On 'Jeopardy!' tonight

[jimimac71]

Dargo ... Okay, I'll bite. What other game show did Jim Lange host?
I grew up with Gentleman Jim on The Dating Game and KSFO in San Francisco.
I got to meet him face to face. He smoked like a chimney.
KSFO was in the basement of the Fairmont Hotel.
Jim and wife Nancy Fleming did a TV talk show.
He was everywhere it seems.
Last thing I know of was KABL.
KSFO history:
https://bayarearadio.org/audio/ksfo/560 ... -francisco
Just as TCM claims, "We will never see these days again."
I was spoiled rotten with the best radio of all-time.
Jim Lange and the Morning Gang were a part of it.

[Dargo]

Dargo ... Okay, I'll bite. What other game show did Jim Lange host?
I grew up with Gentleman Jim on The Dating Game and KSFO in San Francisco.
I got to meet him face to face. He smoked like a chimney.
KSFO was in the basement of the Fairmont Hotel.
Jim and wife Nancy Fleming did a TV talk show.
He was everywhere it seems.
Last thing I know of was KABL.
KSFO history:
https://bayarearadio.org/audio/ksfo/560 ... -francisco
Just as TCM claims, "We will never see these days again."
I was spoiled rotten with the best radio of all-time.
Jim Lange and the Morning Gang were a part of it.

Hi jimimac. Jim Lange hosted and I was a three game champion on the following short-lived (1980-81) Barry & Enright production syndicated quiz show titled "Bullseye". If I recall correctly, it was filmed at the CBS Television City facility:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullseye_ ... game_show)

I found the following YouTube clip which will show the premise of the program...

[Dargo]

And tonight, in the "HOLD" category, no one recognized a picture of William Holden.

Yep, and none of them could recognize the great boxer Sugar Ray Robinson either, nor knew that Jim Thorpe was complimented by the King of Sweden during the 1912 Stockholm Olympics by calling him the greatest althete of all time. (what DO they teach these kids now days anyway, I ask?!)

And btw, once again none of the contestants got tonight's Final Jeopardy question correct either (Boston's Old North Church), AND while I HATE to blow my own horn here again (yeah, sure LOL), I DID!

Next week Mayim Bialik is back. Do you suppose she finally gotten the hang of how to host a game show? She seems more like the pleasant enough sister-in-law you see once a year at Thanksgiving. One would never guess that she grew up in show biz.

Re this...I have to admit I think she's done and does a pretty good job overall. I guess it's the "energy" and "enthusiasm" she shows while hosting the show that makes me say this.

(...but yeah, I suppose she does occasionally go a little overboard with that, but on the whole I think her diction and use of inflection while reading off the questions is well done)

[Fedya]

, I have no idea who won best supporting actress in '53.

Sepiatone

To be fair, Thelma Ritter should have won for Pickup on South Street.

[Sepiatone]

[quote=Dargo post_id=180129 time=1682749342 user_id=349040]

And btw, once again none of the contestants got tonight's Final Jeopardy question correct either (Boston's Old North Church), AND while I HATE to blow my own horn here again (yeah, sure LOL), I DID!

[quote]

Yeah. I kept shouting "The Old North Church!" at my TV, but I guess they couldn't hear me. But I'm sure several of my neighbors could.

And I shouted equally as loud on the Bill Holden clue.
Sepiatone

[Fedya]

That said though, it is not entirely surprising that none of the contestants knew it. I am an avid viewer of game shows in general and watch Jeopardy on a nearly daily basis, and over the years, even some of the smartest contestants are a bit shaky on the subject of movies, both past and present. (Two of their top contestants of all time were undone in a tournament over a final question concerning '90s Oscar winning films) It was a nice surprise though when a thirtysomething contestant got a question about Sullivan's Travels last week.

Over on the old TCM boards, when that incident came up, I asked one of the posters who had a condescending attitude toward the contestants for not knowing it how many of the other 60 clues they would have gotten right. There was also a "Documentaries" category that particular game, and another of the posters had the courage to admit not being able to remember which state was the setting for Harlan County, USA.

On the other hand, different shows have different rules. The Game Show Network (GSN) has started airing reruns of Who wants to be a Millionaire with the late Regis Philban. These shows would now be over 20 years old, and its fascinating to look back at them (I was a child when they first aired, and watched it quite a bit back then). But what's striking is that there are very few questions that are outright difficult to answer, and sometimes very easy ones were worth a lot. There was a question about the musical Anchors Aweigh on there, about the famous sequence where it made it look like Gene Kelly was interacting with Jerry the mouse. Almost everyone here probably knows about that scene, but just to know the name of Jerry the Mouse was worth $125,000 on the game show episode from 2000. Its remarkable.

On one of the Meredith Vieira episodes, there was a question to the effect of "As Time Goes By is a novel hypothesizing what happened to Rick and Ilsa after the end of what classic Hollywood movie?" The contestant looked at the choices, said, "I know there was an Ilsa in The Sound of Music, so I'll go with c, The Sound of Music, final answer."

Things like that are why I don't get annoyed when tentpoles show up in prime time on TCM for the umpteenth time. There are people out there who simply don't know many of the tentpoles.

[Fedya]

Are you smarter than a 12-year-old?

[txfilmfan]

Are you smarter than a 12-year-old?

Countdown is a low-key game which would probably never succeed in the U.S. without "amping up." There's no bells or whistles, no huge prizes, no gargantuan set. It was adapted from a similar French game show, running since 1965. I always try to catch it when I'm in the UK.

Of course, as I say that, there's a low-key Password-type game that runs here (25 Words or Less) in syndication and seems to be doing OK, so maybe it would work. There was an unaired US pilot made in 1990, but it was not picked up.

Countdown was the first programme shown on the UK's Channel 4, in 1982.