Mark Goodson | |
|---|---|
 Goodson in 1948 | |
| Born | Mark Leo Goodson January 14, 1915 Sacramento, California, U.S. |
| Died | December 18, 1992(1992-12-18) (aged 77) New York City, U.S. |
| Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley (B.S., Economics, 1937) |
| Occupation | Television producer |
| Years active | 1937–1992 |
| Known for | Early television game shows and Goodson-Todman Productions |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 3, includingJonathan Goodson |
Mark Leo Goodson (January 14, 1915 – December 18, 1992) was an American television producer who specialized ingame shows, most frequently with his business partnerBill Todman, with whom he created Goodson-Todman Productions.
Goodson was born in Sacramento, California, on January 14, 1915.[1] His Jewish parents, Abraham Ellis (1875–1954) and Fannie Goodson (1887–1986), emigrated from Russia in the early 1900s. As a child, Goodson acted in amateur theater with the Plaza Stock Company. The family later moved toHayward, California. Originally intending to become a lawyer, Goodson attended theUniversity of California, Berkeley. He financed his education through scholarships and by working at the Lincoln Fish Market. He graduatedPhi Beta Kappa in 1937 with a degree in economics.
That year, he began his broadcasting career in San Francisco, working as a disc jockey at radio station KJBS (nowKFAX). In 1939, he joined radio stationKFRC, where he produced and hosted a radio quiz calledPop the Question in which contestants selected questions by throwing darts at multicolored balloons.
Goodson and long-time partner Bill Todman produced some of the longest-running game shows in American television history, and their names were well known at least to the large audiences for these shows. Their first television show,Winner Take All, debuted on CBS television on July 1, 1948. The long list of Goodson-Todman productions includesThe Price Is Right,Family Feud,Classic Concentration,Match Game,Password,Beat the Clock,To Tell the Truth (Goodson's personal favorite show),I've Got a Secret,What's My Line?,Card Sharks, andTattletales. Goodson-Todman Productions/Mark Goodson Productions created content for American channels and other international channels. (including Talbot Television Ltd. and Fremantle UK Productions Ltd.). such asCBS,NBC, andABC in the US,BBC1,ITV (Anglia,Central,Granada,LWT,TVS,Scottish Television, andYorkshire Television),Channel 4, andSky One, (also Challenge TV). It licensed many of its shows to theReg Grundy Organisation to be adapted in Australia and Europe.
Goodson and Todman's shows endured through the decades, many over multiple runs, because of Goodson's sharp eye for production and presentation, and their strict insistence on maintaining clean, honest contests, thus allowing their shows to survive thequiz-show scandals of the late 1950s. After those scandals wiped out most of their competition, much of the newer game-show output of the 1960s and 1970s came from either Goodson-Todman or companies launched by their former employees:Merv Griffin,Bob Stewart,Monty Hall, and laterJay Wolpert. Goodson-Todman was involved withJack Barry's comeback vehicleThe Joker's Wild for its 1969 pilot, but ended involvement with the show before it debuted in 1972.
While Todman oversaw the company's lucrative businesses outside of television, Goodson handled the creative aspects of producing game shows. The people who worked for the company and created most of the Goodson-Todman shows were pivotal to the success of those shows. Goodson-Todman executives Bob Stewart, Bob Bach,Gil Fates,Ira Skutch,Frank Wayne,Chester Feldman,Paul Alter,Howard Felsher,Ted Cooper, Mimi O'Brien, Jay Wolpert, and others were instrumental in making the shows successful.
The company proved itself to be masterful at games, but was not as successful when it tried other fields of television programs, including the anthology dramasThe Web andThe Richard Boone Show, a talk-variety show for famed insult comicDon Rickles – and what was possibly the company's biggest failure, a sitcom titledOne Happy Family.[2] Goodson-Todman Productions was also involved with threeWesterns:Jefferson Drum (1958–59), starringJeff Richards as a newspaper editor in the Old West;The Rebel (1959–1961), starringNick Adams as a former Confederate soldier who traveled to the West after the American Civil War (Johnny Cash sang the theme); andBranded, starringChuck Connors as a soldier who had wrongly been given a dishonorable discharge from the Army.
For many years, the company was headquartered in theSeagram Building at 375 Park Avenue in New York City. Most of the company's production moved to Hollywood in the early 1970s (as did many other production companies), starting with the ABC revival ofPassword in 1971. The Los Angeles offices were based at 6430 Sunset Boulevard, moving to 5750 Wilshire Boulevard. The company's last New York-based show was the 1980 version ofTo Tell the Truth, but the New York office remained open and was used for East CoastChild's Play auditions.
A few years after Bill Todman's death in 1979, Goodson acquired the Todman heirs' share of the company, and in 1982, the company was renamed Mark Goodson Productions. Traditionally, shows signed off with: "This is (announcer's name) speaking for (show name), A Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Production/A Mark Goodson Television Production." After Goodson's death, to pay off a massive inheritance tax, Goodson's family sold the rights (except forConcentration/Classic Concentration, which had been licensed from NBC) toAll-American Television, which was subsequently taken over byPearson PLC (an educational publisher and communications company based in the United Kingdom), and, in turn, was acquired byRTL Group (a division ofBertelsmann), to formFremantle, which now owns the rights to the library from Mark Goodson Productions. The Mark Goodson Productions name, logo, and announcement continued to be used for some shows until 2007, whenBob Barker's last show ofThe Price Is Right aired. Afterward, at the close of each episode ofThe Price Is Right, the announcer credits the show as "a FremantleMedia Production" until 2018; it is now credited simply as "a Fremantle Production", reflecting the name change of the company. However, for decades week kicking off season 44 in 2015 the Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions announcement was brought back for the throwback 1970s episode and Mark Goodson Productions announcement was brought back for the 1980s and 1990s episodes albeit the Fremantlemedia logo in place.
Copyrights to many of the Goodson-Todman's game shows were assigned to itsspecially formed companies, named inThe (program name) Company scheme, such asThe Family Company,The Password Company etc. They are currently in-name-only units of Fremantle North America.
In 1990, Goodson received theEmmy Award "Lifetime Achievement Award for Daytime Television", which was presented to him byBetty White.[3] Two years later, in 1992, Goodson earned induction into theTelevision Hall of Fame.
Many Goodson-Todman games were produced internationally, some under different titles, and were distributed byReg Grundy Productions.Family Feud was known in the United Kingdom asFamily Fortunes, andCard Sharks went under the titlePlay Your Cards Right. In Germany,Match Game was known asSchnickschnack (loosely translated, "something, anything" and used as a counterpart for the word "blank", for which German has no direct word). In the United Kingdom, it was known asBlankety Blank, while in Australia, it was known asBlankety Blanks (which, coincidentally, was the title of an unrelated American game show, created by former Goodson-Todman staffer Bob Stewart).
Of the numerous shows Goodson produced in his lifetime, four are currently on the air:The Price Is Right, which has run continuously since 1972;Family Feud, which ran in two different iterations during 1976–1985 and 1988–1995, and was revived in its current form in 1999;Password, which was revived in 2022 after a lengthy stint off the air; andMatch Game, which returned in 2025. All revivals since 1994 have been produced by successor companies (All-American Television from 1994 to 1998, Pearson Television from 1998 to 2002, FremantleMedia from 2002 to 2018, and Fremantle since 2018).
In 1982, theCTV Television Network in Canada aired the short-lived Goodson-Todman creationClaim to Fame[4]hosted by Mike McManus, the show invited a celebrity panel to interview guests and discover what had made them famous in their field. The panelists varied fromLois Maxwell,Valerie Pringle, Don Dickerson,Brian Linehan, Deborah Burgess andHarvey Atkin. The series started the 1982–83 season on Tuesdays at 9:30pm but had gone from the schedule verly early in 1983.Gil Fates supervised the production in the studio of CTV affliate stationCJOH-TV Ottawa. Some say the show played very similar to the unsold Bob Stewart pilot creation calledStrictly Confidential[5]hosted byDick Clark in 1980.
In 1941, Goodson married Bluma Neveleff and moved to New York City, where he teamed up with partner Bill Todman. Todman died from a heart condition on July 29, 1979, two days before his 63rd birthday. In 1982, the Goodsons acquired the Todman heirs' portion of the company.
Goodson and Neveleff had two children, Jill (1942) andJonathan (1945). They divorced and he married Virginia McDavid, a formerMiss Alabama. In 1962, Goodson and McDavid had a daughter, Marjorie, who was a prize model onClassic Concentration from July 1987 until its finale in September 1991. In 1972, he married Suzanne Waddell, who had once been a guest onWhat's My Line? They divorced in 1978.[6]
Goodson died ofpancreatic cancer on December 18, 1992, in New York City at the age of 77. He is interred atHillside Memorial Park inCulver City, California, along with his parents Fannie Goodson and A.E. Goodson. After his death, Bob Barker gave him a small tribute that aired after an episode ofThe Price Is Right, as an attached segment that followed the end credits:
This is a very sad time forThe Price Is Right family. We've lost Mr. Mark Goodson, the creator of our show. Mr. Goodson, a legendary figure in television, was respected throughout the industry and we shall miss his guidance in the years to come.
— Bob Barker
Following was a portrait of Goodson and a message saying, "Mark Goodson 1915–1992".
Reruns of Goodson's shows have continued to dominate both the schedules ofGame Show Network andBuzzr because his company saved most of the episodes of the shows, while other companies wiped theirs to reuse the tapes. Thepractice of wiping was stopped by the start of the 1980s.
On June 3, 2000, an episode ofBiography calledMark Goodson: Will the Real Mark Goodson Please Stand Up?[7]aired onA&E hosted byHarry Smith and narrated by Russell Buchanan, where it profiled his life and career. This features many interviews of the hosts, panelists, and co-workers such asBetty White,Bob Barker,Gene Rayburn,Kitty Carlisle, Marjorie Goodson, and Suzanne Goodson.
On June 6, 2009, an awards special that aired onGSN called2009 Game Show Awards presented byAlex Trebek, featured a brief tribute to Goodson as his daughter Marjorie held the Innovator Award herself.
The series was based on the British format calledAnt & Dec's/Vernon Kay's Gameshow Marathon and ran on CBS from May 31 until June 29, 2006, hosted by former actress/talk show hostRicki Lake, announced byRich Fields (who formerly announced forThe Price is Right from 2004 until 2010), andTodd Newton as the prize deliverer in which six celebrities (Lance Bass,Paige Davis,Tim Meadows,Kathy Najimy,Leslie Nielsen, andBrande Roderick) played seven classic game shows for their favorite charities and the home viewer featured five formats based on Goodson-Todman/Goodson shows along with the recreation of their original sets such asThe Price is Right (1972 version),Beat the Clock,Card Sharks,Match Game andFamily Feud.
From 2014 until 2016, the Buzzr brand was first used by its parent company FremantleMedia (now Fremantle) for its YouTube channel created by its digital-content studio Tiny Riot. The online channel features mostly classic clips along with its short-form reboots of its classic game-show properties using various internet celebrities as contestants. Four of the Goodson-Todman/Goodson shows that were rebooted areFamily Feud,Password,Beat the Clock, andBody Language.
