John Carpenter, a 31-year-old Internal Revenue Service officer from Hamden, Conn., became the first person to win $1 million on ABC's stunningly popular "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" The question he answered correctly was, "Which of these U.S. presidents appeared on the television series "Laugh-In"? A. Lyndon Johnson; B. Richard Nixon; C. Jimmy Carter; D. Gerald Ford.
Carpenter did not deliver his answer until he had dutifully built up the dramatic impact of his win by using the most interesting gimmick the producers of the show have yet implemented -- Carpenter's right to use one of his "lifelines," meaning he could call a friend or relative and ask for help.He called his father and said, "Hi, Dad. I don't need your help. I just wanted you to know I'm going to win the million dollars." Then he answered the question: Richard Nixon.
Asked to explain his approach afterward, he said, "I like to think I have a flair for the dramatic."
Indeed. How could any TV quiz show worth its salt fail to emphasize the dramatic?
And so the previously unknown John Carpenter has already appeared on "Saturday Night Live," "Good Morning, America," "The Late Show With Dave Letterman" and "Live With Regis and Kathy Lee." Who knows how far his star will rise, or the other millionaire winners to come on this TV ratings buster?
And as all successful TV shows inspire a host of competitors, the other networks are scrambling to produce their own versions. Never mind that the ABC game show is directly copied from the successful British program of the same name. Fox, however, quickly jumped into the fray with another version, called "Greed," which has been called "the evil twin" of "Millionaire."
Whereas "Millionaire" emphasizes wholesome-looking, everyday people who are chosen after doing well in a phone quiz, and Regis Philbin acts
as a friendly host who promotes collegiality, "Greed" is more blatant. Contestants, several of whom have appeared cocky and swarthy, have to climb "the tower of greed."
Chuck Woolery, the host of "Greed," has a sort of smarmy on-air personality associated with the smarmy matchmaking shows he has done for many years. On "Greed," the competition is cut-throat, with those who lose going home with nothing. On "Millionaire," a person who loses but has won up to $32,000 takes that money home. We at home tend to identify with these ordinary people who say they intend to use the money to send their children to college or pay off their parents' mortgages.
It is a Jekyll and Hyde approach to quiz shows.
Game show deja vu
Any of this sound familiar? Well, think back to the mid-1950s, when "The $64,000 Question" and its competitor, "Twenty-One," became the most popular two TV shows on the air. "Question" first aired on CBS on June 7, 1955, and "Twenty-One" hit NBC on Oct. 12, 1956. Like "Millionaire," both were immediate hits.
It was estimated that 84.8 percent of the television sets in the country saw Richard McCutchen, a 28-year-old Marine captain whose category was gourmet foods, become the first grand-prize winner on "The $64,000 Question." Movie theaters reported a sharp decline in business, and stores and streets were empty when it came on the air.
McCutchen was not destined for lasting fame. That designation was left for a later figure, Charles Van Doren, a highly educated young man from a famous literary family. Van Doren, an English teacher at Columbia University, was the son of Mark Van Doren, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and grandson of Carl Van Doren, who also won a Pulitzer for his 1939 biography of Benjamin Franklin.
While so-called "intellectuals" rarely find themselves catapulted to the top of public popularity, Van Doren's image had been carefully planned by the producers of "Twenty-One."
Writer Eric Goldman later described him as "lanky, pleasant, smooth in dress and manner but never slick, confident but with an engaging way of understanding himself. The long, hard questions would come at him and his eyes would roll up, squeeze shut, his forehead furrow and perspire, his teeth gnaw at his lower lip. Breathing heavily, he seemed to coax information out of some corner of his mind by talking to himself in a kind of stream-of-consciousness."
Van Doren kept coming back to build the interest of the TV audience for 14 successive weeks, winning what was then a startling amount of money -- $129,000. Soon after he left the show, he accepted a $50,000 contract to appear on NBC's "Today" show, where for five minutes each morning he would chat about science, literature and history.
Until his house of cards came tumbling down.
By the end of 1956, rumors of improper practices on the TV quiz shows were circulating. In the spring of 1957, Time Magazine asked, "Are the quiz shows rigged?" It was soon discovered that Herbert Stempel, a poor boy from Brooklyn who wore ratty suits and a cheap wristwatch and deferentially addressed the show's host, Jack Barry, as "Mr. Barry" had been created by the producers. Stempel, in fact, was from Queens and had married into a well-to-do family, had an I.Q. of 170 and became infuriated when he was told to lose on purpose.
After he took a dive, Van Doren's star rose, and he became the new, interesting quiz-show hot shot. Stempel eventually became a whistleblower who revealed that the answers to the questions were given to him, and that he was instructed as to what he should wear and what he should say on the show.
For a pot of gold
Although Van Doren at first denied he had been corrupted, he eventually came clean, in front of a packed congressional hearing in 1959. In a pathetic confession, Van Doren described how the producers had not only given him the answers to the questions but carefully coached him on technique and even gave him a script several times to memorize.
Afterward, a Gallup Poll revealed that knowledge of the quiz show scandals was known by a higher percentage of the public than any event in the history of such surveys. NBC fired Van Doren, Columbia accepted his resignation and he went into seclusion, a ruined man. It didn't do much for the image of either the intellectual in society or the morality of the TV industry.
In 1994, the quiz show scandals were memorialized by a Robert Redford-produced movie, "Quiz Show," which brought the episode back to life in such a distorted way as to compete with the original quiz shows. Which was worse, the quiz show scandals or the movie version, which though purporting to be the truth actually gave us a phony, rigged version?
In the movie, Richard Goodwin, a young congressional investigator who was not nearly so important to the real story as the movie made him, says, "We thought we were getting television, but television got us."
According to political historians, scandal occurs in a major way about every 50 years. This is not to say that it is a foregone conclusion that "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" and "Greed" are on the same road to infamy, but it should make us all a bit nervous. Public morality could easily be threatened once again. People living quiet lives who have accumulated a store of useless information might get excited at the possibility of transforming it into a pot of gold.
And how many of them would willingly give into deception when the glare of the TV lights suggested it was necessary to win more?
Thus far, the fame of TV's daytime talk show host, Regis Philbin, has accelerated considerably since he became the host of "Millionaire." You have to wonder if Carpenter or any other contestant on the show would allow himself to be molded into an actor who is no longer speaking his own lines. How many of us are sitting at home wondering if we could perform as did Carpenter by glibly answering a trivial question in return for fame and fortune?
Where is TV taking us this time?
Is that your final answer?