Wheel of Fortune (partially lost episodes and cut material of game show; 1975-present)

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Wheel of fortune logo 08678.jpg

The "Wheel of Fortune" logo.

Status: Partially Lost

Wheel Of Fortune is a massive game show that debuted to great success in 1975, with Chuck Woolery as host. This success has only grown, with Pat Sejak hosting the current iteration of the show, and currently over sixty international adaptions to capitalize the series' success.


Lost Episodes

Woolery's run lasted from the show's debut until 1981, when he departed and passed the show off to Pat Sajak. Recordings of episodes from Woolery's run, as well as early Sajak episodes, were often taped over to be reused to record more recent episodes. Because of this, very little footage from these years remains, and what does exist mostly comes through home recordings and television archives. Unfortunately, very little of this remaining footage actually circulates online. A large, yet incomplete list of Daytime episodes that are known to still exist can be found online.[1]


Lost Puzzles

Some episodes were not presented as originally intended. This is due to the fact that some puzzles were omitted during post-production. Reasons for this include personal troubles, national tragedies, technical faults, or just simple production errors.


VANNA'S PREGNANT

One instance of a puzzle being removed from airings was for the November 2nd, 1992 game. The round 2 puzzle was VANNA'S PREGNANT, which was meant to announce the hostess's pregnancy. Unfortunately, not long after the episodes taping, Vanna had a miscarriage.[2]. In place of the puzzle was a three minute, behind the scenes, look at the San Francisco filming, which is where the episode had been shot. At the end of it, Pat shows the winner and how much they won.

November 2nd, 1992 game intended for the reveal. Behind the scenes look and round summary goes from 4:57 to 8:08

Katrina Puzzles

There were 2 puzzles that were deleted due to Hurricane Katrina, one of which remains unseen and unknown to this day. For the original airing of the episode, the puzzles were replaced with Pat and Vanna requesting that the viewers to donate to relief funds and then announcing who won the rounds. For the summer 2006 rerun, however, one of the rounds, for some unknown reason, was actually shown (The answer was THE LOUISIANA SUPERDOME). Strangely though, the other puzzle was replaced with Pat and Vanna thanking those who had donated. To this day, the round hasn't been seen by the public, and it's answer has never been revealed.


Cancelled Episodes

In some cases, some episodes were never aired, or never finished production. Because of this, very little, if anything, remains of these episodes besides basic information.


November 2005 Family Week

Three weeks worth of shows were planned to be shot in New Orleans, from August 26th to August 28th (At 5 games/1 week per day). However, Hurricane Katrina struck before production had wrapped up, and the crew evacuated after the recordings for the August 27th episodes had finished[3]. This left the third week of episodes unshot, and in turn cancelled what was intended to be a Family Week that was meant to air in November of that year. The contestants of the cancelled week were able to get their chance to play in the May of 2006.

References