‘Jeopardy!’ A Fred Westbrook Photo

‘Jeopardy!’ A Fred Westbrook Photo

This is ‘Jeopardy!’ from NBC Studio 6A with host Art Fleming talking to the audience in a pre show warm up round. The cameras are RCA TK44s and on the right is the show’s credit roll box. A popular staple of late night comedy shows was always the bit where they give the answer and then the question. Steve Allen did it as The Question Man, and Johnny Carson did the exact same thing as Karnak the Magnificent. Under the contract of ‘The Merv Griffin Show’, his failed NBC afternoon talk show, Merv was owed a couple of commitments for game shows. He originally tried to assemble a comedy quiz program based on the answer-before-the-question premise but it didn’t come together. At the suggestion of his then-wife, he made it a non-comedy show and defied the notion that daytime TV viewers wanted fluff, not hard questions. In no time at all, Jeopardy! became one of the greatest success stories in the history of television. It debuted in March of 1964 and lasted on NBC until January of 1975. In ’74, a lady named Lin Bolen had taken over in the programming division of NBC and put a new show she had developed called ‘Jackpot’ in the coveted ‘Jeopardy!’ time slot, moving that show to a later, less desirable hour. Both shows failed. NBC cancelled ‘Jeopardy!, but…under the terms of their contract with Griffin’s company, Merv was owed another year of some show, so he came up with ‘Wheel of Fortune’. It debuted the Monday following the last ‘Jeopardy!’ with Chuck Woolery, as the host. In 1978, after Bolen was no longer at NBC, the network tried bringing ‘Jeopardy!’ back in a slightly-glitzier format — at Griffin’s insistence, with Art Fleming — but it only lasted five months. Then in 1983, with ‘Wheel of Fortune’ still doing well on NBC daytime, Griffin launched a syndicated nighttime version. It was a smash so Merv immediately revived ‘Jeopardy!’, hired Alex Trebek to host and sold the two shows as a package. Does anyone know who the bearded man with the check pants is standing behind Art Fleming? I think he is either a producer or floor manager. He is in several shots from the show including the Glenn Mack photo below from this same show. Thanks to Mark Evanier at oldtvtickets.com for the background information.

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