The $64,000 Question was a popular United States television game show from 1955-1958; The $64,000 Challenge (1956-1958) was its popular spinoff show. Jump to: navigation, search A game show is a radio or television program, involving members of the public or celebrities, sometimes as part of a team, playing a game, perhaps involving answering quiz questions, for points or prizes. ...

Broadcast History

The $64,000 Question---CBS, June 1955-June 1958, Tuesday 10-10:30 p.m.; September-November 1958, Sunday, 10-10:30 p.m. CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) is a major television network and radio broadcaster in the United States. ...

The $64,000 Challenge---CBS, April 1956-September 1958, Sunday, 10-10:30 p.m.

The Origin

The Idea

The $64,000 Question had its roots in the CBS radio quiz show, Take It or Leave It, which ran from April 20, 1940, to July 27, 1947, hosted first by Bob Hawk and then by Phil Baker. In 1947, the series switched to NBC, hosted by Baker, Garry Moore, Eddie Cantor and Jack Paar. On September 10, 1950, Take It or Leave It changed its title to The $64 Question. With Paar and Baker still on board as hosts, the series continued on NBC radio until June 1, 1952. Jump to: navigation, search The National Broadcasting Company or NBC is an American television broadcasting company based in New York Citys Rockefeller Center. ... Jump to: navigation, search Eddie Cantor in the 1920s Eddie Cantor (born September, 1892 on the Jewish New Year; died October 10, 1964) was a comedian, singer, actor, songwriter, and one of the most popular entertainers in the United States of America in the early and middle 20th century. ... Jack Parr (1918-2004) circa 1950 Jack Harold Paar (May 1, 1918 – January 27, 2004) was an American radio and television talk show host. ...

On both Take It or Leave It and The $64 Question, contestants were asked questions devised by the series' writer-researcher Edith Oliver. She attempted to make each question slightly more difficult than the preceding one. After answering a question correctly, the contestant had the choice to "take" the prize for that question or "leave it" in favor of a chance at the next question. The first question was worth one dollar, and the value doubled for each successive question, up to the seventh and final question, worth 64 United States dollars. Jump to: navigation, search USD redirects here. ...

During the 1940s, "That's the $64 question" became a common catchphrase for a particularly difficult question or problem. In addition to the common phrase "take it or leave it," the show also popularized another phrase, widely spoken in the 1940s as a taunt but now mostly forgotten. Chanted in unison by the entire audience when someone chose to risk their winnings by going for the $64 prize, it was vocalized with a rising inflection: "You'll be sorrr-REEEE!"

Strangely, the phrase "the $64,000 question" is common in Britain, where it means "the most important question," despite the fact that the original game show is virtually unknown in the UK. Later there was a British adaptation of the show, also known as The $64,000 Question, hosted by Bob Monkhouse, although the top prize was only £6,400. This was, however, quite a lot of money for a British game show at the time (early 1990s). Jump to: navigation, search Robert (Bob) Allen Monkhouse (June 1, 1928 - December 29, 2003), was a British entertainer in the traditional sense, though primarily known as a comedian and game show host. ... Jump to: navigation, search // Events and trends The 1990s are generally classified as having moved slightly away from the more conservative 1980s, but otherwise retaining the same mindset. ...

The Hard Sell

The $64,000 Question, as American television audiences would know and love it, was created by Louis G. Cowan, formerly known for radio's Quiz Kids. Cowan had a difficult time finding sponsorship for The $64,000 Question. Cosmetics giant Helena Rubenstein (who eventually did become a familiar television advertiser) rejected the idea, reportedly because its wealthy founding namesake didn't even own a television set at the time and had no idea of television's advertising potential. The Chrysler Corporation turned down the chance to launch the show because the automaker reportedly feared sponsoring a big-money quiz show would outrage company workers whose wages they were trying not to inflate. A vacuum cleaner company also said no to Cowan, reportedly because the concept would be too glamorous for its product. It was an intriguing argument considering that print ads of the time featured vacuum cleaners operated by women who stopped just short of being glamour queens but never appeared in soiled housework clothes. Quiz Kids, a popular radio-TV series of the 1940s and 1950s, was created by Chicago public relations and advertising man Louis G. Cowan. ... Helena Rubinstein (born 1871 Kraków, Poland - 1965 New York, USA) was a Polish-American cosmetics industrialist. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Chrysler Corporation is a United States-based near-luxury automobile manufacturer, which was purchased in 1998 by Daimler-Benz to become DaimlerChrysler. ...

Finally, Cowan convinced Revlon. The key: Revlon founder and chieftain Charles Revson knew top competitor Hazel Bishop had fattened its sales through sponsoring the popular This is Your Life, and he wanted a piece of that action if he could have it. According to Fire and Ice, a 1970s book chronicling Revson and his company, Revson first signed a deal to sponsor Cowan's brainchild for 13 weeks with the right to withdraw when they expired. Revlon (NYSE: REV) is an American cosmetics company. ... Jump to: navigation, search This Is Your Life was a television show hosted by Ralph Edwards, first broadcast in the United States from 1952 to 1961 on NBC. It originated as a radio show airing from 1948 to 1952. ... Fire + Ice is the name of English Pagan musician Ian Reads primary dark folk ensemble. ...

The $64,000 Question premiered June 7, 1955 on CBS-TV, sponsored by cosmetics maker Revlon and originating from the start live from CBS-TV Studio 52 in New York (now the disco-theater Studio 54). To increase the show's drama and suspense, it was decided to use an actor rather than a broadcaster as the host. Television and film actor Hal March, familiar to TV viewers as a regular on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show and My Friend Irma, found instant fame as the quiz show's host. Lynn Dollar appeared as his on-air assistant, while Dr. Bergen Evans served as the show's expert authority. To capitalize on the initial television success, the show was also simulcast for two months on CBS Radio where it was heard from October 4, 1955, to November 29, 1955. Jump to: navigation, search 1955 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Jump to: navigation, search Studio 54 was a legendary New York City disco located on West 54th Street in Manhattan. ... Hal March (born Harold Mendelson, April 22, 1920 - January 19, 1970) was an American comedian. ... Burns and Allen was a network comedy radio show starring George Burns and his wife, Gracie Allen. ... My Friend Irma was a radio/TV situation comedy created by writer-director-producer Cy Howard (Life with Luigi). ...

How The Game Was Played

Contestants would be asked several questions, earning money which escalated ($1, $2, $4, $8, $16, $32, $64, $128, $256, $512, $1,000, $2,000, $4,000, $8,000, $16,000, $32,000, and $64,000) as the questions became harder. Once the contestant had reached $4000 in winnings, they would come back the next week for one question. They could quit at any time and retire with their money, but until they won $8000, if they got a question wrong, they were eliminated without winning anything. Once the contestant won $8000, if they missed a question they received a consolation prize of a new Cadillac. Once reaching the $8000 level, they were placed in the Revlon "isolation booth", where they could hear nothing but the host's words. As long as the contestant kept answering correctly, they could stay on the show until they had won $64,000. A prize is an award given to a person or a group of people to recognise and reward actions or achievements. ... Cadillac is a brand of luxury automobile, part of the General Motors corporation, produced and mostly sold in the USA; outside of North America, they have been less successful. ... Revlon (NYSE: REV) is an American cosmetics company. ... An isolation booth is a device used to prevent a person or people from seeing or hearing certain events. ...

The Megahit

Triumph on Tuesday Night

Almost immediately, The $64,000 Question was what a later generation would call a mega-hit. It swiftly outrated everything else on Tuesday nights; in fact, it was believed that U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower himself did not want to be disturbed while the show was on the air. It was also believed that the nation's crime rate and movie and restaurant patronage dropped dramatically when the show was on. The show's success spawned a fresh rash of either imitators or new big money quiz shows, aimed at catching Question's lightning. Among those imitators or inspirations were The Big Surprise, Tic-Tac-Dough, and Twenty-One. Jump to: navigation, search Dwight David Ike Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969), American soldier and politician, was the 34th President of the United States (1953–1961) and Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, with the rank of General of the Army. ... Tic Tac Dough, billed as everybodys game of strategy, knowledge and fun, was an American television game show where contestants answered trivia questions to earn squares on a tic tac toe board. ... Twenty One was one of the most infamous American game shows on record - a popular, yet thoroughly rigged, quiz show that spawned the single most popular contestant of the quiz show era, and which nearly caused the demise of the entire genre in the wake of Senate investigations. ...

Not only did Charles Revson not exercise his withdrawal right, but he wanted another way to take advantage of Question's swollen audience. Within ten months of Question's premiere came The $64,000 Challenge, hosted first by future children's television star Sonny Fox and then, for the remainder of the show's life, Ralph Story. Challenge pitted Question winners against each other in a new, continuing game where they could win another $70,000. In time, the sister show came to include various celebrities---including bandleader Xavier Cugat and child star Patty Duke---as well as former Question champions. Irwin (Sonny) Fox (b. ... Xavier Cugat (1 January 1900 - 27 October 1990) was a Catalan-Cuban bandleader who many consider to have had more to do with the infusion of Latin music into United States popular music than any other musician. ... Jump to: navigation, search Patty Duke (born December 14, 1946) is an actress of the stage and screen. ...

Everyday Celebrities

Question contestants sometimes became celebrities themselves, for a short while, including 11-year-old Robert Strom (who won $192,000) and Teddy Nadler ($252,000 across both shows), the two biggest winners in the show's history. Other such newly made celebrities included shoemaker Gino Protto, who won $64,000 for his encyclopedic knowledge of opera. But perhaps the longest-enduring of such newly made celebrities was a then-unknown psychologist who won big on Question because she knew everything knowable about boxing: Joyce Brothers, who went on to make a career dispensing psychological advice on numerous television programs and in newspaper columns for four decades after her Question success. Another winner, Pennsylvania typist Catherine Kreitzer, would read Shakespeare on The Ed Sullivan Show. And TV Guide kept a running tally of the money won on the show, which hit $1 million by the end of November 1956. Jump to: navigation, search Doctor Joyce Brothers (born October 20, 1928) is one of the leading family psychologists and advice columnists, publishing a daily syndicated newspaper column since 1960. ... William Shakespeare—born April 1564; baptised April 26, 1564; died April 23, 1616 (O.S.), May 3, 1616 (N.S.)—has a reputation as the greatest of all writers in English. ... Jump to: navigation, search Ed Sullivan The Ed Sullivan Show was an American television variety show that ran from June 20, 1948, to June 6, 1971, and was hosted by Ed Sullivan. ... TV Guide is the name of two North American weekly magazines about TV programming, one in the United States and one in Canada. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1956 was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Punch Lines and Parody

At the height of its popularity, The $64,000 Question even found itself referenced in the scripts of some other CBS programs, usually but not exclusively through punch lines that included references to "the isolation booth" or "reaching the first plateau." Typical of these was a line put into the mouth of Ed Norton, the scatterbrained sewer worker played by Art Carney in The Honeymooners, who identified three times in a man's life when he wants to be alone, with the third being "when he's in the isolation booth of The $64,000 Question." Plus, there were at least three other Honeymooners episodes that feature a reference to The $64,000 Question, including A Woman's Work Is Never Done (Ralph proposes to Alice that he go on that show because he's an expert in one category: AGGRAVATION) and Hello, Mom (Norton tells Ralph that if she were on that show, his mother-in-law's category would be NASTY). Art Carney starring as Ed Norton from The Honeymooners Art Carney (born November 4, 1918; died November 9, 2003) was an American actor in film, stage, television, and radio. ... Jump to: navigation, search Cover of a book about the Honeymooners. ...

Another episode of The Honeymooners, in fact, delivered maybe the best known of Question references---a parody of the show itself, in one of the so-called "Original 39" episodes of the timeless situation comedy. In this episode, blustery bus driver Ralph Kramden becomes a contestant on the fictitious $99,000 Answer. Still considered perhaps the best quiz show parody in television history, the episode depicted Kramden spending a week studying and re-studying popular songs, only to blow the first question on the subject he faced when he returned to play on the show. The host of the fictitious $99,000 Answer was one Herb Norris---played by Jay Jackson, the former Twenty Questions host and briefly the real-life nighttime host of Tic-Tac-Dough. Jay Jackson (1919-2005) was an American radio and television quiz show host and announcer, who is far more familiar for a one-off, fictitious host he played on a legendary situation comedy than he ever was in his decade as a real radio and television performer. ... Tic Tac Dough, billed as everybodys game of strategy, knowledge and fun, was an American television game show where contestants answered trivia questions to earn squares on a tic tac toe board. ...

But three years after it exploded into a nation's consciousness, The $64,000 Question and its progeny were dead.

A $64,000 Headache

The Cancellation

Having faded in popularity as it was, in the wake of the hugely popular Twenty-One championship of Charles Van Doren, The $64,000 Question and The $64,000 Challenge were yanked off the air within three months of the quiz show scandal's eruption. Challenge went first, in September 1958, with Question---once the emperor of Tuesday night television---taking its Sunday night time slot, until it, too, was killed in November 1958. 21 (twenty-one) is the natural number following 20 and preceding 22. ... Charles Van Doren (born February 12, 1926) is an American intellectual and former TV quiz show contestant. ... The American quiz show scandals of the 1950s were the result of the revelation that contestants of several popular television quiz shows were secretly given assistance by the producers to arrange the outcome of a supposed competition. ...

The Scandal

First, the relatively new but phenomenally popular Dotto, and then Twenty-One were found to have been rigged and cancelled. Then, one Challenge contestant, the Rev. Charles Jackson, told the federal grand jury probing the quiz shows that he received answers during his screening for his appearance. That prompted Challenge's sponsor, the P. Lorillard tobacco company (Kent, Old Gold cigarettes), to drop the show. (Revlon, presumably, pulled out some time earlier.) Dotto (1957-1958) was an American television quiz show whose nine-month jump to the top of the daytime quiz show heap ended when it became the unexpected first casualty of what became the quiz show scandal. ...

Question had the opposite problem: sponsor Revlon---possibly under pressure from its chieftain, Charles Revson, who has been credited with expressing the desire for famous faces that prompted Challenge's expansion to include celebrities---often tried to interfere with Question's production, including and especially trying to bump contestants it simply disliked, no matter whether the audience liked them. (Revson's brother, Martin, was assigned to oversee Question---including heavy discussions of feedback the show received.) The would-be bumpees were believed to include Joyce Brothers herself, who proved strong enough that the bid to bump her finally ended, and on she went to the maximum prize. Revlon (NYSE: REV) is an American cosmetics company. ...

In due course, it was revealed during Congressional investigations into the quiz show scandal that Revlon, the sponsor, was as determined to keep the show appealing---even if it meant manipulating the results---as the producer of Twenty-One (albeit also under sponsor pressure) had been. But unlike with Twenty-One and Dotto, where contestants got the answers in advance, Revlon was reportedly far more subtle: they may have depended less on asking questions on the air that a contestant had already heard in pre-air screenings than on switching the questions kept secure in a bank vault at the last minute, to make sure a contestant the sponsor liked would be suited according to his or her chosen expertise.

The most prominent victim may have been the man who launched the franchise in the first place. Louis Cowan, made CBS Television president as a result of Question's fast success, was forced out of the network as the quiz scandal ramped up, even though it was NBC's and not CBS's quiz shows bearing the brunt of the scandal---and even though CBS itself, with a little help from sponsor Colgate-Palmolive, had moved fast in cancelling the popular Dotto at almost the moment it was confirmed that that show had been rigged. Cowan had never been suspected of taking part in any attempt to rig either Question or Challenge; later CBS historians have suggested his reputation as an administrative bottleneck may have had as much to do with his firing as his tie to the tainted shows. But Cowan may have been a textbook sacrificial lamb, in a bid to pre-empt any further scandal while the network scrambled to recover, and while its president Frank Stanton was accepting complete responsibility for any wrongdoing committed under his watch. Jump to: navigation, search The National Broadcasting Company or NBC is an American television broadcasting company based in New York Citys Rockefeller Center. ... Colgate redirects here. ... Dotto (1957-1958) was an American television quiz show whose nine-month jump to the top of the daytime quiz show heap ended when it became the unexpected first casualty of what became the quiz show scandal. ...

Aftermath

By the end of 1959, all the first generation big-money quiz shows were gone, with single-sponsorship television following and a federal law against fixing television game shows (an amendment to the 1960 Communications Act) coming.

None of the people who were directly involved in rigging any of the quiz shows faced any penalty more severe than suspended sentences for perjury before the federal grand jury that probed the scandal, even if many hosts and producers found themselves frozen out of television for many years. One Question contestant, Doll Goostree, sued both CBS and the show's producers, in a bid to recoup $4,000 she said she might have won if her Question match had not been rigged. Neither Goostree nor any other quiz contestant who sued similarly won their cases.

A $64,000 Icon

While many if not most of its imitators or inspirations disappeared forever, and went almost forgotten, The $64,000 Question never really did, not in terms of American pop culture history. And it was not because people continue to use "that's the $64,000 question" as a part of the language.

Perhaps that was because it was the first and the biggest of the quiz shows that riveted American viewers in the mid-1950s. Perhaps, too, the aforesaid episode of The Honeymooners helped. Perhaps, especially, that position was aided by the fact that neither The $64,000 Question nor The $64,000 Challenge were held as deeply culpable in the quiz scandals as the two shows whose riggings started them so explosively in the first place, Dotto and Twenty-One. That might have reflected the fact that the $64,000 franchise sponsor tampered more directly than on the NBC shows, where the tampering was done (whatever the sponsorship input or demands) by the producers. This does not stop some people from thinking the Question/Challenge franchise had actually launched the quiz show scandal, even after Quiz Show---the Robert Redford film which revisited the scandal and Twenty-One's role therein---proved a film hit in the mid-1990s.

But the ultimate reason why The $64,000 Question survived as an era's signature, if not as a continuing television show, was the show itself. It set the essential blueprint for the first generation of popular television games; it touched a deep American nerve of aspiration and identification---the idea that anyone from anywhere could be, and often was, knowledgeable enough to hit it big on his or her brains alone. For those reasons, when attempts to revive the show occurred two decades later, it may not have been as surprising as some at the time believed.

The Resurrections

It may or may not have been inspired by the resurrection of quiz-scandal figures Jack Barry (creator and host of the mid-1970s hit The Joker's Wild) and Dan Enright (the reputed mastermind of the Twenty-One fix and Jack Barry's production partner, restored to their former partnership as Joker was about to move from network to syndication production), but a resurrection of The $64,000 Question arrived in 1976. Jump to: navigation, search The Jokers Wild was a popular American game show of the 1970s and early 1980s, billed as the game where knowledge is king and lady luck is queen. // Broadcast History The Jokers Wild debuted on CBS September 4, 1972, incidentally on the same day...

Selected PBS outlets showed surviving kinescopes of the original Question in the summer of 1976, as a run-up to a new version of the show called The $128,000 Question, which ran for two years. The 1976-77 episodes were hosted by Mike Darrow and produced at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York, just around the corner from Question's original home at CBS-TV Studio 52. The 1977-78 version was produced in Toronto and hosted by Alex Trebek, then the host of Double-Dare and later to become famous as the longest-serving (and still serving) host of a new version of Jeopardy!, whose original broadcast run (daytime, 1964-1975) ended a year before the new Question arrived. Ed Sullivan. ... Jump to: navigation, search George Alexander Trebek (birth name Giorgi Suka-Alex Trebek, born July 22, 1940), is a well-known Canadian game show host of the syndicated version of the popular Jeopardy! television program for more than 20 years. ... Jump to: navigation, search Jeopardy! logo (1994–1996) Jeopardy! is a popular international television game show, originally devised by Merv Griffin, who also created Wheel of Fortune. ...

In the 1990s, future Who Wants to be a Millionaire executive producer Michael Davis attempted to revive Question under its original name for ABC, before abandoning that effort in favor of the British hit. And, in 2000, Question's original home, CBS, bought the rights to the property in a reported effort to produce a new, rival quiz, The $1,064,000 Question, hosted by Greg Gumbel. Because of format issues similar to those encountered by Davies for ABC, this version never made it to the air. Logo from the UK version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is a television game show which offers very large cash prizes for correctly answering successive multiple-choice questions. ... The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is a television and radio network in the United States. ... Logo from the UK version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is a television game show which offers very large cash prizes for correctly answering successive multiple-choice questions. ... CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) is a major television network and radio broadcaster in the United States. ... Greg Gumbel (born May 3, 1946 in New Orleans, Louisiana) is an American television sportscaster. ... The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is a television and radio network in the United States. ...

But who is to say someone won't try it yet again, perhaps---all things considered---as The $64,000,000 Question?

Or, is that the $64,000 question . . .and challenge?

Where Are They Now?

• Louis Cowan---In addition to Quiz Kids (1949-1951), Cowan also created Down You Go (1951-1956) and the short-lived Ask Me Another. He was killed in an apartment fire in New York City in 1976.

• Hal March---The former comic actor who became an overnight star on The $64,000 Question continued to appear as an actor in television and movies through the 1950s and 1960s. Shortly after he signed on as host of It's Your Bet in 1969, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and died in 1970, four months short of his 50th birthday.

• Irwin (Sonny) Fox---The first $64,000 Challenge host was also known at the time for co-hosting the CBS children's travelogue Let's Take a Trip ("[T]aking two children on sort of an electronic field trip every week -- live, remote location, no audience, no sponsors," Fox has described the show.) But his fame rests predominantly on his eight-year (1959-67) tour as the suave, congenial and dryly witty fourth host of New York's Sunday morning children's learn-and-laugh marathon, Wonderama. He later spent a year (1977) running children's programming for NBC and eventually became a chairman of the board for Population Communications International, a nonprofit dedicated to "technical assistance, research and training consultation to governments, NGOs and foundations on a wide range of social marketing and communications initiatives," for which he is still an honourary chairman. Fox has also been a board chairman for the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

• Ralph Story---He became the much-loved host of Ralph Story's Los Angeles (1964-70), still considered the highest-rated, best-loved local show in Los Angeles television history. Story has also hosted A.M. Los Angeles and was the narrator for the ABC series Alias Smith and Jones in 1972-73.