Who do you think had the best job during the Golden Age of Television? Reginald Rose, who got to pour his heart and soul into acclaimed socially relevant teleplays? Betty Furness, who got to dress up and show a national television audience the wonders of Westinghouse products? Or maybe Ozzie Nelson, who...who... Well, nobody's really sure what Ozzie did, of course, but it must have been fulfilling because the guy just looked so darn amiable all the time.

I believe the best job may have belonged to whoever made up the cockamamie stunts, or 'problems,' as they were called, on the popular 1950’s game show Beat the Clock. You’ll find a fun episode on Film Chest's wonderful 50’s TV Classics set, a 3-disc package loaded with something for everyone--comedy, variety, Westerns, and wacky game show antics.

Beat the Clock offers prizes like a “large 21-inch” television set to couples who complete various goofy tasks. In the episode on 50’s TV Classics, a man grabs Easter eggs with his teeth, another fellow busts long balloons while keeping a round balloon aloft, and a wife bounces ping pong balls into stacked saucers her husband holds.

My first thought upon watching this is, 'This is one of the silliest programs in the history of the medium.” But the second thing is, 'Wow, this is a lot of fun!' Clock is a fine example of how the “less-than-Golden” material of the so-called Golden Age of Television can be even more entertaining today than prestigious programs like Studio One. After all, Reginald Rose never wrote a scene in which a man used a T-shaped contraption to dip balls in a set of teacups—using only one hand (If he did, please send me the video)!

I imagine the job interview for “Chief Problem Maker” on Clock goes something like this:

Producer: Can you think up a bunch of embarrassing Rubian stunts for couples to perform?

(In the 1950s, he wouldn't say Goldbergian for fear of the applicant thinking of Molly Goldberg, not Rube--'You want me to create gentle comic misunderstandings they can resolve with pluck, feminine intuition, and a desire to assimilate into mainstream American society?”)

Applicant: Sure! Sounds like fun! I'm in!

Producer: You're hired! By the way, you have until tomorrow night’s episode to come up with 5 of these crazy things. Good luck, kid!

When I suggested this article, our beloved associate editor mentioned that one of the problem testers for Clock was the legendary James Dean! Now I dream that somehow there exists backstage footage of an anguished Dean yelling, 'You're tearing me apart!' while spitting out whipped cream as egg yolk oozes down his cheeks.\*

I find everything about this game show fascinating, including its charming host, Bud Collyer. Before Clock, he was the radio voice of Superman, a gig which surely came in handy considering he needed Super Patience to explain the often convoluted rules to contestants.

In this episode, Collyer is all over the place, jumping into the action to demonstrate technique, sometimes stopping the clock so he can deliver a bit of strategy (Yes, there is strategy in swinging a marshmallow around your neck so you can bite it without using your hands). In one segment, he literally steps into the 'problem' and lends a helping foot, showing a player how to keep kicking a golf ball towards a cup without letting it stop. “I didn’t say you couldn’t reach in there,” he adds while helping the guy. As a producer for part of the show’s run, Collyer clearly has some input in the creation of the stunts. What’s impressive is that he makes them seem doable, even credible, somehow while performing all the traditional game show host duties like smiling, plugging sponsors, and feigning interest in the 'real lives' of the contestants. Collyer has one of the most difficult jobs in early television, and he does it well.

Watching Clock reminds me of the installment of The Honeymooners (Many things remind me of my all-time favorite TV series) in which the Kramdens compete on the show. It's a Lost Episode called Teamwork Beat the Clock. (What, you were expecting Vacation at Fred's Landing?)

In it, Ralph and Alice are about to try a convoluted stunt when time runs out on the show and Collyer asks them to return next week (The same situation occurs at the end of the episode on 50’s TV Classics). Ralph builds a replica of the Rubian--er, Goldbergian contraption in their apartment so they can practice a challenge involving balloons, lemons, saucers--basically everything in Bensonhurst except a young Larry King.


The scene gets increasingly frenetic until, in a memorable live TV moment, Audrey Meadows, unable to explain how to execute the stunt, screams that Ralph has her so flustered, “I don’t know what I’m talking about!” She gives Jackie Gleason a stern look and says, “Now I’ll start over, slowly,” and after a pause, lays it out in a methodical, somewhat shrill manner. That's right, folks--Meadows did hundreds of hours of live television while enduring Gleason's infamous 'Rehearsal? What rehearsal?' policy, but it took a Beat the Clock problem to rattle her.\*\*

Back to Clock itself: Not all the segments are so elaborate; in fact, some are quite simple. But the whole show is messy, raw, and feels like it's assembled on the fly--and that's why I love it. Beat the Clock's spirit lives on in NBC's gimmicky Minute to Win It, but I can’t sit through even 5 minutes of that imitation.

Why does Clock work for today while Minute doesn't? Well, apart from the fact that television from the 1950’s is almost always inherently cooler and more entertaining, and apart from the fact that Collyer was Superman while Minute host Guy Fieri was The Next Food Network Star, there’s that spontaneity. You just know every segment of a modern stunt-driven show is tested and filtered through a gauntlet of lawyers before it gets anywhere near a soundstage. On Beat the Clock, Collyer kills time while models chase after balloons that won’t stay on the floor (This show loves its balloons).

It's wild, it's immediate, it's ludicrous, and it's irresistible, though it’s probably best viewed in limited doses. I'd like to think that those who devised the crazy “problems” had as much fun making them as we do watching them.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- \*Jeff Kisseloff’s invaluable oral history of early TV, The Box, quotes Frank Heller as saying Bob Howard and Frank Wayne devised the stunts. He also says the show stopped using Dean because he was so well coordinated they couldn’t get an accurate read on how difficult they were to perform!

\*\*In The Honeymooners Lost Episodes by Donna McCrohan and Peter Crescenti, Meadows tells an even funnier version. Unfortunately, her memory is off, but it’s a great story--and still a great scene as actually aired.

Rick Brooks is the proprietor of Cultureshark, a blog in which he uses an often irreverent approach to express his reverence for the classics and the un-classics.