Rayburn of the Radio

I liked both versions but The Match Game of 1963 wasn’t really the same game as The Match Game of 1973. The original had that great theme song, “A Swingin’ Safari,” and the humour was light-hearted. The other was like a party.

Besides matching, both had at least two things in common—announcer Johnny Olson and host Gene Rayburn. Read about Johnny in this post and this post and in this post.

Rayburn graduated from Lindblom High school in Chicago in January 1936; he was class president. In April 1941, we find him in the Vassar College Experimental Theatre co-writing a revue about television called “Sight Unseen.” That July, an ad in the Baltimore Sun urged people to “Dance Tonight with Gene Rubessa and his Big Name Bands” from 11:05 to midnight on WITH. At the end of 1942, he hosted a show on WNEW New York, but a year later he was in his wife’s home state of Texas. He was stationed at the SAAAF Bombardier School where he rose to the rank of Lieutenant, and sold real estate on the side.

When the war ended, he resumed his disc jockey career in New York City, teaming with Jack Lescoulie and then Dee Finch.

Bernice Judis was the general manager of WNEW. Rayburn looked back on those days in a syndicated column that appeared in papers around July 16, 1973, ostensibly to promote his revived game show. (The drawing is from the Toledo Blade).

Rayburn Recalls Radio Ruses
By DON FREEMAN
Copley News service
HOLLYWOOD — They call it "Match Game '73," which is a way of saying that the popular game show of a few years back has returned with a new designation. And the host has returned as well, being Gene Rayburn, a television veteran who might well have inspired the word "congenial" if it had not yet been invented by Webster.
"How I became Gene Rayburn is a little story in itself," Gene was saying in his voluble way. "Eugene Jeljenic — wait, now, I'll spell it for you — is how I was born in Chicago several years ago. Jeljenic — that's Yugoslavian. When you see a 'c' or a 'ch. on a Slavic name, it means something like the 'O', as in 'O'Brien' in an Irish name. It means the family of."
"All right, so my father dies, and my mother remarries. Rubessa is the name of my stepfather, a great guy. Gene Rubessa became my name, and it's the name I used when I went into radio shortly after it was invented."
"So now," said Gene, "I'm working for this lady at a station in New York. She says to me, 'Rubessa. That name of yours sounds Eye-talian. Change it.' I swear she said it just like that."
"Where do you find names? Well, of course, in the phone book. It has plenty of names. I picked up a phone book and saw a lot of names that I didn't want and one that I did want and that name was, of course, Rayburn. And I became Gene Rayburn."
Long before that, Gene said, he had gone to Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. "Actually, I went to college for about 20 minutes," said Gene, "and then I ran out of money and went into the cold, cruel world to make some. A part of that cold, cruel world was radio."
Eventually, Gene joined forces with another radio personality named Jack Finch [sic], and they were a big hit around New York in the late 1940s.
"We had an early morning, wakeup show," said Gene. "Worked out well. We revolutionized the style for early morning radio, and we were widely imitated. We were really rolling along and feeling our oats when we hit the boss for a raise. The boss — it was, by the way, the same lady who changed me from Rubessa to Rayburn — said we didn't deserve a raise, for one thing, and for another we were over-estimating our pulling power."
"All right, we decided to prove our point, me and Finch. We decided to track down the worst recording in the history of human accomplishment, the worst sound since man invented music. We put it on the air and we told our audience, 'Look, gang, this is a song that's bad enough to be a hit.' "
"We played it and we played it. I remember the song began with these lyrics, 'Put another nickel in the nickelodeon.' I tell you it was nauseous. But soon 20 companies were recording it and an unknown little singer named Teresa Brewer made her version and sold a million copies."
"And then," I said to Gene, "You guys got your raise, right?"
"Wrong," said Rayburn. "The boss lady said it was a fluke. So we did it again, with a little monstrous ditty called 'Hopscotch Polka,' which old settlers will remember because about 28 different singers recorded it and even Guy Lombardo made a smash, 600,000-selling item out of it, to show you how awful it was. And when we didn't get a raise then, we both figured it was time to move on and we did."
In time, Rayburn turned to acting and he was an announcer-foil for Steve Allen on the old "Tonight Show." And he also became a whiz at handling game shows.

Rayburn is being a little dismissive. The American Weekly weekend newspaper supplement of Feb. 12, 1950 revealed what Rayburn thought of as a joke had a happy ending for a 75-year-old former glockenspiel player in England.

Two radio disk jockeys at Station WNEW in New York City were weeding out old records from their files and preparing to throw them away.
Gene Rayburn and Dee Finch played through what seemed to be an endless stack, then they came to a real old-timer. It was "Scotch Hot" by Billy Whitlock, the re-recording he had made more than 25 years ago.
The disk jockeys played the record over and over. It was catchy. It should have some good lyrics. They got busy. Through the London Gramophone Corporation in New York they contacted a record company in London.
"Find Billy Whitlock," they begged. "We want a new record, with him playing the bells."
It took some expert detecting to find the old man in the lonely boarding house where he lived in a single room. His job, at the time, was as a night watchman in Brixton.
The ex-entertainer had lost the music for "Scotch Hot," but he remembered the tune and once again he played for an audience. This time it was an unseen audience and no one dreamed how large it would grow.
Gene Rayburn had persuaded Lyricist Carl Sigman to write words for the tune which became the popular "Hop Scotch Polka."
Records sold like hot cakes in this country and, across the Atlantic, Billy Whitlock moved into two large rooms. He didn't leave his boarding house, though, because his friends all live in the neighborhood. "It's like a dream," the old man said, "being back in show business again. I want to get a piano and start composing."
He fingered his contracts lovingly and one of his agents predicted the comedian would be worth several thousand pounds within the next few months.
The greatest thing for Billy, perhaps, is the fact that once again he is a figure of importance in his own small world. When he drops into the local pub, the bartender whispers: "That's Billy Whitlock." Those are sweet-sounding words to an old showman.

The first version of The Match Game ran from 1962 to 1969 on NBC, the second aired on CBS from 1973 to 1979, then in syndication to 1982. Thanks to cable TV, the CBS shows have attracted new fans who weren’t around a half-century ago.

Thanks, in part, to Gene Rayburn, The Match Game was blank.