Huckleberries: Chosen bachelor still recalls ‘Dating Game’
Tuesday Huckleberries:
It’s 1968 and Woody McEvers is fresh out of high school with a dream job – maintenance man at Malibu Beach, Calif.
Trash as far as the eye can see to keep a young man busy – and viewtiful people and vistas, too. All that, and surf every day. Then came the letter that he had been chosen for ABC’s “The Dating Game,” the first of many shows created by the late Chuck Barris.
The show went something like this. A woman would question three men she couldn’t see behind a curtain. Then she would choose one of the three to take on a date provided by the game show. Woody was one of the three that contestant Tony Tachet interviewed 50 years ago. And chose.
Woody had an advantage over the other two “bachelors.” He knew Tony. She had been his best friend’s neighbor in the 1950s in Santa Monica, Calif.
“The Dating Game” provided a dinner at the Brown Derby, a limo and a cruise of Hollywood Boulevard. Woody lost track of his “bachelorette” afterward. But the recent passing of “The Dating Show” mastermind Barris brought back those once-in-a-lifetime memories for Woody, who has traded his surfboard for a seat on the Coeur d’Alene City Council. Full Huckleberries column here.
Question: Have you appeared on a game show?
