Filthy Rich

One
It’s funny how a single dumb decision made in an…

Two
Okay, come out and say it: Marcy Mallowitz must be…

Three
By the time I dropped my mother off in Brooklyn…

Four
One maddening thing that happens when you collide with fame…

Five
I was awakened by the dulcet tones of Frank, the…

Six
The flowers from Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer were just…

Seven
Oops. In the depressing aftermath of my network television debut, 

Eight
Quick, give me a five-letter word meaning “Dumped Female Lifeline.”

Nine
It occurs to me that I haven’t told you yet…

Ten
When I got up the next day, it was already…

Eleven
“Oh shit. What have I done?”

Twelve
“It’s a disaster area,” I cautioned my two intrepid sidekicks…

Thirteen
“You were great with Diane Sawyer. Just great. You’re a…

Fourteen
I had a vivid dream that Oprah Winfrey was beating…

Fifteen
The next weeks passed by in a blur. As followers…

Sixteen
“Tonight. Live. Marcy Lee Mallowitz returns to play for $1.75…

Seventeen
The great lobster place Cliff had in mind was the…

About the Author

Praise

Copyright

About the Publisher

It’s funny how
a single dumb decision made in an unthinking moment of weakness can change the entire course of a person’s life.

At thirty-four, I suppose that shouldn’t come as any great revelation, especially as life’s incredible serendipity is a central theme of much of the world’s great literature, some of which I’ve actually read. It also happens to be a major subtext of the popular TV shows I watched obsessively while growing up, and whose humor and moral lessons still inform my general outlook and thinking—a jam-packed cultural cornucopia of after-school reruns and contemporary evening hits that included such indisputable classics as
Green Acres, Bewitched, Happy Days, Three’s Company, The Facts of Life
, that trusty evergreen
I Love Lucy
, and my abiding personal Bible,
The Brady Bunch
.

Yet nothing in the seminal works of either Dostoyevsky or Eva Gabor prepared me—Marcy Lee Mallowitz—for the amazing, if sometimes traumatic, life-transforming roller-
coaster ride I unknowingly embarked upon two months ago, when, against my better judgment, I agreed to be my boyfriend’s Lifeline.

What is a Lifeline?

In the event you’ve been living in a cave, or floating on a raft somewhere in the North Atlantic as part of a farsighted scientific experiment testing man’s ability to thrive once denied new episodes of
Friends
, I suppose I should explain.

A Lifeline is one of the clever wrinkles the producers of
So You Want to Be Filthy Rich!
built into the rules to add a touch of drama to the TV game show, and make it easier to give away the network’s money. In other words, it’s a gimmick for boosting the ratings, which—for reasons that continue to baffle me—have been stratospheric from the program’s inauspicious start a year ago as a summer replacement. Who knew it would become a national phenomenon? A national addiction, really.

But it works. As many as five times a week—or even more frequently if the network’s programmers are feeling desperate—zillions of Americans plant their greedy bodies in front of the tube to watch contestants perched precariously on a “hot seat” mounted atop a box of $100 bills field quirky questions for increasing amounts of money.

These questions seem to puddle-jump in no particular pattern from hard to easy, and cover an amazing span of useless, or nearly useless, information—everything from his
tory, geography, and current events to physics and pop culture. The value of the questions keeps escalating, until finally the lucky player is going for the full $1.75 million—an amount calibrated so the show can honestly claim the winner remains a millionaire even after paying taxes. Answer correctly, and it’s Easy Street. Answer incorrectly, and the take is a measly seventy-five grand, fake expressions of sympathy from relatives and former friends, and a future of excruciating second-guessing.

This action all takes place inside a circular klieg-lit arena—a knockoff of the set used in the original British version and re-created now in some seventy other countries. Given the demise of the Empire, and Princess Di’s tragic death a few years back, I’d wager it’s currently Britain’s most successful export.

The show is broadcast live from the same New York City studio where Nixon and Kennedy met for one of their famous debates in 1960. The debate is mainly remembered for Nixon’s bad sweating problem, which many say cost him the election, and I’m sure some wiseass Ph.D. candidate in history is already preparing a thesis comparing and contrasting Nixon’s perspiration on that historic occasion with the flood that surely would have emanated from the forehead of the disgraced former president had he instead been going for the $1.75 million from the
Filthy Rich!
hot seat.

Under the rules, a stumped contestant is allowed to consult a friend or loved one identified in advance for help in answering a question. This person is the Lifeline.

When all goes well, and the designated Lifeline provides the right answer, the moment becomes a sickeningly giddy bonding experience for the contestant and the helper. When things go awry, however, and the Lifeline turns out to be just as clueless as the contestant, the worst family dynamics can kick in, only to be played out on live national TV to great audience acclaim.

At least, that’s what happened to me.

“The Big Brush-Off,” as some sage at
TV Guide
dubbed it in a callously accurate cover story, occurred at precisely 9:21
P.M.
Eastern Standard Time (8:21 Central), just before the final commercial break of a Tuesday-night episode. During sweeps week no less. If you’re a
Filthy Rich!
fan (and who isn’t?), you probably remember the show. It’s considered a classic.

My almost fiancé—Neil Postit (pronounced “post it,” just like the yellow sticky notepads, as the program’s nattily attired master of ceremonies, the genial Kingman Fenimore, matter-of-factly observed)—was on the hot seat. Somehow Mr. 3M, Neil, had made it to the $500,000 mark—astounding guesswork, when you think about it, for a thirty-six-year-old orthodontist for adults who never seemed to read much, except about the latest advances in braces. That meant he had just one more question to answer before either pocketing the whole $1.75 mil and joining the
Filthy Rich!
pantheon, or bidding an abrupt adieu to a singular chance for fame and riches.

“So,” Kingman Fenimore said to Neil, “you’ve got
$500,000. Do you want to stop now and take it home, or are you ready to risk it all and go for the full $1.75 million?”

The large gap between the two top prizes is a perverse strategic ploy to bring out contestants’ avarice and make it almost irresistible for them to keep on playing notwithstanding the considerable downside risk.

Naturally Neil, the greedy bum, fell for it. He just couldn’t leave well enough alone.

“You bet, Kingman,” Neil said, displaying more zest than I’d ever seen him exhibit at home.
Ever
. “Let’s go for it.”

“Good luck, Mr. Post-it,” the host replied. “We’re all hoping you can make this one
stick
. Get it?
Stick. Post-it notes
. I’m trying to make a little joke here, audience. You think it’s easy being up here?”

Neil didn’t crack a smile. He was tense, and besides, he hates jokes about his last name. If it didn’t mean having to scuttle the lavishly framed dental school diplomas displayed prominently in his office, I’m sure he’d happily drop the last two letters and make it plain Post, an insight that may account for Neil’s oft-expressed enthusiasm for Post Grape-Nuts, his favorite cereal.

“Sorry, Neil, I couldn’t resist that,” said Kingman. “I should save the bad jokes for my morning show.” He was referring, of course, to
Gabbing! With Kingman and Tracy Ellen
, the ridiculously popular hour-long talk show he’d been doing weekdays on the network for years. “So back to business! For $1.75 million, let’s play
So You Want to Be Filthy Rich!
”

Suddenly, the spotlights were flying all over the place, nor
mal audience noises were replaced by the prerecorded sound of a pounding heartbeat, and the whole studio took on the feel of one of those old low-tech pressure cookers. A close-up shot showed sweat beads beginning to form on Neil’s forehead and upper lip à la the aforementioned Mr. Nixon. The effect was to mar the boyish good looks I found so appealing—not least, I’m sure, because Neil’s thick brown hair, clear blue eyes, and broad, slightly bemused grin conjured up fond memories of Ted Bessell, the amiable and underrated actor who played the tweedy boyfriend on both
That Girl
and
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
, TV’s breakthrough odes to single career women, and two of my favorite sitcoms ever.

Right across from Neil, meanwhile, sitting behind his bulky game console and all decked out in his patented rich person’s uniform of dark silk shirt and matching tie, Kingman, TV’s reigning sixty-two-year-old wonder boy, was looking as cool as a cuke. And why not? Thanks to this gig and his live morning talkfest with Tracy Ellen, he was already a millionaire a gazillion times over, and nothing was going to change that, not even Neil coming up with the wrong answer and blowing his Big Chance.

I was sitting in the front of the audience with my mom, Francine Mallowitz, the still spry and faintly glamorous, if ever-so-slightly stooped, former second runner-up in a long-ago Miss Coney Island contest. I stayed busy cheering Neil on and nervously basking in my appointed double role of almost fiancée and Lifeline-in-Waiting. During particularly tense moments in Neil’s hot-seat tenure, the camera
would cut to a shot of me anxiously observing from the sidelines. On two occasions, Kingman paused the proceedings to ask how I was holding up. “Fine,” I said, lying.

It’s not just that I was nervous for Neil and what this whole experience might mean for our three-year-old relationship. I was feeling self-conscious. The current consensus of opinion seems to be I looked terrific. But catching a quick glimpse of myself in one of the studio monitors, I thought I looked pale, bloated, and, if you must be cruel, downright frumpy—in all, an unattractive facsimile of the fit five-five poster girl for glowing skin and minimal makeup that is mostly my positive self-image on days I don’t have my period. I imagined millions of people reclining at home in their La-Z-Boys, wondering aloud what Neil saw in this auburn-haired blah. I made a mental note to blow up the trendy SoHo salon where my suave Italian stylist, the renowned Giovanni, personal blow-dryer to stars like Madonna, assured me between taking emergency cell phone calls from celebrity clients that a shoulder-length cut with multiple textured layers would bring out my recessive cheekbones. Liar.

“Members of the studio audience, we need total quiet please,” said Kingman with a solemnity in keeping with the size of the cash prize riding on the next answer, and the show’s pretension to be something more than just an ordinary game show. In just a couple of minutes, the world would find out whether Neil Postit, D.D.S., would succeed in his personal quest to wrest $1.75 million from the network. But the really fun part, as the show’s canny producers
well understand, the part that keeps viewers returning night after night, is the overwhelming communal sense of anticipation beforehand.

After an artful dramatic pause, Kingman continued.

“And now the question: For $1.75 million, Neil, which much-beloved hit 1970s television show, dismissed upon its debut as ‘the worst schlock on television’ by
The New York Times
, boasted regular appearances by the actress Teri Garr?”

These were the choices:

Neil had that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look. Sweaty and scared, he was morphing from Nixon into the Albert Brooks character in
Broadcast News
.

“I suppose ‘worst schlock on television’ isn’t much of a help,” Kingman said jovially, doing his best to revive his melting guest. “Some critics—I won’t say who—said that about this show when we began. Can you imagine that, Neil?”

When Neil failed to respond either with a smile or nervous banter, Kingman tried a different tack.

“Of course, you know Teri Garr,” he said. “She starred in some very good films years ago.
Tootsie
with Dustin Hoff
man, Spielberg’s
Close Encounters, Mr. Mom
with Michael Keaton, Mel Brooks’s
Young Frankenstein
. You sometimes see her now in commercials for that lite music station.”

The camera was in tight now on Neil’s face. He twitched. He squirmed. Then, saying he was “clueless,” he asked Kingman to remove two of the wrong answers—the other help option he still had left.

Now there were just two answers to choose from:

“I’m really flummoxed, Kingman,” Neil said, his game-show gusto suddenly spent. “I don’t know anything about old TV. I’m going to have to use my Lifeline and call on my girlfriend. This is really up her alley.”

“Okay,” said Kingman. “No need for AT&T to place a phone call this time. She’s right here in the audience.”

As the host spoke, I felt my mother stab an elbow into my ribs, her subtle way of getting my attention. “Stop biting your lip,” she whispered urgently in my ear. “And don’t keep looking down. I want to see your gorgeous smile.”

By now, the camera and lights had found me, and having somehow managed to stand without much noticeable wobbling, I was trying, not too successfully, to execute my mother’s final order, and smile.

“We met her briefly earlier,” said Kingman. “Her name is Marcy Lee Mallowitz, she’s in her early thirties, lives in
Manhattan, and her profession, it says here, is ‘Personal Life Coach.’ Marcy what does that mean, Personal Life Coach?”

I knew the inquiry might be coming, and I had an answer memorized. “It means people talk to me about their problems, and I help them identify and implement positive strategies to solve them,” I said.

“Sort of a cross between a psychic and a psychiatrist,” responded Kingman with his bemused trademark chuckle. “Personal Life Coach. Sounds good to me. I think I could use a Life Coach. But that’s another matter. Right now, Neil’s the one who needs your help. Let’s see if you can coach him to a nearly two-million-dollar payday. Neil, you have thirty seconds.”

“What about it, Marcy?” Neil piped up. “Should I choose
Donny and Marie
or
The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour?
”

“I’m only guessing, Neil. I’ve never seen either show. But I know Donny and Marie have been doing a new daytime show. Haven’t seen that, either, come to think of it. It may have been canceled. I remember someone telling me that. Give me a second here.”

I closed my eyes and scrunched up my face in concentration. Nothing came. The annoying heartbeat sound in the background was jamming up my circuits. Attempting to stay calm, I reflexively reached with my right hand for something to hold on to, and ended up grabbing a fistful of hair near the roots and tugging hard on it. If I pull out a big enough clump, I thought wishfully, maybe they’ll stop the game.