Come on Down...a Different Way

The earliest version of U.S. television's longest running game show, gives us a nice museum tour of 1960s consumerism


The Price is Right, "Guest Star: Pat Carroll"
OB: October 16, 1963, 8:30 p.m. EST, ABC
I was born three months after this show first aired.

In 1972, CBS was finally ready to get back into the game show market. Since the cancellation of To Tell the Truth in 1968, they'd left their daytime lineup almost completely to daytime soaps like Love is a Many Splendored Thing and reruns of, say, The Lucy Show and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. So for the game shows they wanted, they turned to three different game show production houses...and ultimately got three recycled ideas in return, all of them successful to some degree, but wildly disproportionately so with one another.

Heatter-Quigley, the people who at that point provided daytime's hottest game show, The Hollywood Squares, got the first, and most original, idea on the air: The Amateur's Guide to Love. The combination panel and Candid Camera-type show lasted every bit of two months; it bombed and was replaced by reruns of Family Affair. Then H-Q came up with Gambit, a show based on the card game blackjack and hosted by Wink Martindale, which was more successful. Meanwhile, Jack Barry, looking for a comeback after his involvement in the 1950s game show scandals, hosted and (with his old partner Dan Enright) co-produced The Joker's Wild, which was based on the idea of a slot machine. Both of those premiered the same day--September 4, 1972--as one other idea from game show powerhouse Goodson-Todman: a retooled revival of one of their own old favorites, now called The New Price is Right.

The results: they all got very good ratings, Gambit and Joker lasting until the mid-1970's, Jack Barry's image being rehabilitated, and both shows being revived at different times with differing levels of success. But the new version of The Price is Right was on its way to becoming a television legend. Using the original format as the front game, the show took bits and pieces of inspiration from other shows--Video Village, Seven Keys, the original versions of Let's Make a Deal and Sale of the Century--to make a weekday powerhouse. Bob Barker, who hosted Truth or Consequences for years, was tapped as host. He'd actually been more interested in The Joker's Wild but was told he had too much talent for that show. The result, Barker and Price, was one of those classic, made-for-each-other pairings, with Barker lasting 35 years and the show lasting right up to this very day (now with Drew Carey as host). So I guess the lesson is...original ideas fail, recycled ideas are golden. That's kind of a downbeat lesson to take away from game shows where so many people seem to be so happy. Then again, originality is probably the last thing on anyone's mind when they've won a car or a vacation.

In 1975, the show expanded to a full hour--unheard of in network daytime TV (but done as far back as old time radio), and stayed that way to this day, with a spinning money wheel (much like one in another network at the time) which determined who got into the "Showcase Showdown."

And so, for what, two, three, four generations now?, many of us have either spent our sick days home from school (or work) or gotten a late start on our school vacation days, watching the pricing games, the contestants jumping up and down, Bob Barker's exciting voice raising and dropping as he offers words of encouragement, and all the pricing games, like the Pricing Game, Plinko, the Clock Game, and the one with the mountain climber and the yodeling soundtrack. And suddenly we're conscious of how much everything costs, from a jar of Jolly Time Popcorn to a brand new Vega or Chevette (or Suburu Brat, or Chevy Cruze, or whatever car they gave away in whatever era).

When I was home one day recently, on a sick day, I watched one of the modern shows (custom made t-shirts and all) and was struck by how much the prizes tell us so much about this particular time: a flat-screen TV, a laptop, a home gym, a karaoke machine; an iPad and iPhone; two vacations (as part of one showcase) and a 2014 Kia Forte. I also couldn't help but notice how drastically the set and especially its colors have changed in 42 years, and how small and few the changes have been in all the theme and prize music. In fact, the prizes given away at any given time tell a lot about who we were in those days. The very first item up for bids in September 1972 was a fur coat. Host Bob Barker would later become an animal rights activist, successfully pushing to have furs banned as prizes on the show years later. His contract even forbade any previous shows, with furs given away, to be rerun.

Although there are a few leftover elements from the older Price is Right, the version that's on now is a different animal. The newer version has a long list of things that didn't exist on the old one: the iconic sound of the late announcers Johnny Olsen, then Rod Roddy (and today, George Gray), saying "Come on down!": the pricing games, like "Plinko"; the exciting music, and of course those "loser horns," those few notes of the theme song played on tuba. And the old version didn't have Bob Barker, since he was busy hosting Truth or Consequences in those days. On the other hand, it always had "the next item up for bids"--in fact, that's almost all there was to the show--and it had one of the other greatest game show hosts of all time: Bill Cullen. No one in television history hosted more game shows than Cullen...and this one was his longest-running gig.


A native of Pennsylvania, Cullen helped call local coverage of Pittsburgh Steelers games and worked in radio before moving to New York. He broke into network radio by writing for the comedy show Easy Aces and eventually began hosting game shows. His subdued, sedate, button-down style, which would become so en vogue in the late 1950s and early 1960s, is quite a contrast to the hyper-excited, melodramatic style of, say, Bert Parks. Listen to recordings of both of them taking turns hosting the radio game show Stop the Music! and it's almost as if you're listening to two different shows. If Cullen were a comedian, he'd have been someone like Stan Freberg or Bob Newhart; had Parks been one, it's likely seltzer water would've been involved.

Cullen began hosting games on TV when Goodson-Todman hired him to host Winner Take All; the earliest existing footage we've ever seen in modern day television of Cullen hosting a show is of him hosting this one, and the two or three existing broadcasts have even been rerun on GSN. From there, the buzzcut, spectacled Cullen would be seen as a panelist on I've Got a Secret for 15 years, and hosting shows like Bank on the Stars, Place the Face and Eye Guess. Cullen had a long life of health problems, including a sharp, pronounced limp from a childhood bout with polio and a 1937 car accident. In 1969, just after Eye Guess ended, Cullen suffered a severe bout of pancreatitis that required surgery. This is where he lost the buzzcut and grew his hair out. Cullen recovered, beginning a stint as a panelist on a syndicated revival of To Tell the Truth and an Emmy-winning job hosting NBC's Three on a Match. He went on to host The $25,000 Pyramid, Password Plus, the original version of the twice-remade Chain Reaction, The Joker's Wild, Blockbusters (heavily rerun for years on GSN, largely on the strength of Cullen's abilities as host), Hot Potato and Bumper Stumpers.

Cullen was so highly thought of, and so in demand, that he was the first choice to host Who Wants to Be a Millionaire when the British game show came to America. The reason he couldn't: Cullen had died nine years earlier, in 1990, as age 70. It was lung cancer that finally did in the man who managed to stand up to so many other health problems; it should be noted that many of the shows he hosted or on which he joined the panel, like I've Got a Secret, were sponsored by tobacco companies like Winston. The Price is Right counted Newport and Lark among its main advertisers.

It was likely those health problems, and his hard time walking around with the limp, that kept Cullen from accepting the job of hosting The New Price is Right in 1972. Most of the other shows shot around Cullen's difficulty in walking, to the point that even his fellow game show hosts were surprised when they met him in person. Bob Barker, who had hosted Truth or Consequences for years and did a lot of walking around on that show, got the physically demanding job hosting the daytime Price instead, with Dennis James the first host of the syndicated nighttime version. Cullen did appear on the show in 1982 to promote another CBS daytime show he hosted, Child''s Play, but neither he nor Barker mentioned his earlier job hosting The Price is Right. Barker has mentioned Cullen a few times, and Drew Carey (whose glasses and haircut seen to resemble the early Cullen) has mentioned him more often. For his part, Cullen actually mentioned future host Barker on the old Price is Right by name; during the NBC daytime version he told viewers they could catch Barker next on Truth or Consequences. Having said that...Cullen can occasionally be seen taking a few steps around the set of the old Price is Right, and his limp is only occasionally noticeable.

If you want to read up more on the fascinating career, life and world of Bill Cullen, a friend of mine, Matt Ottinger, has a definitive website devoted to the master gamesman.

Before I contrast the colorful post 1972 Price is Right to the black-and-white kinescopes of the Cullen era, it should be noted that NBC aired most of the show (if not all of it) in "living color," peacock and all, through its September 1963 departure from the network. Unfortunately, as was the practice in those days, the few existing shows (out of the hundreds that aired in prime time and thousands from the daytime run) were preserved in black-and-white kinescope format, a much cheaper method in those days. However, I could've sworn I saw a colorful few seconds of a Cullen Price is Right that flew by as part of the game show montage, featured on the special NBC: the First 50 Years in 1976, so perhaps one color show existed as late as then.

Beginning in 1956, the show aired five times a week in daytime and once a week in network prime time, as a surprising number of game shows did as late as the early 1970s. In the show's days on NBC, Don Pardo (the man who had done old time radio big band remotes, we'd later hear on the original Jeopardy! and heard him just a few days ago introducing guest host Jim Parsons on Saturday Night Live) did the honors of announcing the show. "Tonight these four people meet to compete for the prizes of a lifetime on...the Price is Right!" is how Pardo opened each show, before introducing Bill Cullen and/or maybe reading a sponsor billboard for, say, Speidel, Lux dishwashing liquid, Imperial Margarine or Newport Cigarettes. (Another version of the opening had Pardo referring to the contestants as "bargain hunters.")

What you would never hear Pardo say, since the players were already seated, was the still not yet coined phrase, "Come on down!" (But how cool would that have been? Hearing that from Pardo?)  Pardo's detailed prize descriptions, sponsor I.D.'s and instructions on mailing sweepstakes postcards to NBC, probably made his role the largest role he's ever had on a TV show, rivaled only by Saturday Night Live in its earliest years. And Pardo is the first man in television history to utter the words, "...and it can be yours if the Price is Right!" at least in this context.

There were no pricing games, no 1950s equivalent to Plinko, for instance. Basically they bid on four-five prizes per show, and every item was the next item up for bids (a phrase that was heard on this version, spoken by Cullen). Everyone had to bid without going over the actual retail price, but there were two or three pricing rounds for most items; there were specific increments of $100 the contestants were required to bid (so you couldn't bid, say, $201 if the guy next to you just bid $200) and you couldn't underbid the highest existing bid; your only other option was to "freeze." (The audience shouting "Higher! Lower! Freeze!" is another feature that made the jump from the Cullen to the Barker years.) They may have used only one part of the 1972 version, but they certainly knew how to complicate it and also mine it for drama. During a 1958 show, for instance, one man talks about how he's always fantasized about owning a boat much like the one up for bids...then wins it and invites the other three contestants for a ride on it.

Other items up for bids during the NBC years include furs; an entertainment center that includes a radio, a televsion and a "hi-fi"; a luxurious dress and a trip to Paris; a serving bar that comes with a bonus prize of 120 bottles of champagne--given away on Christmas Day 1961, presumably for a New Year's party. And of course there were cars. An Alabama native going to school in Boston won a 1959 Ford Country Squire station wagon; others included a 1959 Rambler Cross-Country station wagon, a Chevrolet Corvair and a 1962 Mercury Meteor sedan.

The Wikipedia article on this version of the show lists some highly exotic prizes, like a 1926 Rolls Royce with chauffeur; a ferris wheel; an island on the St. Lawrence Seaway; a live steer to go with a barbecue pit; a live peacock to go with a color TV (a play on the NBC icon); an airplane, a submarine, and walk-on parts on TV shows and movies, including a trip to Israel to work as an extra in the move "Exodus." Contestants could trade the prizes for cash or a more practical prize (example: the antique Rolls could've been traded for a more modern car). Once the show gave away a live elephant, and the contestant refused the alternate prizes and insisted on the elephant...so, he got it. It always wasn't unusual, in those post=war, suburb-growing days, for new homes in newly built subdivisions to be given away as prizes, giving viewers a rare chase to see the fifth digit light up on all of the scoring boards.

The show was created and produced by Bob Stewart, who said he got the idea by watching an auction take place outside his office window. It premiered just as the quiz show scandals were breaking. The show, investigated and found to be clear, continued as other tainted shows like Twenty-One, The $64,000 Question and Dotto, fell by the wayside. So with less competition and as one of the few shows still giving out luxurious (but still less costly) prizes, The Price is Right became America's top rated game show for two years.

Johnny Gilbert, the show's announcer on ABC

But ratings began to slip and NBC cancelled the show in 1963; Goodson-Todman quickly found a new home for it on ABC. The switch meant no Don Pardo, as he was under contact to NBC. Ironically, the man who would succeed him as announcer on the Alex Trebek version of Jeopardy!, Johnny Gilbert, also did the same on The Price is Right. (Like Pardo, Gilbert was even called upon to guest host on occasion.) This glorious celebration of consumerism also reflected a shift in emphasis from the contestants to the prizes themselves, right down to Gilbert's standard opening: "Backstage are some of the most exciting prizes on television...Stand by for...The Price is Right!"

That's how the prime time show of October 16, 1963 opens, complete with a sponsor I.D. for Imperial Margarine. It also has a theme song, "Window Shopping," that seems to revel in how old-fashioned it sounds. It makes me think of what I might've heard as a child, standing in line for the antique car ride at Six Flags. It's a sharp contrast to the 1972 theme, which is so crisp and exciting that it's still used even to this day.

Then Bill Cullen comes out and puts on his lavalier microphone while we all watch, and he opens the show. Pat Carroll is the celebrity panelist, a noticeable change from the NBC version; the celebrities played each of the four rounds for a different member of the studio audience. Sometimes Cullen would tell the winning audience member to come down onto the stage; this is probably what evolved into "Come on down!" in the 1970s.

Cullen introduces the panelists: Marian Dillon of Illinois, a returning champ who previously won $8500 on the show; William Smith of Massachusetts, an older man who won a choice between an oil well and $25,000 and chose the money, saying "I ain't got time to wait for the oil well" (he must've been a home sweepstakes winner); Bill Roberts, the one apparent newcomer, from New Jersey; and Carroll, who plugs her appearance in the musical "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" off-Broadway. "You run from the minute the curtain goes up, not too good for an old lady like me!" she tells Cullen. "Now you know why I turned it down when they offered it to me!" he shoots back.

Pat then chooses four cards from a fishbowl; all of the cards in the bowl have names of studio audience members. She lays each one face down, and will play for each one each round. The first name she calls out is James Snead.

Cullen then calls on Johnny Gilbert to tell us the first item up for bids: it's a travel trailer. The entire panel, including Pat Carroll, even gets to walk through the trailer, as Gilbert describes its many features: gas-powered stove, refrigerator and water heater, sink, shower, storage space and a double bed.

Cullen asks the panel for a bid no lower than $1,000. Marian Dillon bids $1200; William Smith bids $1350 (the minimum raise is $100 and you can't go lower than the lowest bid); Bill Roberts bids $1700 and Caroll, on behalf of Mr. Snead, bids $1800. Then he asks Dillon which way she wants to go, and she bids $1900; Smith bids $2000, Roberts $2300, Carroll $2500. Then a buzzer goes off which means each contestant only gets one more bid.

So the first thing we see is a half-scale replica of a 1910 Ford Model T with a fiberglass body, made by McDonough, a company based in Georgia. (Well, there you go with the whole Six Flags thing...) Cullen says if the Model T won't pull the trailer...

...then perhaps the next part of the bonus will. It's a 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente sedan with a V8 engine. Roberts, who hadn't cracked much of a smile before winning the trailer, is now a very, very happy man.

Pat then turns over her next card, and reads off the name Ruth Billick. Then comes the next item up for bids: a 12 place, 162 piece bone China service, from Royal Worchester.


Cullen announces this is a one-bid item. When Smith bids $100, Cullen reminds him of the one-bid status (apparently a hint that Smith is way off). Roberts then bids $400; Pat, $450; Dillon, $475. The actual retail price turns out to be $1004.50, so Dillon is the big winner.
Cullen then announces a new home viewer sweepstakes; these encourage viewers to send in bids by postcard, and one lucky bidder will not only win the prizes but also get a spot on the show. This is occasionally called a "showcase," the earliest use of the word in Price is Right lore. This particular one is called the "auto sweepstakes," because the main prize is a luxurious 1964 Lincoln Continental. The sweepstakes also includes a Tyco train set and a stereo system.
If the Continental itself wasn't enough to make you think of Mad Men, the next item up for bids will surely do it: a true relic of the "Martini Generation." It's what Johnny Gilbert calls "a unique bar!" Not only does it serve alcohol, but it has a built-in black and white television set and a stereo system.
Roberts starts the bidding with $1500. Cullen then tells Smith he's allowed to underbid but will have to freeze, an apparent hint that Roberts just overbid. After all the bidding, the actual retail price is $1490. Smith gets it with his frozen bid of $1250.
The last item up for bids is a five carat diamond ring from Johnston Jewelers LTD. This time Pat Carroll gets the lowest and highest bid, starting off with $2750, and after three rounds of rather dramatic bidding, comes out with the high bid of $6250. The actual retail price turns out to be $8675 so Pat wins it for her chosen audience member, Carrie Winfield. Carrie, as it turns out, is black, making her a rarity on the shows I've seen on Youtube.
As Cullen tallies up the totals, Pat is the big winner because of her bid on the diamond ring. But the returning contestant is chosen from the other three, and it's the one newcomer, Bill Roberts who won $5833 in prizes. (The total you see below for Marian Dillon is her two-show total.)
The prime time version of The Price is Right would leave the air after the 1963-64 season; Pat Carroll would return for the September finale, in which the last-ever prime time prize turned out to be a newly-built house in Florida. The winner was invited to return the following Monday on the still-running daytime version. The show finally left ABC Daytime in 1965.

Bob Stewart would leave Goodson-Todman to start his own production company; he and Cullen would team up again in 1966 for Eye Guess, and in the 1970s for The $25,000 Pyramid. Stewart would also create other shows like Jackpot! hosted by Geoff Edwards, whose death, sadly, I learned about while writing this post. As for Don Pardo and Johnny Gilbert, they're still working to this day--the 96 year old Pardo still records intros for Saturday Night Live and Gilbert can still be heard dramatically saying "This...is...Jeopardy!"

Looking at this show and all the others, two things come to mind, and one is something I've already mentioned: how much the prizes tell us about the times. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, we see a lot of politically incorrect prizes like furs and the occasional live animal; obsolete prizes, like stereos with turntables and the Chevy Corvair that was "unsafe at any speed"; and some even a combination of both (the bar that's also a combination entertainment center). But some things never go out of style, like new cars in general or vacations, or contestants getting excited about winning them.

But in true late 1950s/early 1960s ideal life, a lot of these prizes seemed to be aimed at upper-middle-class suburban America. They tended to be family-type cars or things that would be a center of attention in a split-level suburban home. I can't imagine the bar that's also an entertainment center going into a small apartment, or for that matter, a farmhouse.

But what's interesting is, the contestants tend to be rather far apart on bidding on these items. They often tend to be as far off as $1-2,000 and in one case, everyone overbid. These are clearly not people who go shopping every day for bone China and large boats. It lays bare the disparity between those who accumulate all of these possessions (and perhaps the debt that goes with them) and those who aspire to them. And the few we met on the old Price is Right were among the lucky ones who had a shot at getting some of these and only having to worry about paying, say, the tax man.

Availability: a number of the Cullen Price is Right shows are on Youtube, including some 37 added by a man I previously idenfitied as a JFK news coverage guru, David Von Pein. A DVD released in 2008 by current rightsholder Freemantle, features four of the Cullen shows (including the September 1964 ABC prime time finale), and 22 other shows from the Barker era (including a few from 1972's CBS premiere week and Barker's final week in 2007).

Next time on this channel: my favorite show of all time.