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<em>Wheel Of Fortune</em> Designer Ed Flesh Dies
By
Jamie Feldmar
Published Jul 21, 2011
Modified Jul 21, 2011
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By
Jamie Feldmar
Published Jul 21, 2011
Modified Jul 21, 2011
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Ed Flesh, the art director who created the iconic wheel in Wheel Of Fortune, died last week in California of congestive heart failure. He was 79.
In addition to Wheel, the Philadelphia-born Flesh also worked on game shows like The $25,000 Pyramid, Name That Tune and Jeopardy!, plus The Oprah Winfrey Show. After earning a Masters in scenic design from Yale, Flesh moved to New York to design sets for Off Broadway productions. In the late 1960s, he became the set supervisor for NBC.
The first version of the Wheel wheel, which Flesh created in 1975, was made of cardboard, paint and lightbulbs. It's been gussied up a bit since then: according to Wheel's official site:
"The Wheel is framed with steel tube on which tiers of Plexiglas are placed supported by stainless steel rods. Over 200 specialized, computerized lighting instruments capable of up to 2 million different color choices are interwoven into the framework. It is all topped by the Wheel which spins on a stainless steel shaft supported by roller bearings. Seventy-three stainless steel pins fly past three hard rubber "flippers" giving it an unmistakable sound. In all it weighs in at a little over 2,400 lbs. And because there is only one Wheel, it is dismantled and reassembled whenever the show travels to another city."
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