1979 Play-by-Play

January

January 4th, hotel tycoon Conrad Hilton said, "Be my guest," and handed out one-point keys to D. Perriman Sr., D. Perry, D. Trageser and C. Tremper... Next day, nine gamesters tallied five on jazz great Charlie Mingus. Taking the lead with six points was D. Trageser!... Jan. 27th, death caught Nelson Rockefeller in flagrante delicto and 12 gamesters banked three points each. Moving into the lead at eight was Skul.

February '79

February 4th, Skul turned his 8 points into 16 as he led 30 gamesters on just-out-of-jail-and-I-want-some-pizza-with-heroin rocker Sid Vicious... Feb. 9th, a more cultured duo of Mullen's Revenge and Smith & Smith tallied three each on poet Allen Tate. (And that week, Mullen's Revenge discovered that she had scored a Wild Card Solo in 1978, on John Bray, inventor of the animated film, who died at 99 during a New York Times strike and thus went unnoticed.)... Feb. 14th, War/Cambodia went gold for England's The National Health and together with Sid, that meant they had 18 points on two hits, and the lead! It marked the first time in Game history that the lead left the USA... Feb. 17th, J. Batterson soloed tastefully on actor William Gargan for three points... Feb. 26th, War/Vietnam rang up its 5,000th fatality and Game Sgt.-at-Arms B. Beasom (who survived the earlier conflict in that area when he was selected for training as a Turkish linguist) was there to collect 10 points.

March '79

March 2nd, 11 gamesters voted for Sen. Dewey Bartlett and were rewarded with five points each. For The Register, this meant 18 points and a share of the lead with The National Health. For M. Stark, it meant farewell to a man whose table she had waited on as a college student at a summer resort in Wisconsin, a tie-in no other gamester could claim... Mar. 7th, five scored five on bomb-toting Puerto Rican nationalist Andres Figueroa Cordero. Among those trained to sniff out explosives was J. Corrigan, rising to 18 and bringing his share of the lead to Albany, N.Y., the cradle of the Game... Mar. 12th, C. Tremper soloed on Victor Kilian for two... Mar. 16th, Dupont Fluvius soloed on Jean Monnet for one... Mar. 28th, The Register led three in scoring two on clown Emmett Kelly and moved to sole possession of the lead at 20 points.

April '79

April 4th, California's J. Batterson continued his stroll into the Hall of Fame with a lovely three-point solo on actor Edgar Bucannon... April 11th, a dozen gamesters led by The National Health scored five on Pakistan's Ali Bhutto and The Health returned to the lead at 23 points... April 24th, ten scored on Marvella Bayh. The Register was there for the six, moving back into the lead at 26 points. Nine scored six but SLY tallied her Wild Card and scored five, becoming the first gamester ever to lose points on a WC. (Another five scored six on "Mrs. Birch Bayh," including Mrs. L. Conway, all seeming to suggest that the pick was not famous in her own right, an odd message to send when you are scrambling for points.) Same day, D. Perriman Jr. matched Bayh with actor John Carroll for three more points, and had himself a nice Daily Double.

May '79

May 9th, D. Perriman Sr., D. McCarthy and D. Trageser scored one on Cyrus Eaton... May 11th, ten gamesters led by The Register and J. Corrigan picked with country music's Lester Flatt for four points. That lifted The Register to 30 as they continued to lead, but they were being shadowed by J. Corrigan, just two points to the rear. Same day, D. Trageser led three in scoring four on oft-married heiress Barbara Hutton... May 14th, D. Hillmann scored a solo two on author Jean Rhys... May 16th, four scored one on Pullman union leader A. Philip Randolph... May 28th, Smith & Smith soloed for two on legendary Columbia coach Lou Little... Next day, 18 film fans added two more with their pick on silent star Mary Pickford.

June '79

June 6th, J. Corrigan struck -- together with D. Perriman Sr. he tallied three on actor Jack Haley Sr. (Oz's Tin Man) and took the lead at 31 points... June 11th, the brave, plucky Register took back the lead at 33 as they led 54 lists in scoring three points on actor John Wayne, "The Duke." They enjoyed this idyll for two days, whereupon J. Corrigan led three in scoring six on Anatoly Kuznetsov and vaulted to 37 points!... June 16th, Mr. Goodvibes showed style with his four-point solo on film director Nicholas Ray... Next day, Ghostwriter scored his second Wild Card Solo on former Massachusetts governor Leverett Saltonstall. (This one was especially sweet to Ghostie, who, while auditing the early 1970's lists, had checked out former roommate G. Murphy's claimed hit on Leverett Saltonstall, and found, instead of an obit, an office address. Putting Saltonstall back in play was Ghostie's way of saying "Stick it in your ear, Murph" which he did with an extra Wild Card Solo twist.)... June 26th, three scored four on Vernon Presley... And then on June 29th, three more were Willin' to step up for seven points on Little Feat's Lowell George: Ghostwriter, S. Greenstein and L. Smith... Next day, D. Heath had an even bigger hit with mammoth Olympic gold medalist wrestler Chris Taylor for eight points.

July '79

July 6th, Mullen's Revenge collected 10 as War/Nicaragua went gold... July 8th, D. Perriman Jr. scored a nice four-point solo on actor Michael Wilding... July 9th, Mullen's Revenge shifted back to the style mode with a three-point solo on author Cornelia Otis Skinner... July 10th, 70 gamesters played beautifully for conductor Arthur Fiedler, including leader J. Corrigan using the two to rise to 39 points, and many others going Wild for five... July 11th, Holcomb et al and the Ricardos scored four on James U. Crockett of TV's "Victory Garden" fame... July 12th, B. Beasom and Captain Cadaver scored four sudden points on Carmine Galante, slain in a spectacular mob hit. Same day, Ghostwriter soloed for seven on singer Minnie Ripperton, his second seven-point hit of the summer... July 13th, W. Krug soloed on film actress Corrine Griffith for three... And then on July 14th, Ghostwriter and P. & E. Hepner scored seven each on mammoth daredevil Billy McCrary dying in a mini-cycle crash and Ghostie found himself at 40 points and, gasp, in the lead, going into history as the first to surpass Dr. Death's record of 39 points... In an interlude of style, July 16th, D. Perriman Sr. had a nice solo for one point on Cardinal James F. McIntyre... July 22nd, after Ghostwriter had relished the lead for eight days, J. Corrigan decked "Two Ton" Tony Galento for four points and moved to 43. Also weighing in during The Summer of the Heavyweights were J. Basal, the Morbo Chucks and both Perrimans, Jr. and Sr.

August '79

August 2nd, Dr. Doornail soloed for two on Herbert Marcuse... Aug. 5th, T. Curran soloed for two on Jacob Potofsky... Aug. 9th, six baseball fans scored three on Walter O'Malley... Aug. 10th, The Register, moving to 41 points, and D. Perriman Jr. made some noise in pursuit of the leader with three points on Cardinal John Wright... Aug. 16th, D. Perriman Jr. tallied a solo two on John Diefenbaker and also moved to 41, tied with The Register and just two points away from J. Corrigan... Aug. 18th, we heard from Perriman Jr.'s daughter, C. Perriman, one among three scoring four on Lucy's sidekick, Vivian Vance... If J. Corrigan was worried, he never betrayed it. Aug. 25th, he led six on scoring four on Stan Kenton and moved to 47 points... Same day, Captain Cadaver and e. mcgrath scored 10 as War/Rhodesia went gold... Aug. 27th, The National Health and M. Stark were shocked when the IRA blew away Lord Mountbatten, but took the three points anyway... Aug. 29th, Mr. Goodvibes, the pride of the Newhouse School of Journalism, went wild on S. I. Newhouse; Smith & Smith and M. Stark tallied two each on the same hit.... Aug. 30th, M. Hamilton and L. Shanahan teased everyone with their three-point score on Sally Rand.

September '79

September 1st, J. Batterson continued his soloing ways with a two-pointer on Doris Kenyon... Sept. 5th, J. Schinto soloed for one with writer/composer Guy Bolton, who wrote musical comedy with P. G. Wodehouse... Sept. 5th, four scored five on Angolan President Agostinho Neto... Sept. 15th, J. Basal and G. Conway warbled for five each on singer Tommy Leonetti... Sept. 18th, Afghanistan's president Noor M. Taraki caught something in a shootout and died. L. Delaney was paying attention to the scene in Kabul and cashed in for four points... Sept. 20th, C. Perriman showed her good breeding as she soloed on former Czech president Ludvik Svoboda for two points... Sept. 26th, J. Batterson soloed, again, for two points this time on Gracie Fields. Same day, J. Basal soloed on Alexandra Tolstoy for one point and some quizzical expressions.

October '79

October 5th, J. Corrigan added a Wild Card five to his total and rose to 52, the first gamester to shatter the 50-point mark. Also going Wild were Mort U. Airy and J. Smoke, while D. Beach, W. Dockum and Morpheus each tallied one on Charlie Smith, the oldest man in the world, who had been a one-pointer for 47 years!... Oct. 8th, five scored three on India's J. P. Narayan... And then a lovely interlude of style: Oct. 6th, Smith & Smith soloed on Elizabeth Bishop for four; Oct. 8th, Smith & Smith soloed on writer Audax Minor (George Ryall) for one point, gorgeous back-to-back solos... Oct. 17th, eight gamesters observed the passing of humorist S. J. Perelman (to whom we owe much)... Oct. 24th, the great, great Morbo Chucks scored the first solo of their fantastic career with an ace on Eleanor Robson Belmont... Oct. 26th, Korea's Park Chung Hee caught the same bug as Noor M. Taraki, and doctors B. Dodge, Dupont Fluvius and D. Heath were on hand to make the diagnosis for four points... Oct. 27th, D. Perriman Sr. soloed for two on hateful radio priest Charles Coughlin... Oct. 30th, The National Health soloed for one point on Barnes Wallis, inventor of the skipping bomb featured in the British WWII film classic, "The Dam Busters." What style!

November '79

November 1st welcomed a hit so big it needed a fresh month to fit: 55 gamesters scored on Mamie Eisenhower, including J. Corrigan, rising to 54 points and taking no prisoners... Nov. 5th, 16 scored three on cartoonist Al Capp who in his later years took to heaping scorn on the loose ways of college youth until arrested for exposing himself to a co-ed who had been assigned to see to his every need, but not that one... Nov. 17th, a first solo, first hit, first everything for rookie Phaedrus, emerging from Club Nula with his two-point hit on Immanuel Velikovsky, author of "Worlds in Collision"... Nov. 23rd, e. mcgrath soloed on political columnist Richard Roever for four points... Next day, seven gamesters bid farewell to actress Merle Oberon for four points. Among them, D. Perriman Jr., moving to within one point of the leading J. Corrigan.. Nov. 30th, 10 gamesters scored three on Zeppo Marx.

December '79

December 5th, M. Hamilton showed style with her solo on artist Sonia Delauney for one point... Dec. 9th, Bishop Fulton Sheen blessed 18 gamesters with two points... Dec. 10th, The Last Roundup soloed on librarian Louis R. Wilson, checking out at 103... Dec. 22nd, J. Basal and Binky Brown yelled "Cut!" for producer/director Darryl F. Zanuck and picked up three points each... Dec. 29th, J. Corrigan just wasn't done. Along with D. Perriman Sr. he tagged Rep. F. Edward Hebert for three and rose to 57 points... Next day, seven gamesters closed out the scoring with three points on composer Richard Rodgers.

It was, all in all, a thundering bravura performance by J. Corrigan who finished four points ahead of D. Perriman Jr. and set a huge new record for points scored in a single season.

Let's look at the Top Ten for 1979.

Take me on to 1980.

Take me back to Play-by-Play.