Quiz Crazy

The quiz-show contagion has spread from the U.S. to just about every nation that boasts a TV transmitter. In Brazil contestants compete for as much as 45,000 cruzeiros ($675); in Italy it is possible to win a fat bundle of 5,000,000 lire ($8,000); in Britain a Pakistani college girl got -L-1,024 ($2,867) for her knowledge of Chaucer. Mexican viewers of The 64,000 Peso ($5,120) Question were grumbling that the sponsor was asking impossible questions to avoid paying the jackpot, but finally a textile engineer named Jaime Olvera broke the bank by identifying two of Cortez' scouts in his war with the Aztecs. Said a spokesman for the sponsor* (a shirt company): "This will prove our good faith."

The U.S. had its own mutterings last week when Cobbler Michael Delia Rocca, with the help of another cobbler, former Contestant Gino Prato, won CBS's $64,000 Question. Critics charged that: 1) Delia Rocca was actually a professional impresario, and 2) Gino Prato's appearance was simply a buildup for a new Revlon show to be called The $64,000 Challenge, starring past quiz winners.

The show's producers, Louis G. Cowan Inc., brushed off the first criticism with the statement that Della Rocca was simply an amateur impresario who dabbles in low-cost opera in his home town of Baldwin, L.I. On the second point, though denying that the Delia Rocca-Prato appearance was planned, they conceded that The $64,000 Challenge will come on the air next month, replacing Sunday night's Appointment with Adventure. The gimmick: people who have written in saying they are just as good at opera as Della Rocca or at cooking as Marine Captain Richard S. McCutchen will be given a chance to compete against the experts for a prize of $64,000.

Meanwhile sponsor Revlon is busy grooming a third entry for the quiz sweepstakes. This one, to be called The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, may appear on Thursday nights in place of The Johnny Carson Show, and seems aimed at bringing the format of Atlantic City's Miss America contest to TV with the added bait of a $250,000 cash award.

At week's end the final word belonged to an advertiser in the trade sheet Variety. Giving a box number and appealing to "interested" sponsors, stations, advertising agencies or agents, he promised to show "complete plans and format" for a new, super-duper quiz program. Its title: The Million-Dollar Question,

* The show this month added another sponsor familiar to U.S. quiz addicts: Revlon.

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