These are several interviews with famed Match Game personalities, all gathered from various sites on the Internet and television archives...

TVgameshows.net Interview with Ira Skutch

In the summer of 2003, Match Game producer/judge Ira Skutch, a legendary figure in the formation of the 60s and 70s versions, sat down with game show scholar and media professor Steve Beverly, creator of the Internet's most popular source for game show news, for a two-part interview in which many details regarding the show were discussed. The day Beverly interviewed Skutch (July 19, 2003) coincided with Game Show Network's day-long marathon commemorating the 30th anniversary of the CBS "Match Game" with the airing of the most memorable epsiodes from 1973-82. Here's the interview:

Beverly: How did you become originally connected with the original 1960s Match Game? 

Skutch: I had been doing Play Your Hunch on NBC and that show ended after NBC decided to give Merv Griffin his own afternoon talk show. We put in Robert Q. Lewis and the ratings dropped, so NBC canceled it. Mark Goodson liked to keep people on staff who had done his other shows. He moved me over to direct Match Game and I directed it from 1964 to '69.

Beverly: For those of us who remember the 60s show, the difference between that and the CBS series, if I am correct, is that Gene was not nearly as restricted. No podium. You really took the handcuffs off of him being a traditional host and he could be all over the place with that little boy enthusiasm.

Skutch: That’s correct. That was the major change we made. That’s what turned it from a serviceable show into a smash hit. The original Match Game was much more structured. Gene had much less room to be himself and we really took the same approach with Match Game as Mark did when we retooled The Price Is Right [in 1972 when Bob Barker was hired and the game was brought back to TV].

Beverly: Was Gene [Rayburn] always the first choice for the original 60s show?

Skutch: Not necessarily. In fact, I was talking to (producer) Bob Noah the other day and he said people at NBC were always wondering why they couldn't get somebody better than Rayburn to do that show. You always had somebody at the network who was never really sure he was quite right for it. I think that was because we never let Gene have enough freedom with the first show---but that was a decade earlier.

Beverly: When you did the CBS show, how much of a question mark was it, if at all, to rehire Gene as host?

Skutch: When we did it out here, I held out for him to do it again. You again had some network people who wondered if somebody else might be better. There were people who did not want him. Everybody has their own favorites. You get a bunch of people together, everybody wants to score. But I can’t remember any other specific names who came up. It never got to where there were competitive thoughts or conversations. As it was, the new format became a vehicle that was just perfect for Rayburn. Another one of those perfect marriages between a personality and a show. It was like Merv and Play Your Hunch or Daly with What's My Line? The way Cullen was with almost anything.

Beverly: You had nearly seven years on NBC and You Don't Say host Tom Kennedy told me both The Match Game [60s version] and You Don't Say were abruptly canceled, despite continued good ratings, because a new executive for daytime was appointed who proclaimed he was going to remake the network schedule.

Skutch: I think it was mainly that. A year later, NBC would have been delighted with our ratings. I think they went through two or three shows very quickly in that time slot after we were canceled.

Beverly: That was also coming in 1969 at a time which was a disastrous one for Goodson-Todman because all of your prime time shows were canceled on CBS and you had lost almost every show you had on NBC in the daytime lineup (including The Match Game.)

Skutch: Things are in cycles. You don’t find any westerns on the air today, yet there was a time when 16 or 18 westerns were on and then they all disappeared. In the ‘80s, almost all the sitcoms disappeared. So, these things are cyclical. The networks at that time were swinging to film. Live had virtually disappeared by then. One of the great advantages for game shows is even though they are on tape, they have the immediacy of live. But that had lost its favor. The networks were buying almost nothing but film and Hollywood and that meant mostly series. They went to the longform and they went to film. What happened was we lost all of our nighttime shows in ’67. By ’69, we had practically no shows left at all. I think the original 60s Match Game was the last show we had on the network.

Beverly: So, the Steve Allen revival of I've Got a Secret only ran one year and was canceled in 1973. What led to the decision to bring back Match Game?

Skutch: During that year [1973], we were constantly trying to come up with new stuff. The thing that Goodson said, “I think we ought to try to bring back Match Game.” (Goodson-Todman's chief financial officer) Jerry Chester was a terrific mover in all of that. He was a very instrumental person in our business, particularly in game shows because he almost singlehandedly was able to get the prime time access rule passed which made syndicated game shows come back at night in 1971. That was really Jerry’s doing.

Beverly: The original Match Game had been a celebrity game, really an extension of Password in that you had a celebrity with two contestants rather than one. But if you look at the old kinescopes, it is really quiet and almost stoic compared to '73.

Skutch: Of course. Goodson and all of us realized it was a new era. You needed something new. [The original 1966-81 version of] Hollywood Squares had been very successful. Goodson said maybe we could do something with a bunch of celebrities. It began to develop from there.

Beverly: You went to an accelerated taping pace [in the 70s], doing 15 shows over a weekend because of Gene's commuting. Did any question mark ever develop beforehand about Gene not moving to California?

Skutch: Not at all. He could have moved out here if he’d wanted to. It was his choice to commute. To begin with, you don’t do something like that unless you’re sure you’re going to have a long run. But he was happy with his life in New England and he preferred to fly out every three weeks.

Beverly: You replaced a show, Hollywood's Talking, that just did nothing in the ratings. The surge in the ratings for Match Game '73 was unbelievable.

Skutch: It got up to the number one show in daytime in about six weeks. Nothing had ever happened that fast in the history of daytime television. It was almost an instant hit, unlike Family Feud, which took a long time to build.

Beverly: You still took a while before that format really found its own niche. It was faster and livelier but quieter than it was a few months into the show.

Skutch:  Panel shows have a way of developing like an organism begins to build and it grows and takes on its own life and personality. The same thing was true with all successful panel shows going back to What's My Line? That didn’t start out with Bennett Cerf and Arlene Francis and Fred Allen. It developed over a period of time. It’s a matter of personality, people fitting in, and how the show itself develops. The new 70s Match Game was not nearly as ruckus at the start as it was when it developed.

Beverly: Take us through how the decisions were made for what celebrities to put on the panel for the first week of episodes. You didn't have Brett Somers or Charles Nelson Reilly yet.

Skutch: Richard Dawson had been on the panel with Steve Allen on the 1972-73 revival of I've Got a Secret and really played the same kind of role. He was obviously just wonderful in that role and he was the first person we put on the panel in the new show. We started out by trying to get the best names and balance of people we could. We got Jack Klugman [costar of TV's The Odd Couple] to do the pilot. We got Michael Landon [star of TV's Little House on the Prairie]  but he hated it. He was the only person we ever had on the show who came and attacked me. He had done the old show in New York but this time, he sought me out and he said, “This is a terrible show and it’s unfair." Fortunately, Michael was wrong. But he never did our show again.

Beverly: When Match Game '73 started, you were still doing some of the remnants of the old show. You still were using "name something" questions. Not everything was a "blank" question. What led to your decision to make everything a blank?

Skutch: What happened was, Mark always was game-oriented. He never really understood the dynamics of a comedy show like this. It really wasn’t his forte. He was always trying to hold the reins in a little bit.

We kept venturing out. We started out by saying these blank questions are funny and we want to use a lot of them. We could use those as the first round questions and then used fake questions for the second round with more game-playing. The blank questions just played like crazy. The other stuff was just mundane. We went to Mark and said we ought to do more and more of these. He finally saw how funny the show was and when the ratings went through the ceiling, we made every question a blank.

Beverly: Brett Somers and Charles Nelson Reilly were not part of the first week of episodes of Match Game '73. How did you end up signing them?

Skutch: The reason we got Brett was Jack Klugman did the pilot and the first week of episodes and he came to me after the show one night and said, “Listen would you do me a favor? My wife is dying to do something. It would really help me a lot if I could get her out of the house and get her something to do.” I didn’t even know her. We booked her and she fit in perfectly. That’s how we got her. Jack said to me afterward, "You saved my marriage.” Not for long, as it turned out. I hadn’t seen him in probably 20 years. We went to the Hollywood Roosevelt to a nightclub performance by Lorna Luft. He was there and I went over to say hello. I said to him, “I did you a favor once and it was the biggest favor you ever did me.” He said, “Brett never tells anybody I got her that job. I guess she’s probably forgotten it.” Charles had done the early 70s revival of I've Got a Secret (as a celebrity guest). I thought he was a very amusing person and he would be a good booking. He was brilliant. We just kept him on.

Beverly: Most analysts believe the CBS Match Game was killed when it was moved to the morning, which seemed out of character for that show. How accurate is that assessment?

Skutch: Very. Oh yes, that hurt us a lot. CBS decided to run reruns of M*A*S*H in the afternoon and they moved us out of our usual spot [3:30pm] to the morning [11:00am]. We lost a number of affiliates who were running their own syndicated shows. That was a disastrous move. They almost killed Price Is Right by moving it back to the morning at one point (in the summer of 1975 after a two-year afternoon run), then they made an hour out of it and it became invincible.

Beverly: Yours became one of the few shows which continued without a break in syndication after it left the network. Cancellation had to be tough from the network after you had given them one of its biggest hits ever in daytime

Skutch:  It was so traumatic, I blocked it out altogether. But we knew when CBS dropped us [in  April 1979], we would go right on as if nothing had happened. Syndication was all powered by (Goodson-Todman chief financial officer) Jerry Chester. He would go out and figure out what he could sell and he’d come back and tell Goodson, “Let’s do this,” and he’d do it. When he saw the show was running downhill, he went right on in syndication. We kept right on. All we did was cut the numbers off with the sign.

Beverly: You managed three more years before the show ran of gas in syndication. Then, less than a year later, the show is back as The Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour. Ira, only the genuine hardcore game show fans thought that was a well-executed show. Objectively, combining those two shows was a serious mistake

Skutch: Oh, absolutely. That was a monstrous error. I thought they did it in the worst possible way. I left the company when they were doing that, not because of that. I did have a big difference of opinion with them over how they were doing it. I thought they should have let (Gene) Rayburn emcee the whole thing and do it as much as possible as a seamless piece; otherwise, it looks like you’re doing two shows with a station break between them. I thought that was a big mistake. They insisted on Gene being a panelist in Hollywood Squares. Jon Bauman was a very, very poor choice to emcee Hollywood Squares. I just didn’t think the thing worked at all.

Beverly: The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour only managed 39 weeks and the ratings were terrible every week. Why was Bauman chosen?

Skutch: Orion Television had gained the rights to Hollywood Squares and when NBC wanted to put the two together, they decided to let Mark produce both of them. That had never been previously done. It's difficult enough to make one game a success. When you're attempting to make two shows into one, the unifying elements are difficult to execute. Jon Bauman had done several of our shows as a celebrity player. He had done Match Game and Password Plus and NBC liked him because he was popular with younger viewers. But it's a different story when you are thrust in the role of being a host. Jon never grasped it at all.

Beverly: Shortly before The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour was canceled in 1984, you left Goodson-Todman. What did you end up doing after that?

Skutch: It was early in '84. I produced a play with Charles Nelson Reilly in Los Angeles, which had been done in Florida, of A.J. Gurney’s “The Middle Ages.” It’s a very good play and this was an excellent production. We arranged to bring the entire production and the director out here and I put up the money. Charles and I were partners and we had a set built and got the playhouse in Westwood and the thing opened, we did two weeks of previews and were doing pretty good business. The show opened and we got a handful of pretty good reviews but the L.A. Times reviewer came to the theatre right from the airport and wrote the most excoriating review you could possibly imagine. He didn’t like Gurney’s work and the phone stopped ringing and we closed two weeks later and that was the end of my theatrical producing career.