Here's a goody for those of you interested in game shows — five minutes from The Money Maze, which ran on ABC from December 23, 1974 to June 27, 1975. It was hosted by Nick Clooney (father of George, brother of Rosemary) who at the time also had a somewhat successful local talk show in New York Cincinnati. The premise of Money Maze (sometimes spelled as one word, sometimes two) was pretty simple. Married couples would answer questions to see which couple would get to tackle the maze. There were "prize towers" in the maze. One member of the couple would watch from an outside vantage point and direct the other to run through the maze and get to a certain tower. If the runner navigated to the tower and hit a button within a certain amount of time (often as little as 15 seconds), they won the prize.
The show was produced for at least part of its run by a man who was later a good friend of mine, a splendid writer-producer-human named Don Segall. Don is no longer with us but he did a lot of odd TV shows and also a lot of odder comic books. Those of you familiar with Steve Ditko's character The Creeper may recognize Don as the fellow who provided the dialogue for the character's debut appearance, and Don also wrote a lot for Dell and Charlton, plus he did TV shows like Ball Four and The Four Seasons. He and Alan Alda were close friends and when Alda wrote and starred in the movie Sweet Liberty, he wrote a character into the film based on Don…and even let Don audition to play himself. Don — wouldn't you know it? — didn't get the part. Bob Hoskins did…and then Hoskins moved in with Don for a week or so to study him and get him "down."
Anyway, Don and I once discussed The Money Maze…which by the way was produced by Dick Cavett's production company. I assume that was because at some point when Cavett negotiated a contract with ABC, he demanded and got a side deal for his company to do something without him for another time slot.
Don claimed that The Money Maze got decent ratings…not blockbuster but good enough that it could have been renewed. What prevented that was that the set was so costly to maintain. They would tape five a day for several days in a row, then dismantle the whole thing so the studio could be used for other shows. Setting it back up for another series of tapings took several days…and the maze had to be constantly reconfigured with new paths after each taping which added to the expense. There were, Don said, only a few studios available in New York that were large enough to accommodate the set and they were always in demand by other projects willing to pay a lot more to be there.
A few years earlier, CBS had a game show called Video Village that also had an elaborate set and therefore much the same problem. That show had decent enough ratings that when the cost of doing it in a New York studio became prohibitive, they moved it to Los Angeles. Money Maze wasn't quite popular enough for that…so off it went…or at least, that's what Don told me. Here's five minutes of what was either the pilot or among the first episodes…
