March 25, 2024: What is Game Show Studying?: 30s and 40s Origins

[On March30, 1964, the legendary game show Jeopardydebuted. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that classic and a handful of othergame show histories! Add your thoughts, obviously in the form of a question, incomments!]

On threestages in the genre’s experimental early decades.

1)     1938 Starting Points: Of course quizzes andtrivia questions and the like had been part of society in various forms forcenturies, but the first official “game shows” on both radio and televisionappeared in the same month and year, May 1938: the American radio show Information Please (whichdebuted on May 17th and would run for the next 13 years); and thevery early British TV show Spelling Bee (whichdebuted on May 31st and featured four live episodes). Both radio andTV have continued to feature quiz shows and game shows in prominent roles eversince, so this dual origin point isn’t surprising (although I’ll admit to notrealizing prior to research this series that TV existed in any meaningful formin 1938). Of course one factor was the evolution of these media andtechnologies, but I would also argue that the Depression-eratiming wasn’t a coincidence; audiences needed escapes from their difficultrealities, and as the name suggests, game shows offered a fun such respite.

2)     1941 Evolutions: Spelling Bee was a bit of a one-off, and it was a few years later thatTV game shows began to emerge and evolve more fully. That started with anadaptation of a popular radio show, Truth or Consequences,which had debuted on the radio in March 1940 but aired an experimental TVversion on July 1, 1941 (making it the first game show on broadcast TV,although it would only become a regularTV program in 1950). Just one day later, on July 2, saw the debut of the firstregularly scheduled TV game show, CBSTelevision Quiz, which aired weekly for about a year. Again this timingwas at least a bit coincidental and likely reflective of TV’s evolutions andnew possibilities in the period, but I would likewise connect these to their1941 moment, and the need for an audience to be temporarily and enjoyably distractedfrom a world at war.

3)     You BetYour Life: One of the most successful game shows of the 1940s appeared in bothmedia, not just as an adaptation from one to the other but as a program thatmoved back and forth between the two. That was YouBet Your Life, the Groucho Marx-hosted comedy quiz show which debutedon theradio in 1947, on TVin 1950, and continued in both media (again in a back-and-forth kind ofway) for another decade. You Bet YourLife was genuinely a quiz show, but a great deal of its marketing andappeal centered on its funny and famous host, making this in many ways thefirst game show that was more about personality and performance than the gamesor quizzes themselves. That would become a recurring element of the genre,exemplified of course by the legendary Jeopardyhost about whom I’ll have more to say on Friday.

Next gameshow histories tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other game shows you’d highlight?