[On March 30, 1964, the legendary game show Jeopardy debuted. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that classic and a handful of other game show histories! Add your thoughts, obviously in the form of a question, in comments!]
On three
ways to contextualize the
fixing scandals that dominated the quiz and game show world in the late
1950s.
1)
Entertainment: As with many cultural forms,
there are tensions and even contradictions present in the genre of the game
show, and illustrated by that name itself: these are indeed games, with rules
and results and winners and losers and so on; but they are also shows, designed
to appeal to audiences (and needing to do so in order to stay on the air of
course). It seems that one of the first and most prominent fixing scandals
began as a direct result of that contradiction: the September 1956 debut
episode of the NBC quiz show Twenty-One
(hosted by Jack Barry) went quite poorly, as the two contestants got most of
the questions wrong; the show’s main sponsor Geritol
complained to the network and producer Dan Enright and demanded a change.
Just a few months later Twenty-One
featured an extended run of victories by Herb Stempel, the
contestant who would later raise the first accusations of fixing (on his
behalf, and then in
favor of his successor as champion, Charles Van Doren).
2)
Law: If these scandals were thus very much
about entertainment, the responses to them quickly and thoroughly became about something
very different: the law. When a fixing scandal for a second game show, Dotto, emerged in August
1958 (as the Twenty-One scandal
was also really breaking), the result was nothing short of a nine-month-long New
York County grand jury investigation, in the course of which a number of
producers and contestants apparently committed perjury rather than admit to
their roles in the scandals. The grand jury did not ultimately hand down
indictments, but the whole thing then escalated even further, to an August 1959
U.S. Congress subcommittee investigation. That did produce a significant and
enduring legal change, a 1960 amending of
the influential Communications
Act of 1934 which make fixing game shows illegal.
3)
Identity: Quiz Show (1994),
the Robert Redford-directed film which focuses on the Twenty-One scandal in particular, certainly engages with all these
histories and themes. But I would argue that the film focuses even more on
another context, a more ambiguous but also perhaps even more definingly
American one: the role that identity and community played for individual figures
like the Jewish underdog Stempel (played by John Turturro)
and WASP son of privilege Van Doren (played by Ralph Fiennes).
It isn’t always easy to remember that each and every game show contestant is a
complicated human being, with all the baggage of heritage, family, community, psychology,
and more that influence each of us. But Redford’s film asks us to keep that in
mind, not just for these quiz show scandal figures but for everyone who takes
part in the long and ongoing tradition of game shows.
Next game
show histories tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Other game shows you’d highlight?
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