Show-Biz Small Fry Tell Tall Tales on TV’s Kid Quiz

Show business-minded children in Orange County have a new route to (modest) fame and (minor) fortune in “You’ve Got to Be Kidding,” a 2-month-old game show that airs weekday evenings and Saturday mornings on television station KDOC, Channel 56, in Anaheim.

On each episode, Jack Narz--who used to host “Concentration” on network TV--asks two child contestants to examine photographs of celebrities or such things as rubber duckies, teddy bears and family pets or photographs of celebrities. Then four panelists, also children, each tell a story about whatever person or item is in the photo, but only one tells the truth. The contestants try to guess who’s not kidding.

Ray Horl, KDOC’S director of new programming (who used to produce such network game shows as “Name That Tune,” “You Asked for It” and “Face the Music”), said the show is intended to be “subliminally educational.” A little geography is taught through questions about states’ locations, and language lessons come through in the panelists’ sometimes hilarious spellings of such words as dictionary and Tennessee.

News about the show has spread, and Horl said he now auditions about 100 children, mostly from Orange County, each week. Participants earn prizes, such as tickets to area amusement parks.

At rehearsals for games that will air next Monday to Friday, Horl coaxed the panelists to exercise their imaginations, and they came up with some wacky stories. Tyler Anspach, 8, of Brea, decided that actor-comedian Steve Martin, shown in a photograph wearing the false nose he sports in the movie “Roxanne,” was “Pinocchio. Of course, you guys know he’s wooden. On his days off he likes to tap dance and stuff like that.”

A little girl approached the group. Horl told the panelists that she would be a “mystery guest” on the show. “This little girl has a claim to fame,,” he said, “and I want you to tell me what it is.”

“She’s ‘Leave It to Beaver’s little brother,” blurted 10-year-old Tommy Stowe from Mission Viejo.

“She went to Supercut and got a good haircut, and she’s modeling now,” said 12-year-old Marc Anspach, Tyler’s brother.

“Instead of taking a bath, she likes to take showers,” Tyler chimed in. “ I don’t know.”

“This girl is a genius in mathematics,” Horl told them. “She’s in 12th-grade-level school. You can give her any kind of problem and she’ll solve it.” He waited for the children’s reaction, then told them another story. “This is Cristina, she’s 7 years old, and she was voted Miss Seal Beach when she was only 6 months old.” Horl paused again, then gave still another story. “You know who this is? She’s a fortune teller. She can read palms. But only clean ones, Tommy!”

Eventually, Horl told the children that the guest, Cristina Ferretti, had in fact won a Seal Beach baby beauty contest. Panelist Shelley Caplan, 10, of Huntington Beach, was assigned to tell the true story on camera.

She and the other panelists trooped back into studio to try--in front of an audience of parents, siblings and teachers--to fool two of their peers.

“You’ve Got to Be Kidding” began airing just before Thanksgiving. Horl said KDOC plans to put two more children’s game shows on the air in late February. He said he will try to sell all three shows for syndication at the National Assn. of Producers and Television Executives convention in Dallas next month.

Children’s game shows seem to be growing increasingly popular. In 1986, the Nickelodeon cable channel began a stunt-filled show called “Double Dare” which recently was purchased for syndication by Fox Television and Viacom Enterprises, and NBC added “I’m Telling,” another children’s game show, to its lineup last fall. Nickelodeon recently launched a new kids’ show, “Finders Keepers.”

“It seems,” Horl said, “as though everybody has realized that we’ve ignored the children. And a lot of production companies are developing these (game) shows now.”

Narz had retired after 40 years as a game show host (“I was just playing golf and traveling”) when he got the call from Horl. He had never hosted a children’s show before, and he finds the job “charming. I think television could use something like this--kids don’t have to look at animated cartoons all the time.”

He doesn’t find children harder to handle than adults. On the contrary, he said, “Their minds are so open, so pure; I think they’re easier to work with.”

Leslie Caplan, mother of panelist Shelley, said her daughter was delighted to be chosen for “Kidding.” Shelley was on “Romper Room” when she was smaller and was “dying to be on TV (again). . . . She just hopes someone will see her and discover her!”

Pamela Anspach said her sons Tyler and Marc have some show business aspirations, too. But she thinks the main benefit of participating is “just the experience of having fun, and being on stage and (learning) more self-confidence.”

“You’ve Got to Be Kidding” is shown Mondays through Fridays at 6:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 7:30 a.m. on KDOC, Channel 56.