It’s April Fool’s Day, and in honor of the holiday, I unearthed this fantastic April Fool’s prank that Henry Winkler, aka The Fonz, pulled on host Tom Bergeron and all the celebrities (MC Hammer, Penn and Teller, Sherri Shepherd, Brad Garrett, etc.) taking up the Hollywood Squares. It may be an eleven year old gag, but it’s still hilarious today and went totally underappreciated at the time.
You can watch the first half of the episode here, although it’s mostly just set up. Basically, the producers of Hollywood Squares and Henry Winkler — who was subbing in as announcer — brought in a couple of actors to play the contestants during teacher’s week. During the first half of the show, the male contestant gets snippy and passive aggressive with the female contestant, in such a way that he’s clearly hurting her feelings. It finally came to a head during a commercial break when the producers asked Bergeron to try and rein it in because the female contestant looked as though she were about to cry.
Those tears finally arrived about two minutes into the second part of the show, much to the shock of Bergeron and the celebrity squares.
