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Mark Goodson

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GSFan:
We all know that Mark Goodson built an extremely successful production company.  Of all his game shows, which ones did he actually create?  Bob Stewart created TPIR and Password.  Who came up with the concepts for G-T's other programs?

Does anyone know if a biography of Goodson was ever published?

David

Matt Ottinger:
Other people on this board were closer to a lot of the action that I ever was, but the general consensus that's come up over the years is that Goodson didn't really "create" as such very many of his games at all (if any, actually).  He's usually given credit for taking good game ideas and turning them into even better TV shows.  Or at the very least surrounding himself with people who could do that for him and having the instinct to recognize when they had it right.

By way of comparison, look at Bob Stewart when he went independent.  Sure, Pyramid turned out to be a company-making monster hit.   Most everything else he did, however, tended to be clever ideas that we fans recognized as decent games but that the general public never really loved.  Also, Stewart shows were notorious for tinkering with rules and formats after they had been running for a while.  Had he still been making those formats for Goodson, half of them would never have seen the light of day, and the others would have been hammered out to something resembling perfection before they got on the air.

zachhoran:
[quote name=\'GSFan\' date=\'Oct 15 2003, 10:36 AM\'] We all know that Mark Goodson built an extremely successful production company.  Of all his game shows, which ones did he actually create?  Bob Stewart created TPIR and Password.  Who came up with the concepts for G-T's other programs?

Does anyone know if a biography of Goodson was ever published?

David [/quote]
 STeve Ryan was responsible for Blockbusters, Puzzlers, and Spellbinders(the latter two of course unsold pilots), and I think maybe Trivia Trap as well.

CHester Feldman was responsible for Card Sharks

Jay WOlpert was responsible for Trebek Double Dare

Jimmy Owen:
Monty Hall had some interesting information on the creation of a couple of well known Goodson shows in his book "Emcee Monty Hall."  The book is long out of print, but in a nutshell, the creation of a game show generally is a group effort, with ideas brought to the table and refined by different people, so that no one person is the "creator," and sometimes the guy who first brought the idea to the table isn't properly credited.

uncamark:
Stewart also created "TTTT"--the show that first got him through the door at G-T.

Bob Bach was considered the main force behind "WML?"--although there were a lot of fathers in that one.

Bob Noah is considered the creator of the original "Match Game" concept--but Jean Hollander Kopelman was the original producer and Ira Skutch and Bob Sherman (and Gene Rayburn indirectly) were responsible for the changes in format and tone in the 70s version.

The only show that you could probably say out-and-out was a creation of Goodson and Todman was "Winner Take All," the show that got them started.

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