March 26, 2024: What is Game Show Studying?: Quiz Show Scandals

[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 threeways to contextualize thefixing scandals that dominated the quiz and game show world in the late1950s.

1)     Entertainment: As with many cultural forms,there are tensions and even contradictions present in the genre of the gameshow, and illustrated by that name itself: these are indeed games, with rulesand results and winners and losers and so on; but they are also shows, designedto appeal to audiences (and needing to do so in order to stay on the air ofcourse). It seems that one of the first and most prominent fixing scandalsbegan as a direct result of that contradiction: the September 1956 debutepisode of the NBC quiz show Twenty-One(hosted by Jack Barry) went quite poorly, as the two contestants got most ofthe questions wrong; the show’s main sponsor Geritolcomplained to the network and producer Dan Enright and demanded a change.Just a few months later Twenty-Onefeatured an extended run of victories by Herb Stempel, thecontestant who would later raise the first accusations of fixing (on hisbehalf, and then infavor of his successor as champion, Charles Van Doren).

2)     Law: If these scandals were thus very muchabout entertainment, the responses to them quickly and thoroughly became about somethingvery different: the law. When a fixing scandal for a second game show, Dotto, emerged in August1958 (as the Twenty-One scandalwas also really breaking), the result was nothing short of a nine-month-long NewYork County grand jury investigation, in the course of which a number ofproducers and contestants apparently committed perjury rather than admit totheir roles in the scandals. The grand jury did not ultimately hand downindictments, but the whole thing then escalated even further, to an August 1959U.S. Congress subcommittee investigation. That did produce a significant andenduring legal change, a 1960 amending ofthe influential CommunicationsAct 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 thesehistories and themes. But I would argue that the film focuses even more onanother context, a more ambiguous but also perhaps even more defininglyAmerican one: the role that identity and community played for individual figureslike 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 acomplicated 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 inmind, not just for these quiz show scandal figures but for everyone who takespart in the long and ongoing tradition of game shows.

Next gameshow histories tomorrow,

Ben

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