The Answer Is… IMPROVISATION AND PREPARATION

The successful game show hosts are all very good at ad-libbing. They don’t need a script. They may need cue cards to help them with the next element of the show itself, but they’re able to converse with the contestants and draw the contestants out and get funny responses or create something funny out of an off-the-wall comment made by a contestant.

Bob Eubanks, for instance—he called the other day, wishing me well. He hasn’t been on the air hosting a game show in years, but he’s still well-remembered. He used to get a lot of mileage just out of a look. As a host, you learn how to do that. You learn that a pause, just a pause, can be worth its weight in gold. Because a contestant will say something, and you pause, you look at the camera, and sometimes you don’t even have to say anything. You don’t have to make the comment. The viewers at home or the studio audience, they make the transition for you. They get the joke. They laugh. And you just continue. That’s part of being a good host. And there are some guys who do it better than others. Peter Marshall was a master on The Hollywood Squares. You have to be aware of stuff like that.

Before the show starts, I’ll stand backstage and try to think of what I’m going to say when I walk out. Because I don’t want to be repetitious with regard to the opening of the show, I try to come up with different ways of welcoming the audience. If it’s Valentine’s Day, I’ll open with “Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.” Or if the contestants are all from the East Coast, I’ll open with “Today, we’ve got three contestants all from the Eastern Seaboard.” Yet because of our taping schedule, there’s usually a couple of months between when we tape the shows and when they air. So my banter can’t be too topical. If a contestant is a fan of a particular football team, for instance, I can’t say, “They’re looking good this year.” Because by the time the show runs they might be in last place in the standings. So I have to be a little more broad.

Still, you try to find something, some element that might be of interest to your viewers. Your job is to keep it fresh, keep it alive, keep your viewers interested in what’s going on. I don’t plan what I’m going to say fifteen or twenty minutes in advance. Because twenty minutes earlier I’m wrapping up the previous show. So I try to be creative there. And that puts a little pressure on me and fires up the adrenaline. The same is true when acknowledging contestants’ responses. There are only so many ways of saying “Correct” or “That’s right,” so it’s easy to get into a rut and keep repeating the same thing.

What I do has a lot in common with being an actor on Broadway. We both do the same show night after night, and we have to find new ways to make it unique and interesting to ourselves. I’m sure if you were to ask some of our successful Broadway actors, “Has there ever been a night where you just, out of wanting to have fun and maybe being the only one who was aware of it, just started doing things a tad off, a tad differently? In the way you were saying the lines or in the movements?” Some actors might say, “No, every night is different because there’s a different audience.” Wrong! It’s the same audience. They just happen to have different faces, that’s all. We have a different audience every time we tape the show, and the people ask the same questions—the same questions—in the commercial breaks. So it’s the same audience. How, then, do you keep it fresh for yourself as a host? And if you can do that, hopefully you’re keeping it fresh for the audience too. Though you never want to inject too much of yourself into the show. You never want to become a stand-up comic trying to take over. But I do have fun in those commercial breaks.

(Clockwise from top left): The game-show-host gang: Peter Marshall, Tom Kennedy, Ralph Edwards, me, Jack Narz, Charles Nelson Reilly, and Betty White.

Here are some of the questions that I hear from the audience for the “first time” hundreds of times a year:

What’s your favorite color?

Gray, it matches my personality.

How would you do as a contestant?

Against my peers (people in a coma), I’d do fine. But a good thirty-year-old would clean my clock.

If you weren’t hosting Jeopardy!, what would you be doing?

I think I’d be a good pope. I look good in white.

Which three famous people would you have liked to see on the show?

Ava Gardner, because she was so beautiful. Mark Twain, because he was so bright. And Ava Gardner again, just because she’s Ava Gardner.

What’s your favorite book?

Growing up, it was The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. Now, it’s The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham.

What are your favorite Jeopardy! categories?

Geography… Movies… Movies about Geography.

What’s the favorite place you traveled to with the show?

There’s so many: Machu Picchu, the Galápagos, Israel, Petra…

Is there any place still on your bucket list?

The Potala Palace in Tibet. We were supposed to go there a few years ago, but the Chinese government was worried about unrest, so the trip was canceled. I’d still like to get there.

Who do you think should replace you?

Someone younger. Someone brighter. Someone funnier. Betty White.

When we wrap each taping, I tell audiences my hope is that having been there to see how we do it, to see what we go through, to see me screw up and redo a clue because I’ve misread it, will add to their enjoyment from now on when they watch the show at home. Because you’re used to seeing it a certain way at home, without knowing the nuts and bolts. You just see the car in the showroom. And now all of a sudden you’re on the road. It’s Ford versus Ferrari. You’re going 160 miles per hour. The game moves incredibly fast. I often won’t know who’s in the lead until I look up and see their scores. Sometimes our stage manager will come up after the first commercial and say, “We’re forty-five seconds long.” And so in the next segment I’ll try to move things along more swiftly. Or he’ll say we’re running ahead of schedule and I’ll have to stretch. I’m driving the show. It’s my job to give it more gas or put my foot on the brake. I have to keep the show moving, guide it, present an environment in which the contestants are going to be performing at their very best. Because that’s how the show succeeds.

Fielding questions from the audience.

It’s not quite the same as just looking at it and saying, “What a lovely car.” When you watch at home, you think, “What a lovely show.” But when you watch it live in the studio, you see how intricate and impromptu so much of it is.

While improvisation is important to the show, so is preparation. You can only improvise if you are well prepared.

We tape two days a week, five shows each day. On tape days I come into the office at 6:00 a.m. First, I’ll grab breakfast. For years, my breakfast of choice was a Snickers and a Diet Coke. Then my doctor lectured me about changing that. So now it’s a Kit Kat and a Diet Pepsi. Then I’ll go over all the games that we’ll be taping that day. I have newspaper-size broadsheets of all the answers and questions printed out, and I read through each clue and response to familiarize myself with the words so that I don’t make too many mistakes in pronun… pronunci… pronucia… in saying words properly. Five games. Sixty-one clues a game. That’s 305 clues. It takes about an hour and a half to go through them all. Then I go review the day’s Los Angeles Times to make sure I am up on all the current news. Not good for a host to state incorrect facts on a show like ours. Then, if I have time, I do their crossword puzzle.

At 9:00 a.m. I go into a production meeting with our writers and producers, and together we review all the games to make sure that a subject or clue in one game isn’t too similar to a subject or clue in another game. The games are selected randomly, as are the contestants who play in any given game, which protects us from any concern that it might appear we’re favoring one contestant over another. When I’m first reviewing the clues I’ll circle any that I think need to be discussed with the group. Sometimes I’ll also suggest changing the wording of a clue if I feel like it can be improved. We may make a last-minute change based on something that’s just happened in current events, which might make a clue out-of-date, or inappropriate. I always keep a dictionary handy, and if I can’t find what I’m looking for in the dictionary I’ll turn to our crack team of researchers. I’ve often said that even if I retire from hosting the show, I would love to keep coming in on tape days just to participate in these morning meetings. Lots of talk. Lots of jokes.

After the production meeting, I go to makeup and put on my suit. We do three shows with one audience, then we take a lunch break and tape the last two shows with a different audience. Even during shows I’m continuing to make notes on the clue sheets, crossing off clues as I read them to ensure I don’t read any clues that have already been played. For this I use a Crayola crayon—because it’s the writing implement that makes the least amount of noise and won’t be picked up by my microphone.

We finish taping around five in the evening. It’s basically an eleven-hour day. Yes, Jeopardy! is a game. But to all of us who work on the show, it’s a job—one we take seriously.

What my finished “script sheet” looks like after a completed game. This one happens to be from the last game of Ken Jennings’ historic run.

7:30 a.m. to 8:45 a.m.: Receiving the five “show scripts” for the day from head writer Billy Wisse.

9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.: Production meeting.

10:30 a.m. to 11:15 a.m.: Hair and makeup.

11:15 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.: Ready for the first show of the day.

12:00 p.m. to 12:15 p.m.: Off to change into a new suit. (The returning champion also changes clothes so that people at home don’t wonder why they only have one outfit for the week.)

12:15 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.: Announcer Johnny Gilbert kicks off the second show.

1:00 p.m. to 1:15 p.m.: Another suit change before the third show.

1:15 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.: Taking a moment to gather myself before show number three—as I do before every show.

2:00 p.m.: Lunch break. I usually get the soup of the day or sushi.

3:45 p.m.: Last suit of the day before the fifth and final show.

3:45 p.m. to 4:15 p.m.: Consulting with the judges.

5:00 p.m.: Happy to be heading home.