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    Museum to Create a National Archives of Game Show History

    The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, N.Y., will house the archives, which it hopes will include set pieces, audience tickets, press photos and other memorabilia.“Showcase Showdowns” and “Daily Doubles” of yesteryear will no longer be relegated to just reruns.A museum in Rochester, N.Y., announced on Wednesday that it would serve as the home of a first-of-its-kind National Archives of Game Show History to preserve artifacts and footage from programs like “Jeopardy!” “The Price Is Right” and “The $25,000 Pyramid.”The archives will be housed at the Strong National Museum of Play, which is undergoing an expansion that will add 90,000 square feet to its space and that it expects to be completed by 2023.Curators at the museum already have some ideas about what types of artifacts would make an ideal centerpiece and are asking for items from collectors.“The wheel from ‘Wheel of Fortune’ would be iconic,” Chris Bensch, the museum’s vice president for collections, said in an interview on Wednesday. The museum, he said, would gladly accept the letter board, along with a dress from the show’s famous letter-turner, Vanna White.Museum officials said there was a void of preservation groups dedicated to game shows. They represent a key aspect of television and cultural history in America, from the earliest panel shows and the quiz-show scandals of the 1950s to big-money mainstays of evening television.“It is something we feel uniquely qualified to do,” Mr. Bensch said of the museum, which opened in 1982.The archive’s creation is part of the broader expansion at the museum, which is being supported by a $60 million campaign. The cost of the archive is yet to be determined.Several marquee names have already lined up in support of the project, according to the museum, which said that the archive’s co-founders are Howard Blumenthal and Bob Boden, the producers of “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” and “Funny You Should Ask.”The museum, which is already home to the World Video Game Hall of Fame and the National Toy Hall of Fame, has found another key ally: Ken Jennings, the record-setting “Jeopardy!” champion.“There’s like a pleasant nostalgia to game shows for generations of Americans,” Mr. Jennings said in an interview on Wednesday.Calling the preservation effort overdue, Mr. Jennings said that people were starting to realize the importance of game shows the way they did with other great 20th century art forms like jazz and comic books.“I think it’s the game show’s turn,” he said.In a statement released through the museum, Wink Martindale, the veteran game show host, said there was a certain urgency to the preservation effort.“Without this initiative, many primary resources relating to these shows, as well as oral histories of their creators and talent, risked being lost forever,” he said.The museum, which welcomed nearly 600,000 visitors in 2019 before the pandemic, said it was seeking to acquire everything from set pieces and audience tickets to press photographs.“It deserves a place where it can be preserved, a place where scholars, media and the general public can access it,” Mr. Bensch said.The museum is not limiting its focus to those in front of the camera. Officials said contestants, television crews and audience members would play an important role in preserving the history of game shows.“There are so many significant folks who have shaped this industry over the years,” Mr. Bensch said. “They deserve a chance to tell their stories. We also have plans to do video oral histories with key people so we will capture their stories directly and share those with the world.”It seems the museum has a lead on an artifact.“If they want a necktie I lost on ‘Jeopardy!’ with,” Mr. Jennings said, “they’re happy to have it.” More

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    On Alex Trebek's Last ‘Jeopardy!,’ Johnny Gilbert Gives a Final Introduction

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn Alex Trebek’s Final ‘Jeopardy!,’ a Last Introduction From a FriendJohnny Gilbert, 92, started on the game show with Trebek in 1984. Now, he must imagine a ‘Jeopardy!’ without his longtime colleague.“I have never thought of anyone as host of the show except Alex,” said Johnny Gilbert, who had been with the show for as long as Alex Trebek. He’ll have to adjust to introducing new hosts.Credit…Jeopardy! ProductionsJan. 7, 2021Updated 11:45 a.m. ETFor more than 36 years, Johnny Gilbert has said the same 10 words, with the same mixture of razzle-dazzle and lofty cadence of a practiced showman: “And now, here is the host of ‘Jeopardy!’… Alex Trebek!” Trebek would appear with a wave and a smile, and the game would begin.He has delivered some version of that familiar warm-up more than 8,000 times, ever since Trebek’s first episode, which aired on Sept. 10, 1984, when the newly minted host strode onto the stage sporting a dark, bushy mustache and a pale pink pocket square. But on Friday, television audiences will see Gilbert’s final introduction of a longtime colleague who had become a pal, as the last episode that was filmed before Trebek’s death in November is broadcast.Johnny Gilbert introducing Alex Trebek on TV for the first time.“As much pain that he was in, I just never thought he was actually dying,” Gilbert said. “The day I heard that, part of me left this world.”Next week “Jeopardy!” will return with Gilbert introducing a new name: Ken Jennings, a record-breaking former contestant, who will be the first in a series of new, interim hosts.“It was a very bizarre feeling,” Gilbert, 92, said in an interview on Wednesday. “I have never thought of anyone as host of the show except Alex.”After Trebek’s death, Gilbert, who has had a roughly 70-year career in entertainment, said that he wondered whether it was the right time to leave. At that point, because of the pandemic, he had not been working at the studio, in Culver City, Calif., but had been recording his announcements from a bedroom in his Venice Beach home.“I thought, ‘Gee, can I go on doing this? Can I still do what the show needs?’” he said. “And I decided, yes, I would go on. I would go on because Alex wanted the show to go on.”When Trebek died at age 80 in November after battling Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, the show’s producers made clear that there would be no rush to fill the role of a man who had been the face and voice of “Jeopardy!” for so long. Only 10 days before his death, Trebek had been in the studio filming, and the show had enough episodes to finish the year. Instead of finishing in the last week of 2020, a chaotic week for television and for viewers, the show decided to push Trebek’s final five episodes to this week.The show also recognized that Gilbert was among many who felt unsettled by a new host delivering “Jeopardy!” clues. Instead of choosing a permanent successor right away, they opted for a series of interim hosts. Jennings, the only guest host who has been officially announced, has already taped 30 episodes, a spokeswoman for the show said. (In recent days, Jennings has received some flak on social media for posting insensitive tweets in the past, for which he apologized, raising questions about whether he would be in the role permanently.) The Los Angeles Times reported this week that Katie Couric had been signed as another guest host, but the show would not confirm that.Gilbert, the announcer on “Jeopardy!,” started with the show’s first episode in 1984.Credit…Michael Loccisano/FilmMagic, via Getty ImagesGilbert and Trebek, who both worked in television in the early 1980s, met at a party in Hollywood a couple of years before Merv Griffin decided to mount a new production of “Jeopardy!” Gilbert was already a known entity in daytime TV, having worked as a golden-voiced announcer for “The Price Is Right” and Dinah Shore’s daily talk show.In his memoir, published last summer, Trebek wrote that he had recommended Gilbert to Griffin: “How could you forget a voice like that?” (Gilbert’s voice wasn’t just used for announcing; he was a singer early in his career and recorded two albums in the 1960s.)What resulted, Gilbert said, was a friendship that involved a lot of chatting in dressing rooms, good-natured teasing in front of studio audiences and a deep mutual respect. On the set of “Jeopardy!,” Trebek would often poke fun at Gilbert’s age, joking that he had been the announcer for Abraham Lincoln.“We’ve been together longer than either one of our marriages, and we’ve never had a cross word,” Trebek wrote of Gilbert in his memoir.Wearing one of his many “Jeopardy!” branded varsity-style jackets, Gilbert would warm up the audience before the tapings, urging them to talk to Trebek during commercial breaks and ask him any questions that they might have. When the time came, Trebek would talk with audience members endlessly, Gilbert recalled, adding that more than once Trebek’s involved chats with members of the studio audience would outlast commercial breaks.Gilbert recalled how Trebek continued to work through his illness. When Trebek was receiving chemotherapy treatments, Gilbert said, there were times when he was clearly in great pain. Sometimes he was too unwell for the usual banter between episodes with the production staff.Trebek wrote in his memoir that there were days during his illness where he could barely walk to production meetings. But after Gilbert delivered his trademark introduction — “And now, here is the host of ‘Jeopardy!’… Alex Trebek!” — Trebek wrote that he would feel like himself again, and be able to walk out onto the stage.That transformation was apparent to Gilbert, too.“Regardless of how he felt when he walked out onstage,” Gilbert said, “when I introduced him, there was Alex Trebek.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More