Heatter-Quigley Productions

Heatter-Quigley Productions was an American television production company that was launched in 1960 by two former television writers, Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley.

The first game show they created was Video Village, a show first hosted by Jack Narz, later Red Rowe, and finally future Let's Make a Deal host, creator & producer Monty Hall. It was also the first new game show produced by anyone after the quiz show scandals.

The next few shows they created didn't last very long, but in 1965, they created & produced what turned out to be a breakthrough hit: The Hollywood Squares. A pilot episode of that show was produced that year at CBS Television City (a studio which would become the show's home from 1998-2004), with Bert Parks of Break the Bank (1) fame as the host and Morey Amsterdam of The Dick Van Dyke Show as the center square. The pilot was originally made for CBS, but over one year later, NBC picked up the show and new host Peter Marshall took over as the "Master of the Hollywood Squares" and has become a ground-breaking crowd favorite ever since. Prior to this success, Merrill & Bob's company was sold to Filmways.

One of the most unique thing about some of the Heatter-Quigley shows in that the key element or centerpiece in those show were life-sized, gigantic or larger than life. Here's a few of them:


 * Video Village, which has a gigantic life-sized game board to which the contestants can actually walk on. Its kid versions Video Village Junior & Shenanigans also have that kind of board.
 * Hollywood Squares, which featured a giant tic-tac-toe board to which the celebrity panel sits in.
 * High Rollers, featuring an extra large pair of dice.
 * Gambit, utilizing a large deck of playing cards in a game of blackjack.
 * The Magnificent Marble Machine, which featured a huge pinball machine.
 * Hot Seat, with an over-sized lie detector (referred to by host Jim Peck as a "galvanic skin response machine").

The announcer for most of the Heatter-Quigley shows was Kenny Williams. The show he didn't announcer for were Temptation (1) (announced by Carl King) and The Magnificent Marble Machine (announced by Johnny Gilbert), with both shows hosted by Art James. Kenny passed away on February 1984.

In addition to creating game shows, they even found time to produce the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Wacky Races. This cartoon is now currently owned by Warner Brothers which holds the rights to all Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

In 1981 Bob Quigley retired from the TV business and Merrill Heatter ran the company solo; he died in 1989. Most of the shows he produced were either revivals or new versions of his previously produced shows. Also Filmways, the company that owned Heatter-Quigley folded into Orion Pictures which produced movies such as Robocop and TV shows like Cagney & Lacey. On September 28, 1998, Heatter leased the worldwide rights to his solo-developed game shows to KingWorld for a short time. That option has now died, plus KingWorld folded into CBS Television Distribution. Today the Heatter-Quigley shows are owned by MGM Television (a company which Orion was folded into) which for a brief period was in partnership with Sony Entertainment.

Titles by Heatter-Quigley Productions

 * Video Village/Video Village Junior (1960–1962)
 * Double Exposure (1961)
 * People Will Talk (1963)
 * The Celebrity Game (1964)
 * Shenanigans (1964–1965)
 * PDQ (1966–1969)
 * Showdown (1966)
 * Hollywood Squares/Storybook Squares (1966-1981 version)
 * Temptation (1967–1968)
 * Funny You Should Ask (1968–1969)
 * Name Droppers (1969)
 * Gambit (1972–1976)
 * Runaround (1972–1973)
 * Amateur's Guide to Love (1972)
 * Baffle (1973), a revival of PDQ.
 * All-Star Baffle (1974), Baffle with no "civilian" contestants.
 * High Rollers (1974-1976; 1978-1980)
 * The Magnificent Marble Machine (1975–1976)
 * Hot Seat (1976)
 * To Say the Least (1977–1978)
 * Bedtime Stories (1979)
 * Las Vegas Gambit (1980–1981)

Titles by Merrill Heatter Productions

 * Battlestars (1981–1982)
 * Fantasy (1982–1983) (co-produced by Earl Greenberg Productions and Columbia Pictures Television [Now Sony Pictures Television])
 * The New Battlestars (1983)
 * All-Star Blitz (1985) (co-produced by Peter Marshall Enterprises)
 * Bargain Hunters (1987) (co-produced by Josephson Communications, Inc.)
 * High Rollers (1987–1988) (co-produced by Century Towers Productions)
 * The Last Word (1989–1990) (syndicated by Turner Program Services)
 * Catch 21 (2008-present) (co-produced by Scott Sternberg Productions)