Money Hunt: The Mystery of the Missing Link

Not only have I seen this movie, I have seen it more times than I could count--perhaps 1,000 or more--all during the contest period.

Two couples were addicted to it, and are convinced we won the contest but were screwed out of the prize.

Once you had solved a series of puzzles and riddles--by spending countless hours in libraries because Google did not exist--you were to phone in your answers.

The puzzles were difficult, but the really hard part was that the phone number to be called was "revealed" in the movie--and that once a winner had been determined the number would be disconnected.

We developed a series of answers to the puzzle but getting the damn phone number seemed impossible.

One night I actually woke up in the middle of the night--I'm telling you it was an obsession--and actually went out to our office to watch the damn movie.

There it was--just what had come to me in my sleep. In the final scene John Hillerman is standing there recounting the story. The camera would zoom in on his face then back, then in again, then back. Every time I had seen it I thought that strange but it was not until that night that it came clear why.

Hillerman was standing in a dining room and every time the camera panned back the number of chairs at the table changed. Sure enough there were ten different combinations of chairs.

Ten is exactly how many numbers you need for an area code and a seven digit number.

I quickly grabbed my phone and dialed the number--remember it's the middle of the night. Some poor soul in Vermont answered his phone, I asked, "Is this the Money Hunt line?" and he muttered some obscenity and hung up.

I sat there staring at the numbers. The last three were 312--if I dialed the numbers in reverse I'd be calling Los Angeles. Why would the producers not have an answering machine right there in Hollywood? So I tried again and this time the phone was answered by a machine that said, "Congratulations! You have reached the Money Hunt solution line." I was almost orgasmic.

Remember, once a winner was found the line was to be disconnected--it was not disconnected. There had not been a winner! The recording asked for answers a series of questions based on the clues throughout the movie.

I actually called my business parter at home at 4:00 AM and told him to get out to the office. He said we should meet at my house because they lived close to my house and my wife was still asleep.

So I grabbed the tape and went home, got my wife up, made a big pot of coffee and waited for our friends to get there.

We called the number--using extensions all over the house--and each of us wrote down what we heard as the questions we were to answer.

We then brain stormed what we thought the answers would be. Then well before sunup in Los Angeles we phoned back and answered the questions.

We never got an acknowledgment one way or the other.

Eventually we had a lawyer friend phone them for an explanation of what happened. We were told that the contest had been won by (I cannot recall the names exactly, it's been more than twenty years) by somebody named something like Sonya H Weisman. This was back in the days when bankers could easily check people's credit and we had a buddy check Sonya out.

The H in her middle name was her maiden name--and it was the same name as the executive producer of Money Hunt. The contest appears to have been won by the executive producers sister.

As "The Church Lady" would say, "Now, isn't that conveeeeeenient." Lest you think that we had too much time on our hands--we were the two couples who owned our own business and we worked on the mystery when we were together--which was most of the time since we were together all day every day as well as very close social friends.

If you find a video around pick it up and watch it--wait for the last scene and realize what I'm talking about.

The only clue I can recall is something to do with "The Dusty Faces" which was a reference to an Indian tribe that has a reservation in South Dakota, or something like that.

It was fun. It's a shame there were not more of them but probably there were not enough sales to recoup the cost of the production, plus profit and also have enough for a prize.