Blank Check
Last Update: May 1, 2005 - Sound + Vision updated with a great new link!
Airing: 12:30-12:55 p.m. Monday-Friday, January 6-July 4, NBC.
Personnel:
Art James, host; Johnny Jacobs, announcer. A Jack Barry Production. Taped in Los Angeles.Description:
Not terribly well conceived Q&A/ESP game.
Game Play:
Six contestants competed, one of which was designated as the check writer. Five digits were shown via a large electronic readout. The five contestants not writing the check were asked a riddle-like question, and the first to ring in and answer correctly tried to guess which of the five digits the check writer had chosen for the last digit in the check (the check amount had four digits in all). If the contestant guessed the check writer’s chosen digit correctly, the two changed places and a new check was begun; if not, the game continued as before and the check writer chose the second digit. This would continue until all four digits of a check had been completed. If the check writer didn’t complete the check, they would still receive the money the check was written for to that point, for tens or hundreds of dollars. (All of this information is from the pilot episode, which uses Quincy Jones’ "Chump Change" as the theme music; since that theme had been usurped by Now You See It by the time the show went to series, a new theme was ordered instead. The photo to the right is from the pilot as well.) All six players competed for a full week; the player who wrote the largest check of the week won an additional bonus prize. Additionally, the rules of either the regular game and/or the end game changed later in the run. I didn’t watch enough episodes to commit the rules to heart.End Game:
A member of the studio audience was called down to compete with the check writer. In the pilot, the audience member was given cards showing one of two prizes, while the winning check writer had to guess which the audience member had chosen. If correct, the check writer kept the prize; if not, it went to the audience member. If the check writer guessed four out of the five sets of prizes correctly, they won a car as well. Again, the end game may have changed by the end of the run.Background:
This was Jack Barry’s second game after The Joker’s Wild (Hollywood’s Talking was the first), and his first one for NBC since Twenty-One set off the quiz show scandals. Art James, who may have had a long-term contract with NBC, was selected to host, and commuted from New York to Hollywood to do so. James was born Artur Simeonvich Elimchik. He was "almost a New York Yankee" according to Maxene Fabe, which is certainly an open-ended statement. James started out as announcer on Concentration in the late 1950s, frequently substituting for host Hugh Downs (not surprising; Downs was also announcing for Jack Paar’s Tonight show at the time). James was awarded Goodson-Todman’s Say When! in 1961; a clip of his live Peter Pan peanut butter spot (in which the bottom of the jar falls out) still hits the blooper shows today. After Say When! closed shop in 1965, James ran Fractured Phrases (NBC, 1965), Matches ‘n’ Mates (syndicated, 1967), Temptation (ABC, 1968), Pay Cards! (syndicated, 1968-69), and most prominently The Who, What, or Where Game (NBC, 1969-74), as well as the local high school quiz for New York teens, It’s Academic, in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. James also did some non-game show entertainment work: he starred in summer theater in Mr. Roberts, Sunday in New York, and Brigadoon, and produced two off-Broadway plays, Charlie Was Here and Now He's Gone and The Buttered Side.James died March 28, 2004 of a sudden illness. He was 74. The AP obituary is so riddled with errors I don’t particularly want to link to it; feel free to Google it if you must.
Blanking Out:
Up against CBS’s successful Search for Tomorrow and ABC’s Split Second, Check might have worked if it were a stronger game. But despite being billed as a game of ESP, it didn’t take clairvoyance to see the show didn’t play well (as mentioned above, the rules were changed partway through the run). It became clear very early Blank Check hadn’t long to live. The game didn’t even work well in the pilot, but looked so splashy that artifice may have sufficed with NBC. (Not to me, of course; after watching a couple of shows I switched to Split Second.) NBC wound up dropping it after a six-month run in favor of The Magnificent Marble Machine, which James also hosted.The Home Game:
None was issued, and we’ve all survived this long without one.Reruns:
I suppose it could be around, since Jack Barry & Dan Enright Productions seem to have done a pretty good job of preserving their games, but NBC pretty much wiped out every game it aired in the ‘70s, and I don’t think this was an exception. The pilot episode is still traded around among collectors; that show uses Quincy Jones’ "Chump Change" as the theme.Revivals:
You’re in charge of game shows at Sony, who has acquired Jack Barry and Dan Enright’s programs, along with Bob Stewart’s, Chuck Barris’, and Merv Griffin’s. Would this be the first property you’d reactivate? The tenth? The thirty-seventh?Curt Alliaume, Executive Producer:
It would take a blank check made out to me to ensure my participation.My Grade:
D+.Sound + Vision:
Themes OnLine for the introduction from the last episode. That’s Johnny Jacobs announcing over a theme that is not Quincy Jones’ "Chump Change" (although Quincy could have a pretty good copyright infringement suit there).E-Mail Me With Your Memories of Blank Check
Blank Check is a copyrighted title of Jack Barry Productions. This page is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Jack Barry Productions, Columbia/Tri-Star Television, their subsidiaries, affiliates, or successor organizations. No challenge to their ownership is implied. Photo originally appeared on eBay.
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