Michael Larson

For those of a similar name, see Michael Larsen.

Michael Larson
Born	May 10, 1949(1949-05-10)
Died	February 16, 1999(1999-02-16) (aged 49) Apopka, Florida

Paul Michael Larson^[1] (May 10, 1949 – February 16, 1999) was a contestant on the American television game show Press Your Luck in May 1984 that aired on TV in June 1984. Larson's claim to fame was his winning $110,237 ($233 thousand in present-day terms^[2]) in cash and prizes, at the time the largest one-day total ever won on a game show. Larson was able to win by memorizing the patterns used on the Press Your Luck game board.

Preparations

Through a careful study of the movement of the light used for the 18-square "Big Board" on Press Your Luck, Larson discovered that only five patterns determined the movements of the spinner used to award money on the show. By using a VCR to pause a recorded episode of the game, he proceeded frame by frame to learn the patterns. Armed with this knowledge, he found that it would be theoretically possible to hit squares containing money consistently. Larson used the pause button on his VCR to practice precisely when to stop the pattern in order to win.

Two of the 18 squares on the game board (usually referred to as 4 and 8, with Square 1 being in the upper-left corner) always contained cash in Round 1 (Square 4 held $1,000, $1,250, and $1,500, while Square 8 held $300, $450, and $550), as well as cash and an extra spin in Round 2 (Square 4 held $3,000 + ONE SPIN, $4,000 + ONE SPIN, and $5,000 + ONE SPIN, while Square 8 held $500 + ONE SPIN, $750 + ONE SPIN, and $1,000 + ONE SPIN). These squares never contained the Whammy, a character on the show who takes away all cash and prizes a contestant has earned. Therefore, Larson reasoned, if he used his knowledge of the board patterns to stop on only those two squares, he could play on as long as he dared, never at risk of losing his money.

Larson arrived in Hollywood from Lebanon, Ohio for an audition on Press Your Luck, having virtually no money to his name and using most of what he had to make the trip. In his tryout interview, he described himself as unemployed, and an ice cream truck driver during the summer season. The program's executive producer Bill Carruthers and contestant supervisor Bobby Edwards discussed whether to have him on the show after his tryout interview; Edwards was suspicious of Larson and his reasons for trying out, but Carruthers was not. The final decision was to let Larson on the show, so Michael was booked for the show and later chosen for the fifth taping of the day, intended as a Friday episode.^[1]

While waiting, he met Ed Long, a Baptist preacher booked for the fourth taping. They struck up a conversation. When it was Ed's turn to go on, Michael said to him, "I hope we don't have to face each other on the show." But Ed won $11,516 in his game and so Michael would have to go against him as well as a dental assistant, Janie Litras.^[1]

The game

One game board pattern that Michael Larson memorized to win over $110,000; Squares 4 and 8 never had the Whammy throughout the show's run.

Larson finished the game's first question round in last place with only three spins, behind Long's four and Litras' ten. He also hit a Whammy on his first spin, and finished the first board round in third place. By the second question round, Larson gave two correct buzz-in answers, finishing this round with seven spins; Long earned only two spins, and Litras only three.

In the second and final Big Board round, Larson's demeanor and behavior changed dramatically. He was completely silent during spins, concentrating carefully, and leaving the host, Peter Tomarken, to fill the silence with increasingly amazed chatter. Ed Long would later describe Larson as "in a trance".^[1] This was extremely unusual for a Press Your Luck contestant. He finished the game with $110,237.

Aftermath

While Larson was running up the score, the producers contacted Michael Brockman, head of CBS' daytime programming department. In a 1994 TV Guide interview commemorating the Larson Sweep, conducted at the time the movie Quiz Show was released, he recalled "Something was very wrong. Here was this guy from nowhere, and he was hitting the bonus box every time. It was bedlam, I can tell you. And we couldn't stop this guy. He kept going around the board and hitting that box."

The program's producers and Brockman met to review the videotape. They noticed that Larson immediately celebrated after many of his spins, instead of waiting the fraction of a second that it would normally take for a player to see and respond to the space he had stopped on (effectively showing that he knew beforehand that he was going to get something good). It was also noticed that Larson had an unusual reaction to his early prize of a Kauai trip, which was out of his pattern – he initially looked puzzled, smiling and clapping after a pause.^[1]

CBS initially refused to pay Larson, considering him a cheater. However, Brockman and the producers could not find a clause with which to disqualify him (largely because the board had been constructed with these patterns from the beginning of the series, and Larson had memorized the patterns on his own), and the network complied.^[1] Because he had surpassed the CBS winnings cap (at the time) of $25,000, he was not allowed to return for the next show. CBS later raised, and has since eliminated, the winnings cap. New light patterns were quickly added to the sequences already in place to hinder others from being able to memorize patterns.^[1]

Later years

Part of Larson's winnings went to taxes and another part was invested in real estate, with the remainder placed into Larson's bank account. The real-estate deal turned out to be a fraudulent ponzi scheme and Larson lost his investment entirely.^[1] Larson then learned about a get-rich-quick scheme involving matching a $1 bill's serial number with a random number read out on a local radio game show in November 1984, which promised a $30,000 jackpot. Each day, Larson withdrew his remaining winnings in $1 bills, examined each dollar carefully, and (upon discovering that he did not have the winning number) re-deposited all the money. Larson's wife at the time, Teresa Dinwitty, stated that this obsession consumed him.^[1]

At one point, Larson and Dinwitty left to attend a Christmas party, leaving approximately $40,000 in bagged $1 bills in the house. Upon returning, they found that the house had been broken into, and the money stolen.^[1] Larson angrily accused Dinwitty of some involvement; Dinwitty, already angered with Larson's antics, promptly left him.^[1]

Final years and death

In 1994, the film Quiz Show was released. As part of the renewed discussion that the film generated on game show scandals, Larson appeared on ABC's Good Morning America. By this time, Larson had been diagnosed with throat cancer, and his voice was noticeably weakened.^[1]

Shortly thereafter, Larson got involved with an illegal scheme to sell part of a nationwide lottery. As a result, Larson went on the run, leaving Ohio. His family was contacted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but no one knew his whereabouts.^[1]

Larson died of throat cancer on February 16, 1999, in Apopka, Florida. Only after his death did his family find out where he had been living.^[1]

Broadcast of the Larson game

Larson's appearance on Press Your Luck was split into two episodes due to its exceptional running time and aired only once during the original run of the series on June 8 and 11, 1984. CBS then suppressed them for 19 years,^[3] as both the network and Carruthers at that time considered the incident to be one of their biggest embarrassments.^[3] When USA Network (and later Game Show Network) bought the rights to rerun Press Your Luck, CBS and Carruthers insisted that the Larson episodes must not be aired. USA took this a step further, not airing any episodes of the first Home Player Sweepstakes the episodes landed in.

On March 16, 2003, GSN was allowed to air clips from the episodes as part of a two-hour documentary called Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal. The documentary was produced by and aired on GSN (in association with Lionsgate and FremantleMedia), and was hosted and narrated by Press Your Luck host Peter Tomarken. The original telecast was dedicated to the memory of Bill Carruthers, producer/creator of Press Your Luck, who had died before the airing. He was also interviewed for the special, and it was his final television appearance. The documentary remains the highest-rated program ever aired on GSN.^[4]

The documentary featured interviews with the program's producers, Larson's family, and the two contestants who lost to Larson that day, both of whom were allowed to try their hand at duplicating Larson's trick on a recreation of the original Big Board. The board replica used only one of the patterns that Larson had memorized, and Tomarken pointed out exactly what it was. Janie Litras was able to stop the board at Square #4 only twice; Ed Long's play was edited for entertainment purposes and it isn't clear how long he lasted.^[1]

As part of the commemoration, Larson's opponents from 1984 were invited back to be contestants on Whammy! The All-New Press Your Luck playing against Larson's brother, James, with Tomarken returning to host the Question Round. Despite the fact that the board was now more random, and there was no way either Larson could have pulled off the same trick, Long and Litras (who had remarried and took the surname Litras-Dakan) still lost. In fact, when James Larson hit the Big Bank space on his first spin of Round 1, Long proceeded to joke with host Todd Newton that he had seen this before. At one point, when she hit a hot streak to put herself in first place, Litras-Dakan joked "I'm a Larson!" before hitting a Double Whammy shortly afterward.

The two Larson episodes finally aired in their entirety on GSN in late 2003 and were shown in regular rotation and on special occasions until the network ceased showing Press Your Luck in March 2009. However, the Big Bucks documentary included additional footage, directly from the original master tapes, that had been edited out of the episodes for their initial broadcast.

On August 16, 2006, as part of GSN's 50 Greatest Game Shows of All Time series, Press Your Luck was ranked #13; the two Larson episodes were shown back-to-back.

On January 31, 2007, TV Land broadcast TV Shows Myths and Legends, which featured the Larson episodes with commentary from his brother, the past contestants, and Penn and Teller.

Michael Larson's performance on Press Your Luck was featured in a July 2010 broadcast of This American Life.^[5]

See also

• Press Your Luck
• Joseph Jagger
• Quiz show scandals

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o} Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal (television). Game Show Network. 2003-03-16. 
2. ^ Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–2008. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Retrieved December 7, 2010.
3. ^ ^{a b} Ruch, John (March 15, 2003). "TELEVISION REVIEW; Game-show flick uncovers `Press' mess". Boston Herald: p. 28. 
4. ^ "Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal Delivers Record Ratings for Game Show Network". PR Newswire. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/big-bucks-the-press-your-luck-scandal-delivers-record-ratings-for-game-show-network-74711397.html. Retrieved 13 July 2011. 
5. ^ "Million Dollar Idea". This American Life. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/412/million-dollar-idea. Retrieved 25 August 2011. 

External links

• Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal at the Internet Movie Database
• "Press Your Luck". Snopes.com. 8 August 2007. http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/whammy.htm. Retrieved July 18, 2010. 
• "Tribute: Best Week Ever (for guys with beards)". www.snarkyhumor.com. September 30, 2009. http://www.snarkyhumor.com/2009/09/best-week-ever-for-guys-with-beards.html. Retrieved July 18, 2010. 
• "412: Million Dollar Idea". This American Life. July 16, 2010. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/412/million-dollar-idea. Retrieved July 18, 2010. 

Persondata
Name	Larson, Michael
Alternative names
Short description	Press Your Luck contestant
Date of birth	May 10, 1949
Place of birth
Date of death	February 16, 1999
Place of death	Apopka, Florida