Hollywood Connection

Hollywood Connection was a game show hosted by Jim Lange, announced by Jay Stewart (Johnny Gilbert in earlier episodes), and produced by Barry & Enright Productions. It aired from September 5, 1977 - April 1978.

Premise

This is classified as a clone of the popular Match Game. For two contestants faced a panel of six celebrities in game of answering questions about the stars themselves. Like in Match Game, the contestants' goal is to match the stars' answers in order to score points; this is classified as making a connection.

Main Game

Round 1

In round one the player who won the coin-toss choose which row of celebrities (either the top or bottom) to play with. Then host Lange read a question to them with two possible answers after which the stars wrote down their answers. When they're finished the player in control chose one of the answers that he/she thinks the star would say (unlike Match Game he/she gave an answer for each individual panelist rather than the entire panel). Each time the player made a connection, he/she earns 1 point. After the first player is done, his/her opponent does the same thing.

Round 2

This is played like round one except for these differences:
*The player whom didn't start the last round went first in this round, and choose to either play with the male stars or the female stars, leaving the other gender for the other contestant.
*Each question now has three choices.
*Each connection is now worth 2 points.

Round 3

Round three, the final round is played exactly like round one except for these differences:
*The player whom is behind goes first.
*Each question still has three choices.
*Each connection is now worth 3 points.

The player with the most points at the end of the game wins the game, receives some prizes, and goes on to play the bonus round.

Bonus Round

The bonus round had two formats in its eight month run.

Format #1 (first week only)

In this bonus, the celebrities & winning contestant were shown a picture of a famous person/place/thing, then the celebrities wrote down a word or phrase associated with them. Then the winning player wrote down three answers of his/her own, after which he/she calls on the stars one by one to see what they've written; the top answer is worth $300, the middle is worth $200, and the bottom is worth $100. When showing their answers, each time the panelist's answers matches one of the contestant's, the contestant wins the money attached to that answer. After all the stars have shown their answers, if the winning player reaches $1,000 or more, he/she wins $2,000 and a trip.

Format #2

Same as above, but rather than the "$100/$200/$300" scoring system of the first format, each connection was now worth $250, and three connections won $750 & a trip. After that, the winning contestant earned a chance to make two more connections; each one doubles the contestant's money meaning that the first one doubles to $1,500, and one more doubles to the maximum amount of $3,000. If at anytime there's no connection made, the game's over and the money is lost (the trip was not in jeopardy here); but to prevent this from happening, the winning player has the option before each double round to stop and take the money as well as the trip.

Notes

*"Hollywood Connection" was taped in the same studio as the syndicated "The Newlywed Game".
*Jim Lange & Jay Stewart would later become the host announcer combo on another Barry-Enright game show "Bullseye".

Music

*The theme song used on the show is "Virgo" by Robert Ascot. It was previously the theme music for a previous Jack Barry game show, Hollywood's Talking.
*The think music which plays while the stars write down their responses ("Gamineries" by Jean Leroi) would later be heard as the category reveal music on another Barry & Enright game show, The Joker's Wild.
*The think music played during the bonus round was "Gentleman Jim" by Bert Kaempfert.

Episode Status

All episodes seem to exists and have reran on GSN before.

External links

* [http://www.geocities.com/rebich_josh/hollywoodconnection.html Rules for Hollywood Connection]