This month our blog series is “Life is Just a Game,” and we are looking back at some of the game shows that debuted in the fifties and sixties. Today we are ending our series with Sale of the Century.

On September 29, 1969, three game shows debuted on NBC. Letters to Laugh-In and Name Droppers didn’t last long. The third was Sale of the Century. Compared to the other game shows we have learned about this month, Sale of the Century was not a long-lived show; it was canceled in 1973. I don’t remember the first two years of the show when Jack Kelly was the host, but I remember watching with Joe Garagiola, a former baseball player, when he did the emcee tasks. I loved this show for some reason. From 1983-1989 another version was aired, hosted by Jim Perry.

Jack Kelly was best known as Bart Maverick in the show Maverick from 1957-1962. He took a break from acting to host this game show but after two years, he decided to go back to his acting career. He ended up with 120 credits, so he was a busy and well-respected actor. After this show, he did appear regularly in Get Christie Love and The Hardy Boys/ Nancy Drew Hour.

Joe Garagiola was a baseball player with the St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, Pittsburgh Pirates, and San Francisco Giants from 1946-1954. In 1951, he led the National League in fielding percentage for catchers. He later did some color commentary for his son’s team, the Arizona Diamondbacks. He did give acting a try and ended up with 3 credits, two which were playing himself. However, game shows was where he made his mark, hosting for He Said, She Said; To Tell the Truth; Strike It Rich; and Joe Garagiola’s Memory Game.

Jim Perry was the typical game show host. He started out in show business as a singer and worked with Sid Caesar in his comedy routines. In the seventies he began doing game shows. In total, Jim Perry hosted approximately ten different game shows (including unsold pilots) in a career that spanned about 25 years. 

In the original version of the television game show, there were three contestants who each started the game with $25, and the host would ask a general-knowledge, trivia-type question. Whoever answered it got $5. The second half of the game, the questions were worth $10. They also lost that amount if they gave the wrong answer. Off and on during the game a dinging would be heard, and an Instant Bargain was brought on stage. The bargain was a great prize at a reduced rate, like a television for $15. Whoever was leading got a chance to buy the item; if they did, that amount of money was taken off their board. Whoever won the game got to go shopping with their money or they could come back the next day to try to win more in order to buy a bigger prize.

Like the other game shows we learned about, none of the original episodes were kept because they were recorded over. The UCLA Film and Television Archive does have nine episodes of the show in its collection. There are also some episodes from 1985-86 and 1992-94 versions that ran on USA later.

The theme song was composed by Al Howard and Irwin Bazelon. Howard was also the executive producer of the show. I couldn’t find any other composing done by Howard. He would later produce Supermarket Sweep from 1992-1994. According to imdb.com, Bazelon wrote the score for the television production of What Makes Sammy Run?, and incidental music for “The Taming of the Shrew” and the “Merry Wives of Windsor” for the Shakespeare Festival Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut. He joined ASCAP in 1955, and his compositions include “Brass Quintet,” “Five Pieces for Cello, Piano,” “Five Pieces for Piano,” “Sonatina,” and “Piano S.”

You could play the game at home with Milton Bradley’s versions from the original series or the American Publishing Corp.’s game from 1986.

Fun fact, Tim Hollerin of Connecticut was the show’s biggest winner. In 1985, he took home cash and other prizes to the value of $166,875.

I’m guessing that this show wouldn’t hold up as well after so many decades. The general trivia questions might not resonate with this generation, and prices are so incredibly different, that it might just feel very dated. That said, I would love to catch an episode or two because I do remember enjoying it so much.