Password Plus (found unaired George Peppard episode of Goodson-Todman game show; 1979)

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The show's logo

Status: Found

Date found: 8 May 1999

Found by: Game Show Network

Password Plus was a revival of the word game Password that aired on NBC from January 8th, 1979, to March 26th, 1982. The format of this revival remains somewhat the same as Password only except the password one team of one celebrity and one civilian is part of a five-word puzzle that adds up to a person, place or thing. A correct guess of the puzzle wins the team $100 and the first team to reach $300 at the end of three rounds goes onto Alphabetics. In Alphabetics, the civilian faces the celebrity and it's the celebrity's job to get the civilian to say ten passwords (in alphabetical order) in the same word-association method as the main game. Ten correct guesses awards the civilian the episode's jackpot, but failure to get all ten gets the civilian $100 per correct guess.

The Episode

In 1979, actor George Peppard and actress Elaine Joyce appeared on the show for a week of five episodes set to air from June 11th to 14th of that year[1]. But during filming of the first episode, Peppard made some on-camera complaints about the show's format, then went into an on-camera rant about the standards & practices at NBC. He said that:

"Here's the thing friends, I think you should know that before we do this program that is, the, do they make you sign that form too?"

The contestant declined to answer the question and then Peppard concluded:

"Alright well, there's a form that says (That you won't cheat, you won't steal, you won't kick your mother, you won't tell anyone or you won't get any prizes) It goes on and on and on like you were some crook! Well, it's really, uh, unnecessary in this game I mean, everybody around this game is paranoid about the truth. They are very careful, uh, and we have somebody from NBC who watches us. Now that get's into the police state mentality and I do not think it's necessary and I personally resent it. Mr. Silverman and the rest of you, would you write him a letter and tell him to stop that?"

After the rant the show's host Allen Ludden went on to explain that "what you see is what you get" and the forms that the participants sign before the program ensures that there is no cheating.

As a result of Peppard's rant (and possibly due to him visibly smoking on-camera), the episode was pulled before it aired and a sixth episode was filmed two weeks after filming for the week had wrapped[2] and the contestants ended up not getting paid for the episode. The episode that would've aired on June 12th ended up airing on June 11th and the show's announcer Gene Wood made an announcement in the opening of the second episode saying[3]:

"The program originally scheduled for air at this time will not be seen."

Availability

For 20 years, the episode would never be seen and considering the episode was made during a tape were taping over programs was common at NBC, it would be easy to assume that the episode fell victim to this given the fact it didn't air. That was until May 8th, 1999, [4], when the episode randomly appeared on Game Show Network along with other episodes of Password Plus. Since then, the episode has been aired numerous times on both Game Show Network and Buzzr and can easily be found online.

Gallery

The unaired episode.

Game Show Garbage's video on the topic.

Blameitonjorge's video on the Lost Media Gameshow Iceberg (episode mentioned at 33:51)

See Also

Pilots

Television

Miscellaneous

References