The Luckiest Man in America

 

Last year, Hollywood finally made the documentary that this blogger had been waiting 20 years for - sort of.  The 2024 film The Luckiest Man in America tells the improbable story of an ice cream truck driver named Michael Larson, who in 1984, won more than $110,000 on the TV game show Press Your Luck.  Starring Paul Walter Houser, the film does an adequate albeit fanciful job of showing how Larson beat CBS at its own game, but it failed to delve into his life prior to 1984, nor did it disclose his fate.  Enter Six Feet Under Hollywood.

Paul Michael Larson was born in Lebanon, Ohio on May 10, 1949.  He was the youngest of four children to father Robert, a butcher with a local grocery store chain, and mother Ruth, a stay-at-home mom.  While his older brothers took on great responsibilities, including college, military service, and joining the workforce, Michael leaned more towards get-rich quick schemes, which often blew up in his face.  During the 1970s, he was arrested on three separate occasions for larceny, possession of stolen goods and petty theft.

Larson also had commitment issues, with two failed marriages under his belt, each of which produced a single offspring.  By 1984, he was living with his common-law wife Teresa, with whom he had a third child.

By the 1980s, he had turned to television for the next big thing, amassing twelve sets in his living room, from where he would launch his next attack.  In 1983, he discovered a new game show called Press Your Luck, which featured a supposedly random prize board.  For those who haven't seen the film, and it is worth a watch, Larson used his VCR, a new technology then, to slow down the board's blinking lights. 

He learned that despite the show's claims, the lights did indeed have a pattern, five in fact, all of which he memorized.  He also discovered that two squares on the board never held a "Whammie," the dreaded demon who would steal all of a contestant's earnings.  Armed with this knowledge, Larson made his way to Hollywood, was cast on the show, and took CBS for more than $110,000 in cash and prizes, more than ten times the amount that any previous contestant had ever won.

Larson returned to Ohio with his winnings, quickly losing much of it in a shady real estate scheme.  CBS, embarrassed by the event, aired Larson's episode in two parts, locked them away in a vault for 20 years, and did their part to move on.  Press Your Luck would run for another three years before ultimately being canceled in 1986.

Larson resurfaced in 1994, when he was interviewed by Good America, America.  In a raspy voice, he said that it had taken him six months to memorize all of the patterns, and that he hoped to one day be cast on Jeopardy, as he had figured out a few angles on their board as well.  He'd never get the chance to implement them however, as he died of cancer five years later while living in Florida.  At the time of his death, he was in hiding from the law, the result of another of his get-rich quick schemes.  He was just 49 years old.

Michael Larson was laid to rest in the family plot at Lebanon Cemetery in Lebanon, Ohio.

Rest in peace.

Trivia

• If you want to learn more about Michael Larson, take a voyage to Amazon.  It's all in books.
  
  
• While this blogger missed the initial 1984 broadcast (it was a school day), you can watch it in its entirety (both parts) on YouTube.
  
  
• In 2003, Game Show Network pulled Larson's episodes out of mothballs and incorporated them into an excellent documentary called Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal.  In this blogger's opinion, the two-hour basic cable presentation does a better job of telling Larson's story than its big brother Hollywood counterpart would do twenty years later.  Check it out on YouTube.
  
  
• As noted above, Larson lost most of his winnings in more get-rich-quick schemes, one of which involved a local radio contest.  Larson withdrew half of his winnings in $1 bills, attempting to match a serial number that the station was looking for.  While he and Teresa were out one evening, their home was robbed, and the bills were never recovered. 
  
  
• To say that the film's producers embellished the story would be an understatement.  Whereas the film shows us Larson driving his ice cream truck from Ohio to Hollywood, he actually flew in coach.  Producer Bill Carruthers is portrayed in the film, but he's joined by executives who simply did not exist, thrown into the film to present a more diverse cast than was present in 1984.  Also, ludicrously, the movie shows Larson stepping out during the taping to appear as a guest on a talk-show hosted by Johnny Knoxville.