The Talent who Taught me Everything, an occasional series….

Monty Hall, “The Hold” and that one big moment when the contestant wins or loses everything

“How long have you been in the States?” asks the blonde English lady sitting across from me on this K9 Jets flight from Van Nuys to Teterboro, her white standard poodle curled elegantly at her feet.

Yes, I’m flying across the country on a specialty airline for dogs. With my black German Shepherd Andie - who at this point is basically my Head of Security, emotionally and otherwise - and nine other dogs and their humans, crammed into a metal tube hurtling toward New Jersey.

Yes, it’s absolute chaos.

Hardly optimal conditions for writing a newsletter. But as my proper writer brother always tells me: Writers write.

“I’ve been here 36 years,” I reply, trailing off as I mentally check the math. Yes, that’s right - 59 minus 23 is 36. “I came here right after university.”

I consider explaining how I walked off a tennis court and into the TV business in Orlando, Florida, but we’re interrupted by a dog barking in the back, which sets off a chain reaction. Madeline, the standard poodle, snarls with diva ferocity. Wodehouse, a noble chocolate lab who’s been asleep since check-in, grumbles without opening an eye. And Andie, naturally stationed by the cockpit, lets out a commanding bark that says: “Enough. The pilots are working. Pipe down, all of you.”

And so, yes, back in 1990, just after my 24th birthday, I walked off that tennis court and into my first real job in television - writing for Let’s Make a Deal. And that’s where I met the first great talent who lit a fire under my career and taught me lessons that I have returned to again and again.

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Monty Hall: Master of The Hold

Monty Hall, the legendary game show host and Canadian radio pioneer, was nearly 70 when I met him. We were working out of an Imagineer-ed writer’s bungalow at what was then Disney-MGM Studios at Walt Disney World.

Originally, Monty, who had hosted every version of Let’s Make A Deal since he created it in the early 1960s, wasn’t meant to be involved in the NBC daytime revival of the show. That changed when the new host, the affable but not that compelling Bob Hilton, just didn’t have what Dick Clark, our big boss, called “The Hold.”

I didn’t know what Dick meant by that…until I saw Monty work.

Bob was sent back to Tennessee, which I thought was a showbiz euphemism until I learned that he actually lived in Nashville, and Monty took over. And from the moment he walked onstage on day one, to the very end of each deal, each segment, each show, Monty held the room. Contestants. Studio audience. Viewers at home. Everyone was under his spell. It was like watching an elite conductor lead an orchestra, the crowd, and everybody watching at home simultaneously. He never let the tension break. Watch this clip and you’ll see what I mean:

And that intense focus started in pre-production, in the production meeting held the day before a production block began, where we took Monty through all the deals, all the prizes and everything else planned for the upcoming shows - item by item, deal by deal, show by show.

We writers had to craft deals and games that allowed Monty to pull the audience into a story, twist by twist - Switch your door? Take the box? Let me tempt you with some cash? It was street theater elevated into broadcast art. No “stage weights” - Monty’s term for props or filler that didn’t drive the game forward. That lesson has stuck with me. (And I confuse young producers with that note to this day.)

But Monty’s most enduring lesson? That the most elite on-camera talent holds the audience and never lets them go. Watch Jon Stewart on a Monday night and you’ll see it instantly.

When I’m looking for a host to front a new project, it’s what I look for first. And it’s binary—you either hold the audience or you don’t. 95% doesn’t cut it.

Another bit of Monty wisdom that changed my career:

“Every great game show has that one moment when the contestant wins or loses everything.”

So imagine what went through my mind when I first saw the UK version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? I popped in a VHS in my ABC office in Century City in 1998, saw this moment and was on a plane to London the next day to secure the rights:

Millionaire had that Monty Hall moment again and again and again, and the entire production, from the lights, the music, the direction, and the design of the game itself, served to amplify those massive moments.

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Years later, Monty and I had lunch at his golf club, Hillcrest, in Los Angeles. By then, I was working with his daughter Sharon Hall who was a drama executive at Sony and she arranged the reunion. He was stunned I remembered so much from those early days. He admitted he hadn’t loved the 1990/91 revival - flying to Orlando, trying to resuscitate a show he felt was already sinking - and apologized for always being in a bad mood. I told him we’d all been a little afraid of him. But we had hung on every word.

And you will too, if you watch this interview:

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Monty was the first in a long list of on-camera talents who taught me everything I know about television. Yes, I’ve learned from brilliant bosses (particularly at Disney/ABC and Sony) and my peers in the producing community on both sides of the pond who make the same kind of television that I do. But the heart of what I know - what makes TV actually work - I’ve learned from on camera talent, the ones who look down the lens and communicate through the screen. These are the ones who make television real and powerful and possible - television - that wonderful Greek and Latin hybrid, from the Greek tele, “far off” and the Latin Visio, “act of seeing”. Watching television is literally to see up close what’s far away. That’s a magic trick which takes the most tremendous talent to pull off.

Think about it. There’s so much glass or liquid crystal between the performer and the audience—camera lenses, control room monitors, TV screens, your own glasses! But the best of the best? They cut through all of it.

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Coming Soon in This Series:

I have been so fortunate to work with and learn from so many outstanding television performers:

Merv Griffin, Bill Nye, Martha Quinn, Wink Martindale, Ben Stein, Jimmy Kimmel, Jennifer Lopez, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Damon Wayans, Billy Crystal, Drew Carey, Cindy Crawford, Chris Tarrant, Regis Philbin, Peter Jennings, Kenny Mayne, Meredith Vieira, Johnny Vaughan, Pat Kiernan, Sherri Shepherd, Ken Jennings (long before Jeopardy!), Maria Sansone, Andy Cohen, Andy Cohen, Andy Cohen, Andy Cohen (I could type it 1,000 times and it still wouldn’t be enough), Jerry Seinfeld, Alton Brown, Roger Bennett, Mike Tirico, Katie Nolan, Michael Kosta, Georgie Thompson, Jason Gay, Bevy Smith, Derek J, Miss Lawrence, Kay Adams, Kyle Brandt, Nate Burleson, Peter Schrager, Rebecca Lowe, Ryan Murphy, Aisha Tyler, Jason McCourty, Jamie Erdahl.

And even a computer.

And that’s all before I became Executive Producer of Jeopardy!

Over the next few months I’ll write about many of these extraordinary people, this array of phenomenal talent, and what they have taught me.

Stay in Charge,

Michael Davies