Who Needs Rehearsal?

Bill Cullen is still my favourite game show host.

And my favourite show he hosted was “The Price is Right.”

It was a great show for the viewer. They could smile at some of the more outrageous prizes that Goodson-Todman staffers dug up. They could make their own price guesses. They could watch in suspense as each contestant cogitated their bid. And, occasionally, Bill came up with an unexpected witty or hokey ad-lib. He was, to me, the most genuine game show emcee on TV.

Delving through old newspapers, it’s a little astounding how much was written about the show in the popular press, and was written about Cullen. But The Price is Right, and he, were that popular (even The Flintstones parodied both). Here are a couple for you Cullen fans. The first is one of a number by the Associated Press’ Cynthia Lowry. This was published March 26, 1961.

Bill Cullen's Secret: He Never Rehearses
EDITOR'S NOTE—Bill Cullen, master of ceremonies on “The Price Is Right," is convinced he'd make a terrible contestant. He isn't told beforehand what the prices really are but tries to guess the values as the game goes along. And says the MC, his price is always wrong.
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
TV-Radio Writer
NEW YORK (AP)—In the clock-watching world of television and radio, busy Bill Cullen lives by a timetable as precise as a railroad schedule. As a result he has more leisure than most of us.
A slight, boyish-looking man with a ready grin and easy manner, Cullen six day work-week is as carefully planned as an architect's blueprint.
"It has to be," remarked the 41-year-old master of ceremonies, disc jockey and panelist, "if I'm going to get around to all bases. Actually, the way I've got it worked out, it's a breeze: The secret is that I never rehearse anything."
Cullen is either facing a television camera or a radio microphone for a total of 25 ½ hours a week. On Wednesdays, his work day spans 14 hours, three shows and two networks. Every weekday he is on camera and mike at least 4½ hours. He loves every minute of it.
LOVES HIS WORK
Cullen is the master of ceremonies of NBC's popular and successful game show, "The Price Is Right," televised live every weekday at 11 a.m. and Wednesday nights at 8:30. (EST.)
He is also a regular panel member of “I’ve Got a Secret” on CBS—also Wednesday night, at 9:30—a seat he has held since the program's third show nine years ago.
Finally, he is the star of a live, daily four hour radio show on WNBC, which from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. broadcasts music, news, weather and light hearted chatter that helps get a large segment of New York millions off to a working day. It is also on from 8 to 10 on Saturday mornings.
The first one up at the Cullen home, however, is his wife Anne, a former actress he married six years ago. "She gets up at 4:45 and makes coffee for me," he said. "And she brews coffee, she doesn't make instant. Then she wakes me up at 5. After I've gone, she goes back to bed.”
Cullen drives to the radio studio. He has a private taxi, a regulation two-tone cab and a driver named Teddy (“I think it would look wrong if a fellow like me drove around in a big, black limousine.”) He never plans the radio show ahead, and upon arriving is merely supplied with a sheet containing the names of the musical pieces to be played and notations of the time there are breaks for news and commercials.
WORKS PUZZLE
"It's easy—I just say anything that comes into my head," he said. "In fact, I spend my time during the musical pieces working on a crossword puzzle."
When the radio stint is over at 10, Cullen rides up to the theater on Broadway from which “The Price is Right” is televised.
“This show requires lots of rehearsal,” Cullen said, “because of all the articles that are shown. And the m.c. has to know exactly what he's doing. If you're in the wrong spot—on a turntable, for instance, when a car is being shown you're apt to be tossed on your face."
NOT AT REHEARSAL
Cullen never attends the rehearsal. His stand-in is an actor named Jim Holland who has worked with Cullen for five years, and goes through his paces for him. Then he jots down, in a shorthand Cullen understands, all the directions: where Cullen is to stand, when the commercials come, and if a "bonus" is to be awarded a prize-winner, what it consists of. The directions are printed on two small cards, which Cullen keeps in his left side pocket and unobtrusively consults from time to time.
Procedures are the same on the Wednesday night show, except that Cullen has only half an hour between the end of "Price" and the start of "I've Got a Secret" in another part of town. Teddy drives him to the other theater. "That," he confessed, "is the easiest job on television. Absolutely no preparation at all. There's nothing to do but get there."



Lowry had other tidbits about Cullen sprinkled in her columns throughout the year. One was on May 11, 1961 where she revealed Cullen was on holidays and someone loaded the wrong video tape of the Wednesday night show onto the network (earlier in the year, Arlene Francis filled in for three weeks). She also included a blurb of Cullen commenting that the strangest prize he ever gave away was 400 shares of CBS stock. The show was on NBC then.

Cullen had planned to get busier that year. He was signed to replace Arthur Godfrey on Candid Camera for the fall season, but soon was un-signed. It turns out Price had a headache pill-pusher as one of its sponsors. Candid Camera did, too. A different one. Sorry, Bill, no conflicts allowed.

The Price is Right moved from NBC to ABC in 1963 (announcer Don Pardo stayed with the Living Color network) and bowed off the air in 1965. Of course, it returned in the ‘70s. The host was now required to get up and move. It would have been a strain on Cullen’s legs and he didn’t return. No matter. He seems to have hosted endless numbers of game shows and continued to work until the mid-1980s. Lung cancer claimed him in 1990.