I don't know exactly when there came to be a "stigma" attached to television game show hosts, but one suspects it may well have started with this man, Jack Barasch, better known as Jack Barry. To readers of a certain age, Barry is fondly remembered as the host of a rather popular game show from a bygone era called The Joker's Wild; but to readers of another, older time period, he would be forever remembered as one of the crooked game-show producers behind the 1950s Quiz Show scandal immortalized in the classic Robert Redford film.
The show in question was called Twenty-One, a quiz show that challenged the trivial expertise of its players. In terms of pure difficulty, this thing was like Jeopardy on steroids. It was so daunting, in fact, that the earliest contestants repeatedly flubbed answers to the questions, making for pretty stale television. At least that's what the show's sponsor, Geritol, thought, and so to appease the folks who were picking up the tab for their program, the decision was made by the show's producers to "rig" the telecast in an effort to make the show more compelling. Players were prepped with the show's questions and their correct answers in advance of the broadcast, and they were coached to play up the suspense angle accordingly. The viewers at home and in the studio audience were held captive by the ensuing "drama".
Why would the producers do it? Not because they were "evil" people; they did it on account of money. Game shows in those days were like the 50s answer to reality TV: they cost practically nothing to produce, you didn't need to worry about scripts or difficult actors, and most importantly, they were broadcast in prime-time, which meant they had the potential to be enormously profitable. They were all over the television landscape of the day, and the best of them, like the reality shows we are all familiar with nowadays, typically brought in strong ratings. So the game was juiced for everybody involved: the players, the producers, the networks, and above all, the sponsors. In its heyday, Twenty-One was one of the biggest shows of its kind (imagine what you would get if you crossed American Idol with Trivial Pursuit), but after it was revealed that the whole thing was a complete fraud, the show was quietly pulled by its network, NBC. Its final telecast was October 17, 1958. One could argue that the Twenty-One scandal in its aftermath actually changed the face of television, in that it pretty much killed the prime-time game show phenomenon. However, big-time TV networks are nothing if not resourceful, and the game-show format would find new life in the milieu of daytime television.
For his part, Barry denied that he was involved in the actual "fixing" of Twenty-One, that that was largely the work of Barry's business partner, fellow producer Dan Enright and Enright's assistant. Honestly though, what I know about TV production makes that story sound a little weak. It was Jack Barry's show, produced under the aegis of Barry's own production company, Barry-Enright productions. As one of the producers, Barry would have been among the first to know that a major sponsor wanted changes made to a program in danger of tanking, which Twenty-One was initially. If the decision was made to "juice" the show, Barry as co-producer would have to give the idea at least tacit approval. And as a practical matter, being the show's host, Barry would need to be in on the scam so that he could convincingly play along with the contestants. These guys weren't getting paid to produce integrity, they were getting paid to produce entertainment.
Barry's denial of greater culpability falls flat for still another reason. Twenty-One was only one of several successful game shows brought to you by Barry-Enright productions that were allegedly rigged as well. A couple of them you may have heard of: the original Tic-Tac-Dough and Concentration, both also hosted by Barry. These programs all ran concurrently with Twenty-One, but after the scandal broke, one by one they were all subsequently cancelled, which effectively ended Barry's career as a popular game show host.
But Jack Barry was pretty resourceful in his own right, so he wasted little time in reinventing himself, establishing a new career, and mending his tarnished reputation. Leaving the mean streets of New York behind, Barry relocated to sunny southern California. He purchased a Los Angeles radio station and an early cable TV prototype, based in Redondo Beach. He slowly but surely re-established himself as a bankable figure in local programming produced in Los Angeles, including a gradual return to the game show format. This ultimately made it possible for Barry to re-emerge on the national TV stage, eventually becoming a host again for an ABC show called The Generation Gap in 1969. Around that time, Jack Barry hit upon the idea that would not only return him to the national spotlight as host of a major game show, but would also make him fabulously wealthy in the process.
After several abortive attempts to launch the program he called The Joker's Wild, which included two failed pilot episodes and a couple of major format changes, the version that we remember with Barry as host made its debut in 1972, the same day as the re-incarnation of an old show called The Price Is Right, now hosted by Bob Barker. Shortly thereafter, Barry brought his old partner Dan Enright back into the fold as executive producer. The ratings for this early version of "Joker" were serviceable, but it was when Barry and Enright sold reruns of the show into syndication that it really took off, such that they opted to produce new episodes for first run syndication in 1977. That's the version I distinctly recall watching as a kid, and I loved it. I don't know, there was just something fascinating about watching people spin a giant slot machine on television. The funny thing is, in the wake of The Joker's Wild's runaway success, Barry and Enright went on to produce a virtual blizzard of new programming, including a successful revival of one of their original, "tarnished" shows from the 1950s, Tic-Tac-Dough, now hosted by Wink Martindale. The case could be made that the two TV veterans were now bigger than they ever had been in the scandal-plagued 50s.
The only thing Americans love better than a good rags-to-riches story is a good comeback; Barry had come full circle. On May 2, 1984, after completing the seventh syndicated season of "Joker", he suffered a massive heart attack while jogging through Central Park, in New York City. He died later that day. Jack Barry was 66.
No comments:
Post a Comment