Showstars issue number two plus#
The winner is given a jewelled crown and a sable-trimmed robe, plus appliances, new clothes, a vacation. The cheers are measured by an applause meter, which rises, predictably, in relation to the severity of a woman’s suffering. I feel that I would like to have a vacation.” At the end of each episode, audience members applaud for the woman they think is most deserving. She passed away, along with my mother and my father, and then my husband passed away. “I lost them, and then I took care of an elderly lady in a wheelchair. “I had two handicapped sons,” one contestant says. The plainspoken dignity with which they narrate their misfortunes is frequently astonishing. The contestants aren’t versed, as reality-show stars are today, in the grammar of television they have trouble maintaining eye contact with the host, and nervously wrap their handkerchiefs around their fingers. Old episodes can be found online, but they are hard to watch. Another, a Holocaust survivor, wanted funds to have her tattoo from Auschwitz removed.
Showstars issue number two Patch#
One contestant entered the show in the hope of hiring a carpenter to patch the bullet holes above her bed left by her husband’s suicide. In addition to the prizes, each winner was granted a request for some product or service, which tended to be practical and not infrequently macabre.
One of the so-called misery shows of that era, along with “Strike It Rich” and “Glamour Girl,” it largely featured working-class contestants: widows whose husbands had been killed in hunting accidents, mothers of chronically sick children, grocery-store owners who couldn’t afford to stock their stores. At the end of the half hour, one woman would be crowned queen and showered with prizes. In each episode, four women who had suffered recent hardships spoke candidly about their experiences on live TV. From 1956 to 1964, one of the most popular daytime television programs was “Queen for a Day,” a game show that rested on a simple, and savage, premise.
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