Information Please
Information Please | |
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Genre | radio |
Created by | Dan Golenpaul |
Presented by | Clifton Fadiman |
Country of origin | United States |
No. of seasons | 13 |
Production | |
Running time | 30 minutes |
Original release | |
Network | NBC Radio |
Release | May 17, 1938 April 22, 1951 | –
Information Please is an American
The series was moderated by Clifton Fadiman. A panel of experts would attempt to answer questions submitted by listeners. For the first few shows, a listener was paid $2 for a question that was used, and $5 more if the experts could not answer it correctly. When the show got its first sponsor (Canada Dry), the total amounts were increased to $5 and $10 respectively. A complete Encyclopædia Britannica was later added to the prize for questions that stumped the panel. The amounts rose to $10 and $25 when Lucky Strike took over sponsorship of the program.
By 1948, the prizes changed to the following: submitting a question awarded the viewer an Encyclopædia Britannica world atlas, and stumping the panel added a $50 savings bond plus the complete encyclopedia. They also replaced the regular sponsorship with a different sponsor for certain broadcasts.
Regulars
Panel regulars included writer-actor-pianist
The show would always have a fourth guest panelist, usually either a celebrity, a politician or writer. Guest panelists included Fred Allen, Leonard Bernstein, Boris Karloff, Clare Boothe Luce, Groucho Marx, Dorothy Parker, S. J. Perelman, Sigmund Spaeth, Rex Stout, Jan Struther, Deems Taylor, Jackie Robinson, Alexander Woollcott, George S. Kaufman, Ruth Gordon, Orson Welles, Basil Rathbone, Moe Berg, and a very young Myron "Mike" Wallace.
The show was as much a comedy as a quiz show. The panelists displayed a quick wit in answering the questions, reveling in puns and malapropisms. (For instance, once the panel was asked to supply a common household expression. Adams: "Please pass the salt." Kieran: "The front doorbell's ringing." Levant: "Are you going to stay in that bathroom all day?"[1]) Due to the spontaneous nature of the program, it became the first show for which NBC allowed a prerecorded repeat for the West Coast.[2]
Accolades
During
The program was so popular that, from 1939 to 1943, excerpts of 18 radio broadcasts were filmed and released by
The show was satirized by the zany panel of radio's It Pays to Be Ignorant, which likewise enjoyed a successful radio run from 1942 to 1951.
In 1947, Golenpaul edited the
The program was mentioned by name in the 1949 film A Letter to Three Wives.
At the start of the 1942 movie Woman of the Year, Spencer Tracy's character enters a bar and hears on the radio Katharine Hepburn's character appearing on Information Please.[3]
Television
Information Please | |
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Genre | TV |
Created by | Dan Golenpaul |
Presented by | Clifton Fadiman (June–August) John McCaffery (August–September) |
Country of origin | United States |
Production | |
Running time | 30 minutes |
Original release | |
Network | CBS |
Release | June 29 September 21, 1952 | –
Information Please went to television from June 29 to September 21, 1952, on
A variation of Information Please, this time a program devoted exclusively to music with the same four-member panel format, became popular when it was televised in
International
An Australian version of the program was first broadcast from Melbourne radio station
References
General references
Inline citations
- ^ Zolotow, Maurice (c. 1952). No People Like Show People. New York: Random House. p. 152.
- ISBN 978-0-19-507678-3. Retrieved 2019-02-11.
- ^ https://www.scripts.com/script/woman_of_the_year_23618
- ISBN 978-0-345-49773-4. Retrieved 2023-02-19.
- Newspapers.com.
- ^ Radio Times (Melbourne weekly journal), 25 July 1941.
- ^ "Before the Parrot: The 'News Commentator' on Australian Commercial Radio" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-01-28. Retrieved 2015-01-24.
- ^ From Wireless to Radio. The 3DB Story McLaughlin, Bill, Melbourne, 1985.
- ^ Changing Stations. The Story of Australian Commercial Radio Griffen-Foley, Bridget, Sydney, 2009.
Listen to
- Archive.org Information Please radio shows
- OTR Network Library: Information Please (68 episodes from 1938-1943)
- Zoot Radio, free old time radio show downloads of 'Information Please.'
- "Information Please". RadioEchoes. 1938–1948. 236 episodes.