The $64,000 Question
Before the quiz show scandal of
the late 1950s, The $64,000 Question was a high-stakes,
nail-biting, ratings-topping game show phenomenon.
It was the
first of TV's big money prime time game shows, and some of its
biggest and most illustrious winners included a housewife, an
eleven year-old whiz kid, a jockey, a shoemaker, a cop, an
actress, and a shrink named Dr. Joyce Brothers who would go on to
dole out good, sound advice to the masses.
The CBS show was
really a hyped-up, bright-lights version of radio's The $64
Question. Contestants professed an expertise in particular
categories (Dr. Joyce's was boxing, by the way), and each time
they answered questions in their chosen fields correctly, their
money doubled.
The more questions they answered, the more
money they could potentially win, but the questions got tougher at
each level (though players who made it all the way to the $64,000
question could bring an expert along with them for help). For
questions in the upper echelons of the game, players were politely
escorted into the stage's ''Revlon Isolation Booths'' by pretty
assistants, perhaps made all the prettier by the sponsor's cosmetic
wares.
Inside the isolation booths, contestants couldn't hear the nervous
audience's gasps and whispered
speculation about the answers - which helped maintain the players' furrowed brows and squinty looks of pained concentration
that the camera loved to pick up. And if they indeed answered
correctly, they came back to the show the following week to answer
a question at the next highest level.
The "one
question per contestant per show" format meant that on any
given episode, there were camera-savvy vets who were going for the
big money, and wet-behind-the-ears newbies who were just starting
out at the lowest levels. And we're talking low - the game began
with stakes of just one dollar (in one episode, Jack Benny made a
gag appearance, bowing out after he won that first dollar).
Shiny new Cadillac's were the consolation prize for
players who lost at the eight grand level, and for those poor
$64,000 losers, there was a four thousand dollar prize to take the
sting out of coming just oh-so close, but not close enough.
In its first year, the show rocketed past I Love Lucy to
become a national pastime. Over the next seasons, if and when the
ratings started to dip, producers took the cap off the prize money
possibilities so that contestants could win more than the usual
$64,000. And the greatest players could always play on the show's even bigger money companion, called
The $64,000 Challenge.
The
aforementioned eleven-year-old whiz kid appeared on both,
incidentally, and hoarded 192 thousand big ones for his efforts.
The $64,000 Question set the precedent for shows
like Twenty-One, Question, Challenge, The Big
Surprise, and Dotto.
But when evidence of game rigging on several programs erupted into
the quiz show scandal of 1958, most of the big money shows were
taken off the air, whether any cheating was ever uncovered or not.
Though no malfeasance was associated with the beloved $64,000
Question, it went the way of the others.
The $64,000
Question had real people winning unreal sums of money, while
audiences tested their own smarts and more importantly, empathised
with the alternate triumphs and tragedies of a contestant's capricious fate. That kind of "you are there" empathy
was, and is, every game show's goal - if you can't get viewers
to feel for the contestants, you don't have a show.
Perhaps Question's demise came too soon, but it set
the standard for linking real life contestants to the armchair
contestants out there in the world, watching from home. And
whether you applauded or jealously despised that eleven-year-old
know-it-all, you didn't dare leave the armchair until you knew
his game show destiny.
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