By Adam Nedeff, researchers for the National Archives of Game Show History
Barely five years removed from the quiz show scandals of the 1950s, NBC surprised viewers by touting an exciting new quiz show in which the contestants would be told all the answers…the catch was, they had to provide the questions. Sixty years ago this month, America was introduced to Jeopardy! in March of 1964.
Merv Griffin had lamented to his wife, Julann, about the absence of Q&A shows from television since the quiz show scandals, saying that the networks were afraid that a quiz show would give the contestants the answers, as they did on the shows at the heart of the 1950s scandals. Julann cheekily suggested a quiz show that did exactly that, give contestants the answers. When Merv didn’t understand the idea right away, she began giving examples.
“The answer is 79 Wistful Vista. What’s the question?”
Griffin, remembering an old-time radio show, replied, “What was Fibber McGee & Molly’s address?”
“5,280.”
“How many feet are in one mile?”
Griffin fleshed out the idea, creating a gameboard with 10 categories, each with 10 answers that had to be questioned. He named it What’s the Question? and staged a demonstration game for an audience of NBC executives. After a game that fell rather flat, an executive named Ed Vane laid out his main objection: “The game needs more jeopardies.”
Griffin could not take his mind off the word. He revised the format accordingly. The main “jeopardy” was that an incorrect response would now deduct the cash value of the answer from the player’s score. One executive, Bob Aaron, suggested dividing the game up into rounds of increasing difficulty, which led to a smaller game board of six categories with five clues apiece, and rounds of Jeopardy, Double Jeopardy, and Final Jeopardy. Griffin, a horse racing fan, added a “Daily Double” to the board, injecting an element of gambling to the game.
The retitled Jeopardy! played much better for executives. A complaint that the material was too hard seemed to doom the show, but one executive, Grant Tinker (who had started his career on another hard quiz, College Bowl), spoke up, insisting that the level of difficulty enhanced the game and implored his fellow executives to buy the show. On March 30, 1964, Jeopardy! made its debut. The host was Art Fleming, a novice MC who was hired because Griffin liked his performance in a commercial for TWA. In what could only be described as “beginner’s luck,” Fleming would host 2,900 episodes of Jeopardy! The show aired daily on NBC through January 3, 1975. A concurrent nighttime version premiered in the fall of 1974 and ran for 39 weeks. Fleming and Jeopardy! returned in 1978 with a reinvented version of the game (one contestant was eliminated before Double Jeopardy, and Final Jeopardy was replaced by a bonus round called Super Jeopardy) but it ran for only 22 weeks.
Among the highlights of Jeopardy! starring Art Fleming:
- The annual Tournament of Champions. The first, held only six months after the series debuted, was part of a ratings stunt that NBC dubbed “The Week of Champions,” in which each of their daytime game shows had a tournament of champions. Jeopardy!’s became an annual tradition. The 1968 Tournament was won by Red Gibson, father of Mel. The 1969 tournament was won by Jay Wolpert, who went on to create the game shows Whew!, Hit Man, and Blackout.
- In 1965, John McCain was a contestant, 22 years before he was first elected to the U.S. Senate. A one-day champion, McCain decades later recounted the experience to reporters and ruefully recalled the Final Jeopardy clue that cost him his second game. (“Cathy loved him, but married Edgar Linton instead.” The correct response was “Who was Heathcliff?” McCain, blanking on the character’s name, simply wrote the title of the relevant novel. “What is Wuthering Heights?”)
- In the summer of 1966, a special contest was held in which viewers were invited to submit complete boards of material they had written themselves—six categories with five answers apiece. The winning entrants won guaranteed appearances as contestants on the show, while the material they had written was played on later dates.
- On March 30, 1970, the show celebrated its sixth anniversary with a special game in which three ten-year-old contestants competed, with all the prize money going to Easter Seals. Art Fleming also gave a backstage tour of the Jeopardy! studio and offices during the show.
- On January 13, 1971, Jeopardy! kicked off a special Back to College Week with an appearance by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who thanked the show and Art Fleming for their efforts in promoting education.
- On February 21, 1972, Jeopardy! celebrated its 2000th episode with a special game bringing back three of the all-time champions of the series, a board consisting entirely of visual clues, and a Daily Double hidden in every category. The episode also included a special appearance by devout Jeopardy! fan Mel Brooks, in character as The 2,000-Year-Old Man.
- On March 30, 1972, Jeopardy celebrated its 8th anniversary with a special game played by the other NBC daytime game show hosts: Art James of The Who What or Where Game; Peter Marshall of The Hollywood Squares; and Bill Cullen of Three on a Match.
- On March 7, 1974, Art Fleming welcomed a special guest, Alex Trebek, who was promoting his NBC game show The Wizard of Odds.
- In April of 1974, Jeopardy! celebrated its tenth anniversary with a special week of games in which all of the contestants were parent/child teams, each consisting of a past Jeopardy! champion and their 10-year-old son or daughter. Alex Trebek returned during this week to wish Art Fleming a happy 10th anniversary.
DO YOU REMEMBER…THESE OTHER GAME SHOWS OF MARCH, 1964?
YOUR FIRST IMPRESSION (NBC)–Host Bill Leyden welcomed a mystery celebrity, and presented a series of clues, as well as the celebrity’s answers to personal questions that they had been asked before the show. A panel tried to guess the celebrity’s identity.
GET THE MESSAGE (ABC)–Frank Buxton hosted this variation on Password in which a contestants’ two celebrity partners each had to write down a clue to the correct answer; the catch was, the celebrities couldn’t consult each other about what they were writing.
WORD FOR WORD (NBC)–Jeopardy! wasn’t even the only Merv Griffin Production on the NBC schedule that day. Griffin hosted this creation himself; contestants saw a lengthy word, like MICROBIOLOGY, and scored points by coming up with shorter words that could be formed from those same letters. (BRIM, or GRIMY, or GOO, for example)