1 9 5 7 – 1 9 7 1 (Australia)
A long, long running, popular Australian game show from Channel 7, based on an earlier radio show of the same name.
Contestants had to choose between opening a box with a mystery prize within, or building a bank of cash (The time-honoured “money or the box” scenario).
Pick-A-Box was hosted by Bob Dyer and his wife Dolly, who became Australian icons. Dolly had been a teenage showgirl in Sydney during WWII when she fell in love with a visiting American comedian billed as The Last of the Hillbillies, Bob Dyer.
They married, bought a home in Sydney, and in 1948 produced Pick-a-Box on radio which later made the transition to television.
In the 1950s and 60s, Bob and Dolly Dyer’s BP Pick-a-Box was one of the best rating television programs in Australia.
Australian MP Barry Jones went undefeated as a contestant from 1960 to 1967.
In 1971 the Dyers walked away from television and retired in Queensland where Mr Dyer concentrated on his first love – fishing. The format came back later as Ford Superquiz.
Bob Dyer died in 1984. Dolly Dyer died of a stroke in a nursing home at Gympie (Queensland) on Christmas Day 2004 and was buried in a private service on the Gold Coast on 30 December.
