The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

Post by Roadgeek Adam »

Some more:

Allan Shepard, a sales manager for the Boston and Maine Railroad, at the time the highest winning total in Jeopardy history.

William (Bill) Martin, a music teacher from Ronkonkoma, New York, is mentioned here

Rosemary Travis, of Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, is mentioned here.
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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

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Can you post the remainder of the 1971 article you found? Thanks!
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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

Post by Roadgeek Adam »

I checked, there isn't.
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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

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Back in the days where if there weren't any more column-inches, tough.
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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

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New article found on Jane Gschwend. It doesn't add much that you didn't already have, but it notes the 2000th show for charity and the winner would get a 1000-book library. Did note though that she was the all-time record holder in winnings in April 1969. The 2000th Show is now on YouTube as well as of September 2019.

The article is from the Sunday News of Lancaster, February 6, 1972. Unfortunately the copy does not have the other part. Given she died at age 77 on October 14, 1997, it is reasonable to assume she was 49 during her run in 1969.

Susan Smith of the 1971 TOC won $4,970. (Binghamton Press, October 28, 1971)

More on Rosemary Travis [1973] here, but not much. (The Terre Haute Tribune, November 13, 1973). Also some more specifics on the 1973 TOC charities and Greece trip. (The Mercury of Pottstown, Pennsyvania, November 10, 1973)
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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

Post by Robert K S »

Thanks for these!
Roadgeek Adam wrote: Wed Nov 13, 2019 10:11 pm New article found on Jane Gschwend.
The article notes she spoiled the outcome (she was the winner of Fleming show #2000) and then said nobody had told her not to. I guess there were no NDAs back then.
Roadgeek Adam wrote: Wed Nov 13, 2019 10:11 pm Susan Smith of the 1971 TOC...
The article says she qualified in October 1971 for the 1971 ToC that taped and aired in November 1971, but, in fact, she didn't appear until the 1972 ToC, which taped and aired in November 1972.

I don't know when or how our culture evolved to call women by their husband's names but man am I glad we've moved beyond that in all but a few holdout sectors of society.
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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

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That was odd considering she was billed by her own name on the show.
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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

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Robert K S wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2019 11:52 am The article says she qualified in October 1971 for the 1971 ToC that taped and aired in November 1971, but, in fact, she didn't appear until the 1972 ToC, which taped and aired in November 1972.

I don't know when or how our culture evolved to call women by their husband's names but man am I glad we've moved beyond that in all but a few holdout sectors of society.

Just a typo on my part. Apologies.

Unfortunately, many of the female TOC members have their hubby's names instead. It has caused some headaches
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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

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Cross-posted from another thread, the obituary of 1974 Grand Champion Denny Golden, who died in 2017. https://fergusonfuneralhomesnj.com/book ... ituary.php
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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

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Since no one has mentioned it yet...

Hutton "Red" Gibson, 1968 Jeopardy! Grand Champion (though better known for his views on the Catholic Church and even better known as the father of actor Mel Gibson) passed away on May 11th at the age of 101 (b 26 Aug 1918).

Obituary

As far as I know, he is/was the only J! contestant to be a centenarian. Are there any others?
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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

Post by Bamaman »

The original show ran for over ten years so I am sure there would be others. The current show maybe not. Maybe someone from an early Seniors Tournament in the Alex era?
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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

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tagNV wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 12:17 pm Since no one has mentioned it yet...

Hutton "Red" Gibson, 1968 Jeopardy! Grand Champion (though better known for his views on the Catholic Church and even better known as the father of actor Mel Gibson) passed away on May 11th at the age of 101 (b 26 Aug 1918).

Obituary

As far as I know, he is/was the only J! contestant to be a centenarian. Are there any others?
Thanks for posting, I hadn't seen anything in the media about this.

Say what you want about his theology, but you have to give him props for the ultimate sedevacantist punny book title, Is the Pope Catholic?

Also he's in kind of a weird category of people independently famous (perhaps to different subsets of followers) for three totally unrelated things. I wonder how many others can be put in that category. Perhaps Ben Franklin (inventor, statesman, author/publisher, father of imprisoned loyalist colonial Governor of New Jersey), but all his facets of celebrity (except, perhaps, William) are sort of inextricably tied up in his lifelong self-promotion. Even Hedy Lamarr didn't gain substantial notoriety for her invention of frequency hopping during her lifetime.
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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

Post by Bamaman »

I found this on YouTube. It is an audio of the 10/30/1969 TOC game.

https://youtu.be/btdaw3rBOPU
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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

Post by finishemzoe »

I figured now would be an appropriate time to revive this thread, with the 1964 pilot episode coming into fruition.

Any new data on how many games these TOC players won, besides their money (defeated or undefeated)? It'd be cool to know how much they won in their respective TOCs as well. If I can gather that data, I'll make a separate section on the leaderboard for Fleming era TOC players.
sup, i'm bliss.

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JEOPARDY! LEADERBOARD HERE: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... mYjSS0weM/

SUBSTACK: https://livinginjeopardy.substack.com/
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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

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Robert K S wrote: Sun Aug 17, 2014 6:02 pm
MattOttinger - Senior Member - Join Date: Sep 2001 - Posts: 1,331
Trebek HAS played Celebrity Jeopardy

Thing is, it was in 1974.

Don't know if this has ever been mentioned, or if I've got a wonderful new nugget of information. I was checking over some notes a researcher gave me about the Fleming-era Jeopardy, and it turns out that Alex was a celebrity player late in the original run of the show. What my guy found were original paper records from NBC that documented some interesting information about special shows or happenings.

Trebek appeared on one show the week of April 1-5, 1974 (and no, this isn't an April Fool's gag) as part of a special week marking the show's 10th anniversary. The notes say his opponents were Bill Hayes (at the time, a popular soap star) and Bill Bixby. He doesn't have any record of how they performed, who the other celebrities were that week, or why the producers picked two guys named "Bill" for the same show. At the time, Trebek was the host of a short-lived game show called "The Wizard of Odds". In fact, the notes indicate that Trebek made a walk-on appearance a month earlier, on March 7th, to plug his new game.

Celebrity games tied to the show's anniversary were apparently a tradition of sorts, as was using NBC daytime stars as celebs for those shows. According to the notes, a second anniversary game in 1966 featured Hugh Downs, Don Morrow and Monty Hall, and an eighth anniversary game in 1972 featured Peter Marshall, Bill Cullen and Art James. I actually have some photos from the 1972 game in my stash of Bill Cullen stuff.

There's virtually nothing in the notes about civilian contestants. Burns isn't mentioned, for example, but there is a note that says on February 4, 1974, William Tyman became the show's biggest winner with $8,500. My guess is that's a five-day total not counting ToC winnings. That would be the equivalent of winning $170,000 in five shows today.

I hope this dip into the past has been interesting to at least some of you.
Matt's researcher friend was undoubtedly looking at the Master Books broadcast logs, either in the Library of Congress or at some other site. I'd be curious to know who the researcher was, what else he may have found, and what project his research was for. Hitting interesting Jeopardy! information on those microfilms is like finding a needle in a haystack. Going through a few weeks' worth of shows can take a full day of spooling through microfilms. And the reading room where you can do it has pretty short hours. As I already posted, though, the Master Books log does have info about Burns Cameron's appearances.
FWIW, I asked the UCLA Film & Television Archive if they could take a look at their copy of the April 5, 1973 episode of Jeopardy! and I got this reply:
Unfortunately, this episode of JEOPARDY! is on a vintage open reel 1/2" video that is unidentified, with no contestant information. At present, the Archive does not maintain the equipment necessary to playback this poor format and it is likely that due to age the tapes themselves are no longer in playable condition. ... If you have not already, ... try the Library of Congress at http://www.loc.gov/rr/mopic
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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

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Hello, first time commenter, long-time Jeopardy! fan with a note about a past Jeopardy! champion that I believe may be optimal to bring up on this thread. I am an avid fan of the public radio quiz show Says You! (http://www.saysyou.net), where two teams of three panelists play games generally about words, definitions, and lexicography (think elements of My Word! on BBC Radio and The Liar's Club). It aired on NPR affiliates from 1997-2021 and still gets aired in reruns on some affiliates and on podcasting services. One of the many guest panelists over the years is Dr. Stuart Mushlin, a Boston-area internal medicine doctor, Harvard Medical School professor, and author. Seven episodes are available to stream online for free featuring Stuart as a panelist (always teamed up with his wife, regular panelist Francine Achbar), and this episode introduction by then-host Richard Sher caught my attention:

He's a former undefeated Jeopardy! champion, finally, finally in the big time, Dr. Stuart Mushlin! (link: https://beta.prx.org/stories/142279. They tagged it as SY-903 from this re-airing, I'm fairly certain it's actually the premiere of season 7 in 2003)

This got me looking up the name, as I didn't recognize a Stuart Mushlin as a Jeopardy! champion of renown. Assuming Richard's introduction was accurate, that would mean that Stuart was at least a retired 5 day champion, but all 5 day champions are accounted for on the modern version, as are anyone who won a tournament that didn't play in the Tournament of Champions. The last name Mushlin has no JBoard or J-Archive hits, and the only Google hits for "Stuart Mushlin" and "Jeopardy" that firmly referenced the show came from Says You!'s website, and not in any detail. I next looked up surviving records on the Art Fleming versions, and the name doesn't come up as a match on this thread of the 1964-1975 Tournament of Champions competitors unless his name wasn't recorded in surviving materials or he wasn't invited for one reason or another (thusly keeping him undefeated).

However, I did find the tape traders listing for a 1979 Tournament of Champions finals game between contestants named Stuart, Todd, and Phillip that taped in December 1978. The episode was allegedly posted on YouTube once but I didn't find it there in a quick search. Pictures of Stuart Mushlin more recently can be found on medical pages if that is of any use. According to HealthGrades.com, Stuart is 75 years old, which would make him around 30 years old during the 1978 ToC tapings. I believe his Jeopardy! run was referenced on Says You! episodes beyond the S7 E1 introduction, but in the context of "Ask Stuart, he was a Jeopardy! champion", not so much an interview, as they always got by more on friendly camaraderie wrapped around the game proper. If anyone wants to poke around the freely streamable episodes that he's in for a relevant reference, the others are episodes 1-4 of season 19 and in episodes 3-4 of episode 20, and all can definitely be heard on PRX. Stuart was in more episodes than this, but most episodes from seasons 1-17 are not currently available to stream for free, and he did not appear on the show after S20 E4, which aired in late 2016. He was at least in episode 4 of season 13 too, but but that is only available as a paid download at the moment.

Apologies if this got long-winded, I just figured it was worth sharing the possibility that the winner of the 1979 Tournament of Champions may have been identified (thusly confirming Richard Sher's announcement that Stuart was an undefeated Jeopardy! champion), though the possibility exists that this Stuart just had the same first name, and Stuart Mushlin's run came too late in 1975 or 1979 before either version ended to qualify for a ToC. Maybe the tape of the 1979 finals episode gave last names, but on tape trading sites that list this episode that I found, they don't give that much detail, and this thread doesn't include an entry on the 1979 season's ToC. That's all that I've got, but I do recommend listening to Says You!, it is an amusing but very challenging program, I enjoy playing random episodes of it on long road trips and as background audio when volunteering at a local bookstore. Have a good day!
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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

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NeedlessToSay wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 12:16 am the winner of the 1979 Tournament of Champions may have been identified [as Stuart Mushlin]
Great info, thanks! The early posts in this thread cover the the original daytime version of the show that aired on NBC 1964-03-30 to 1975-01-03. Fleming did two other Jeopardy! shows, a weekly nighttime syndicated show that lasted 12 months from 1974-09 to 1975-09, and an NBC weekday revival called The All-New Jeopardy! that lasted six months from 1978-10 to 1979-03. This remembrance of 1973 daytime contestant Marissa Piesman indicates that the 1974-1975 nighttime show included what she characterizes as a ToC cast (at least in part, and maybe in whole) from contestants from the daytime show, and that she was on it. Marissa remembers well Fleming's "ludicrous silver lamé tuxedo jacket" from the syndicated show. (The fact that she was only a 2-time champ makes me think it wasn't really a ToC, but just that she was a prime choice as a contestant for the new syndicated show, having proven herself on the original show.)

Given the short run of the 1978-1979 revival, I guess it surprises me a bit that they had a ToC, which Dr. Mushlin might have been involved in. But if you find any other information, post back here!
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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

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Just poked around online to see if I could glean anything else about Stuart Mushlin on Jeopardy! and/or the 1979 ToC. Here's what I came up with:

Newspapers.com has no Google hits for Mushlin and Jeopardy in 1979, but given the nature of how their scans are transcribed, that doesn't necessarily mean he didn't make the newspaper for appearing on the show, just that they didn't detect those words in scans from that year.

In this tape trader's collection listing (https://gameshowchest.weebly.com/games-f-l.html), he notes that the Stuart/Todd/Philip ToC final "contains a truly exciting Double Jeopardy!" and that his copy of it "counts as half an episode due to virtually all non-gameplay footage being cut", which may explain the description for tape trading copies of the episode don't give the finalists' last names. He did not say who won the game there. This person lists having six episodes from the 1978-79 version in their collection, including the series finale. While the 1979 finals episode is abbreviated, it is tagged as "OB" (original broadcast).

This tape trader listing (https://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/at ... 1530893788) has the same episodes, and they confirm that the circulating ToC finals episode was partial, but it says it is "the 1978 Toc game" (the Jeopardy! History Fandom wiki says it was taped in December 1978 and aired in 1979). That wiki also says that finalist Todd was first on this version in week 1 in 1978, and that game (episode #2 from October 3rd, 1978) is posted in full on The Internet Archive. If accurate, then he is Todd Russell, an equipment installer from Santa Ana, California, and in that circulating game (his debut), he defeated Harriet Ottobiano (unsure of spelling), a homemaker from Seal Beach, California, and returning 1 day champion Richard Prince, a graduate student from Pacific Palisades, California who won $6,025 in his debut. Todd won with $7,200 after Final Jeopardy!, with Harriet in second place and Richard eliminated first. Hopefully someone posts what they have of the finals episode somewhere, as IDing Stuart alone would be useful.

Also, based on visuals, it seems VERY likely that this is the same Richard Prince that competed on the December 8th, 1995 episode of the modern Jeopardy!, albeit not doing nearly as well as he did in episode 1 of the 1978 version (https://archive.org/details/JeopardyOct ... arrietTodd and https://www.j-archive.com/showplayer.php?player_id=6970 to compare). Winning the series premiere of the 1978 version strikes me as a worthy footnote for his contestant page!
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Re: The Tournament of Champions in the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy!

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Okay, I think I found a still image of Stuart (Mushlin or otherwise) in the 1979 Tournament of Champions game. A thumbnail from the now-deleted YouTube copy still exists on the US Game Shows Fandom wiki's video gallery page for Jeopardy! (https://gameshows.fandom.com/wiki/Jeopa ... eo_Gallery), and if the contestant order in tape trader copies (Stuart/Todd/Philip) is accurate to what was seen on air, then the image has to depict Stuart based on the red/white square patterns behind him. Of course, the thumbnail is zoomed in to where his name is cropped out of view, but if Todd is the same Todd Russell in the October 1978 game on the Internet Archive as is claimed elsewhere, then the only way this is Philip is if the contestant placement that tape traders give is incorrect. I adjusted the dimensions to make it 4:3 as the YouTube upload was stretched to 16:9

https://ibb.co/sjgphwC

Is this Dr. Stuart Mushlin? I can't 100% say, but based on his image on his U.S. News & Health Report profile (https://health.usnews.com/doctors/stuart-mushlin-13982), the mustache, glasses, and similar hairstyle are noted
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