Stump the Stars

This is a fun, oddity sent to me by Nell Minow.  It's an 1962 episode from the show Stump the Stars, which is another name for charades.  There's a weekly set team who gets challenged by various guest celebrities -- and this week they do something a little different:  the various guest celebrities here all come from the same place.  They're the cast members of The Dick Van Dyke Show.  (Mary Tyler Moore, Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie.)  Apparently, Dick had appeared on the show as a guest, and had a good time and convinced the others to come on.  Either that, or someone at CBS thought it would be a great way to promote The Dick Van Dyke Show...  But they seemed to have practiced a lot, so it might well be the former reason, or a combination thereof.

On the opposing "home" team is captain Sebastian Cabot (who most people would recognize as 'Mr. French" on Family Affair), Beverly Garland (though she's probably best-known to most people as joining the cast of My Three Sons by marrying Fred MacMurray's character, if you live in Los Angeles near Universal Studios she's familiar for another reason -- you likely ever passed by the Beverly Garland Hotel, and this is her), actress Diana Dors, and Ross Martin, who was Robert Conrad's sidekick, Artemus Gordon, on The Wild Wild West.  And the host is Pat Harrington, later a co-star on One Day at a Time as the superintendent, 'Schneider.'

The contest is pretty close, though one team pulls away when they get a hugely unfair advantage with a clue.  While it was meant to be cute and clever, it is much too easy for a reason that will become clear, and what should have been clear to the producers.

The biggest oddity to me is the opening credits where the man who created the show, Mike Stokey, is prominently highlighted overwhelmingly as if his name is a big deal and means something.  Maybe it did in 1962, but I have a reasonable sense of that time, and I don't have the slightest idea who he is.  I looked him up, and this show seems pretty much his only significant credit, other than some early TV specials. (And as for being so impressive about created the show, it's really just "Hey, how about if he had celebrities playing charades!")

The show is broken down into two segments, and I have the separate videos below.