Strictly Confidential
Taped November 8, 1980
The Show:
Dick Clark hosted, while Bill Cullen was a celebrity guest on a pilot combining elements of two prior Bob Stewart creations, To Tell the Truth and The Face is Familiar.
Two four-player teams compete, each comprised of one contestant and three celebrity partners. Dick reads a set-up of some celebrity gossip mined from tabloids ("Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn have developed a unique relationship. What do they do together?") Three celebrity teammates would tell stories ("They do psychoanalysis together" or "They make obscene calls to each other" or "they give each other massages.") The four opponents then vote and select one story that they believe. Correctly picking the real story wins 100 points. Picking a fake story gives the 100 points to the opponents. 300 points wins the game and the right to play Triple Exposure for $10,000.
For the bonus round, a photo of a celebrity is concealed behind a circle divided into 12 sections. With 90 seconds on the clock, Dick asks the three celebrity partners a series of questions; some are trivia ("Name the sexy blonde co-star of Three's Company") while some are just asking for an item that fits a category ("Name a body part starting with A.") A section of the circle is removed for every correct answer.
Once a contestant believes that enough of the photo is revealed that s/he can identify the celebrity, s/he yells "Stop the clock!" and gives a guess. Identifying one celebrity photo is worth $500. A second is worth $1,000. The third is worth $10,000. If the clock hits zero, the contestant is given one guess at the current photo to end the round.
Notes:
Bob Stewart created Password, To Tell the Truth, and The Price is Right for Mark Goodson/Bill Todman Productions before leaving in 1964 to form his own company. He had hits with a variety of ideas--Eye Guess, Three on a Match, and Jackpot were all vastly different concepts. But by 1980, the company was running into a strange problem that unfortunately, it couldn't overcome for the rest of its existence. One of Stewart's other creations, The $10,000 Pyramid, was so successful that eventually, Stewart couldn't get anything on the air unless it was similar to that game. Although he mounted pilots for a few different ideas, the only new ideas that Stewart got on the air in the 1980s were Chain Reaction, Go, and Double Talk, three word association games played by celebrity/contestant teams. Strictly Confidential didn't fit that mold, and it's not exactly a concept that knocks your socks off anyway, so it's easy to see how this one ended up in the scrap heap.
Oddly enough, the game bears a striking resemblance to one that a different production company managed to get on the air two years later. Claim to Fame, a very obscure entry from Mark Goodson/Bill Todman Productions, had a brief run in prime time on Canadian television in 1982. Like Strictly Confidential, Claim to Fame had two teams of celebrities playing against each other in a bluffing game.
