Quick - turn on your TV! You might still have time to watch Van Schmidt of Sandy win $32,390 - not to mention some lovely parting gifts - on Wheel of Fortune (6 p.m., Ch. 4).
Schmidt, a 27-year-old marketing consultant and a graduate of BYU and Alta High School, made his first appearance on the show Wednesday and did well enough to earn a return visit. And even though his string of good luck ends tonight, you have to figure he got a pretty good return on his investment of a couple of trips to Southern California.Of course, he hasn't actually seen any of it yet (unless you count the pasta and the dishwashing liquid). There are forms to fill out and delays to be endured. But he still has the glory - and memories of having shared a stage with Vanna White.
Sort of.
"To tell the truth, we weren't allowed to talk to Vanna," Schmidt confessed during a telephone interview this week. "I'm not sure why."
In fact, Schmidt's not even really sure when the idea of appearing on a game show first occurred to him.
"I watch the show all the time," he admitted, "and I found that I could usually solve the word puzzles before any of the contestants on TV could. So one day my wife (Dottie - they've been married a little more than a year) said, `You'd really ought to be on that show'. And I thought, `Why not?"'
So with a little help from Dottie's family in Fresno Schmidt found out what he needed to do to audition, and last September the burgeoning family (little Whitney Brook Schmidt made her debut in November) traveled to California for the try-outs.
"I auditioned for `Wheel of Fortune' and `Scrabble," Schmidt said, "but since I had never seen `Scrabble' I didn't last very long there."
But he did well enough at the "Wheel" auditions to earn a shot at the big bucks last month.
"It was pretty scary, sitting out in the audience waiting for my turn," Schmidt said. "You sit there and concentrate on the puzzle and try to solve it before the people on the set do - just like at home. But it's harder while you're out there - and even harder when you're up on the stage."
The nerves went away, though, as soon as he solved his first puzzle - "Sylvester and Tweedy."
"That took all the pressure off," he said. "I loosened up, and pretty soon it really felt like I was just playing a game with friends."
The wheel itself, he said, "is really quite heavy. But it doesn't take long to get a feel for how hard you have to push it to make it land where you want it." By the second day show he was getting pretty good at dropping it in right where he wanted it. But then, so were the other players, and before long his winning streak came to an end.
Or did it? I mean, when you stop and think about it, it's been a pretty eventful year for Van Schmidt - married last February, a baby in November, winning more than $30,000 on a game show this February. After a year like that nobody is going to call him a loser - no matter what you see on "Wheel of Fortune" tonight.
-ON TV TONIGHT: Lee Marvin and Jane Fonda star in the delightful comic Western, Cat Ballou (6:05 p.m., TBS); The NCAA Basketball Tournament takes over CBS's prime time schedule, with two games on tap including North Carolina-Arkansas (6 p.m., Ch. 5) and Duke-UCLA (8:15 p.m., Ch. 5); PrimeTime Live (9 p.m., Ch. 4) profiles Oscar nominee Morgan Freeman; and "Mystery!" presents a new P.D. James' six-parter, A Taste for Death (9 p.m., Ch. 7).
-LOOKING TO FRIDAY: The NCAA Basketball Tournament continues on CBS with Loyola-Marymount vs. Alabama (6 p.m., Ch. 5) and UNLV-Ball State (8:15 p.m., Ch. 5); Howard Keel is Peter in The Big Fisherman (6 p.m., Ch. 30); Jason Robards plays Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov (8 p.m., Ch. 13); and Joanne Woodward wears The Three Faces of Eve (10 p.m., Ch. 11).