What is the term for this lighting effect?

I thought it was a transparency placed over the camera lens.
Filters/transparencies associated with the lens wouldn't appear white, but black; they could only block light, not create it. (Placing one over the end of the lens itself would be pretty much invisible due to being wildly out of focus.)

It's presumably whatever sort of titling technology they used at the time--which I think was generally an additional camera pointed at some (black and white) art on an easel, and then mixed/overlaid in the video stream live like any other camera. That is, of course, assuming it wasn't a pre-filmed bit (as it would appear other parts of the introduction were, e.g. the brief clips of the celebrities), edited and titled with whatever movie editing and titling techniques were used. The shot of the spotlight on the curtain behind the giant E sure does look like a live shot to untrained me.
 
Rather than "sloppy," I prefer "organic." I love the fact that it's "manual" and not machine-made. And at the end, when spots 1 & 3 peel off, leaving just spot 2 at center. Don't tell me that wasn't rehearsed a whole bunch of times before shooting.

I agree. The effects that do this seem very mechanical and sterile to my eye. Kind of like watching an oscilloscope.
 
Rather than "sloppy," I prefer "organic." I love the fact that it's "manual" and not machine-made. And at the end, when spots 1 & 3 peel off, leaving just spot 2 at center. Don't tell me that wasn't rehearsed a whole bunch of times before shooting.
The end is very nice. I just think that they were told do some stuff with the light and then on this cue pull out and the center stop on center. Just picking at nits.
 
My real question is how did they do what looks like a glass gobo of the ”E” at 30 seconds In?
The same way Credits were done at the time. It's a peppers ghost arrangement on the front of a camera. A piece of glass is placed at a 45° angle to the lens. A reverse printed negative is scrolled past a linnebach type projector mounted at -45° to the glass. The camera shooting straight ahead sees the image superimposed over the scene the camera is pointed at; varying the intensity of the light varies the opacity of the 'white'. Yes, there are other angles and keystone-ing things that had to be done, but that is the basic. OLD film credits were done the same way and scrolled by hand. you can often see pauses and shakes in the scroll. The Title scene at teh opening of Star Wars was done the same way, shot against a chroma key then overlaid on a starfield.
 
I worked at busch gardens for a summer, big out door theater where there was a Chinese acrobat show. 15 minutes before showtime I and my fellow spot op had to point our Gladiator II's up into the sky and do some big ole ballyhoos to let everyone know the show was about to start. Got scolded for letting my pattern get a little too loose and clipping the top of the stage facade. It was also a big no no to look like the beams were chasing each other. Gotta stay in sync, nice big mirror image figure 8s.
 

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