Fame & Fortune

Fame and Fortune was a lottery game show from the Michigan Lottery.

The show taped on Friday afternoons at Detroit's WDIV-TV and aired Saturday evening on WDIV and eight other stations around the state. Breaks during the show allowed for commercials and coverage of live drawings of the evening's Daily 3, Daily 4, Lotto and Zinger games.

Each week, six contestants played. Their names were drawn from those who had submitted scratch off Fame & Fortune lottery tickets with three TV symbols.

Fortune Round
The object of the game was to accumulate $1,000. Dollar amounts from -$300 to +$300 were randomly hidden behind the seven letters in the word FORTUNE. One by one, contestants picked a letter and the amount was revealed and added or subtracted to the contestants tally. If the revealed amount would put the contestant below zero or over $1000, the score did not change. However, landing back on zero eliminated the contestant from the game with a $500 consolation prize.

A CAR card was used once each game beginning in round 2. The contestant who found it had the option of leaving the game with a luxury car (usually a Cadillac) or playing on, taking whatever amount was behind the CAR card.

If a contestant were to accumulate exactly $1,000, the current round is played out to give remaining contestants a chance to tie. Ties were broken by having the tied contestants play one additional round, although random two digit numbers were used instead of dollar amounts.

If no contestant reached $1,000 after four rounds, the contestant with the highest score was declared the winner.

The winner of the game was awarded $50,000.

Spin To Win
The remaining contestants then played a second round called Spin To Win. They had the choice of keeping the money they earned in the front game or risking it by spinning a wheel with prizes ranging from $500 to $5,000.

Draw for Next Week
At the end of the show, the hosts drew submitted tickets from a plexiglass drum and read the names aloud to determine who would play the following week. At some point, the drawing was moved offstage and only the winning names were read from a list.

The program aired for the last time on April 6, 1991 and was replaced by Megabucks Giveaway the next week.

YouTube Link
A Full Episode