About John Bergman Expertise I can answer all questions on game shows, hosts, rules and history of those fantastic game shows from the 1950`s to today.
Experience I'm a game show freak and I have invented about three to four games that can be easily turned into game shows.
Question I apologize , actually the hearings showed that giving the awnsers in advance of questions being asked was common practice for game shows in the fifities. Which leads to yet another question , Why sell all of your product to a single sponsor , the Colgate Comedy Hour for example , this leaves a single sponsor with make-or-break power. This was common in radio , but why? wouldnt it have made more sense to sell a little at a time.
I would like more information on Barry and Enright -those two were marked men after twenty-one how in the world did they get a second strike?.
Barry was Enright's right hand , I always considered him as having an equal amount of scorn and blame with Enright , and rightfully so.
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Followup To
Question -
I have always wondered if Geritol knew about the corruption going on behind twenty one , if they did why didnt they pull support.
I also wonder why NBC never did the same , the Congressional Investigation showed they had knowledge of what was hapening.
Answer -
Dear Chris:
Those are really good questions. I knew that Geritol had knowledge of what was going and even the president for marketing for the company was into it because of the sales that was generated for Geritol when the show was a big hit.
As for NBC, that's a new one. I didn't think that they had knowledge that this was happening until all of this controversy came out. I knew that after the game show scandals, NBC bought CONCENTRATION from Barry and Enright and made into their own show.
Let me ask you, do you think Jack Barry had anything to do with the game shows? I'v egot some info on that if you like to know.
JOHN
Answer Dear Chris:
Involving your first question, the reason why that many companies had big time sponsorship during that era was because back then the companies were the ones putting up the money and the time to put these shows on the ground. Back then, in the early days of television, there were only three major networks and they didn't have the budgets for many of these shows, so in order to afford those shows and the stars, the networks had to kowtow to these companies such as Colgate, Geritol, etc. It wasn't till the end of the game show scandals that the practice of the company having the power was eliminated and it went to the networks.
AS for Jack barry, in my opinion, I don't think he had anything to do with the scandals. THe reason why is that in the movie QUIZ SHOW, a good movie even though it has some bad language, the guy who gave up his championship on 21 asked Enright if Barry knew what was going on. Enright's response was that he didn't know and that he didn't need to know, for he was the face in the camera. I like Jack Barry and I think he got treated wrongly. but since his name was part of the credits, he got part of the blame. He went into obscurity in Canada until 1969 when he was the substitute host of THE GENERATION GAP and then to 1972, when his great creation, THE JOKER'S WILD, made him into a star again and rightfully so.
I hope this answers your question. You might want to find more about BARRY-ENRIGHT on the Internet.
