Hello and welcome back to two-time quiz show champ Barry Lee’s trip down Quiz Show Memory Lane. And we pick up this week where we left off last week! The early 1970s…

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= Pick a Box Redux I =

There was a certain irony in Great Temptation losing a ratings battle with a Ten network show because GT had delivered a similar fate in 1973 to Ten’s The New Moneymakers hosted by the very likeable Philip Brady, who we so sadly lost a short time ago. The Moneymakers (the no-nonsense name reflecting the fact that all of the prizes were cash – no cars, trips, furniture or appliances) had begun on the Ten network in Brisbane and, after its success in that market, was extended to other states in 1971. It was the first quiz show which ran Monday to Friday in the 7.00PM slot, a pattern later adopted by Great Temptation.

The format was a combination of Great Temptation and an extended version of Pick a Box. The first round had three contestants with buzzers competing to be the first and second to get five questions correct. The second round pitted the successful two from the first round against each other in a best-of-five questions contest – one would have headphones (with loud music) while the first was asked the five questions – ties were broken by a single point lead. This was the same format as Pick a Box and the questions were of a similar standard. The final round pitted the winner of the second round against the carryover champ – with the winner being the first to ten points, and a two point lead being required to break a tie. As with the second round, both contestants faced the same questions, with headphones being used. The questions in this round were serious stuff, and probably some of the most consistently challenging asked on an Australian TV quiz show (other than in championships) – reflecting the wide knowledge and experience of George Black who served as question writer and adjudicator for this show as well as for Great Temptation. A later re-jigging of the format, and a slight change of name to The New Moneymakers, saw the first two rounds dropped, with each episode consisting of as many first-to-ten-point contests as time permitted. In the three seasons which Money Makers and its re-jigged format ran nationally, five people (as best I can remember) including two former Pick a Box champs (Evelyn Lynch and Mervyn Vinson), won the ultimate prize of $20,000 cash – a serious amount of money in those days.

The undefeated champion of champions in match-ups against the other big winners, and some overseas challengers, was Margaret Lawrence, who had also won the top prize on the Coles show in 1966 and had been a formidable contestant going back to the radio quizzes of the early post-war years.

Much of Margaret’s winnings from that show – totalling around $70,000 – was generously donated to an indigenous education charity. While it was not mentioned during her Moneymakers appearances, Margaret was also a generous patron of the arts and a quick search will find a website about that part of her life and her gifts to the Victorian College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne. That site mentions the tantalising possibility of a proposed contest between Margaret and Barry Jones, with some intriguing speculation about why that didn’t happen. The challenging questions on this show were what really hooked me on the quiz show format. There were many that I didn’t know, but which seemed sufficiently interesting to set me off on journeys of research and learning that I found intrinsically fascinating. In the process, and along with my amateur question-writing for Temptation and Great Temptation, I developed many of the skills and techniques, and much of the body of knowledge, which served me so well in later years. Even now, I still hear the occasional challenging question and remember that I first heard it (and often last heard it!) on a show which went to air half a century ago – but this does not happen often enough in a world which no longer cares about where Hamlet went to university*, what Bizet’s Carmen did for a living**, what battle might have been called “la Belle Alliance”***, the name of the suffragette who fell under the King’s horse in the 1913 Derby****, the family relationship between Jack Lang and Henry Lawson*****, who owned a raven called ‘Grip’******, the king who died from a monkey bite*******, the name of the only ship to escape the cyclone which struck Samoa in 1889******** – and many other intriguingly obscure bits of trivia.

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And that’s where we’ll leave it for this week.

And for those of you playing along at home, please scroll down for the answers to Barry’s questions……………..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* Hamlet attended the University of Wittenberg.

** Carmen worked in a cigarette factory.

*** The Battle of Waterloo was known by this name in Prussia.

**** Emily Wilding Davison was the suffragette who fell under the King’s horse (‘Anmer’) in the 1913 Derby.

***** (NSW Premier) Jack Lang and (poet and author) Henry Lawson were brothers-in-law: they married sisters from the Bredt family. (Hilda and Bertha)

****** Charles Dickens owned a raved called ‘Grip’.

******* King Alexander of Greece died from a monkey bite (in October, 1920).

******** HMS Calliope was the only ship to escape the cyclone which struck Samoa in 1889.

See you next time!

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