Celebrity Challenge of the Sexes originally aired on Sunday, April 17th 1977.

Another great 1970s era celebrity "reality" show created by CBS after the success of the ABC television network's Battle of the Network Stars. I should say recreated because this show originally began by showing real athletic stars in a real competition of the sexes but after ABC's show became a hit that was changed. On this program the various stars put aside their trivial network rivalries to answer a much more important question, which was the superior sex! But how did they did go about answering this controversial and age-old question? How, by pitting male star versus female star in grueling competitions, that's how! Where else might you see Redd Foxx competing against Roz Kelly in billiards! Or how about Ed Asner vs. Lola Falana in a marathon run! Elliott Gould vs. Brenda Vaccaro in Basketball or Robert Conrad vs. Penny Marshall in the obstacle course, you don't see something like that every day! I didn't even mention Connie Stevens vs. Flip Wilson in Go-Karts; the mind boggles! As with other similar television shows of the era, everything was done in light-hearted fun way, no one took themselves too seriously and a great time was had by all.

In this episode Kristy McNichol represented the girls in a skateboard competition. But who did the guys get to challenge Kristy? Kristy, who was 14 years old at the time and all of 80 pounds! Who did the guys get? None other than Dan Haggerty, Mr. Grizzly Adams himself, a six foot one 200+ pound hulking hairball of a man. Well it's of no matter because Kristy thoroughly thrashed Mr. Adams in the competitions beating him 4 out of 4 times! Kristy the giant killer!

Buying note: To my knowledge this program has not been seen since it originally ran in 1977, no copies have been traded among collectors and the chances of it ever being released on home video are small at best. The best chance this show has of ever seeing the light of day again would probably be if some cable or satellite television service reran them, much like Trio® did with ABC's Battle of the Network Stars program a few years back.

5-5-2006