Here's a golden oldie…blast from the past…call it whatever you like. It's a full episode of the daytime game show Treasure Hunt from March of 1958. This was a little more than a year before the events I described in this posting when I, a tender lad of seven, got to meet its host Jan Murray in the corridor outside the studio. As I think back, I'm not sure that encounter didn't have a larger impact on my burgeoning psyche than I'd previously realized. I never longed to go into his line of work but I thought Jan Murray was the coolest guy in the world and that he had a magic power. He could make everyone around him smile and even laugh. He was by no means the only person I saw on TV who could do that but he was the first one I met in person. Ergo, it was the first time I could verify that the folks who had that power were actual human beings.
Here he is in an episode of this game show he did that wasn't, when you got right down to it, much of a game show. It worked because of the sheer force of his charm and showmanship. I didn't like everything he did on it. Most days, there was a point where he had to torture a contestant a little, making her think she'd picked the wrong box when in fact, she had a lovely and thrilling gift awaiting her. As he went through that routine, I practically yelled at the set, "Get on with it!" But I liked him most of the time and so did America, which watched this show for quite a while. When it went off, they watched the next Jan Murray-hosted game show, too.
Here ya go…and remember this is live TV and that Jan is operating with almost no cue cards — probably just a few to help him introduce the contestants and to tell him when to throw to commercial. He did this every day, Monday through Friday, for many years…
