The $64,000 Question is an American game show broadcast in primetime on CBS from 1955 to 1958, which became embroiled in the 1950s quiz show scandals. Contestants answered general knowledge questions, earning money which doubled as the questions became more difficult. The final question had a top prize of $64,000 (), hence the "$64,000 Question" in the show's title.
The $64,000 Challenge (1956–1958) was its spin-off show, where contestants played against winners of at least $8,000 on The $64,000 Question.
The show was initially produced by Louis G. Cowan, Inc., who soon changed its name to Entertainment Productions in 1956 before the show ended. Cowan bought out the rights from Milton Biow, so just to develop the series.
Origins
The $64,000 Question was largely inspired by the earlier CBS and NBC radio program Take It or Leave It, which ran on CBS radio from 1940 to 1947, and then on NBC radio from 1947 to 1952. After 1950, the radio show was renamed The $64,000 Question. The format of the show remained largely the same through its 12-year run; a contestant was asked a series of progressively more difficult questions which began at $1 and ended at a top prize of $64,000.
Show creation The $64,000 Question was created by Louis G. Cowan, formerly known for radio's Quiz Kids and the television series Stop the Music and Down You Go. Cowan drew the inspiration for the name from Take It or Leave It, and its $64 top prize offering. He decided to expand the figure to $64,000 for the new television program.
Cowan then convinced Charles Revson, owner of Revlon, to sign a sponsoring deal to finance the show for 13 weeks with the right to withdraw when they expired. Charles knew top competitor Hazel Bishop had increased its sales through sponsoring the popular This Is Your Life, and so decided to partner with the show.
The $64,000 Question premiered 7 June 1955, on CBS-TV, sponsored by cosmetics maker Revlon and originating from the start live from CBS-TV Studio 52 in New York (later the disco-theater Studio 54).
To increase the show's drama and suspense, and because of radio host Phil Baker's failure with Who's Whose, it was decided to use an actor rather than a broadcaster as the host. Television and film actor Hal March, familiar to TV viewers as a supporting regular on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show and My Friend Irma, found fame as the quiz show's host, and Lynn Dollar worked as his assistant. Author and TV panelist Dr. Bergen Evans was the show's expert authority, and actress Wendy Barrie did the "Living Lipstick" commercials. To capitalize on the initial television success, the show was also simulcast for two months on CBS Radio where it was heard from October 4, 1955, to November 29, 1955.
Gameplay Contestants first chose a subject category (such as "Boxing", "Lincoln", "Jazz" or "Football") from the Category Board. Although this board was a large part of the set, it was seen only briefly, to conceal the fact that categories were sometimes quickly added to match a new contestant's subject. The contestant was then asked questions only in the chosen category, earning money which doubled ($64, $128, $256, $512; then $1,000, $2,000, $4,000, $8,000, $16,000, $32,000, and finally $64,000) as the questions became more difficult. At the $4,000 level, a contestant returned each week for only one question per week. The contestant could quit at any time and retire with their money, but until they reached the safety nets, they lost all winnings for answering a question incorrectly. The first safety net was $512, after four questions. The second safety net, $4,000, offered contestants a new Cadillac Series 62 (whose maximum MSRP was about $5,400). Starting with the $8,000 question, the contestant was placed in the Revlon "isolation booth", where they could hear nothing but the host's words. As long as the contestant kept answering correctly, they stayed on the show until they had won $64,000.
Public reception Almost immediately, The $64,000 Question beat every other program on Tuesday nights in ratings. Broadcast historian Robert Metz, in CBS: Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye, claimed U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower himself did not want to be disturbed while the show was on and that the nation's crime rate, movie theater, and restaurant patronage dropped when the show aired. It earned the #1 rating spot for the 1955–56 season, being the only television show to knock I Love Lucy out of the #1 spot, and finished at #4 in the 1956–57 season and #20 in 1957–58. Among its imitators or inspirations were The Big Surprise, Tic-Tac-Dough, and Twenty-One.
The $64,000 Challenge Charles Revson did not execute his withdrawal right and wanted another way to take advantage of The $64,000 Question's audience. In April 8, 1956 The $64,000 Challenge was started (initially co-sponsored by Revlon and Lorillard Tobacco Company's Kent cigarettes), hosted through August 26 by Sonny Fox and then, for the remainder of the show's life, Ralph Story.
It pitted contestants against winners of at least $8,000 on The $64,000 Question in a new, continuing game where they could win another $64,000. The contestants took turns answering questions from the same category starting at the $1,000 level. If they each answered a question correctly, they advanced to the $2,000 level. Starting at the $4,000 level, both contestants answered the same question while each standing in their own isolation booth. If a contestant answered correctly with the other contestant missing a question, the winning contestant either kept the money and faced a new player, or continued playing against the same opponent at the next money level.
In time, the sister show came to include various celebrities, including bandleader Xavier Cugat and child star Patty Duke, as well as former The $64,000 Question champions.
The J. Fred & Leslie W. MacDonald Collection of the Library of Congress contains one kinescoped episode featuring Capt. Richard McCutchen as a contestant, broadcast July 1, 1956.
Everyday celebrities
The $64,000 Question contestants sometimes became celebrities themselves for a short while, including 11-year-old Robert Strom (who won $192,000) and Teddy Nadler ($252,000 across both shows), the two biggest winners in the show's history. Other such newly made celebrities included Italian-born Bronx shoemaker Gino Prato, who won $32,000 for his encyclopedic knowledge of opera. The longest enduring of these celebrities was psychologist Joyce Brothers. Answering questions about boxing, she became the second top winner, and went on to a career providing psychological advice in newspaper columns and TV shows for the next four decades. Another winner, Pennsylvania typist Catherine Kreitzer, read Shakespeare on The Ed Sullivan Show. TV Guide kept a running tally of the money won on the show, which hit $1 million by the end of November 1956.
The American Experience (PBS) episode probing the scandal noted:
Merchandising and parodies One category on the Revlon Category Board was "Jazz", and within months of the premiere Columbia Records issued a 1955 album of various jazz artists under the tie-in title $64,000 Jazz (CL 777, also EP B-777), with the following tracks: "The Shrike" (Pete Rugolo), "Perdido" (J.J. Johnson, Kai Winding), "Laura" (Erroll Garner), "Honeysuckle Rose" (Benny Goodman), "Tawny" (Woody Herman), "One O'Clock Jump" (Harry James), "How Hi the Fi" (Buck Clayton), "I'm Comin', Virginia" (Eddie Condon), "A Fine Romance" (Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond), "I Let A Song Go Out of My Heart" (Duke Ellington), and "Ain't Misbehavin'" (Louis Armstrong).
Other musical tie-ins included the 1955 song "The $64,000 Question (Do You Love Me)", recorded by Bobby Tuggle (Checker 823), Jackie Brooks (Decca 29684), and the Burton Sisters (RCA Victor 47-6265). "Love Is the $64,000 Question" (1956), which used the show's theme music by Norman F. Leyden with added Fred Ebb lyrics, was recorded by Hal March (Columbia 40684), Karen Chandler (Decca 29881), Jim Lowe (Dot 15456), and Tony Travis (RCA Victor 47-6476).
When the show was revived in 1976 as The $128,000 Question, its theme music and cues were performed (albeit with a new disco-style arrangement for the theme) by Charles Randolph Grean, who released a three-and-a-half-minute single, "The $128,000 Question" (the show's music and cues as an instrumental), with the B-side ("Sentimentale") on the Ranwood label (45 rpm release R-1064). For the show's second season, Grean's music package was re-recorded by Guido Basso.
There were numerous parodies of the program, including in the Foghorn Leghorn cartoon "Fox-Terror", Bob and Ray's The 64-Cent Question. The Jack Benny Program featured Hal March as a contestant in an October 20, 1957, spoofThe Jack Benny Program episode guide with Benny asking the questions. As a gag, Benny actually appeared as a contestant on The $64,000 Question on October 8, 1957, but insisted on walking away with $64 after answering the first question. Hal March finally gave him $64 out of his own pocket.
At the height of its popularity, The $64,000 Question was referenced in the scripts of other CBS shows, usually but not exclusively through punch lines that included references to "the isolation booth" or "reaching the first plateau". Typical of these was spoken by The Honeymooners Ed Norton (Art Carney), who identified three times in a man's life when he wants to be alone, with the third being "when he's in the isolation booth of The $64,000 Question". At least three other Honeymooners episodes referenced The $64,000 Question: In A Woman's Work Is Never Done Ralph proposes to Alice that he go on the show because he's an expert in the "Aggravation" category. In Hello, Mom Norton tells Ralph that his mother-in-law's category on the show would be "Nasty". In The Worry Wart, Ralph advises Alice to become a contestant because she's an expert in the "Everything" category.
Another episode of The Honeymooners, delivered one of the best known The $64,000 Question references – a parody of the show itself, in one of the so-called "Original 39" episodes of the timeless situation comedy. In that episode, blustery bus driver Ralph Kramden becomes a contestant on the fictitious $99,000 Answer. Regarded as one of the Golden Age of Television's best quiz show parodies, the Honeymooners episode depicted Kramden spending a week intensively studying popular songs, only to blow the first question on the subject when he returned to play on the show. The host of the fictitious $99,000 Answer was one Herb Norris, played by former Twenty Questions emcee and future Tic-Tac-Dough host Jay Jackson.
The show has been referenced on other game shows. On the U.S. version of Deal or No Deal, an episode aired January 15, 2007, in which the banker's offer was $64,000. Host Howie Mandel said, "This is the $64,000 question".
In many money trees of most variations of the television series Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, the amount of $64,000 is often included as the prize money awarded for correctly answering the 11th question.
Scandal and cancellation
In mid-August 1958, while both The $64,000 Question and The $64,000 Challenge had already been announced as part of CBS's fall lineup, the network's quiz show Dotto was cancelled without explanation. A federal investigation was launched by the end of August on the allegation that a Dotto contestant had been given answers in advance. The probe soon included NBC's Twenty-One, and was expected to expand further.
In the first week of September, a contestant of Challenge, Rev. Charles Jackson, came forward to say he had been given answers in advance. On September 13, Lorillard Tobacco Company pulled its sponsorship of the show; this made the previous airing on September 7 the last for Challenge. The $64,000 Challenge was replaced on CBS with "a special news program" on September 14.