The Lady With the Zonks

She made a career on television without saying a word.

Granted, a lot of it involved gesturing at “A NEW CONVERTIBLE!!!” but Carol Merrill’s name was constantly mentioned for years by Monty Hall on Let’s Make a Deal, giving her a level of fame. She was probably the best-known TV model of the 1960s.

Ah, how things could have been different. Instead of Door Number 3, she was Contestant Number Five in the Miss Rheingold contest of 1962. She wasn’t unknown then. The Hollywood Reporter of March 6, 1961 announced she would be the model/assistant on the CBS game show Your Surprise Package. (Since some trivia lover will point it out if I don’t, Beverly Owen in the picture to the right, was the original Marilyn on The Munsters).

It’s a delight to find interviews were done with some of television’s non-stars. Here’s one with Carol from the Wichita Eagle of June 21, 1970.

TViews
By NANCY SPARKS
Watching television on one of those infrequent weekdays at home, I suddenly had the urge to interview Carol Merrill.
Who, you may well ask, is Carol Merrill?
If you watch much daytime television, Let’s Make a Deal to be specific, you don’t need to ask. You already know the answer. She’s the girl about whom Monty Hall (the host) is always saying: “Or you can have the curtain Carol Merrill is pointing to. Or the coat Carol Merrill is wearing.
Miss Merrill, in private life the wife of an importer and mother of 3-year-old Hillary, describes her job on the show as “actually a model. There are those who try to build it up to be more than that, but all I really do is model."
She’s been doing it now day in and day out for the past six years, since Let’s Make a Deal first went on the air. But her job was something of an after-thought, she explained.
“The night before the first show was taped, suddenly somebody said 'Maybe we should get a model for the show.’ So they called me and the next day I had the job.”
Ironically, although she hadn't met Monty Hall until that day, she had worked in the same studio—CBS — with him for a year.
“I was doing Your Surprise Package with George Fenneman, and Monty was host of Video Village at the time. On Surprise Package I had much the same job as I do on Let’s Make a Deal, so there were people who knew me."
Miss Merrill, who never speaks on the show, has a soft melodious speaking voice.

“Although Monty always tries to build me up by saying my name as much as possible, my real job isn’t to speak. I did say something on the air once, though. Right before I left three years ago on a leave of absence to have the baby, Monty called me out on stage to explain to the audience that I was leaving. As I remember, I said ‘Thank you.’
“I’ve been asked to do dramatic roles, but I have no interest at all in acting. In fact, I can’t think of one thing I’d like about acting. I have the best possible job — go to the studio at 4 p.m., get home by 10 p.m. I work some weeks every night and then some weeks only two nights. Every now and then we get little vacations, and sometimes whole months off. So I have time to be home with my family, and I play tennis and ski a lot.”
While she’s at the studio she’s busy, though. For each new “deal,” she makes a costume change, which means rushing off stage, into a dressing room which she characterizes as a “lean-to,” and back on stage again, all during commercial breaks.
“I actually change clothes in just the time you see it done, too,” she laughed. “We don’t halt taping for anything except an emergency.”
Emergencies do arise but they are infrequent. In the six years, taping has been stopped fewer than a dozen times.
“It’s just too costly to stop a tape,” she explained. “I do remember one time, though, when a sleeper sofa wouldn’t pull out all the way. We had to re-tape that segment at the end of the show and splice it in later. Every now and then, too, a refrigerator door won’t open right (remember Betty Furness back in those days of live television and her now classic battle with a refrigerator door?). I have the boys trained now, though, to put plastic guards at the bottom of the doors so they won’t close altogether. The magnetic catches are sometimes terribly difficult to open otherwise and, because the refrigerators are on dollies, they will roll around if you tug on them too hard.”
If and when Let’s Make a Deal runs its television course, Miss Merrill probably will return to making commercials. “That’s a lucrative field and I’d find it far more interesting than acting. I’ll probably have to go to school to learn how to do commercials again, but it would be much easier than returning to modelling.”
That may be far in the future, however, since Let’s Make a Deal seems to gain more audience and more popularity each year. As long as it's on the air, viewers will continue to see Carol Merrill smiling, pointing, and modeling through one deal after another.

A few years before Deal signed on, the Bill Cullen version of The Price is Right would occasionally offer unusual prizes. Monty Hall and business partner Stefan Hatos expanded this on their show to include gag gifts; the bigger, the better. The Pomona Progress-Bulletin decided to get the story, and who better to spill the goods than Carol Merrill. This appeared June 8, 1969.

ZONKS I HAVE KNOWN
By Carol Merrill
(Editor's Note: Carol Merrill is the model on ABC’s Let’s Make a Deal, the trader-game show. The statuesque beauty is 5’ 7 ½” tall with brown eyes and light brown hair. A former photographic model (35-24-35), she started with the show five years ago. "Deal" airs Mondays through Fridays, 1:30 PM, and in prime time on Fridays in its new time period 7:30 PM.)
In case you haven't seen our show, I would like to explain the ground rules. They are simple. To play, you must be selected for the trading floor. A trader is selected because he brings something unusual to trade and is dressed in some way that draws attention.
When selected for the trading floor, Monty Hall will ask them to trade and when they accept, they keep going until they get what they want or get zonked. The game is to guess right in making the trade since you never see what

Monty has until you accept it could be bartering for a new car or a camel. The camel would be the zonk since that would be a funny booby prize. You could also be zonked with an old bathtub, a salami or a wild turkey. The zonks are strictly for laughs but I've found that working with some of the live zonks isn't always that funny.
There was a zebra who had me going around in circles——literally. Just before I took the leash, the trainer warned me that might happen and as soon as the curtain opened, there we were going around together.
I like animals—at least most of them. There was a hippo zonk that did scare me a little. I was told that I had nothing to worry about because he was inside a railing. I stopped worrying until discovered that he could climb the railing. I looked over just as he was about to take a bite out of my arm.
Jay (Stewart), our announcer, works with all the big animals that appear on the show like lions, tigers and camels. I’m just as happy handling the sheep. They just stand around. So do horses and cows.
There is a burro named Junior who is a friend. There was also a seal who wasn't a bit mean although I heard that seals are. I fed him fishheads while we were working together.
I can remember the time we had chinchillas as zonks—they reminded me of mice. I like the skunks. They were the non-smelly kind.
But then there's the mountain goat who bruised my leg with his horns. And there was a boar that chased me. I remember two different times when bears gave me a rough time. One started walking when the curtain opened. I gave a tug on his leash but he kept on going. He stopped at a camera to smile into the lens. I guess animals are hams too. The other bear got affectionate just as we went on camera. I was so shocked that I just stood there.
(Editor's note: I have to admit, I admire the bear’s taste.)

A macadamia nut farm sounds like a zonk, but that’s what Carol Merrill owned when she moved to Hawaii after giving up her life with “TV’s biggest dealer” (Monty Hall was originally called “America’s biggest dealer.” Then I guess someone realised he was Canadian). Her life couldn’t have been any more nutty than it was with contestants on TV some 50-plus years ago.