By RM
wednesday, april 10, 2024 at 1:05:00 a.m. edt
wikipedia entry on Art Fleming, the original JEOPARDY! host:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Fleming
“in the early years of the Trebek version, he [Fleming] stated that he disliked the show’s new direction and the various changes that the revival’s producers had made. He disapproved of moving production from his native New York to Los Angeles, suggesting to a Sports Illustrated journalist in 1989 that filming in California made the show feel superficial and anti-intellectual...”
[RM: NOTE: that was when there was still a difference between NY and L.A.- remember when the latter was derisively called “La-La Land”?]
“He also claimed that the new show was too easy and he feuded publicly with the staff of the modern Jeopardy! over the nature of the clues, as he believed that the writers were inserting hints into the clues to make the correct response seem obvious and easy to guess.”
Fleming was pure class. The revived JEOPARDY! was never as good as the original.
Here’s a rare surviving episode:
Art Fleming Jeopardy! Kim/Kent/Karen June 27 1974
1,777 views Jan 26, 2024
Posted by Delivery Boy Roy
One of the few existing episodes of the original Jeopardy! One time champion Karen competes against challengers Kent and Kim for the championship. This video was on channel Game Show Island, but that channel was sadly terminated recently. I understand Sony and NBC own the rights to this video and that this may be removed. However, try to enjoy it for as long as you can.
-RM
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6 comments:
And Don Pardo.Announcers and hosts were a team back then.
--GRA
Yes, ditto Pardo. Johnny Gilbert deserves a double-lifetime award but his voice never seemed to be the right choice for an announcer role.
Trebek, I guess he had his following, but in my book, overrated. Art Fleming had an certain affability and warmth of personality; Trebek was rather robotic.
Theme Music: Classic as the Final Jeopardy think music may be, it's not strong enough on its own to be the main theme. Repeating it over and over made for a tiresome intro and closing theme. The original had a variety of tunes yet they had a certain common theme to them. The musicologists probably have a better term for it. It was a unified whole, somehow.
1) The intro jingle as players entered. The low rumble and then the high-pitched do-do do-do do-do-do.
2) A few bars of the closing them when Art Fleming came in.
3) ... which may have been from the full closing theme. Which I read somewhere that Merv Griffin's daughter wrote? It had an echo of the high-pitch piece of the players' intro. And overall that piece had the vibe of Radio City and the NYC of yore.
And more tributes to the original: Not 30 video monitors but actual physical placards that stagehands pulled from behind. There's just something right about the old-style games that didn't use video monitors for everything.
The FONT was better, too. A plain simple block font. Not that screwy font on Trebek's video version, particularly the warped letter U.
Decay of Civilization, Game Show edition. Ken Jennings? What an unlikeable little twerp. A face and an attitude that is at the top of the Punchability Scale, right up there with George Stephanopoulos, Bill Nye the Science Lie, and others.
I mean, we dodged a bullet in the DEI pick (Lavar Burton), and I don't know what was up with the woman with the odd name who had the part-time hosting gig and then disappeared. The guy who got zapped by the Me-Too-but-I-waited-years-and-years-to-make-a-complaint seemed plausible. Aaron Rodgers was better than expected but they passed by him.
Do people still watch the show just because the TV has been stuck at the same channel since Cronkite? Or have the ratings collapsed and media's just keeping it mum?
And finally, the stupid rule where 2nd and 3rd place don't get any money at all, so it's entirely predictable they're going to bet the farm and probably lose by $1 anyway. Borrring!
Maybe Carla Mae came all the way from a small town in the Midwest and she just wants to make a small bet and go home with at least the $5,000 she'll have left over instead of going all-in on Medieval Royalty. Yawn...
It was either going to be Jennings as host or a black.Look at it that way and he's fine.Bialik,as hostess,would have forced me to quit watching cold turkey.Jennings reads without any slipups and has a quick sense of humor--he's SMART.Compare him to LeVar Burton,for example,and I have no complaints.
--GRA
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