TVSquad

If you have a leisure suit in your closet and think it'll never be in style again, you may be wrong. Everything has a way of coming back around, even game shows. With that in mind, Queen for a Day, a game show that ran in daytime for 20 years, is being resurrected for today. RDF USA has obtained format rights and plan to present their resurrected, revamped edition to cable and broadcast nets this week.

Queen for a Day was originally a radio show, but appeared on TV in 1947 and ran on and off until 1970. It was sort of the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition of its day, albeit on a much more modest level. Female contestants would appear to tell her story of woe and misfortune in order to be eligible to become queen for a day, wherein she would win prizes, be feted with a crown and robe, offered roses and other gifts. "Make every woman a queen, for every single day," was the host, Jack Bailey's closing line each day. If it sounds hokey, it was. Comedy shows regularly satirized it.

No doubt the updated version will be more grandiose, the prizes a lot more substantial, and the reality elements of the show will be emphasized. You can imagine that the stories of woe will be depicted with video and testimonials from family and friends about why this woman needs to be a queen for a day.

RDF USA is seemingly a good choice for this project; they currently do ABC's Wife Swap, which is rife with sentimentality and dripping in the kind of reality that makes one's toes curl.

When I mentioned this Queen for a Day redux to my husband, he laughed and asked if it was going to be a gay game show? Hmm...perhaps. Or maybe they'll make it Queens for a Day and set it in Astoria or Flushing with just borough residents eligible? What about King of Queens for a Day in which Kevin James grants a winner a day with a Hollywood star?

According to RDF CEO Chris Coelen, a format is still in the works, but they're planning to inject more emotion into the new version. Considering the tears shed in the original (which I've only seen in kinescope clips), this thing might need to be sponsored by Kleenex. But in this era of product interference -- oop, I mean, integration -- that's not out of the question. The original 1950's edition had partnerships with such advertisers as Johnson & Johnson, Hoover and Westinghouse.