Airing: Password All-Stars: 12-12:30 p.m. Monday-Friday, January 1-February 21; Password: 12-12:30 p.m. Monday-Friday, February 24-June 27, ABC.

Personnel: Allen Ludden, host; John Harlan, announcer. A Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Production. Taped in Los Angeles.

Description: The best word association game ever – in two short-lived alternate formats.

Password All-Stars Game Play: Six celebrities competed for a full week. In the opening round, two celebrities alternated giving one-word clues to lead the four receiving celebrities to the password, with the first of the receiving celebs to ring in and guess the password correctly receiving one point. The first two celebrities to garner two points went to the main game, with the first celebrity choosing which of the givers they wanted as partner, and the second paired with the remaining clue giver.

Password All-Stars End Game: This was known as "20-20 Password," where the members of the winning team gave and received clues in order to add 20 points to their scores. Those two players then became clue givers, and a new round would begin with all six celebrities playing, as described in the Game Play section.

At the end of the week, the four celebrities with the highest score returned on Friday for a tournament round. The highest-scoring celebrity that day won $5,000 for the charity of their choice. Two Grand Master Tournament rounds were also played during the run, with the winner’s charity receiving $25,000.

Password Game Play: The same as Game Play listed above, except the two celebrities were always clue givers, and four contestants competed to score two passwords and move to the main game. In the main game, two celebrity/contestant teams competed to score 50 points and move to the Big Money Lightning Round.

Password End Game: Played in three 30-second stages. In the first stage, the contestant was awarded $50 for each of three passwords correctly guessed. If at least one password was guessed, they moved to the second stage; if all three are guessed, they were awarded $150 plus $5 for each second of the 30 not used.

In the second 30-second stage, each password was worth the total money won in the first stage (for example, if they guess all three passwords in the first stage and had five seconds left over, each password was worth $175). If at least one password was guessed, they moved to the third stage; if all three were guessed, they won the value of each word ($175 in the above example, or $525 for all three words) plus $10 for each second not used.

In the final stage, the contestant played for 10 times the amount of money earned over the previous two rounds, which could be worth several thousand dollars.

Background: Password first started on October 2, 1961 on CBS. This version was very simple, with contestants playing to 25 points with their celebrity partners for $100 ($250 in the evening version), and up to an additional $250 in a five-word, 60-second Lightning Round. This simple game, which showed celebrities playing a game with a contestant (previously, celebrities had only appeared on panel shows, guessing occupations and such), took the country by storm, and became immensely popular in both a daytime and nighttime version. Top-flight celebrities (Carol Burnett, Elizabeth Montgomery, Jack Benny, Garry Moore, Lucille Ball, and others) were delighted to compete. Milton Bradley box games sold by the truckload, eventually hitting over 20 editions. Allen Ludden, recruited from CBS’s College Bowl, became a new and unique host: with his glasses and gentlemanly manner, Ludden, along with Jeopardy! host Art Fleming, became two of the best-known hosts of the 1960s. Ludden married frequent celebrity guest Betty White in 1963 (his first wife died of cancer a few weeks into Password’s run), and the show eventually moved from New York to Los Angeles. One of the favorite parts of the show was the final minute, when Ludden would note "The Password for today is…" and then note a word that was sent in by a home audience member, along with a clever phrase or definition. Sometimes he would also note a charitable organization via a password in this manner.

According to Bob Stewart, the show’s creator, as quoted in The Box (an essential book on the early history of television), "The original idea for Password didn’t work. That was, you had two opponents facing each other. When one looks at the other, behind his head he sees a word. Each one gives the other a one-word clue to see who gets it first. The problem is, what’s to stop one from giving the other deliberately bad clues. We [Stewart and What’s My Line? director Franklin Heller] kicked it around until we came up with the idea of having two teams of partners, and now each of the teams was trying to communicate instead of competing. When I presented the show to Mark [Goodson], he said, ‘If you can only give one-word clues, it won’t work because what are you going to do if somebody says mother-in-law. Who is going to know if it is one word or two?’

"Gil Fates said, ‘Why don’t you get a judge?’

"I said, ‘What a wonderful idea. We’ll get the best etymologist in the world.’

"I got to the World Book Encyclopedia and find out their etymologist was a guy named Reason A. Goodwin, a wonderful name. We would plug the World Book, and he would be the judge. It was fabulous. Goodson agrees to do it. We sell the show in fifteen minutes, and we’re now in the first or second week of taping. Sure enough, someone says something with a hyphen in it, which would be unacceptable. Everybody now looks anxiously at Reason A. Goodwin. Is he going to accept it? Reason A. Goodwin very calmly opens up a dictionary, looks up the word. We were hysterical. We could have had a girl do that twice as fast."

CBS’s Password might have lived a longer life had it not been for a stroke of bad luck. CBS covered a press conference featuring Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on July 11, 1966; ABC did not. Millions of dials, possibly not interested in Vietnam War coverage, switched to ABC and found the debut of Bob Eubanks’ The Newlywed Game – and they stayed there. (CBS never could get the knack of when to pre-empt and when to go with regular programming. Their decision not to cover Senate hearings on the war February 10, 1966, choosing to go with a decade-old rerun of I Love Lucy, led to the resignation of temperamental CBS News president Fred Friendly.) Password would be dropped a little over a year later in favor of Fred Silverman’s latest soap brainchild, Love Is a Many Splendored Thing. Syndicated reruns of Password aired for two years thereafter, a first for game shows.

ABC took a chance in 1971 and dropped Password in at 4:00 p.m., the first game show to be returned to the air years after its initial cancellation, excluding the short period between runs for Truth or Consequences and the 1950s version of Break the Bank. (This move alientated long-time fans of the previous 4:00 p.m. show, the gothic soap Dark Shadows, whose cancellation had not been foreseen and thus loose plot lines weren’t tied up.) With a snazzier set, a doubling word in the Lightning Round and Ludden continuing as host, the show did just fine. Password later moved to 12:30 and then 12 noon, where it competed head-to-head with Jeopardy! for two years.

In 1974, Password’s ratings started to slip again NBC’s Jackpot! and CBS’s The Young and The Restless. No surprise, really – the format hadn’t changed in 13 years, and started to look stale against such "mod" games as High Rollers, Match Game ’74 and so on. On November 18, 1974, Goodson-Todman took the drastic step of completely overhauling Password, turning it into an all-celebrity game (several all-celebrity weeks had been done in the past, but this was the first time it was a permanent arrangement) with a brand new set and name, Password All-Stars.

Password Minus: Unfortunately, G-T would discover that all-celebrity games don’t work. Viewers don’t get excited about celebs winning money for their favorite charity – they get excited when average Joes and Janes like themselves win money with the help of celebs. The new rules were too complicated for viewers to grasp, and shook Ludden’s sure hand on the game. Further, some of the celebrities were aces at the game (Bill Bixby, Richard Dawson, Betty White), while others most definitely were not (Shelley Winters? Ruta Lee? Wilt Chamberlain?).

Viewers expressed their displeasure both by writing letters and by turning the channel. The end result was Password, which took Password All-Stars’ place February 18, 1975. It was an improvement over the All-Stars format, and managed to incorporate some of the All-Stars innovations (as well as a huge set built for all the extra players). But it wasn’t enough to save the show, which was dropped June 27, 1975, in favor of a new G-T game, Showoffs. Give G-T credit, though – they never again tried adding extra celebrities to save a show (many other packagers learned this lesson the hard way).

One happy postscript came almost a year after Password left the air: Allen Ludden won his first and only Emmy for hosting the show May 11, 1976, beating out Peter Marshall and Geoff Edwards. Ludden would go on to host Stumpers for NBC in 1976 and the syndicated Liars’ Club from 1977 to 1979.

Password Plus: NBC brought Password back in early 1979, under the title Password Plus (set to be called Password ’79 until the last minute), again with Ludden as host. This time, G-T got it right, and for the third time (after The Price Is Right and Match Game), they completely overhauled a classic game and came up with one just as good, if not better. Celebrity-contestant teams gave clues to up to five words, which together identified a person, place, or thing (called the Password Puzzle). The first two puzzles were worth $100, the second two $200, and the first team to earn $300 won the game and went on to Alphabetics. Similar to the Lightning Round, the celebrity was shown 10 words, starting with one letter (let’s say A) and proceeding alphabetically to the tenth letter following (J, in this case). They had 60 second to convey the words to their partner, earning $100 per password identified or $5,000 for all ten ($1,000 less per word thrown out for an illegal clue). At various points in the run, antonyms ("opposites") were also illegal clues. Never a huge hit, the show managed a 3-year run on NBC.

Ludden, however, would not finish out Password Plus. He underwent surgery in mid-1980 and missed several weeks of tapings, with Bill Cullen, who had just wrapped up Chain Reaction, temporarily taking his place as host (this would be Cullen’s first daytime hosting job on a G-T game since the cancellation of the original Price Is Right). Ludden returned thinner but still at the top of his game, not revealing that he was suffering from cancer and the surgery hadn’t totally solved the problem. A stroke in October 1980 permanently sent him to the sidelines. NBC and G-T debated tapping Bill Cullen again, but since he had begun hosting Blockbusters, the network settled on Tom Kennedy, who had hosted the similar You Don’t Say! for many years (and had become a good friend of Ludden and Betty White over time as well). Kennedy guided Plus through the difficult transitional period with the utmost sensitivity, often mentioning Ludden and his recovery on the air. (This must have truly been difficult – it was probably apparent to all close to Ludden that it was extremely unlikely he would return to Password Plus, yet Kennedy could never say that on the air. I’m sure Kennedy never would have anyway – I think he would have given up the hosting job with no regrets if Ludden could have resumed the role.) In any case, Ludden never did fully recover and passed away June 9, 1981. Password Plus was dropped nine months later, as NBC tried to clear its games off the schedule in favor of soaps and prime-time reruns.

Final Pass: Games made a nice comeback on the network the following year, happily, so in September 1984, NBC dusted off Password Plus and returned it to the air as Super Password. With Kennedy busy hosting CBS’s Body Language, Bert Convy became the new host. The only changes from the Password Plus format were minor: $500 won the game (with each puzzle worth $100 more than the previous one -- this rule had been added late in the Password Plus run). The winner of the second puzzle played the Cashword, worth $1,000 initially and $1,000 more for each day it wasn’t won (the celebrity had to convey a word with three clues inside 10 seconds). Contestants traded celebrity partners after the first two rounds, and Alphabetics was retitled the Super Password Round, the value of which was increased $5,000 for each time it wasn’t won (illegal clues also eliminated a partial win in this version). Opposites were also reinstated as legal clues. Convy’s version ran until March 24, 1989.

• "Hi, doll." Ludden’s greeting to Betty White’s mom, generally at the opening of each show.
• "The Password is…" John Harlan’s whispered phrase. By the way, the reason the word was spoken as well as shown was because original producer Bob Stewart's mother didn’t speak English, and he knew communicating the word both ways would get the point across better, not only to her but others in similar circumstances.
• "As they look at it, we’d like you to see it." And in case you didn’t hear John, there it is on your TV set. I never realized how often Allen Ludden said this until I caught some reruns of the earlier version.
• "I give the word to Elizabeth Montgomery, to Bill Bixby, and to our friends at home." A variant of the above Ludden phrase. It might have been nice to keep the password hidden and let the home audience play along (a la You Don’t Say, which didn’t reveal the person, place or thing about once out of every five clues).

The Home Game: Lots. Milton Bradley issued 24 editions of Password, as well as a "Fine" edition (a few extra geegaws included, which allowed them to charge more), "Collector’s" edition (I have no idea), and "Educational" edition (more kid-oriented). Three editions of Password Plus were issued as well (in fact, they overlapped the latter Password games). GameTek did a Super Password disk, Milton Bradley put out a computer cartridge for the Omni system, and Endless Games recently issued two new Password box games. There’s even a new hand-held edition out. If you see an old Milton Bradley Password game around, you can’t go wrong – words don’t age, and game play has been tweaked nicely.

Reruns: Game Show Network has returned all the existing Password formats to the air, which is a reason to cheer in itself. Password Plus and Super Password air back to back at 7 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Eastern time weeknights. Color episodes of the CBS Password run at 11:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, with Password Plus running at 4 p.m. both days. (Note: the weekend Password Plus run is currently showing episodes hosted by Bill Cullen, so catch them now!) GSN’s Sunday Night in Black and White currently features a black-and-white prime time Password as well at 10:30 p.m. and 2:30 a.m.

"Aristophanes!": Ludden and Betty White appeared as themselves on an episode of The Odd Couple, which featured Felix (Tony Randall) and Oscar (Jack Klugman) on a New York-based version of the show. Although the premise was flawed (celebrities are never allowed to pick their partners), the execution was brilliant, mocking Felix’s odd trains of thought. Given the clue "meat," he promptly responded "Lincoln!" Shown the password "bird," he offered Oscar the clue "Aristophanes." The episode was voted the most-popular sitcom rerun of all time by Nickelodeon voters, and the fourth-most popular episode of a TV series of all time by TV Guide. And, of course, it’s still around!

Revivals: Pearson seems to have put this way on the back burner.

Curt Alliaume, Executive Producer: My idea is to use the two different versions, plus the germ of an idea sold currently as a box game called "25 Words or Less," in which the clue-givers challenge one another as to how many clues it would take them to communicate five Passwords in 60 seconds. All three rounds would be played in each episode of Ultimate Password: a round of regular Password up to 25 points, one Password Plus puzzle, and one round as described above, called Password Challenge. The first two rounds would be worth $500 and the third worth $1,000, with the first team to score $1,500 going on to Alphabetics for $10,000. In case of a tie or neither team hit $1,500 after three rounds, the two teams would play a tie-breaker round of regular Password to 15 points for $1,000 and the match. The rounds would be played in the order of the players’ choosing. And wouldn’t it be fun to use the different themes – six by my count – for commercial bumpers? (Hey, what’s a life without dreams, anyway?)

My Grade: B- for Password All-Stars, B+ for Password in 1975. Caveat: any other version of Password gets an A- or better. This is a tremendous game – please tell your friends and station managers.

• Chris Lambert’s Game $how Page for the rules of the game.
• Steve Beverly’s Password Page is a lovingly crafted tribute to the game.
• Brian Conroy’s Password Plus Episode Guide lists the celebrity panelists for all episodes, and notes other important issues (when Tom Kennedy took over, the weeks Johnny Olson subbed for Gene Wood as announcer, and so on).
• Jay Smith’s Super Password Page includes a bunch of memories from the most recent version of the show.
• Linda Johnson’s Bert Convy Page is the source to find out all that was Bert.
• Matt Ottinger’s Bill Cullen Homepage has all the dirt (what dirt?) on Password Plus’ temporary 1980 host.
• Aaron Handy’s ABC Password Page includes a bunch of screen grabs and a full celebrity list from the 1971-1975 version. I guess someone has to work on those 1961-67 TV Guides soon.

Sound + Vision:

Here's a clip that used to reside on Mike Klauss' Classic Game Shows.com site, and is now on Youtube. It's the first eight minutes of a 1973 episode; the other sections of the episode can be linked to as well.
• ’80s TV Theme SuperSite to download the theme music for Password Plus and Super Password.
• TVParty.com currently has two streaming Real Audio files from Password All-Stars on its Game Shows ’74 page.

E-Mail Me With Your Memories of Password

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Password All-Stars and Password are both copyrighted titles of Mark Goodson Productions/Pearson Television. This page is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Mark Goodson Productions, Pearson Television, their subsidiaries, affiliates, or successor organizations. No challenge to their ownership is implied. Password box game copyright Milton Bradley Company. Photo of Tom Kennedy courtesy of Aaron Handy; color photo of Allen Ludden and Peter Lawford courtesy of Matt Ottinger; all other photos originally appeared on eBay.

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