Tag Archives: Billiards TV Game Shows

I’ve Got a Secret

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Philo Farnsworth’s secret was that he invented electronic television at the age of 14. Clyde Tombaugh’s secret was that he discovered Pluto. And, Samuel J. Seymour’s secret was that he saw John Wilkes Booth assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

Between 1952 and 1967, these three individuals, along with hundreds of others – both celebrities and ‘ordinary’ contestants – appeared on the American CBS panel game show I’ve Got a Secret to see if a quartet of celebrity panelists could guess their special, unusual, embarrassing, amazing or humorous factoid. 

To my knowledge, billiards was the focus of a hat trick of secrets over the show’s 16-year history. Those episodes featured Willie Mosconi (1962), Bill Staton (1965), and Jean Balukas (1966).

Willie Mosconi

On February 5, 1962, a little more than four months after the release of The Hustler, Willie Mosconi, the “brilliant pocket billiard champion of the world,” appeared as a celebrity contestant on I’ve Got a Secret. Palling around with host Gary Moore, who in a sign of the times is smoking a cigarette throughout the exchange, Mr. Mosconi demonstrates his “virtuosity” by doing the butterfly trick shot, pocketing six balls in one shot. He then shares with the audience his “secret”: he taught panelist Bill Cullen to do the trick shot they just witnessed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYwSxZKOhDs

The panel – actress Betsy Palmer (who many years later played Jason Voorhee’s mother in Friday the 13th), radio humorist Henry Morgan, former Miss America Bess Myerson, and game show host Bill Cullen – deduce that Mr. Mosconi did something billiards-related in the last 24 hours that could entertain millions, but otherwise fail to guess the secret. 

Once the veil is pulled, Mr. Cullen does indeed make the same shot to the awe of his colleagues. The show ends with Mr. Mosconi running 15 balls on a table (while announcing his record is 526) and then making a popular “railroad” trick shot using three cues and three balls.

Bill Staton

Toward the end of 1965, Bill Staton appeared on the show with the secret that he could sink all 15 balls in one shot.  Ms. Myerson guessed the secret pretty quickly, notwithstanding her reference to the cue as Bill’s “pole.” 

Mr. Staton then proceeds to set up the shot, which combines Mr. Mosconi’s aforementioned six ball trick shot, with carefully placed balls in the corner pockets and the cue strategically nestled between two balls in front of the butterfly sextet. 

As (new) host Steve Allen forewarns, the studio floor is not perfectly straight, so the shot may not work. And, in fact, Mr. Staton sinks only 14 of the 15 balls. Fortunately, the shot was also pre-recorded earlier in the day, so the audience and panel can watch the shot made successfully, both at regular speed and in stop-motion. 

While Mr. Staton appeared as a ‘normal’ contestant, for the billiards community, he became rather famous for his unwavering promotion of the sport, as shared by pool historian R.A. Dyer. Nicknamed “Weanie Beanie” for the hot dog chain he and his brother started, Mr. Staton was a world renowned pool player. He won the World’s Championship One Pocket tournament, the Virginia State Pool Championship five times, and numerous other tournaments. He also appeared on The Tonight Show, The Mike Douglas Show, and The David Frost Show. 

Jean Balukas

Ms. Balukas won the U.S. Open seven years in a row from 1972 through 1978, accumulating six world championship titles and eventually becoming the second woman inducted into the Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame.

But, years before earning all those accolades and victories, she appeared on I’ve Got a Secret in 1966 at the age of just six years old.  Her secret: she gave pocket billiards exhibitions and instructions over the summer. 

The panelists, unchanged since the Mosconi appearance, ruled out singing, acting, telling jokes, working with animals, and being in the circus. But, they were otherwise completely flummoxed.

After little Jean revealed her secret, she then did a brief pool exhibition, including introducing her young sister and student, Laura, who also made some shots. Host Steve Allen summed it beautifully, “That’s what I like: a six year old hustler.”

 

Unfortunately, in 1967, CBS canceled I’ve Got a Secret, along with its other panel shows, What’s My Line? and To Tell the Truth, both of which had also featured Mr. Mosconi, in 1962 and 1958 respectively.

Pick Pockets

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I was not familiar with the English television presenter and comedian Tom O’Connor, who died from Parkinson’s about two months ago. But, an alert about his passing showed up in my news feed because in addition to hosting such popular British game shows as Crosswits, Name that Tune, and Password, he also hosted a snooker-themed game show called Pick Pockets.

What was this?

Of course, there have been snooker-themed game shows, such as Pot the Question from 1984 or the widely popular Big Break, which ran from 1991-2002, but this one had clearly eluded my research. Wikipedia lists over 500 British game shows, but there’s no mention of Pick Pockets.  Nor does it appear on the British Game Show Wiki, the website UK Game Shows, or searching the BBC. Yet, sure enough, there on YouTube, user gareth11077 had posted the pilot episode from 1988.  You can watch it here.

Fortunately, I was able to contact gareth11077, who I subsequently learned was Gareth McGinley, author of Heart Breaks: The Tony Knowles Story, and a self-described enthusiast and researcher of ‘80s snooker. Through my email exchange with him, as well as a separate email exchange with Trevor Chance, the creator of Pick Pockets (as well as the founder of Legends, Europe’s longest running live tribute show), I learned that the show I had watched was an untransmitted pilot, as the series actually never aired. The hope was to get it onto ITV, but the network’s commissioner at the time, Greg Dyke, allegedly had a particular dislike for snooker that not only left Pick Pockets homeless, but more important, signaled a “death knell of snooker on ITV, as well.”

According to Mr. Chance, Pick Pockets was inspired by a game of snooker he was playing (and was not influenced by its forbearer Pot the Question). Produced by Tyne Tees, the ITV television franchise for Northeast England, the show combined “the knowledge of our teams with the snooker skills of our guest professionals,” as Mr. O’Connor shared in his opening.

Pick Pockets had two competing teams, each pairing a local contestant with a celebrity. In the pilot episode, the celebrities were TV actor George Layton and English women’s cricket captain Rachel Heyhoe Flint. The teams, in turn, were each paired with a professional snooker player.  The episode’s two players were John Parrott, who one year later would lose the World Snooker Championship to Steve Davis, and the “Silver Fox” David Taylor, a familiar face in the ‘80s though after 1980 he never made it past the quarterfinals of the World Championship.  Completing the celebrity lineup was Len Ganley, the show’s “resident referee” and scorekeeper (who refereed four World Championships between 1983 and 1993).

(At the end of the episode, the audience is promised that next week’s episode – which was never made – would star Alex Higgins and Willie Throne, two true giants of the sport.  Oh well.)

Gameplay begins by each snooker player breaking their opponent’s rack. The 15 red balls have no value; they are obstacles to interfere with potting the colored balls and can be removed in the first round by each team correctly answering trivia questions, such as “how many toes does a rhinoceros have? (three) or “what is a jumbuck to an Australian?” (a sheep).

Once a ball is removed for each correct answer, round two begins. In this round, the players seek to pot the colored balls in order, while avoiding the remaining red balls. The pockets have different point values, and points are earned by a combination of answering a trivia question and potting the ball.  The team that has the most points advances to the third round.

In this final round, the non-celebrity contestant must answer six trivia questions. Each right answer earns his snooker-playing teammate 10 seconds to run a table consisting of the six colored balls. The player wants to leave as much time on the clock because once the table is run, the remaining time will be used to pot a single gold ball, which is worth 1000 pounds (or approximately $1700 USD in 1988).

While clearly dated through today’s viewing lens, the show was entertaining and had a certain imbued charm, principally due to Mr. O’Connor’s jovial banter. It’s a shame it never aired. Evidently, the ingredients were right, as Big Break proved only a few years later with a format that is uncannily similar to Pick Pockets.

What’s My Line?

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Salvador Dalí. Walt Disney. Eleanor Roosevelt. Lucille Ball. Alfred Hitchcock. Walt Frazier. Althea Gibson. Dizzy Gillespie. Aretha Franklin. Groucho Marx. Jesse Owens. Vidal Sassoon. Barbara Walters. Orson Welles. Gore Vidal. Sean Connery. Along with hundreds of others, these celebrities all had one thing in common.  Care to guess?

What's My LineThey all appeared on the famous panel game show What’s My Line?  And to this pantheon of household names, we can also add two renowned billiards players, Willie Mosconi and Minnesota Fats, who appeared on the show September 2, 1962 and January 17, 1965, respectively.

What’s My Line? aired in the United States on CBS initially from 1950 to 1967, making it the longest running U.S. primetime network game show. Moderated by John Daly, the game required four “celebrity” panelists to question a contestant in order to determine his or her occupation, with panelists occasionally having to identify a celebrity “mystery guest” by name. Though there were a number of panelists during the 17-year run, a majority of the episodes had a panel that included columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, actress Arlene Francis, and Random House Publishing founder Bennett Cerf.

Willie “Mr. Pocket Billiards” Mosconi, of course, was (and still is) considered one of the greatest pool players in history. He won the World Straight Pool Championship an unmatched 15 times, and he set the straight pool world record in 1954 for pocketing 526 consecutive balls in an exhibition match.

In the What’s My Line? episode featuring Mr. Mosconi as the mystery guest, the billiards legends signs in as Mr. X to avoid recognition. The panel tasked with identifying his profession (“world pocket-billiard champion”) consists of Ms. Francis, Ms. Kilgallen, Mr. Cerf, as well as the flamboyant composer and pianist Liberace. 

Knowing only that Mr. X is salaried, deals in a service, and hails from New Jersey, the panel establishes that Mr. X is an indoor entertainer for a profit-making organization who has appeared on television, but otherwise fails miserably to guess his vocation.  When the host ultimately reveals that Mr. X is Willie Mosconi, the panel erupts into a chorus of ohs, ahs, and “Yes, indeed.” He then closes his appearance by discussing his role as technical advisor on The Hustler, and then giving the audience a lexical lesson on the origin of the term “pool.” 

What's My LineThe episode featuring Minnesota Fats is also available to watch on YouTube here.  New York Fats, aka Rudolf Wanderone, was a pool player and hustler who assumed the name Minnesota Fats in 1961 after the release of The Hustler, starring Jackie Gleason as the fictional character Minnesota Fats. Though he appropriated the moniker and was only a decent player, Minnesota Fats quickly became one of the world’s most famous billiards players, appearing in movies (The Player), starring on game shows (Celebrity Billiards with Minnesota Fats), authoring books (The Bank Shot and Other Great Robberies), and headlining video games (Minnesota Fats – Sega Genius).

In this Season 16 episode of What’s My Line?, mystery guest Mr. Fats enters by signing in as Rudolf Wanderone. His profession, which the panelists must guess in 10 or less turns, is “professional pocket billiards player.” The panel, which includes Ms. Francis, Ms. Kilgallen, Mr. Cerf, as well as author and comedian Alan King, are not blindfolded, as they often are with celebrities who are visually recognizable to the general public. Though the panel determines he is an indoor performer who uses “props,” moves around a good deal, requires skill and dexterity, is an expert/champion in sports, and has been seen on television, they fail to guess his identity.

What's My LineWhen the host Mr. Daly finally reveals his identity, eliciting applauses, head shakes, and an “Oh Yes!” from Ms. Francis, Mr. Daly goes on to reinforce the myth that Mr. Fats “came to great fame” because he was portrayed by Jackie Gleason in The Hustler, which, of course, was entirely inaccurate. Mr. Daly goes on to cite other parts of Mr. Fats’ resume, including that he was also Vice President at billiard table manufacturer Rozel Industries in Lincolnwood, Illinois.[1] Ironically, the fast-talking Mr. Fats has little opportunity to speak in the episode, often over-ruled by Mr. Daly, but he does have a classic in-character retort to Mr. Cerf’s ignorant question about the famous poker novel later adapted into a movie:

Mr. Cerf: Are you in The Cincinnati Kid? Are you one of the characters?

Mr. Fats: I am one of the characters whenever pool is concerned.

For Mr. Mosconi, What’s My Line? was but one of three game show appearances he made.  He also showed up on To Tell the Truth in 1958 and I’ve Got a Secret in 1962. As noted above, Mr. Fats adored the limelight and parlayed his celebrity into a starring role on Minnesota Fats Hustles the Pros in 1967 and then on Celebrity Billiards with Minnesota Fats from 1968 to 1971.

[1]       Rozel, formed in 1963, sold pool tables and accessories under the name Minnesota Fats Billiard & Leisure Centers. In 1980, the five Minnesota Fats stores were converted to Video King outlets. The company filed for bankruptcy in 1985.

 

Big Break (snooker game show)

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Almost exactly 11 years ago, the final episode of Big Break, a British game show that paired ordinary contestants with professional snooker players to win cash and prizes, aired on BBC1.  It was not the first billiards game show (an honor that belongs to Ten-Twenty, which aired in the 1950s).  Nor was it the first billiards game show to feature “celebrity” pool players (check out Celebrity Billiards with Minnesota Fats from 1967).  And it was certainly not the last game show to incorporate billiards (the short-lived Ballbreakers aired in 2005). But, by any measure, it was the most popular billiards game show, with 222 episodes, plus 8 Christmas Specials and 8 Trick Shot Specials, airing between April 1991 and October 2002.

Big Break - billiards game showThe format of the show is well-detailed on Wikipedia, but I’ll summarize the main points, starting with the hosts.  Off-color comedian Jim Davidson was paired with former snooker player John Virgo, who served as the “straight man” for Davidson’s barrage of banter, mockery, and impersonations. (In later years, Davidson became the subject of much controversy for his offensive jokes about ethnic minorities, homosexuals, disabled people, and rape victims.  Some speculate, not surprisingly, that Big Break was ultimately canceled because of Davidson’s reputation.)

Each 30-minute episode paired three contestants with three professional snooker players.  Though in the US, billiards players sadly do not achieve celebrity status, such was not case across the ocean in the United Kingdom. Starting in the late 1960s, with the BBC’s decision to broadcast tournaments, snooker became increasingly popular, and by the mid-1980s, the sport was at its apex, when 18 million TV viewers watched the World Snooker Championship in 1985. This back-story explains why a game show with snooker players could become so popular.  In fact, many of the current and former stars of the sport at the time, including Dennis Taylor, Jimmy White, Alex Higgins, Willie Thorne, and Allison Fisher, appeared on Big Break.   The episode below from 1993 features snooker stars Peter Ebdon, Ken Doherty and Terry Griffiths.

The first round of play was called Red Hot.  In this round, contestants would amass 10-second increments of time by answering questions correctly.  The snooker players then had to “pot” as many balls as possible in that rewarded time (maximum 40 seconds).

The contestant paired with the player who potted the fewest balls then had a chance to win a consolation prize (including a Big Break board game) in the mini-game Virgo’s Trick Shot. In this game, Virgo would make a trick shot, and then ask the contestant to make it.  If s/he were successful (and often the hosts would “help” get the balls in), the contestant won the prizes.

The two remaining contestants then competed in the next round of play called Pocket Money.  In this round, each snooker player had to play by traditional snooker rules for 90 seconds with the snooker balls being worth amounts of money.  When the player missed, the contestant would need to correctly answer a question for play to resume.  Whichever contestant won the most money moved on to the final round, Make or Break?

In the final round, contestants were given 90 seconds to answer five general knowledge questions. Each correct answer allowed the snooker player to remove one red ball from the table. After the questions were answered, the remaining time was given to the snooker player to clear the snooker table with the benefit of having had a certain number of the red balls removed.

It’s interesting to quickly compare the wild success of Big Break to the wild failure of its American step-cousin Ballbreakers, which aired in 2005 on the Game Show Network and lasted just one year.  On one hand, each was a product of its time and origin.  Though Big Break missed the snooker heyday era by at least five years, it still was birthed by a country that loved the sport and the professionals who played it.  In comparison, the US TV networks have never looked favorably at billiards, and as a result, the US players, with the exception of Jeanette “Black Widow” Lee are basically unknown to the larger American TV-watching audience.  In this sense, Big Break started in the penthouse; Ballbreakers launched from the basement.

But the other interesting point of comparison is that Big Break left the billiards to the professionals.  And they were exciting to watch, especially under the 30- to 90-second time pressure of the different rounds. Ballbreakers made the terrible decision to let the contestants play the pool.  This may sound very populist and cool, but it made for awful viewing.

All of this begs the question…could Big Break be remade in parts of Asia, where billiards players are already recognized as celebrities?  Could it be remade today as an American game show and a way to increase the popularity of billiards in the United States?

You can find episodes of Big Break, including the Christmas Specials (with celebrities) on YouTube. Other relevant blogs on Big Break worth reading:

Ballbreakers (billiards TV game show)

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For a fleeting moment in July 2005, members of the billiards community were aroused by a new billiards TV show – specifically, a billiards game show featuring both amateur “pool sharks” and celebrities – that debuted on the Game Show Network.

Produced by Sokolobl Entertainment, the show Ballbreakers (originally titled No Limit 9 Ball) consisted of contestants competing in 9-ball for a chance to win $20,000.  Giving the show its billiards imprimatur was Ewa Mataya Laurance (“The Striking Viking”), who provided commentary on game play and expert advice on shots if asked by the players, as well as Mars Callahan, the director of Poolhall Junkies, who was the show’s co-executive producer.   Adding to the show’s popular appeal was Adrianne Curry, winner of the first season of America’s Top Model, who served as the series’ “Rack Girl.”

Billiards TV - BallbreakersWith its cover story in the July 2005 issue of Pool & Billiard Magazine, the show sparked a brief surge of debate about its merit and role in improving the popular image of pool.  Rob Lobl, one of the show’s creators, said, “Pool is coolest in the movies…and the lamest thing on TV.”  His partner, Sam Sokolow, added, “With the right set, the right format, we knew we could come up with the coolest pool show ever…the sky is the limit.”

But, among billiards players, the reactions were more polarizing, even before it premiered.  One person posting in the Billiards Digest Forum said, “This program will probably bring more interest to the game and more pool players.”  While another person countered by saying, “Great.  Another dumbass show to lower the bar…whatever happened to elegance and the beauty of this game to those who really can play.”

In hindsight, Ballbreakers had very little impact on billiards.  This was, in a large part, because the show wasn’t particularly good, and it was cancelled in 2006.   Why, you might ask?  Let’s start with the premise: watching amateur players compete in 9-ball is only interesting to watch on TV if the billiards-playing is decent.  But, the contestants never ran more than a few shots and often missed easy ones.  Similar to hearing bad jokes told at an amateur comedy show, some of the playing became downright cringe-worthy.

This “lousy pool” dynamic in turn made the Striking Viking’s job as commentator kind of a joke, too.  Laurance may be an ESPN commentator, a member of the Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame, and a winner of all the major events on the WPBA tour, but even she couldn’t breathe much excitement into average playing and positioning.

The addition of Sal Masekela (X Games) as host also did little to dial up the engagement factor, especially because he was asked to treat the contestants as caricatures (e.g., the gay player “Cupcake,” the big player “Beefcake, etc.).  I did, however, enjoy his catchphrase, “Good luck.  Break some balls.”

A group of b- and c-list celebrities, including Tia Carrere (Wayne’s World), Lou Diamond Phillips (La Bamba) and Noah Wyle (ER) also joined two episodes of the series to boost ratings, but had little long-term impact.  However, at least one of those celebrities – Dorian Harewood – gets an honorary shout-out from me, for he also appeared 6 years earlier in the pool movie Kiss Shot, the topic of a future blog post.

I’ve included above one full episode of Ballbreakers, divided into four segments.  Watch them all, but I encourage you to check out the most novel part of the episode, which was Laurance’s introduction of the game “Jawbreakers” (Segment 2, 7:38) to get table control in the 2nd round.  It’s an interesting game designed to test how fast the players can pocket the 6 balls arranged next to the 6 pockets on the table.  But, like the show itself, it quickly falls apart.