Hollywood's Talking

Hollywood's Talking is a short lived American game show based on the 1960s quizzer, Everybody's Talking, and produced by Jack Barry. It ran on CBS for three months in 1973, debuting on March 26 (alongside The $10,000 Pyramid and The Young and the Restless) and ending on June 22 to make room for a new version of Match Game.

It was hosted by Geoff Edwards, with Johnny Jacobs announcing. The series was the first national game show hosted by the 42-year-old Edwards, who would become notable for his next two hosting jobs, The New Treasure Hunt and Jackpot!.

The program aired at 3:30 p.m./2:30 Central time, opposite ABC's One Life to Live (then still a 30-minute show) and NBC's Return to Peyton Place.

Edwards once said that while hosting this series, he had a tenuous working relationship with Jack Barry. It was not until 1980 that Edwards would host another Barry & Enright game, Play the Percentages.

Gameplay

In this game, three contestants viewed videos of famous celebrities, all of them talking about different subjects, and the contestants had to buzz-in and identify what subject they were talking about. Correct answers won money for the players according to how long the video was played, while incorrect answers disqualified a contestant from answering for the remainder of that round. The value of each round started at $150, and decreased by $50 for every 1/3 of videotape it took to take a guess. The first player to reach $200 won the game. All players kept their money.

Short Subjects

The winner played "Short Subjects", in which 15-second videotapes of celebrities were shown one by one. Unlike the main game, there was no penalty for an incorrect answer, and contestants could buzz-in and answer as much as they wanted on each clip. Each correct answer won the same amount of money won in the main game (there was no penalty for an incorrect answer), and solving five subjects won an extra $1,000.

Later in the run, Short Subjects was eliminated in favor of giving contestants who won three consecutive games a new car and a handful of cash; however, the car was not won until the final week of the series.

Theme

A slightly different arrangement of the theme music for the show was used for a later Barry & Enright game, Hollywood Connection, which aired four years later in syndication.

Episode status

Only four episodes - including a studio master of the Premiere - are currently accounted for (the other three shows being March 28, April 2, and April 9). According to Edwards, CBS wiped the other 61 shows "into thin air"; this is uncertain, however, as the network had mostly abandoned the wiping practice in late 1972.

External links

• Game Show Utopia: Hollywood's Talking
• Rules for "Hollywood's Talking"
• The J-Man's "Hollywood's Talking" Page