The $64,000 Question

The format of the show remained largely the same through its 12-year run; a contestant was asked a series of progressively more difficult questions which began at $1 and ended at a top prize of $64.

The key: Revlon founder and chieftain Charles Revson knew top competitor Hazel Bishop had fattened its sales through sponsoring the popular This Is Your Life, and he wanted a piece of that action if he could have it.

To capitalize on the initial television success, the show was also simulcast for two months on CBS Radio where it was heard from October 4, 1955, to November 29, 1955.

Although this board was a large part of the set, it was seen only briefly, evidently to conceal the fact that categories were sometimes hastily added to match a new contestant's subject.

April 8, 1956 saw the debut of The $64,000 Challenge (initially co-sponsored by Revlon and Lorillard Tobacco Company's Kent cigarettes), hosted through August 26 by future children's television star Sonny Fox and then, for the remainder of the show's life, Ralph Story.

Other such newly made celebrities included Italian-born Bronx shoemaker Gino Prato, who won $32,000 for his encyclopedic knowledge of opera.

Answering questions about boxing, she became, after McCutchen, the second top winner, and went on to a career providing psychological advice in newspaper columns and TV shows for the next four decades.

The American Experience (PBS) episode probing the scandal noted: All the big winners became instant celebrities and household names.

For the first time, America's heroes were intellectuals or experts–jockey Billy Pearson on art, Marine Captain McCutchen on cooking–every subject from the Bible to baseball.

Cobbler Gino Prato, whose category was opera, was brought to Italy for a special performance at la Scala and honored by an audience with the Pope.

[7] One category on the Revlon Category Board was "Jazz", and within months of the premiere Columbia Records issued a 1955 album of various jazz artists under the tie-in title $64,000 Jazz (CL 777, also EP B-777), with the following tracks: "The Shrike" (Pete Rugolo), "Perdido" (J.J. Johnson, Kai Winding), "Laura" (Erroll Garner), "Honeysuckle Rose" (Benny Goodman), "Tawny" (Woody Herman), "One O'Clock Jump" (Harry James), "How Hi the Fi" (Buck Clayton), "I'm Comin', Virginia" (Eddie Condon), "A Fine Romance" (Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond), "I Let A Song Go Out of My Heart" (Duke Ellington), and "Ain't Misbehavin'" (Louis Armstrong).

Other musical tie-ins included the 1955 song "The $64,000 Question (Do You Love Me)", recorded by Bobby Tuggle (Checker 823), Jackie Brooks (Decca 29684), and the Burton Sisters (RCA Victor 47-6265).

"Love Is the $64,000 Question" (1956), which used the show's theme music by Norman F. Leyden with added Fred Ebb lyrics, was recorded by Hal March (Columbia 40684), Karen Chandler (Decca 29881), Jim Lowe (Dot 15456), and Tony Travis (RCA Victor 47-6476).

At the height of its popularity, The $64,000 Question was referenced in the scripts of other CBS shows, usually but not exclusively through punch lines that included references to "the isolation booth" or "reaching the first plateau".

Typical of these was spoken by The Honeymooners' Ed Norton (Art Carney), who identified three times in a man's life when he wants to be alone, with the third being "when he's in the isolation booth of The $64,000 Question".

At least three other Honeymooners episodes referenced Question: In A Woman's Work Is Never Done Ralph proposes to Alice that he go on the show because he's an expert in the "Aggravation" category.

In mid-August 1958, while both Question and Challenge had already been announced as part of CBS's fall lineup, the network's quiz show Dotto was cancelled without explanation.

The $64,000 Question was closely monitored by its sponsor's CEO, Revlon's Charles Revson, who often interfered with production, especially attempting to bump contestants he himself disliked, regardless of audience reaction.

Revson's brother, Martin, was assigned to oversee production, including heavy discussions of feedback the show received.

[14] Nadler's victory was called into question when he failed a civil service exam in 1960 applying a job for the United States Census Bureau.

Louis Cowan, made CBS Television president as a result of Question's fast success, was forced out of the network as the quiz scandal ramped up, even though it was NBC's quiz shows bearing most of the brunt of the scandal – and even though CBS itself, with a little help from sponsor Colgate-Palmolive, had moved fast in cancelling the popular Dotto at almost the moment it was confirmed that that show had been rigged.

Cowan had never been suspected of taking part in any attempt to rig either Question or Challenge; later CBS historians suggested his reputation as an administrative bottleneck may have had as much to do with his firing as his tie to the tainted shows.

Cowan may have been a textbook sacrificial lamb, in a bid to preempt any further scandal while the network scrambled to recover, and while president Frank Stanton accepted complete responsibility for any wrongdoing committed under his watch.

Over the course of the early 1960s, the networks wound down their five-figure jackpot game shows; Jackpot Bowling (1959–1961) and Make That Spare (1960–1964), which both escaped the fallout due to bowling being harder to fix, a period on Beat the Clock (1960) when its Bonus Stunt grew in $100 increments past the $10,000 mark until finally being won for $20,100 on September 23, You Bet Your Life (ended 1961) and the more lavish prize offerings on The Nighttime Price Is Right (1957–1964) were the few remaining shows offering large prizes.

[17] None of the people directly involved in rigging any of the quiz shows faced any penalty more severe than suspended sentences for perjury before the federal grand jury that probed the scandal, even if many hosts and producers found themselves frozen out of television for many years.

In 2000, responding to the success of Millionaire, CBS bought the rights to the property in a reported effort to produce another revival attempt, called $64,000 Question (with a top prize of $1,024,000), to be hosted by sportscaster Greg Gumbel.

Initially the rules and the studio set-up matched the original's, but in 1975 both were changed by Wojciech Pijanowski, creator, producer, writer, and/or host of many quiz shows in Poland in the late 20th century, as the isolation booth was abandoned and a large turntable was added in the center of the studio floor, displaying the prize amount for each round, upon which the envelopes containing the questions were placed.