ABSTRACT
I’ve always been a fan of Match Game. 1 If you were born too late to see Match Game during its initial run in the 1970s or too busy to catch the reruns on Game Show Network, let me catch you up. Genial host Gene Rayburn 2 would read a short parable of modern life, such as “Blind Betty couldn’t see a thing. In fact, last week, she went to Coney Island to get a hot dog and ended up eating a BLANK”. The point of the game would be for the young contestant to fill in the blank with the same answer as the celebrity panel, consisting of such notable names as Charles Nelson Reilly and Nipsey Russell. Now, at this point, the young contestant had to make a choice. Would she go with the dirty answer and say “penis”, thereby matching most of the dirty-minded celebrities but embarrassing her mother and husband, or would she go with the milquetoast answer, “snake”, and lose the game. It was a moral dilemma that kept me watching week to week, I assure you. One Tuesday morning in 1977, Gene Rayburn read a little ditty that has stuck with me ever since. “The theater marquee”, he read, “said ‘Celebrity Shorts’, but all they had inside were pictures of BLANK”.
