Hollywood Squares

Hollywood Squares is a American television comedy and game show in which two contestants play tic-tac-toe to win money and prizes. The "board" for the game is actually a 3 × 3 vertical stack of open-faced cubes, each occupied by a celebrity seated at a desk and facing the contestants. The celebrities are asked questions and the contestants judge the veracity of their answers in order to win the game.

Although Hollywood Squares is a legitimate game show, at its best the game is simply the background for the show's comedy. The show is scripted, in the sense that the panel of celebrities know the questions in advance and are provided with answers, and suggestions for bluffs and jokes. Typically, a celebrity's first response to a question is a(n attempt at a) humorous one. This is then followed by the true answer or bluff.

The show's recurring and most successful celebrities have always been the ones with comic timing.

Basic rules

Although there have been variations over the years in the rules and the prize-winning aspects of the game, certain aspects of the game remained fairly consistent. Two contestants, a woman playing Os (noughts) and the man playing Xs (crosses), take turns selecting a celebrity, following traditional tic-tac-toe strategies for which square to select. The chosen celebrity is then asked a trivia question by the show's host. The celebrity answers the question, and a contestant win an X or an O on the board by agreeing with the celebrity, or disagreeing if the celebrity is bluffing or wrong. If the contestant is right, he or she gets the square; if wrong, the other contestant gets the square, unless that causes the opponent to get three-in-a-row. In that case, the opponent has to win the square on his or her own.

Original version

The show's greatest success was during its original run. In its heyday in the early 1970s, it was the most popular daytime show in the country, and a platform for celebrities to promote their work which seemed almost as popular as Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show.

The show got its beginning as a black-and-white pilot episode filmed for CBS in 1965. That pilot was hosted by Bert Parks, with the squares occupied by Charley Weaver, Wally Cox, Rose Marie, Morey Amsterdam, Abby Dalton, Jim Backus, Gisele MacKenzie, Robert Q. Lewis, and Vera Miles. The first five of the initial panelists were to later appear on the first broadcasted show (October 17, 1966) and become some of its initial regulars.

CBS shot a second pilot hosted by Sandy Baron, but choose not to follow-up with either host. A year later, NBC acquired the rights to the show, and chose Peter Marshall as host, a job he held for fifteen years, until 1981.

In 1970 after two years on the show, its biggest star Paul Lynde became the regular center square. Lynde was the only panelist on the show to win two daytime Emmy Awards, in 1975 and 1979. Other regulars and semi-regulars over the years included Nannette Fabray, George Gobel, Vincent Price, Charo, Sandy Duncan, Karen Valentine, Roddy McDowall, and Joan Rivers.

The daytime version of the show was replaced by NBC on June 20, 1980, by a short-lived talk show hosted by David Letterman. It ran for one more year in syndication before it was canceled for good.

Peter Marshall wrote about his experiences on the show in the 2002 book Backstage With The Original Hollywood Square [sic] (ISBN 1558539808).

The 1st theme song used in 1966-1969 is called "The Silly Song" by Jimmie Haskell. The 2nd theme song used in the 1969-1980 version is called "Bob & Merrill's Theme" by William Loose. The 3rd theme used from 1980-1981 was composed by Stan Worth.

Revivals

There have been several revivals, each with variations in the prize-winning rules but still based on the core premise. For nine months starting in October 1983, Jon ?Bowzer? Bauman of Sha-Na-Na hosted a version packaged back-to-back with Match Game. John Davidson hosted a version called The New Hollywood Squares between 1986 and 1989, with Shadoe Stevens and Jm J. Bullock as regulars.

More recently, Tom Bergeron hosted a version since 1998, which was also called Hollywood Squares. It starred Whoopi Goldberg in the center square; Whoopi also co-produced it for its first four years. In its fifth season it underwent an update after Henry Winkler and Michael Levitt took over as executive producers, taking on the nickname H² and switching to a rotating series of center square occupants. That series ended in September 2004.

Other versions

A UK version of the show, called Celebrity Squares and hosted by Bob Monkhouse, appeared on ITV from 1975 to 1979; it was revived with the same host in the mid-1990s.

Storybook Squares, a Saturday-morning children's version, was on for several months in 1969. It featured stars dressed as fairy tale and historical characters.

Other celebrity panelists

Since the center square is the most strategic in tic-tac-toe, it is treated as the position of honor on the show. Besides Paul Lynde, center square occupants in later versions have included:

• Joan Rivers, who was the primary occupant in the late-1980s version;
• Whoopi Goldberg, who was the center square in the second revival for its first four years; and
• Ellen DeGeneres, who took over for Whoopi.

The following is a partial list of other notable celebrity panelists:

• Carol Channing
• Phyllis Diller
• Bob Eubanks
• Gilbert Gottfried
• Rich Little
• Martin Mull
• Tom Poston
• Charles Nelson Reilly
• Caroline Rhea
• Siegfried and Roy
• Bruce Vilanch
• Jimmie Walker
• Marcia Wallace
• Chuck Woolery

Puppets have also appeared as panelists, including:

• Bear, from Bear in the Big Blue House
• Big Bird and Elmo, from Sesame Street
• Kermit, and Miss Piggy, from The Muppet Show
• Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog, from Late Night with Conan O'Brien

Reruns

• Most of the episodes hosted by Marshall were destroyed; only about one hundred remain, which aired on GSN in 2002 and 2003.
• All of the Bauman version's episodes are assumed to be intact, but the Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour has never been rerun on any network, primarily because of cross-ownership issues.
• Episodes hosted by Davidson were rerun on the USA Network for a few years after the show's cancellation.
• The Bergeron episodes continue to air on GSN.