The Money Maze

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (August 2007)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

The Money Maze
Format	Game Show
Created by	Don Lipp
Starring	Nick Clooney
Country of origin	United States
Production
Running time	30 Minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Original run	1974 – 1975

The Money Maze was an American television game show seen on ABC from December 23, 1974 to July 4, 1975. The show was hosted by Nick Clooney, a popular Cincinnati journalist and future presenter on AMC (and father to the actor George Clooney), and was announced by veteran TV announcer Alan Kalter.

It was produced by Daphne-Don Lipp Productions, of which Dick Cavett was a principal. ABC broadcast this program at 4 p.m. Eastern/3 p.m. Central, opposite Tattletales on CBS and Somerset on NBC, neither of which it was successful against in the ratings.

The object of the game was to negotiate a large maze built on the studio floor. A contestant would direct his or her spouse from a perch above the maze; the spouse would need to find his or her way to a pushbutton on the side of a tower inside the maze.

1 Front game
2 The $10,000 Dash
3 Set
4 Episode status
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Front game

Two married couples played against each other for the right to enter the maze. Three regular rounds were played. Each round had a particular topic, with eight related clues. Two clues would be shown on a screen; one couple would select a clue for the other to attempt to answer. A correct answer scored a point, and that couple would then select from two clues (a new clue plus the one they didn't act on before) for their opponent. An incorrect answer gave the opponents a chance to answer instead. If they did so, they had a chance to answer as many of the remaining clues as they could; if they were also incorrect, play would continue in the round. If the two couples each answered four clues in the round, a tiebreaker would be played where two additional clues were shown. The first couple to activate a buzzer would select a clue to answer for one point, then try to answer the other for two points. If they were wrong on either, the other couple got a free attempt.

The winning couple in each round would then send one member into the maze, with the other directing from above. The "runner" would have 15 seconds to find a phone-booth-size "tower" with pushbuttons on each side. Pressing the lit button before time expired won the prize. Later in the show's run, couples were given the option of trying to also reach a second tower within 25 seconds for a $500 bonus; if they accepted the risk but couldn't reach both towers, the prize and the cash bonus were both lost.

The final round was the Catch-Up Round. Clues proceeded as in earlier rounds, except that the couple trailing in score at that point of the game would do all the answering and the leading team would select the clues. The first clue was worth one point, the second worth two, and so on. If the trailing couple incorrectly answered at any time before their score surpassed their opponents, the round was over and the other couple won outright. If the trailing couple tied or passed the leading couple's score, the leading couple got one (and only one) chance for a final clue that would win the game. The winner at the end of this round would play "The $10,000 Dash," a final maze run for a prize of up to $10,000. If both couples were tied going into the Catch-Up Round, they each effectively won the game, and each would run the maze for $10,000.

[edit] The $10,000 Dash

In the final run, five of the towers (out of eight available) would be lit. Four of them would have zeroes on top, and the fifth would have "the all important 1." The 1 was indeed important, because the runner had to activate it to win anything at all. To win the $10,000, the runner had to activate all the pushbuttons, and exit the maze — pushing another button atop a podium near the exit (sometimes called the "birthday cake" for its multiple layers of bright lights) — within one minute. The total prize was determined by how many "zeroes" were reached: the 1 plus three zeroes won $1,000, the 1 plus two zeroes won $100, and so on. The top prize doubled shortly before the end of the run.^[1]

[edit] Set

The large maze, estimated by some sources at 50 × 100 feet, was widely believed to be the main factor in the show's undoing — it took nearly an entire day to set up the maze and another to break it down, tying up the studio for an extra two days for each five-show, one-day taping session. Audience members sat in bleachers above and around three sides of the maze, with the stage facing the remaining side.

It is likely the costs that included the rental fees for taping at a large studio for several days and all the overtime paid for setting up, striking and storing the set played a deciding factor in its cancellation. According to Mark Evanier, producer Don Segall described it as the first game show where the stage crew took home more money than the contestants.[1]) Along with Clooney's claim in a 1998 Cincinnati Post column that fewer than half of ABC stations cleared the show at all, the huge expense probably influenced ABC to discontinue production well in advance of its July cancellation date. For the first time ever in network daytime television history, game show episodes were rerun (from the first two weeks), between June 23 and July 4. This practice is now standard for CBS' The Price is Right during the summer months.

[edit] Episode status

The pilot and at least one episode from the series exist in ABC's archive. Like most daytime game shows on the networks other than CBS from that era, the tapes were erased after broadcast for reuse, due to their great expense at the time. The pilot exists among tape traders, and a small clip of the show aired in 2004 when Chuck Barris and George Clooney (Nick Clooney's son, who was also part of the Money Maze staff) were promoting Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Another 1974 episode exists at the Paley Center for Media.