Most Memorable Non-Million Dollar Winner on Millionaire?

[Kevin Prather]

My suggestion is Michael Shutterly.  He was the first person in the world to see the $1 Million question and he EARNED it with his stack.  John Carpenter got an easier stack because the networks were competing to see who could give away a $1 Million first.  Michael's $500K question asked him what was the real name of John Paul I, and that was a proper 1/2 million dollar question.

With respect to you and to Michael himself, I'm going to disagree. He certainly earned the half a mil answering tough questions, but I wonder if he cost himself the million by throwing away his Phone a Friend just to get his mom on the show. It's certainly an admirable thing to do, if expensive.

More to the point, I can't call him memorable other than the fact that he was The First. He really stayed in his shell, despite Regis's desperate attempts just to pull SOMETHING out of him.

[BrandonFG]

My suggestion is Michael Shutterly.  He was the first person in the world to see the $1 Million question and he EARNED it with his stack.  John Carpenter got an easier stack because the networks were competing to see who could give away a $1 Million first.  Michael's $500K question asked him what was the real name of John Paul I, and that was a proper 1/2 million dollar question.

I don't disagree that John had a pretty simple stack (yeah yeah yeah, only easy if you know it), but when he won, the show was still doing the two-week sweeps runs, and Greed was barely on the air. The networks didn't start falling over themselves until a few months later.

[Loogaroo]

More to the point, I can't call him memorable other than the fact that he was The First. He really stayed in his shell, despite Regis's desperate attempts just to pull SOMETHING out of him.

To that end, the reason why the show resorted to contestant auditions was because so much of the contestant pool was homogeneous. A lot of middle-aged middle-management guys wearing glasses who, at their best, were dad-joking their way through every stack. Most of them had no charisma and the only way they were getting on TV is by virtue of a blind test of knowledge that the show originally used. For every Doug Van Gundy or Neil Larrimore, you had 20 John Cuthbertsons and Dan Dageys. (And no, I don't expect anyone to recognize those last two names.)

[PYLdude]

More to the point, I can't call him memorable other than the fact that he was The First. He really stayed in his shell, despite Regis's desperate attempts just to pull SOMETHING out of him.

To that end, the reason why the show resorted to contestant auditions was because so much of the contestant pool was homogeneous. A lot of middle-aged middle-management guys wearing glasses who, at their best, were dad-joking their way through every stack. Most of them had no charisma and the only way they were getting on TV is by virtue of a blind test of knowledge that the show originally used. For every Doug Van Gundy or Neil Larrimore, you had 20 John Cuthbertsons and Dan Dageys. (And no, I don't expect anyone to recognize those last two names.)

John was a UTOC semifinalist, no?

[nowhammies10]

More to the point, I can't call him memorable other than the fact that he was The First. He really stayed in his shell, despite Regis's desperate attempts just to pull SOMETHING out of him.

To that end, the reason why the show resorted to contestant auditions was because so much of the contestant pool was homogeneous. A lot of middle-aged middle-management guys wearing glasses who, at their best, were dad-joking their way through every stack. Most of them had no charisma and the only way they were getting on TV is by virtue of a blind test of knowledge that the show originally used. For every Doug Van Gundy or Neil Larrimore, you had 20 John Cuthbertsons and Dan Dageys. (And no, I don't expect anyone to recognize those last two names.)

John was a UTOC semifinalist, no?

"He was the highest money winner of the 1993-94 season. An investment analyst from San Diego, California..."

J-Archive has him in the UTOC semis against Brad Freakin' Rutter.  Also lists $32,000 won on Millionaire 1999-11-07, as well as having won Ben Stein's Money.

[TLEberle]

To that end, the reason why the show resorted to contestant auditions was because so much of the contestant pool was homogeneous. A lot of middle-aged middle-management guys wearing glasses who, at their best, were dad-joking their way through every stack. Most of them had no charisma and the only way they were getting on TV is by virtue of a blind test of knowledge that the show originally used. For every Doug Van Gundy or Neil Larrimore, you had 20 John Cuthbertsons and Dan Dageys. (And no, I don't expect anyone to recognize those last two names.)

Dan Dagey won $32,000 and was a customer service representative. Meh. (Thanks Millionaire Fandom Wiki, for knowing stuff so I don't have to.

I recall a conversation like this--perhaps it was with you, maybe it was with STYDFan/CarShark--but the dichotomy is there. The milquetoast folks were the ones winning the money. So if you want big winners you go with the people who can do the job.

I don't think I could have stood a parade of Dougs and Neils--it was nice to have a friendly and upbeat guy there to break up the monotony but I could relate more to the--let's say charisma challenged. I wasn't going to get on Jeopardy but I could at least dream that it could be me at center stage. When it became "have five stories at the ready and impress the PA who drew the short straw" it became a different situation.