Game show features
familiar face
By Kelly Feser Eells

True or false: Hollywood's funniest Square was Paul Lynde.
(True, although Whoopi Goldberg may also be accepted.)
OK, that was an easy one. This next question is a little harder: Who is Mary Neathery?

Tick, tock

If you answered, "Mary Neathery is a longtime Ojai Valley resident with a ready laugh and a good word for everyone," you're partially right.
Because, while Neathery is indeed a longtime Ojai Valley resident with a ready laugh and a good word for everyone, she's also something of a "Hollywood Square" herself - or as "Hollywood Squares'" executive producer, Michael Leavitt, put it, "the greatest contestant we ever had."

Neathery, whose appearance on the popular game show will air Oct. 16 and 17 on Channel 9 (KCAL) at 7:30 p.m., beams at the memory.
"That was my prize," she said, when asked if she won; "him saying that."

She explains how, "after getting tripped up by the Last Comic Standing - or was it Lance Bass, the N'Sync guy? Incidentally, do you know how tall Napoleon was? Lance Bass did: 5- foot-6-inches. I couldn't believe it! - and it was time to leave (the set), and all the stars were waving, 'Bye, Mary, bye, Mary,'" Leavitt walked up to her, introduced himself, and delivered her 'prize.' "That was just the greatest thing," Neathery says, still beaming. "People working on the show, producers, assistants, all my Green Room buddies: they all told me he's never done that after a show, said anything like that to a contestant. It really made my day!"

Neathery's sunny disposition undoubtedly made many an other person's day - or at least made many an other person's day easier, particularly those people charged with finding the ideal Hollywood Squares contestant.

She concedes that, even though Hollywood Squares isn't her favorite game show, "when I saw a story in the news about it, about the show looking for contestants, I thought, 'I could do that.'" And do it she did, passing each phase of a four-weekend "screening" process with flying colors. "First, I had to pass a test of 'Useless Knowledge Trivia.'

Then an interview with the contestant coordinator, who asked me where I was from, and when I said 'Ojai,' she said, 'Isn't that a little hippie town?' I wanted to describe it a little more, well, diplomatically," Neathery chuckles, "so I said, 'no, more like a bohemian town.'"

Next, Neathery charmed the folks standing in for the Hollywood stars and Squares host Tom Bergeron during a "mock-up" game, telling the mock host she was a school secretary (true, for Mira Monte Elementary School) and Weight Watchers group leader (also true; she herself has lost 82 pounds on the plan)- "two positions of high confidentiality."
When the mock host asked what her biggest challenge was, Neathery replied, "Food."

At the end of the day, the contest coordinator told Neathery "we'll call if you make the cut."

The call came the very next weekend. "I came home, turned on the tube, had a cup of coffee, my daughter, Kerry - when we're not in school, we like to go to "Wheel of Fortune" tapings - she got the message when I did."

Neathery taped the show the weekend of Aug. 25, "and loved every minute of it. I made some really good friends, we rooted for each other, cheered each other on. It was just a great experience all the way around."
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© 2003 The Ojai Valley News

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