Money Maze
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(The) Money Maze was an American television game show seen on ABC from December 23, 1974 to July 4, 1975. The host of the show was Nick Clooney, the father of veteran actor George Clooney and a Cincinnati-based television personality; Alan Kalter was the announcer. It was produced by Daphne-Don Lipp Productions, of which Dick Cavett was a principal.
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.
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[edit] Front game
Two married couples against the 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 challenge 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.
[edit] Scheduling history
After ABC moved its successful $10,000 Pyramid to 2 p.m. Eastern/1 Central, the network replaced it at 4/3 with Money Maze, which in effect replaced the long-running Newlywed Game. Unlike Pyramid, though, Maze did not stand up well to the competing Tattletales on CBS or Somerset on NBC.
Also problematic was the tendency of affiliates to preempt ABC's offerings at that time of day with cartoons, sitcom reruns, or old movies, believing them to appeal more to children coming home from school. Further, even though Pyramid did well on stations that tape-delayed it until the next morning to run against games on CBS and NBC, Maze did not make much of an impact there, either.
Its poor performance in the Nielsens likely did not only result from its timeslot; ABC debuted Maze on the day before Christmas Eve, when most potential viewers were probably making household preparations for the holiday. This blunted the network's promotional efforts, and many ignored the show after the holidays ended. This also affected the other Don Lipp-packaged show running in tandem with Maze, The Big Showdown.
[edit] Trivia
- The show is believed to be the first in American game show history where a profanity was not censored. When a husband was not making good progress inside the maze, his wife became frustrated and yelled, "Get out of the maze, Warren, get the hell out of the maze!" In that same year, 1975, the first profanity appeared on a soap opera, as the character Meg (Tudi Wiggins) on CBS' Love of Life referred to her son's illegitimate child as a "bastard." The son was portrayed by none other than eventual Superman Christopher Reeve.
- Late in the show's run, Clooney would open each show with a short song: "Life’s a chance/A happenstance/Come with me/And wander free/Try my way/And you’ll be on top/All the time!" Clooney's sister Rosemary, however, is the best-known vocalist in his family.
- This was Clooney's only network show. Nationally, he was better known as a host for American Movie Classics. He then returned to his home of Cincinnati, Ohio, where he became a news anchorman, newspaper columnist, and, years later, unsuccessful candidate for the United States House of Representatives on the Democratic Party ticket.
- The large maze, estimated by some sources at 50 × 100 feet, was part of 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.
- Alan Kalter announced several game shows, but is better known as the current announcer for The Late Show with David Letterman.
- 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]) The huge expense probably influenced ABC to discontinue production well in advance of its July cancellation date, and for the first time in network 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.
- The pilot and at least one episode from the series exist in ABC's archive. Like most daytime game shows on ABC from that era, the tapes would be wiped after broadcast. 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.
