I am putting this new query up as the dedicated thread to this short-lived (three-season long) show - a sort of Mad Men of the publishing world, from what I got in a 2018 Hollywood Reporter article about the 50th anniversary of its premiere - has been put under lock and key - but it has to do with the opening title sequence backed by the jazzy 7/4 time theme composed by Dave Grusin (of which a different version appeared each season). Most episodes, unfortunately as packaged in recent years when it was shown anywhere, use the same opening, drawn from a first-season Robert Stack episode where the order of the leads was shown as him (with his name cleverly "stacked" up and down by the artists who worked at Universal Title, before going to his two-tone image in multiple layers), followed by Gene Barry and Tony Franciosa - regardless of who headline a given episode. But as on one of the Barry episodes as originally aired in Season 2, and shown on YouTube, make clear, the order on that episode's opening title segment was Barry, Franciosa and Stack. My question (for those who might know) involve those few and far between episodes (compared to the other two leads) with Mr. Franciosa (and, after he was fired midway into Season 3, those who were rotating replacements such as Robert Culp, Peter Falk, Robert Wagner and even Suzanne Pleshette). It is a given he would have come first, with the column of "Tony's" stacked up and "Franciosa's" stacked down in a see-saw pattern, on its way to the multiple images of him breaking off after the zoom up. But who would have followed in the order of such episodes - Stack and Barry, or the other way around? I've searched in vain on YT for such examples.
That was a stand-out show in those years. I do remember this theme- but I don't know about your query.
That was the "Stack/Barry/Franciosa" opening - alas, tacked onto a Franciosa episode. Here's what I mean by the "Barry/Franciosa/Stack" variant, from the very start of the Season 2 Barry episode "The Takeover": And that's why I ask if anyone knows on Franciosa episodes who came after him in the opening titles.
Your answer: Also, see “Opening Titles” on the Wikipedia page: The Name of the Game (TV series) - Wikipedia
That RS / GB / TF sequence is the default opening used on virtually every episode - and retroactively, I might add - regardless of who's in the lead in a given episode. Didn't use to be that way. And Wiki seems to know as much as everyone else, i.e. not that much. However, apparently "Keep The Doctor Away" from Season 2 - a Franciosa episode - had its original opening, which would have led with Franciosa in the opening titles; however, that episode seems nowhere to be found on IMDb, and three other original episodes, all Barry - "Goodbye Harry," "The Takeover" and "The Tradition" - all had the GB / TF / RS opening variant. It is on "Keep the Doctor Away" where I enquire how the opening titles star order was handled.
The GB / TF / RS opening title variant was also used in the Season 3 episode "A Capitol Affair" - the one where Suzanne Pleshette played gossip columnist Hallie Manville; Mr. Barry figured in that episode.
Terrific show, very cool and "happening" for the late '60s/early '70s. Big fan of the "LA 2017" science fiction episode of Name of the Game, directed by young Steven Spielberg...
Great show, perhaps the best episode was the one in which[Sammy Davis Jr.] portrayed a soul singer with a deadly secret[Davis should've gotten an Emmy] Franciosa starred in that episode.
The only episode ("I Love You, Billy Baker") to be divided into two parts - and the one after filming of which Mr. Franciosa was fired and, for the rest of that final season, they had the rotating "guest" reporters in his place as described in the post that inaugurated this thread. I'm still wondering what, in this and the other 15 episodes Franciosa headlined, what originally would have been the rotational order on the opening title sequence (Franciosa / ? / ? - I think "Keep The Doctor Away," which guest-starred Robert Goulet, had the original title sequence as applicable to that episode intact, as opposed to having the "Stack/Barry/Franciosa" version as from Season 1 inserted as in the other 43 or so that Stack didn't star in. Oh, and the opening titles of "LA 2017" would have originally been Barry/Franciosa/Stack, with the third season opening/closing theme version. The Season 1 RS/GB/TF open prior to "LA 2017" in that clip was revisionist up the gazooka.
I have stumbled on the answer. The Franciosa episodes did indeed have the order on the opening titles as Franciosa / Stack / Barry. A YouTuber put up S02E24 ("Jenny Wilde Is Drowning," a Franciosa episode with guest Pamela Franklin), albeit in black-and-white and with the first 12 or so seconds of the open missing. But in the sequence of the open, and Stack coming up followed by Barry and then "Starring In" and all the rest, there it is:
Another ep which (at least on a print circulated around) had the Franciosa/Stack/Barry opening variant, was this Season 1 episode, "Shine On, Shine On, Jesse Gil":
