Last Update: February 26, 2001 -- a new link added.

Airing: 12:00-12:30 p.m. Monday-Friday, July 7-November 28; 12:30-12:55 p.m. December 1 through the rest of the year, NBC.

Personnel: Art James, host; Johnny Gilbert, announcer. A Merrill Heatter-Bob Quigley Production. Taped in Los Angeles.

Description: 1) A huge pinball machine; 2) one of the most overblown game show concepts of the decade and one of the genre’s most legendary flops.

Game Play: Two teams, made up of one celebrity and one contestant, competed. A riddle/clue was flashed to the players via a giant Broadway marquee-like screen. The first player to correct answer the clue received one point for the team. Five points won the game and the chance to play the Magnificent Marble Machine.

End Game: Each player manned one flipper on the machine, which measured over 20 feet high and 12 feet wide. The team put the ball in play, and earned 500 points for every time the ball touched a bumper, and 200 points for every time the ball hit something else that made a noise. Each of the seven bumpers was worth a prize, with the number 2 and 3 bumpers combining for a larger prize, such as a trip or a car. Each ball was played for a maximum of sixty seconds, then the machine went dead. There were also two "out" holes, one at the bottom center of the machine and one in the middle center. To keep the ball in the safe areas, the idea was to keep it at the top of the machine.

Background: A heavily hyped replacement for Blank Check, MMM premiered against a new Goodson-Todman entry, Showoffs, on ABC and The Young and The Restless on CBS. This was one of the biggest "larger than life" games developed by Heatter & Quigley, who were responsible for three games on the NBC lineup. Pinball was enjoying a renaissance in the mid-‘70s (video games, with the exception of Pong, hadn’t yet been developed), and the premiere was eagerly anticipated. Art James, fresh off Blank Check’s flop, was chosen as host.

A Wobbly Kind of Machine: What Heatter and Quigley didn’t realize, one suspects, is pinball is fun to play, but not nearly as interesting to watch. The opening game was boring, had zero to do with pinball, and took up way too much time. The machine itself was criticized in some areas as lame-looking and sounding as well (it wasn’t, really – but it wasn’t as interesting as a genuine arcade pinball machine), and watching middle-aged celebrities such as Roddy McDowall and Joan Rivers grapple with the machine looked, well, faintly ridiculous. Virtually every NBC game show host appeared on the show at one point or another (all except Geoff Edwards and Dick Enberg, as far as I can tell), as well as a bunch of other celebrities, but the ratings remained low. MMM was switched to 12:30 p.m. to allow for Wheel of Fortune’s expansion, then actually went off the air in early 1976 to make room for Kelly Lange’s brief daytime gabfest Take My Advice. It returned two weeks later, however, reappearing in the noon slot after Wheel shrank back to a half-hour.

Tilt!: To save their floundering brainchild, Heatter-Quigley made the decision to go with all celebrities, who played for members of the studio audience. Adding extra celebrities has never helped a show (R.I.P. Password All-Stars, Celebrity Whew!, Celebrity Bullseye, and Celebrity Hot Potato), and it didn’t here either. The ratings stayed low (even though ABC was now running the fast-fading Let’s Make a Deal in the 12 noon slot), and NBC finally pulled the plug in April 1976 in favor of Bobby Van’s game-variety hybrid The Fun Factory. Due to a technicians’ strike, however, the network reran 13 weeks worth of Magnificent Marble Machines until The Fun Factory could start taping. June 11,1976 marked the final airing of this curious failure, save for a clip shown in the 1979 film The China Syndrome.

Magnificently Attired: Give credit to Art James, who appears to have worn sport jackets and ties throughout most of the run of this series, where the celebrities sported as gaudy fashions as the machine itself. The photos that survive The Magnificent Marble Machine picture Peter Marshall (white leisure suit with dark Mike Brady-like shirt, on his way to a Heatter-Quigley pool party in Malibu), Alex Trebek (polyester two-piece suit, open collar and the largest perm since Dr. J’s at his heyday, accompanying Marshall to the same party), Jim McKrell (turtleneck and suede suit, on his way to a George Plimpton lookalike contest), and Chuck Woolery (metal-studded two-piece blue denim suit and open-collared plaid shirt, on his way to a Marvin Gaye-meets-Charley Pride dressalike contest). This may prove the reason game show supply clothes to their hosts is because they don’t know how to dress themselves. (Of course, it was 1975 – this stuff was in fashion.)

• "Isn’t there anything better on?" Oops, sorry, this is what I used to say.

Reruns: Heatter-Quigley programs have pretty much been erased by NBC. A couple of episodes make their way around the trading circuit, however.

Revivals: Right after NBC cancels ER in favor of Supertrain 2000.

Curt Alliaume, Executive Producer: Bring on the wrecking ball. This is simply not a good game.

My Grade: D.

Read More About It:

• Chris Lambert’s Game $how Page for the rules of the game.
• GameRoom Magazine, normally dedicated to pinball machines, video games, and other toys used in the three-dimensional world, has a nifty article with photos written by game show expert Fred Wostbrock.