Bask in the unfamiliarity of an unaired Jeopardy! pilot shot before the show’s 1964 premiere
Art Fleming hosted a trial taping before the show aired its first in nearly 60 years of episodes
TV Features Jeopardy!
Jeopardy! is an institution. For more than three decades, the game show was hosted by Alex Trebek, who, mustachioed or not, established a reliable tone for its episodes that became comfortable in its familiarity. The transition to new hosts required by Trebek’s death in 2020 hasn’t been without some very notable issues, but it’s also taken place within a format that’s only altered by degrees over the years. When we watch modern Jeopardy!, we still see the same sets, hear the same music, and call the same very smart people dumb for missing a Final Jeopardy! question that we knew.
Because of all this, watching any pre-Trebek era Jeopardy! feels strange. And watching a Jeopardy! pilot from before the show’s 1964 premiere feels even stranger.
The official Jeopardy! YouTube channel has decided to let us all bask in the discomfort that comes from the deeply familiar being made alien by uploading an unaired pilot shot before its 1964 premiere. From the first frantic flute notes and rolling bongos of its old theme song, the pilot feels essentially wrong.
After introducing the show format, Art Fleming interviews his contestants right from the jump, giving us player trivia before the game’s even begun. The unveiling of clues and the rhythm of the show as it moves through rounds of Jeopardy, Double Jeopardy, and Final Jeopardy is pretty much the same but the players are all sitting down, the music is wrong aside from the immortal Final Jeopardy theme, and there’s a sense of messiness to everything that’s completely unlike the smooth progression of almost every Jeopardy! episode.
Luckily, format aside, you can still yell at the screen when the contestants fail to answer clues that you think are obvious (seriously, none of these jokers know that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein?) and try to assure yourself that if you were filmed trying to play trivia on TV you’d do much better than the people on screen.
If you’d like to watch the full pilot for yourself, know that it will disappear back into the Jeopardy! archives, perhaps accompanied by a descending series of staccato musical notes, on April 6th.
[via Boing Boing]
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14 Comments
I Lost on Jeopardy, baby….
Weird.
It’s so distracting that they can buzz in as soon as the question is revealed.
“For ten dollars, I’ll take ‘Beat the Meat Less,’ Art.”
“Uh… that’s ‘Meet the Beatles,’ Mister Connery.”
“No, I took ten dollars from your mother to beat the meat less, Fleming! Awh harh har hah!”
It’s wild to think that Jeopardy was already a 20 year old show when Alex Trebek stepped into the role. You can really see how primitive the concept was in 1964. They just let the players buzz in whenever and the response style is super loose or vague.
Jeopardy was pretty much off the air for a decade before that though. It was canceled in 1975, but a version of it ran of it called The All New Jeopardy ran for less a season in 1978-9 though it is little remembered since it was so low rated. Weird Al’s parody song I Lost on Jeopardy actually came out before the Alex Trebek revival.
If the writer above is of the view that the music is “wrong,” it is because the writer likely is not old enough to remember the original Jeopardy! with Art Fleming, Don Pardo and the Take Ten theme music. That music was unchanged for the entire run in the Fleming era. It was the greatest game show theme music, but it was relatively unknown even in the Fleming era because the show often was pressed for time at the end, meaning that the closing credits with the playing of the closing theme were not run. Indeed, the playing of Take Ten with the running of the closing credits for me became synonymous with being organized, having your act together and being rewarded for it with hearing the full playing of Take Ten.
But the frantic flutes and bongos STAYED when the series got picked up. The intro is exactly the same, for years.
As is the Take Ten theme music, which remained unchanged for the entire original Fleming run.
Amazing they all blew Final Jeopardy.
Didn’t the host blow it, too? DR. Dracula?
It was LINUSES blanket! Sheesh.
sorry, please delete this comment
If anyone missed it, it’s still up at this location:
https://lostmediawiki.com/Jeopardy_(found_unaired_pilot_of_NBC_game_show;_1964)The first big shock to me was the dollar amounts on the board. 10 bucks?!? 50 bucks?!? Wow.After watching the whole thing, it’s striking how much fun they all had. Nowadays we all know how to respond to the clue in the form of a question; but it was unfamiliar then, and these contestants really struggled with it, and everyone laughed. The contestants, the audience, sometimes the host. It’s quite charming. Got pretty fast-paced in the Double Jeopardy round. Despite how primitive it looks, you can really see that there’s something there.Some of the clues and questions are zany. Jesse’s beard was epic. It’s funny how comfortable he was in the role of clueless uncle. The host had just enough creepy/gallant in his speech to the women to sound a really false note to our ear, and place it in the Mad Men era. The women clearly knew how to play along; what an interesting time.Thanks for bringing this to our attention! Really interesting and fun.