For some reason, mentioning the Candyland board game the other day caused me to remember an early game show I often watched when I was ten or so. It was Seven Keys hosted by Jack Narz — an ambitious production by KTLA Channel 5, a local independent TV station in Los Angeles.
According to the usually-but-not-always-right Wikipedia, Seven Keys ran in L.A. on Channel 5 from September 12, 1960 to April 28, 1961. Then — and this didn’t happen very often — it was picked up by a network. ABC began running it as of April 3, 1961 and note the brief overlap in dates. It did well for ABC in some time slots, not so well in others. After being moved around a lot on the schedule, its last network airing was on March 27, 1964. *Seven K…
For some reason, mentioning the Candyland board game the other day caused me to remember an early game show I often watched when I was ten or so. It was Seven Keys hosted by Jack Narz — an ambitious production by KTLA Channel 5, a local independent TV station in Los Angeles.
According to the usually-but-not-always-right Wikipedia, Seven Keys ran in L.A. on Channel 5 from September 12, 1960 to April 28, 1961. Then — and this didn’t happen very often — it was picked up by a network. ABC began running it as of April 3, 1961 and note the brief overlap in dates. It did well for ABC in some time slots, not so well in others. After being moved around a lot on the schedule, its last network airing was on March 27, 1964. Seven Keys then moved back to being a local show on KTLA as of April 6 and lasted there until January 15, 1965.
The episode below — one of the few surviving ones — aired on July 12, 1962 so it was from the network version. I remember when the show transitioned from KTLA to ABC, the prizes they gave away suddenly went from meager to impressive. And then when it went back to being a local show, contestants were no longer winning cars and mink coats.
The host was Jack Narz, a pleasant-enough gent who hosted oodles of game shows in his day. I have a vague memory of him hosting one called Dotto when I was around six and of the show being taken off the air because it came out that it was rigged. Apparently, it really was. It wasn’t like Donald Trump claiming that any election that doesn’t go his way is rigged. Dotto really was but the scandal did not touch Mr. Narz and he went on to host, among many others, some incarnations of Top Dollar, Concentration, Beat the Clock and many more.
And readers of this blog will write to tell me, like I didn’t know, he was the narrator on the “origin” episode of the George Reeves Adventures of Superman TV show. And that his brother Tom also hosted a lot of great game shows under the name Tom Kennedy.
My friend Stu Shostak and I have an occasional friendly debate. He thinks that successfully hosting a TV game show is more of an achievement than I do. I’m not putting it down. I just think what Johnny Carson or David Letterman accomplished was a lot tougher — by, like, a magnitude of twelve — than what Bob Barker or Alex Trebek did. Still, what Mr. Narz’s job was not easy and he did it smoothly and efficiently. Here — watch at least a little of that episode of Seven Keys and you’ll see what I mean…