With the rise of dangerous sports, extreme game shows, exploitative news, and particularly reality TV, writers have become fascinated by the idea of just how far a game show will go to get ratings. Of course, the answer is always the same — public execution. Movies like The Running Man, The Show, Series 7: The Contenders, and Live, as well as the novel The Big Question (by game show producer Chuck Barris), all deal with game shows where contestants die on television. It’s an intriguing premise, but most of them don’t tell very interesting stories. That said, Live and The Big Question both build up the tension by only having one person die on TV at the end of an episode, and as the pressure mounts over the course of the story, we get this increasing sense of dread. We know this is going to end with someone dying, and it is just a matter of who and when. Even though these are just fictional stories, they do succeed in putting that sickening feeling in the pit of our stomach. Thankfully, real TV has never gone this far, but the closest I have ever gotten to that pit-of-the-stomach “someone’s life is going to be ruined forever” feeling from a game show is while watching the infamous Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire.
One of the most fun posts I’ve written on here was about the worst game shows and reality shows in the history of television. In that post, I named The Chamber, a game show where contestants answered questions from inside a torture chamber, to be the worst game show of all time. I left Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire off that list for a very practical reason — I hadn’t seen it. It was a one-time event that was never rerun, and it didn’t appear on the internet again until last year. While it was never intended to be a weekly series, it was intended to have more editions, so it definitely counts. Sadly, unlike that post, the story of this show is just bleak and maddening.
Content warning: This story includes multiple instances of domestic abuse. I’ll give another warning when we get to it, but if you simply stop reading when I get to the end of the episode description, you won’t see any of it.
The year was 2000, and big money quiz shows were all the rage. Thanks to the runaway success of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, every network was trying to get its big-money show on the air. Shows like Greed, Winning Lines, and the ill-advised reboot of Twenty-One were trying to give away as much or more money than Millionaire, with varying levels of success. Also, right around the corner was reality TV. Survivor would premiere in March of that year, and Big Brother would follow in July. We were still two years away from The Bachelor. However, in February of 2000, a shockingly misguided game show aired and made the worst kind of headlines.
Part dating game show, part beauty pageant, and part creepy male fantasy (oh wait, did I already say beauty pageant?), Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire was all of the criticisms people can make about reality television combined into one. It was shallow. It was vapid. It was sexist. Thankfully, unlike so many other controversial shows, it only aired one episode. In hindsight, it is fascinating that they expected this to be such a smashing success that it could happen more than once. It is such a disaster in every foreseeable way, yet they thought they could do this format again?
Alright, let’s take a look at the rules of this nightmare. 50 women compete to marry the titular multi-millionaire. The multi-millionaire is kept in a pod onstage, and no one gets to see him.
However, all 50 women have agreed that should they win, they’ll marry him at the end of the show. Yeah, I’m sure keeping his face obscured in shadow like a Bond villain is really going to get these women excited to marry him. Host Jay Thomas tells us a little bit about the multi-millionaire at the beginning of the show however, promising, “He is not crazy.” Yeah, we’ll get back to that…
All 50 women are brought out on stage, and they introduce themselves one at a time. The announcer says their name, an onscreen graphic displays their name and age, and the contestant says what their job is.
This process takes nearly SEVEN MINUTES. I realize when you have 50 contestants it takes some time, but there has to be a better way than speed-rounding all 50 of them in one fell swoop. People are going to change the channel. The multi-millionaire then has to immediately knock it down to 10. Again, this show is shallow, and it’s not pretending to be anything else, but knocking it down to 10 based solely on appearance?
While most of the women are in their 20s or early 30s, their ages go as high as 43 and as low as… 19. Yeah. So, you’re probably expecting that the groom-to-be is around 30, but nope. He’s 42. Well, at least he doesn’t choose any of the women who could still be in college, right? Nope, one of his final 10 is all of 20 years old. The 10 remaining women move to the second round, and the other 40 go away with their free trip to Vegas and week of pampering, and probably a slight sense of relief because they don’t have to continue competing in this travesty.
Alright, so we’re down to 10. Now we’ll finally get to know these women, because this mysterious multi-millionaire is going to marry one of them after all, right? Nope. They get to answer one question apiece. You’ve probably gotten hints of this so far, but with this round it becomes quite evident that this show is BORING.
Here’s how this exciting round of 10 goes. Jay announces a category, the randomizer picks a contestant, Jay reads them a relationship question and four choices, the contestant gives their answer, and the multi-millionaire’s friends and family rate the answer on a scale of 1-10. If you’re only going to give these women one question to answer, you would think they would be meaningful, right? Let’s take a look at some of them:
“You’re out having brunch with friends. You order a bowl of soup. Everyone else orders an expensive entrée. Now the check arrives. One of your friends proposes that you split the bill equally. What do you do?”
“Let’s say your house is a little dirty. What do you do?”
“Your husband mentioned that on a recent business trip he and some of his business associates ended up at a strip club. How do you respond?”
Despite these questions being pretty open-ended, they are multiple choice anyway, because we just have to parody Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Jay even asks, “Final answer?” at one point. That aside, how are these supposed to help the multi-millionaire learn anything about the women? Also, how are the friends’ and families’ scores supposed to help him? He sees the contestants answering, and he’s the one eliminating players. Their scores mean nothing.
Weirdly, Jay interviews some of the contestants during this round, but he snubs two of the last three and goes right to their question. I’m guessing they were cut for time, but the fact that he interviews the first seven and not two of the last three makes it feel like someone was giving him a “hurry it up” motion. (This show didn’t air live, but it feels live). The interviews also don’t really help the multi-millionaire learn anything about the women, as they’re typical game show anecdotes (“I once met George W. Bush,” “I accidentally walked into a pole in the military”). Not exactly the kind of stuff that helps you fall in love.
Well, sure we could spend time getting to know these women so the groom could make sure to pick one who at least seems well-suited for him. Nah, forget that. It’s more important to have a swimsuit contest. It’s not like a guy going on a show where he gets to have his pick of women to instantly marry is looking for a real connection anyway. On the plus side, in this round, we at least get to see a few likes, dislikes, and hobbies for each woman. Of course, we don’t get to hear them talking about them, but at least they are slightly informative.
After the swimsuit round, the multi-millionaire cuts the field in half from 10 women to five. It is here that you can see the monumental shift in the attitude of the women on stage. When the 50 women were narrowed to 10, the women who are selected were surprised, yes, but they were mostly smiling and hugging the people next to them. When the field narrows from 10 to five, the reality of it all sets in. The smiles are clearly nervous ones, and none of them feel confident about what’s ahead.
Let’s just say that they are correct to be worried. Jay asks each of them a question about how they feel or if family members are watching at home, and their answers are extremely telling. Jay asks one contestant if she is prepared to be legally married by the end of the show, and she lets out the most blasé “Yep” imaginable. They haven’t even met the potential groom yet, and they’re already thinking of the annulment.
It’s totally understandable too, because when you sign up for a show with 50 contestants, you never actually think too much about winning. It’s a free week in Vegas and a chance to be on TV. Sure, some poor sap is going to stuck marrying someone at the end, but it won’t be you…
You can see that host Jay Thomas is experiencing the same gross pit-of-the-stomach feeling that I mentioned at the top, at least to a point. I don’t have a lot of nice things to say about him based on the comments he made after the show, but as the show marches on towards (metaphorical) death, you can see him change. He starts out jokey, making some quips that aren’t exactly great, such as saying that losers can come to his hotel room for a consolation buffet. However, once it gets down to the final five, Jay seems to realize that these women are terrified.
For the rest of the show, he tones down any jokes at the expense of the women and is genuinely concerned with making them feel comfortable. Again, we’re going to come back to what he said after the show, so I don’t think he had some kind of crisis of conscience here or anything, but it’s admittedly a hosting job that improves as the show goes on.
We already had the wannabe Who Wants to Be a Millionaire round earlier with the multiple-choice questions, but now we’re getting another knockoff Millionaire as each contestant is given some “intimate” questions to answer. Well, two questions. Well, kind of three questions, but they’re worded terribly. It’s a mess. See if you can understand these rules as Jay explains them (I am not blaming the host here, mind you):
“You have 30 seconds to answer, and when you hear this chime, it means it’s time to wrap it up. Here is intimate question #1: What are the three things your new husband can do to bring out the best in you, and what are the three things he should avoid doing?”
That is just the first question! Technically, they’re looking for six answers. Thankfully, the second question is just asking if children are needed for a happy life, but still. Who is writing these questions? One two-part question with six answers, followed by one simple yes-or-no, and both warrant 30 seconds? Plus, the timer is never shown on screen, and no one is told to hurry it up. When time runs out, the contestants just seem kind of confused. Plus, for every single contestant, there’s this dramatic, knock-off Millionaire music that is dumb the first time and absolutely grating the fifth time. The producers probably thought it was amusing parody, but it’s just sad. The real Millionaire music is genuinely great; this is desperate. Once again, the family and friends give scores for these answers, but … just one score overall. Not one score per question or something sensible! If this was handled well, I would at least admit that these are good questions to get to know someone you’re considering marrying. However, the execution is so wonky that I don’t think Jay even knows what’s going on.
Before the multi-millionaire proposes to one of these women (based on all of the meaningful information he has gathered about them over the course of the show), they get one final plea.
As if these women are not terrified enough at the moment, they have to make them in wedding dresses! Everyone had a wedding dress personally tailored in advance, so if I’m being gracious, they put five of them in wedding dresses to show off the designers’ work. How are these women supposed to make statements from the heart like this? Even worse, they are still making these statements to a man they cannot see!
Finally, after these final pleas, the ladies get to learn who the multi-millionaire is. A video clip kind of introduces him, but his face is still shrouded in various ways throughout. Then, he comes out of his pod, and everyone gets to meet Rick Rockwell.
We don’t see a lot of the reactions from the women (a wise choice from the director), but it is clear they are not impressed. Eliminated contestants were watching backstage, and one was quoted as saying, “He wasn’t as attractive as you would have thought. So the room erupted with, ‘Whew! God forbid it was me!'”
When a show is this shallow, there is a certain expectation that the contestants will be conventionally attractive. All 50 women were, after all. Rick, to put it kindly, is not. When you plan this show that you promise will end with a wedding on national television, you should at least make the bachelor someone who could be fun to marry for a short while. I get the show’s ultra-shallow messaging is that women want to marry someone with money, but it’s clear from these women’s reactions that they don’t! Since they don’t get to know Rick in any other way, this is an absolutely dreadful first impression. Then, he doubles down on the weirdness by making an incredibly creepy statement about the women on stage: “I know exactly what I’m looking for in love and life, and it’s here tonight.” The camera is showing the women’s faces as he makes this objectifying statement, and one of them cannot help but roll her eyes.
Who can blame her? Another is giving a deer-in-the-headlights “Get me out of here now” look. Rick briefly talks about how unfair it was that he got to learn about them while they knew nothing about him, which is nice and all, but he knew the format of the show. He then just walks up to one of the women, walks her forward, and proposes. It is the most awkward thing on a special filled with awkward moments.
The woman he proposes to is Darva Conger, and if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll note that until the proposal, she has been the least terrified of the women. There are two reasons for this. One, she is from a Hollywood family. Her mother was Susan Harrison, whom you may know as Burt Lancaster’s sister in Sweet Smell of Success or the dancer in the classic Twilight Zone episode “Five Characters in Search of an Exit.” Two, up until the moment of the proposal, she did not think she had any chance of being chosen.
In an interview with Larry King a year later, Conger admitted that she went on the show to get back at a boyfriend she had broken up with. She hoped to look great and make him reconsider things, and in the end — a very long and messy end — it worked. In multiple interviews, Conger suggested that she assumed the show was rigged, including a 2015 ET interview where she said that she thought the multi-millionaire was already dating one of the women on stage. She got taken to task for saying this by critics, but let’s really look at this. This was before dating reality shows were really a thing. The Bachelor, which tries to end every season with an engagement after weeks of gameplay, wouldn’t premiere until two years later in 2002. Most dating shows until this point offered the prospect of a single date. Even more risque dating shows of the ‘90s like Studs, Bzzz!, and Singled Out ended with contestants winning a date. Promising that a show will end with a marriage is a lot. As I’ve stated, Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire wasn’t live, but if all the women ran out when Rick walked out, it’s not like they could have just brought in more. I really can’t blame someone for assuming the show was taking out some kind of insurance, at least for its first episode, by making one of the contestants a plant. Sure, rigging game shows has been illegal since the ‘50s, but maybe she wasn’t thinking of it in those terms, or maybe she thought there was a loophole somewhere. I’ll cut her some slack.
Alright, back to the proposal, because four things of note happen in about five seconds. One, Rick gets Darva’s name wrong! He gets on one knee and says, “Darva Congra, will you marry me?” Couldn’t have, uh, fixed that in post? I know this was last minute, but there’s something else we’ll get to soon that was obviously fixed in post. Two, the other women (who are clearly relieved) are just kind of awkwardly shuffled off stage. Three, Darva accepts in a state that can only be described as trance-like. From the moment Rick takes her hand until the end of the show, she looks like her soul has left her body and she does not believe anything that is happening.
This is clear proof that the poor woman believed the show was rigged, because she was on top of things for the whole show up until the proposal. Four, Rick plants a huge kiss on her that she was not expecting, and that she later said she was not happy about. This is just absolutely unhinged television at this point, and I still cannot believe it aired. Jay interrupts the raucous cheers to promise a wedding when they come back.
When they come back, a makeshift wedding set has been brought in, and a judge from Nevada marries Rick and Darva. In addition to Darva remaining in her horrified trance state for the entirety of the ceremony, the judge also seems kind of horrified.
Since Darva has no one on her side of the wedding party, no one knows what to do with the flowers that she walked in with. She hands them off to the judge, and Jay quickly steps in to take them. It does provide another amusing moment from Jay, but just… how was this not planned for? How was this so sloppy? As Rick and Darva are dancing, Rick is clearly saying all kinds of things to her, and we just keep seeing Darva mouth “OK” over and over. She is not into whatever he is suggesting.
That’s where the TV episode ends, but the story is far from over. The fallout was almost immediate. There was plenty of criticism to go around, which I have to imagine the producers knew would happen. Thankfully for the creators, the premise was so objectionable that not as many people talked about just how downright boring it all was. Two hours of absolutely nothing, except for a little bit of grim death, or at least what felt like it. Darva and Rick never consummated the marriage, and Darva filed for annulment almost immediately. She sold the ring through Make a Wish and gave the rest of her prizes directly to charity to make it clear she had no financial gain from the show. Of course, she still got criticized by everyone for years to come when the show came up, but trust me — she is not the villain here. Did she go on the show? Yes. Did she go through with it? Yes, but clearly under duress. If you want to blame her for that, fine, but that is all you can blame her for. She went on a show thinking it wasn’t real, and the worst case scenario happened. Naivete was her only sin. We need to take a look at Rick Rockwell, or rather — the man who called himself Rick Rockwell. To put it bluntly, his name wasn’t Rick Rockwell, he wasn’t a multi-millionaire, and it’s clear that no one would ever want to marry him.
His given name is Richard Balkey, and he clearly decided that he wanted to go with Rick Rockwell after taping, because the new name is awkwardly edited in. Watch how it cuts away from Jay every time he says his full name. I guess Richard wanted to sound like a runner-up love interest in a ‘40s screwball comedy (Likely profession: Traveling salesman. Likely actor: Ralph Bellamy). As for the multi-millionaire thing, they are really stretching the definition here. When people wanted to know if Rick really was a multi-millionaire, FOX revealed that he had liquid assets of $750,000, but a net worth of a little over $2 million. However, even if you can put aside the unconventional looks, the debatable wealth, and the stage name that sounds like a character the Left Behind authors discarded, we have to deal with the actual elephant in the room — the restraining order. I’m going to reinforce the content warning from the top.
Even though FOX claimed that they ran a background check on Rick, what they didn’t report was that a former girlfriend had a restraining order on him. According to a People magazine article, Ex-girlfriend Debbie Goyne claimed Rockwell “’threw me around and slapped and hit me’ and broke into her home.” Rockwell, of course, denied this, but in an interview with Dateline, he did admit that he threatened to kill her. At first, FOX claimed the restraining order didn’t come up in their research on Rick, but they later disclosed that he had told them about it, and they decided it wasn’t a big deal. A restraining order wasn’t a big deal? How. All of the stories suggested that FOX was selecting from a wide range of multi-millionaire candidates, but this is who you landed on. Oh, but there’s more. Another ex-girlfriend said that Rick sent her countless emails after their breakup, which he signed “Ira” in reference to Ira Einhorn, a fugitive who murdered his girlfriend. I guess Rick, a wannabe standup comedian, (don’t seek out his standup; there is video) thought this was just hilarious. Who were the other options for this show, FOX?
If you’re angry by now, you should be, but save a little bit of anger for one more person. I really hate to say this, because I thought host Jay Thomas was the only saving grace of this absolute shitshow, but then I looked up his comments about the show. Maybe I shouldn’t have. What can I say? I’m thorough to a fault… well, at least more thorough than the FOX network running a background check. In a 2014 episode of Gilbert Gottfried’s podcast, Thomas sat down to talk about his career, including the show, and there are some noteworthy tidbits. Thomas, unsurprisingly, knew the show was awful and really didn’t want to do it, but they paid him enough. He claims that Rick was actually friends with producer and creator Mike Fleiss, but I have not heard this claim anywhere else and can’t back it up. Thomas describes Darva Conger as “a bitch,” without giving any examples to back up his misogyny. He clearly just didn’t like her. Just give one example, Jay, and also use a better word! Or just don’t criticize the woman who got exploited by everyone. Anyway, Jay claims he went into the pod at one point to tell Rick, “Whatever you do, don’t marry the blonde!” However, all of Jay’s claims deserve speculation, not just because they’re misogynistic, but because we know that one is factually incorrect. Jay claims, “There was a girl from Washington, who was a little bit overweight with braces,” and he claims he told Rick, “Marry her, she will be so happy.” It goes without saying that this is just a gross and disgusting statement, but it’s also just not correct. Based on what he’s saying, it’s clear he’s talking about a finalist named Jennifer who was from Washington. It sure doesn’t look like she has braces, but maybe it’s just because I’m watching a VHS rip of the episode (If you really must know you, you can watch the whole thing on YouTube, but I don’t recommend it). However, even if we give him that one, she is extremely slender, just like pretty much all of the women! What on earth were you talking about, Jay? She’s more nervous than Darva, sure, but she probably thinks it’s real, and her mother wasn’t an actress. If you want to have even less respect for Thomas, listen to the rest of the podcast where he uses the r-slur and claims Woody Allen is the victim in an abusive marriage.
There really isn’t too much to say about the major players in the years since. Darva and Rick reunited a year later for an interview with Larry King, which I mentioned above. I can’t find video of it, but it sounds like they were fairly cordial with each other, not that Darva had any need to be. She was eventually married and had a son, before divorcing. She’s been mostly out of the public eye, as has Rick. Jay Thomas passed away in 2017 from throat cancer. Creator Mike Fleiss sadly didn’t leave TV forever out of sheer embarrassment, instead going on to create The Bachelor, which took a little longer to get to the wedding but had even more drama. In 2019, Fleiss was accused of assault by his wife, but he continues to work on The Bachelor anyway.
So let’s go back to FOX’s other contender for the worst game show of all time title. The Chamber put contestants in a torture chamber to answer questions, and one sued the show for damages. That said, even though it had a horrible premise and execution, at least contestants knew there was danger going on. FOX had a responsibility with Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire, and they blew it. Even if you want to create the trashiest “dating” show of all time, you have a responsibility to make sure your contestants are safe. By not weeding out a contestant who seemed to have murderous intentions toward multiple women, they put all 50 women in danger and should have been sued out of existence. Thankfully, Darva got out immediately and was not harmed physically. After getting out, she became the villain in the public eye (even though, admittedly, there was no hero), and that only made things worse. It kind of just shows everything wrong with America, and I think it’s worse than The Chamber.
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