Barbara Tedesco was easily the hottest girl in my Poli Sci class. She was so hot, her aura screamed, “Don’t even bother to hit on me until you get your nose fixed, lose those ridiculous glasses and buy a new car.” So, when I ran into her several years later, I was surprised she remembered my name, let alone that she took the time to strike up a conversation. I should have known she was up to something.
“How would you like to be a contestant on ‘The Dating Game?” she asked.
After graduation, Barbara took a job as a production assistant with the ABC Television Network in Los Angeles. They produced the popular dating show and sent Barbara out fishing for unsuspecting young bachelors like myself willing to embarrass themselves on national TV. At the time I was a daft 21-year-old ski instructor living in Big Bear Lake – a mountain community two hours outside of L.A. – so I was an easy target for a gorgeous production assistant who promised wealth, women and a Naugahyde briefcase.
“The Dating Game” was the televised equivalent of Match.com. Produced by Chuck Barris (who went on to popularize other high quality programming like, “The Gong Show,” “How’s Your Mother-in-law?” and “The Newlywed Game”), it first aired on December 20, 1965 and was televised on and off until the late 1980s. I was abducted by the show during the spring of 1972 and went missing for nearly a month.
When the ski season ended, I left home for my first audition. During my introduction, the producers wanted to find out if a) I was alive, breathing and free from communicable diseases, b) I had any distinguishing features like Elephantitis or a hunchback that might turn off their viewing audience and c) I’d ever raped or killed anyone. Since they needed three available bachelors and bachelorettes every day, five days a week for more than 10 years, it didn’t take much to get past the first hurdle.
Barbara was there, so she wedged me into the green room with 50 other guys who looked exactly like me, while we waited our turn to run through a mock-up version of the show. After several hours, they eventually brought three of us onto an empty stage and sat me down in bachelor number two’s chair centered in between two other guys. Several director’s assistants walked in and started running us through the types of questions we’d likely encounter if selected to appear on the show:
“Bachelor number one, if you were peanut butter, would you be chunky or smooth?”
“Bachelor number two, if you were a peach, would you be the fruit or the pit?”
“Bachelor number three, if I were a Twinkie, what would you fill me with?”
This went on for more than an hour, with one brain-cramping question after another until they eroded our self-esteem to the same level as a stain on the carpet. “Thank you, gentlemen. We’ll give you a call if we want you back to tape an episode of the show.”
Ashamed and humiliated, I shuffled back to my car as I went over my answers: “Would you be the fruit or the pit?” How in the hell was I supposed to answer a question like that? I would have liked to see how Tom Selleck or Burt Reynolds handled that. As it turns out, both appeared on the show before they became famous – along with Steve Martin, Arnold Schwarzenneger, Michael Jackson, David Cassidy, Robin Gibb and condemned Los Angeles serial killer, Rodney James Alcala. Through some screening faux paux, Alcala managed to slip through the cracks – and won – despite the fact that he had previously been convicted of raping an 8-year-old girl and would go on to murder four women and a child. Sheryl Bradshaw, the unknowing bachelorette who chose Alcala ended up bailing out of their date. Nobody knows why. Either she figured out who he was or didn’t care for Magic Mountain.
Several weeks later, I got a call from Barbara congratulating me on making the cut – I was going to be on “The Dating Game.”
I spent the next week getting a haircut and borrowing everything I’d need to appear on daytime television. My uncle loaned me his lucky sport coat that he wore to the dog track. I rummaged through the back of my closet and found the slacks I wore to my high school graduation and my dad let me wear his wing tips.
Back in the green room, I met my two co-competitors. Bachelor number one was a bronzed surfer type who looked like a cross between George Hamilton and Jeff Spicoli from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” Once again, I was to be bachelor number two. Bachelor number three wore a pocket protector in his short sleeved shirt and had a slide rule hanging from his waistband, so I wasn’t particularly concerned about him.
With five minutes to go until taping, a P.A. escorted us onto the stage and showed us to our directors’ chairs. Prior to the show, the revolving stage faced backwards, hiding us from the studio audience. Then, the music began.
As Herb Alpert’s “Whipped Cream” bellowed from the studio monitors, the stage crept around toward the audience with the lighting heating up the studio to the same temperature as the surface of the sun. As the stage rotated, I slowly evolved from a relaxed, talkative ski instructor into a pillar of salt. Beginning with the tips of my toes, I felt involuntary paralysis ooze upward until it settled into a frozen grin, ear to ear. I was smiling, but I couldn’t move my lips.
I don’t remember much about the bachelorette – just her questions. She was merciless:
“Bachelor number one, if we were both homeless and living in the same shelter, where would you take me out to show me a good time?” Then it was my turn.
“Bachelor number two, if I came down with projectile diarrhea on our first date, what would you say to me to make me feel better?” I was speechless. Even after a life of creating well-crafted lies, I couldn’t come up with a thing except, “Gee, I don’t know. I’ve heard the Kaopectate is pretty good here.” Bachelor number three got off easy:
“Bachelor number three, if a group of the Hells Angels hit on me while we were on the dance floor, how would you turn the situation around?” He was stunned. He started to cry and completely dismantled, forcing them to cut to a commercial.
As it turned out, the bachelorette chose bachelor number one. Later, I found out he had won twice before and was on the studio’s list of ringers to supplement their sub-standard, mediocre contestants. But, I didn’t care. Barbara told me the bachelorette was entering a Tibetan convent at the end of the month and the studio would be sending me a nice Naugahyde briefcase as a consolation prize. I waited for over two years, but never saw it. But, I wasn’t disappointed. What’s a ski instructor need with a Naugahyde briefcase, anyway?
