A. Serial killer contestant. Rodney Alcala won a date on the show in 1978, but his killing spree actually began in the late 1960s.
The Dating Game is a classic 1960s television game show that follows a bachelorette (or occasionally a bachelor) as she questions three hidden contestants behind a partition to choose a blind date for an all-expenses-paid trip.
Years Active: 1965–1973 (Original ABC Daytime & Primetime runs)
Creator: Chuck Barris
Host: Jim Lange
Major Production Blooper: The Inappropriate, “Un-Aired” Contestant Answers
Because the series was recorded in front of a live studio audience during the late 1960s and early 1970s, producer Chuck Barris encouraged contestants to give witty, flirtatious, and risqué answers to drive up ratings. However, the production crew frequently ran into trouble with the strict standards of network television censors.
The major, hilarious bloopers occurred when male contestants would take the double entendres entirely too far. During several untaped or subsequently edited out moments, flustered bachelors dropped highly explicit innuendos—with one bachelor famously declaring his slogan as a laundry detergent would be “the harder you rub, the cleaner I come,” and another describing how he would “impale” the bachelorette.
Because the technology didn’t allow for instantaneous digital editing, host Jim Lange frequently had to stop the show, scold the contestants, and completely restart the segments while the production crew scrambled to splice the magnetic tape to ensure the raw, inappropriate answers never made it to air.