REM EM BER WHEN
Game Shows, Anyone? Janice Lane Palko
T
he recent winning streak of James Holzhauer on television game show Jeopardy! garnered much attention as viewers watched to see if he could break Ken Jennings’ record. Maybe it’s our competitive nature, but Americans have always loved game shows since they began on radio in the 1930s. The first televised game show
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was called Spelling Bee and debuted in 1938. As the television became a fixture in American homes, game shows proliferated giving us classics like Truth or Consequences, What’s My Line, Password and I’ve Got a Secret. Dr. Joyce Brothers was made a “star” after winning on The $64,000 Question. Scandal erupted in the 1950s when it was revealed that some of the shows were rigged including the game show Twenty-One, which tried to manipulate the nerdy Jewish contestant Herb Stempel into throwing the game so that the more handsome, “WASP-ish” character Charles Van Doren, who they felt would garner better ratings for the show, could win. This was the subject of the excellent 1994 film Quiz Show, which starred Ralph Fiennes as Van Doren. One of the earliest game shows
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I remember watching as a girl was Queen for a Day. It went off the air in 1964, so I would have only been four back then, but I remember being enthralled watching the winners as they were showered with prizes and then adorned with a crown and draped in royal robes. Talk about appealing to your inner princess! You can probably define the era you grew up in by the game shows that were popular then. Let’s Make a Deal, The Newlywed Game and The Dating Game harken back to the swinging 60s, with The Match Game, The $10,000 Pyramid and Family Feud drawing lots of viewers in the 1970s. In the 80s, games shows lost a bit of their luster, but in the late 90s, the British game show asked the question: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Americans answered that they did, and this show became a hit across the pond as well and was the catch phrase for the Academy Award winning movie Slumdog Millionaire. Pittsburgh has had some locally produced game shows including Junior High Quiz, which pitted local eighth graders against each other and was hosted by Ricki Wertz from 1965-1982. Today, we have Hometown High-Q on KDKA-TV, and it features a battle of wits between local high school students. Though technically not a classic game show, Dialing for Dollars kept my grandma tuned in to the featured movie and kept her aware of what “the count and amount” was in case host Del Taylor gave her a ring. The longest running game show is The Price is Right, and for those who can’t get enough, there is the Game Show Network where you can watch favorite shows you may have forgotten about. With the advent of online games, who knows where the future of games shows will head, but wherever they go, you can be sure Americans will follow. n