Jeopardy's real origins

[DjohnsonCB]

Merv Griffin has said on a couple of occasions that the "answer and question" concept for "Jeopardy!" was conceived with the help of his wife while they were on a plane or somewhere else.  She suggested a show where players are given the answers and asked to respond by asking the right question, which at first got Merv to thinking that giving the answers was what got the industry in trouble several years back.  

That story sounds convincing, but according to "TV Game Shows" by Maxene Fabe, it was supposed to have been conceived as a comedy-type idea (Answer: 9-W; question, "Mr. Wagner, do you spell your last name with a V?")  Given the amount of mistakes prevalent in that book, I'd side with Merv, but did both parties actually have a hand in the creation of the format?

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'DjohnsonCB\' date=\'Dec 4 2003, 10:38 AM\'] Given the amount of mistakes prevalent in that book, I'd side with Merv, but did both parties actually have a hand in the creation of the format? [/quote]
 I'm not sure who you mean when you speak of "both parties".  You don't think Maxine herself had a hand in the creation of the format, do you?

Merv has told the story of Jeopardy's origin countless times, a lot more than "a couple".  It's passed into legend, and as with any legend certain aspects of the story tend to get played up more over time.  The gag about the earlier scandals is just that, a gag.  It would have taken ten seconds of explanation to get past that concern.

Merv may have considered a comedy format at one point, or Maxine could have gotten the idea from comedy routines like Steve Allen's Answer Man or Johnny Carson's Carnak.  In fact, I don't have her book in front of me, but I could have sworn that the example in the book was a comparison to Steve Allen's old routine, not an explanation of how the game would have been played.

Either way, I don't see the two stories as being mutually exclusive.

[Mike Tennant]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Dec 4 2003, 10:23 AM\']Either way, I don't see the two stories as being mutually exclusive.[/quote]
Exactly.  It seems to me it was a combination of the two.  Mrs. Griffin came up with the answer-and-question idea, and then Merv thought it would make a good comedy show as Matt described.  Ultimately he realized they could never keep it going as a comedy show for very long because they'd run out of material, so they went to the straight quiz show format we all know and love.  (At least this is what I've gathered from my reading over the years.)

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'Mike Tennant\' date=\'Dec 4 2003, 10:31 AM\'][quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Dec 4 2003, 10:23 AM\']Either way, I don't see the two stories as being mutually exclusive.[/quote]
Exactly.  It seems to me it was a combination of the two.  Mrs. Griffin came up with the answer-and-question idea, and then Merv thought it would make a good comedy show as Matt described.  Ultimately he realized they could never keep it going as a comedy show for very long because they'd run out of material, so they went to the straight quiz show format we all know and love.  (At least this is what I've gathered from my reading over the years.)[/quote]
I've also had the feeling (particularly from the first "J!" book) that Merv wanted a straightforward Q&A from the start--that it was the NBC suits who wanted a comedy format.  Merv knew that the line had been drawn on Q&As ever since the quiz scandals (with the exception of the unsullied "GE College Bowl") and his concern was getting a quiz back on the air.  Juleann's idea that doing it backwards was the gimmick that could get it by.   Bob Rubin was the one who felt that the show should be done at a faster pace than any other game show on the air--and that's how you come up with a television classic.

[calliaume]

I believe Merv had a serious quiz in mind all along.  He was nice enough to drop me a brief note, saying NBC's head of daytime (Jerry Chester?) was dubious about the show's prospects, but Grant Tinker talked him into it.  (Actually, Tinker was jumping up and down, shouting "Buy it!  Buy it!")

I guess that makes up for Tinker axing Just Men! because he thought it was so horrible, despite his late buddy's wife hosting.

[tyshaun1]

[quote name=\'calliaume\' date=\'Dec 4 2003, 05:48 PM\'] I believe Merv had a serious quiz in mind all along.  He was nice enough to drop me a brief note, saying NBC's head of daytime (Jerry Chester?) was dubious about the show's prospects, but Grant Tinker talked him into it.  (Actually, Tinker was jumping up and down, shouting "Buy it!  Buy it!")

I guess that makes up for Tinker axing Just Men! because he thought it was so horrible, despite his late buddy's wife hosting. [/quote]
 Actually in Betty White's autobiography (which name escapes me), she recalled that Grant Tinker stayed home sick one day, and happened to tune in NBC's game lineup. The next day he told the daytime brass to ax "Just Men!" to spare her further humiliation. My guess is that "Hit Man" got its pink slip the same day.

Tyshaun

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'tyshaun1\' date=\'Dec 4 2003, 05:01 PM\'] The next day he told the daytime brass to ax "Just Men!" to spare her further humiliation. [/quote]
 That's an interesting way to look at it. I'm not sure how humiliating it is to be an Emmy-winning game show hostess....

[GS Warehouse]

[quote name=\'DjohnsonCB\' date=\'Dec 4 2003, 09:38 AM\'] Merv Griffin has said on a couple of occasions that the "answer and question" concept for "Jeopardy!" was conceived with the help of his wife while they were on a plane or somewhere else. ... [/quote]
 Diverging slightly (but staying on the topic of J!), I've always heard that Merv composed the familiar theme, but in the credits of Airplane 2, in which Art Fleming had a cameo as himself, the theme was credited to "J. Griffin" as in Julann.  Typo or credit where due?

[chris319]

My recollection is that there were four music cues on NY Jeopardy. The main theme was composed by Mrs. Griffin and you never hear it any more. The Final Jeopardy! think cue, "Time for Tony", was written by Mr. G. and is now the main theme, leaving Mr. G. to collect royalties every time it is played. The other two music cues on NY Jeopardy! were the contestant entrance cue and the fee plug cue: "Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia* is a source authority for the questions and answers used on Jeopardy!".

Ach! How could I forget! There was a fifth cue: the curtain cue! That right there fills up a five-slot Mackenzie.

Mark's comments comport with what I know about Bob Rubin steering them toward a straight Q&A game.

*Compton's is a crappy encyclopedia.

[byrd62]

[quote name=\'calliaume\' date=\'Dec 4 2003, 05:48 PM\']I believe Merv had a serious quiz in mind all along.  He was nice enough to drop me a brief note, saying NBC's head of daytime (Jerry Chester?) was dubious about the show's prospects, but Grant Tinker talked him into it.  (Actually, Tinker was jumping up and down, shouting "Buy it!  Buy it!")

I guess that makes up for Tinker axing Just Men! because he thought it was so horrible, despite his late buddy's wife hosting.[/quote]
Ed Vane was head of daytime programming for NBC in 1963, when Merv Griffin pitched J!; Ed's boss, who also witnessed Merv's pitch, was NBC's head of network programming, Mort Werner.

Ed was concerned that "the program needed a few jeopardies", which led to Merv's proposal being renamed J! instead of What's the Question?

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'chris319\' date=\'Dec 5 2003, 03:09 AM\']My recollection is that there were four music cues on NY Jeopardy. The main theme was composed by Mrs. Griffin and you never hear it any more. The Final Jeopardy! think cue, "Time for Tony", was written by Mr. G. and is now the main theme, leaving Mr. G. to collect royalties every time it is played. The other two music cues on NY Jeopardy! were the contestant entrance cue and the fee plug cue: "Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia* is a source authority for the questions and answers used on Jeopardy!".[/quote]
At one point it switched to the equally-crappy Encyclopedia International, but Compton's was there in the beginning.  I had believed that the fee plug cue was simply the beginning of "Take Ten" (Juleann's theme) that you rarely heard over the credits since the music was back-timed--and when Art Fleming was a co-host on Mike Douglas, Joe Harnell's band played the fee plug cue for Art's entrance.

Ach! How could I forget! There was a fifth cue: the curtain cue! That right there fills up a five-slot Mackenzie.

Although a post on a moderated radio newsgroup a few years ago seemed to indicate that well into the early 70s NBC was still dubbing music submitted on reel-to-reels to the old "electrical transcription" discs that were used to record programming until magnetic tape came along.  This was to allow the musicians union turntable operators to play them--and the union was still requiring the network to use them.  Tape cartridges could only be used for sound effects or audio/radio news reports.  This pretty much explained to me why original recorded music cues on NBC game shows back then always sounded so muffled compared to the other networks (if they were using commercially-released music, of course the platter spinners played the record).  Consider the source, but it sounds possible.

And this story also confirms to me that if Norm Blumenthal couldn't bring himself to fire Milt Kaye, he could have him do platter spinning on "Concentration," improve the music and perhaps (with whatever other cosmetic changes Lin Bolen wanted) bought himself a few more years on the air.