The Answer Is..., page 12
People often ask me what are the wildest things contestants have said on Jeopardy! David Letterman even asked me this when I was a guest on his show in 1990. That was my first appearance on David’s show, and we had a lot of fun ribbing each other. He listed all the shows I hosted before Jeopardy!, including the short-lived ones like Battlestars and Double Dare, and said: “In those days, were you thinking to yourself, What’s going to become of me? Am I just going to go from one little game show to another?” That got the audience laughing. Later I got him back when, in describing the process for becoming a Jeopardy! contestant, I said, “If you pass the test and have personality, you might wind up on the program. If you have no personality at all, you could wind up doing a talk show.” The audience really loved that line.
David then asked about the most amusing interactions I’ve had with contestants. I told him about one woman in a seniors tournament who was a forensic pathologist in New York.
“What do you do in that job?” I asked.
“We examine tissue to find out what kind of disease is there,” she said.
“You don’t deal with me if I’m alive, right?” I said.
“No, Alex,” she said, “I won’t touch you if you’re alive.”
A high school junior from Decatur, Georgia…
To which I replied: “You’re not the only woman to have said that to me.”
I got a good laugh from our studio audience with that line, but sometimes the shoe was on the other foot. One contestant was a psychiatrist who specialized in dream interpretation. Great! I figured I’d get a free mini-consultation. I told her about a recurring dream of mine in which I am always being chased—by evil men, ogres, monsters, you name it.
“But what’s unusual about all these dreams,” I said, “is that they never catch me. No matter how many times they chase me, they never catch me. What does that mean?”
Her response: “It means you’re a fast runner.”
Kudos to the contestant. But that’s not my favorite interview, either. My favorite was Dana Venator.
Dana participated in our Teen Tournament in 1987. She was a junior from Briarcliff High School in Decatur, Georgia. There are so many positive things I could say about every teenager who has played in those Teen Tournaments, but there’s only one I could describe as “beginning bagpiper,” and that was Dana. She was just learning how to play the instrument, and she would trudge deep into the woods behind her house to practice, so that she didn’t disturb her neighbors. I just thought that was so wonderful. She also wrote short stories and what she called “bad poetry.” I asked her for an example, and she recited:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Some poems rhyme
And some don’t.
She had another that she titled “The Life of a Dorito,” though she refrained from sharing that one. What I found most endearing about her interview was how giddy and wide-eyed she was about the entire Jeopardy! experience. She seemed so tickled by every aspect.
“What’s the most notable memory you’re going to take back to Georgia with you?” I asked her.
“Our hotel room,” she said. “It’s a very nice hotel room. We took pictures of it.”
That cracked me up.
“Is it that good?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “We’re gonna buy the robe and everything.”
That might have been the hardest I’ve ever laughed on the show. Dana has always served as a great reminder to me to never take anything for granted and to always appreciate even the simplest things.
The players I have highlighted in the last three chapters—Eddie, Cindy, and Dana—represent the best and the brightest of America, the achievers. However, I would feel remiss if I did not also acknowledge the other side of the coin, those who are not so intellectual, but who, nevertheless contribute so much to the success of our country. Many of these people are easily led or manipulated into positions of deep bias. Others feel victimized, and they are right. It is important for the rest of us to reach out to these people, to give them a voice, and most importantly to listen to that voice. Only then will we be able to bring about a reconciliation that will help mend the great chasm that divides us. And if we are really lucky, we might also resurrect an old adage that has not been heard very often in recent years: “Good politics is the art of compromise.”
The Answer Is… COMFORT
There are several reasons why I think Jeopardy! became so popular. One, I suspect, is that audiences view it with a bit more respect than other games shows. I’ve always said, “You never have to apologize for admitting that you watch Jeopardy!” The viewers feel they’re getting value from the show. They’re learning.
Of course, the show’s longevity helps. The show was on for ten years, from 1964 to 1974. It came back for six months in 1978. And now we’ve been on the air for thirty-six more years. Combined, that’s almost a half-century that Jeopardy! has been on television. And back when it debuted, it would air on NBC back-to-back with The Hollywood Squares between 11:00 a.m. and noon. A lot of young kids at home and college students would watch the show on their lunch breaks. They grew up with it. So when we brought it back in 1984, they were nostalgic for it. And then they raised their own kids on the show.
Another explanation for the show’s popularity is that Americans are so very competitive. It’s almost primal.
“I can throw the ball farther than you.”
“I can run faster than you.”
“No, you can’t. Prove it.”
Cutting the cake with Harry Friedman in celebration of our seven thousandth show.
The day in 2005 we received a Guinness World Record for most Emmy Awards won by a game show. At the time the number was twenty-five. We now have thirty-five.
That competition exists within families too. Brothers and sisters. Children and parents. And grandparents—we have material that probably only grandparents, people of that generation, may know the correct response to. The information is a little arcane, a little out of the mainstream for the kids. And vice versa. There’s information regarding pop culture that the parents and grandparents don’t know. So there’s something for everybody. And for one or two moments—and you only need a couple of moments—these opportunities to shine exist on our program. That makes you feel good about yourself and inspires a little bit of awe in the other members of the family who maybe never looked at you as being particularly sharp. “Grandpa’s old and he’s crotchety, but damn he knows a lot about geography!”
But I think the biggest reason the show has endured is the comfort that it brings. Viewers have gotten used to having me there, not so much as a showbiz personality but as an uncle. I’m part of the family more than an outside celebrity who comes into your home to entertain you. They find me comforting and reassuring as opposed to being impressed by me. It’s not that kind of thing. I’m a second-tier celebrity. The comfortability aspect, I think, is very important. I really think that.
Viewers come to the show because it is very familiar to them. They know what to expect. They don’t have to wrestle with figuring out how it works. Because we’ve been on for thirty-six years, it’s now unlikely that a man will appear in the back of the audience in a conference room at a New York hotel and say, “Who are you?” The show has become part of the fabric of American life. People say to me, “My mother doesn’t want us to call her from seven to seven thirty when Jeopardy! is on.” Or “We have dinner with you every night.”
At some point—and it occurred slowly over the years—we made the transition from just being an enjoyable quiz show to being part of your daily life. There’s something ritualistic about it. It’s special but not in a big way. It’s not “I must watch Jeopardy!” It’s “Hey, Jeopardy!’s on. Let’s watch.” It’s a quality program. If it were in your pantry, it would be on the shelf labeled “Staples.”
But it’s not like we were an overnight sensation. We had to pay our dues. It took time. Even after we finally caught on, we were always number two in syndication behind Wheel of Fortune. Now we’re ahead of them. It only took us thirty-six years.
What Is… A MUSTACHE?
I grew the mustache toward the end of my time in Canada, not long before I came to California. Honestly, I can’t remember why. I’d say it was because it was in style, but it wasn’t—at least not in my industry. I was the first game show host since Groucho Marx to be on the air with a mustache. Maybe it was my rebellious streak. I have naturally wavy hair, but throughout most of my career at the CBC, they would straighten it. The hairdresser would come in each week and put the part in my hair and yank it straight. It was the mid-sixties, and they wanted me to look squeaky clean. Once the seventies came along, I started to let my hair grow longer. It got fluffier and turned into an Afro. Once I grew the mustache, I looked like Dr. J.
When I flew to LA to shoot the pilot for The Wizard of Odds, I walked into the NBC studio and the executive producer, Burt Sugarman, came up to me and said, “I like the mustache.”
And then I ran into a doubtful-looking Lin Bolen, who was head of daytime programming for NBC.
“How do you feel about your mustache?” she asked.
“Very strongly,” I said.
“Oh,” she said. “Okay.”
And that was the end of that. They did cut some of my hair down. But they left me with my mustache.
I wore that mustache for nearly thirty years. Then, in 2001, I decided to shave it. It was pure whim. We were about to tape our fifth and final show of the day. I went into the makeup room, sat in the chair, and I said, “I’m gonna shave my mustache.” I grabbed the clippers and a razor and shaved half of it. Then one of my producers came in, and he was dumbstruck.
“Do you want me to come out with half?” I asked.
“No, no,” he said. “Not half.”
So I shaved the other half, and I walked out. Half the people in the audience didn’t notice right away. I got the same reaction when I came home. I walked into the house. Jean was there in the Play-Doh Room with Matthew and Emily. I stood in the doorway.
“Hi, guys,” I said.
“Hi, Dad,” the kids responded.
“Did you have a good day taping?” Jean asked.
“Yeah, it was fine.”
We talked for a few minutes… and a few minutes more… and a few minutes more.
Finally, I said, “Anyone notice anything different about Dad?”
“Oh my God,” Jean said. “You shaved your mustache.”
Matthew, who was around ten, started to cry. It was such a big shock. You do not mess with your children’s lives in that way.
What amazed me afterward was the amount of press that got. It made newspapers and magazines everywhere. I was surprised and to a certain extent appalled by this.
Hey, I thought, this is a television quiz show host shaving his mustache. Look at all the tragedy and calamity going on in the world. And they’re asking about my mustache? Sometimes our values are a little off.
The metamorphosis.
I was without a mustache from 2001 until 2014. I grew it back, and then we had our viewers vote on whether I should keep it. They voted I should shave it off again. Not everyone was in favor of this. I was a guest on The Howard Stern Show shortly after shaving it off that second time. Jimmy Kimmel was also a guest on the show that day.
“It was a betrayal,” he said of the first time I shaved the mustache. “I actually filed a class-action lawsuit against you.”
Howard said he found the mustache to be comforting. Perhaps that was always part of the appeal for viewers. During tapings, the audience still always asks: “Are you going to grow it back? When are you going to grow it back?”
Unsurprisingly, it’s usually guys with mustaches themselves who pose the question.
On summer vacation a couple of years ago, I decided I would regrow the mustache. But then things got a little out of hand. Those hairs kept attracting friends. Soon I had a full-blown beard. Once again, we put the vote to fans on whether I should keep it. The winner was… my wife, Jean. She voted for me to be clean-shaven.
The very short-lived beard experiment.
Making a cameo on Will Ferrell’s last Jeopardy! sketch.
Eugene Levy as me on SCTV.
Who Are… WILL FERRELL AND EUGENE LEVY?
Studio audiences always ask me what I think of Will Ferrell’s impression of me on Saturday Night Live. I loved it. I even appeared on his very last Celebrity Jeopardy! sketch before he left SNL. It was a lot of fun, but to be honest, my favorite impersonation of me would be the one done by Eugene Levy on SCTV. They did a marvelous parody of Reach for the Top called High Q. Eugene played me. He looked more the part than Will did. He had the dark bushy hair and the black mustache. The first couple of times they did it, he was introduced as Alex Trebel. And then I guess they decided, “Let’s forget about this charade. Let’s just call him Alex Trebek.” John Candy, Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara, Dave Thomas, and other cast members played the students. They were so stupid, and it was so funny. I never got to see it when it was originally broadcast. It took about four or five years after I left Canada for somebody to send me a tape, a compilation of all of their bits. I looked at them all at once and I thought, My gosh, these guys are so bright.
In a way, being parodied means you’ve arrived. If a comedian decides to do a takeoff of you, it’s a sign that they believe their audience will immediately recognize who they are poking fun at. And if that’s the case, that must mean there are a lot of people who have watched your show over the years or are watching now. They know immediately what the reference is. So you’re popular not only because of your own show but because of the takeoffs and the mentions on other shows.
And it applies to other people as well. Larry King was in one of our early Celebrity Jeopardy! tournaments. I ran into him a few years later and he said, “I’m on the air five days a week, an hour each day, and I can’t tell you how many people come up to me and say, ‘Oh, I saw you on Jeopardy!’ ”
Of course, I’ve appeared as myself in a number of TV shows and movies, such as Cheers, Mama’s Family, The Simpsons, The X-Files, Orange Is the New Black, White Men Can’t Jump, and The Bucket List. I even had the honor of joining Stephen Colbert in a flying sleigh as he signed off from The Colbert Report for the last time. Those opportunities are always fun, though I wish someone would offer me a part that wasn’t a quiz show host. I’d love it if someone came to me and said, “We’d love to cast you as an ax murderer.”
There was actually a time when I thought of maybe leaving Jeopardy! to pursue a career in acting. I had thoughts of being an actor at the beginning of my career. I auditioned for a drama that the CBC was producing when I was a staff announcer. The casting director at the CBC agreed to let me try out for the part. I didn’t get it, but she was complimentary. However, as I began to seriously consider making a career change, I started talking to a lot of my actor friends, and I learned what their schedules were.
“Wait a minute,” I said, “I’m making more money than you and I work two days a week. You work six days a week, fourteen-hour days. I’m fine, thank you very much.”
Appearing on Cheers with America’s favorite know-it-all mailman, Cliff Clavin (played by John Ratzenberger), in 1990.
One of my multiple appearances on The Simpsons.
Watch the drool, Colbert.
Giving my best Trojan pose at USC.
What Are… THE COLLEGE CHAMPIONSHIPS?
One of my favorite parts of Jeopardy! has been going out on the road occasionally to record the College Championships on campuses across the country. Instead of taping the show in front of two hundred people in Culver City, we’re doing it in front of thousands of people in an arena. There’s always the added excitement of the rivalries, such as USC versus UCLA or Michigan versus Ohio State. They’re good-natured rivalries but rivalries nonetheless. The students in the audience will be cheering as if it were a sporting event.
One of the biggest laughs I ever got was when we visited the Ohio State University (where we definitely learned that it is properly referred to as the Ohio State University). During one of the commercial breaks, I was talking to the audience and taking questions. Most of the questions were what I typically got from audiences: what do I think makes a good contestant, or what I do think of Will Ferrell’s Saturday Night Live impersonation. Then a young lady raised her hand.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Boxers or briefs?” she said.
That got a big laugh. Then everyone quieted down to hear my answer. I looked at her with great seriousness.
“Thong,” I said.
That got an even bigger laugh.
What Is… CELEBRITY JEOPARDY!?
It’s no great secret that the material for Celebrity Jeopardy! is easier than in regular games. Many celebrities who appear on the show are not die-hard fans. I’m often asked if celebrities have to take a test to appear on the show. Yes. They have to be able to spell their name correctly. Our aim is to make it easier for celebrities to appear on the show, not harder. It isn’t easy getting them to come on. They don’t want to embarrass themselves. They don’t want to screw up an answer to a seemingly easy clue and seem dumb in front of millions of viewers. So we do as much as we can to entice them, like offering the chance to win large amounts of money that will be donated to their favorite charity and holding it in an exciting venue like Radio City Music Hall.
That said, there have been some contestants who might’ve held their own in regular games. Usually they come from the news media. Those folks have a good grasp of current events. The actors Michael McKean and Jodie Foster are two other fierce competitors who come to mind. However, not all actors have an easy time on the show. They are always playing a role, so it’s difficult for them to be themselves. Other celebrities who I feel could definitely compete on the regular version of Jeopardy! would have to include Aaron Rodgers, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Anderson Cooper, Andy Richter, and Joshua Malina.
