Mark Goodson

Early life and early career

Mark Goodson was born in Sacramento, California on January 14, 1915. His parents, Abraham Ellis and Fannie Goodson, emigrated from Russia in the early 1900s. As a child, Goodson acted in amateur theater with the Plaza Stock Company. The family later moved to Hayward, California. Originally intending to become a lawyer, Goodson attended the University of California, Berkeley. He financed his education through scholarships and by working at the Lincoln Fish Market. He graduated Phi 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 (now known as KFAX). In 1939 he joined radio station KFRC, where he produced and hosted a radio quiz called "Pop the Question" in which contestants selected questions by throwing darts at multi-colored balloons.

Television production

Goodson and long-time partner Bill Todman produced some of the longest-running game shows in US television history. Their first television show, Winner Take All, debuted on CBS television on July 1, 1948. The long list of Goodson-Todman productions includes The Price Is Right, Family Feud, Match Game, Password, Beat the Clock, To Tell the Truth, I've Got a Secret, What's My Line?, Card Sharks, and Tattletales. The shows endured through the decades, many over multiple runs, because of Goodson's sharp eye for production and presentation. Goodson-Todman Productions/Mark Goodson Productions creates content for US channels and other international channels. (including Talbot Television Ltd. and Fremantle UK Productions Ltd.). such as CBS, NBC, and ABC in the US, BBC1, ITV (Anglia, Central, Granada, LWT, TVS, Scottish Television, and Yorkshire Television), Channel 4, and Sky One, (also Challenge TV),

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, Jay Wolpert, and others were instrumental in making the shows successful.

Goodson-Todman was involved with the 1969 pilot of The Joker's Wild, along with creator Jack Barry, but severed ties with Barry shortly afterward.

The company proved itself to be masterful at games, but were not as successful when they tried other fields of television programs, including the anthology dramas The Web and The Richard Boone Show, a talk-variety show for famed insult comic Don Rickles – and what was possibly the company's biggest failure, a sitcom entitled One Happy Family.

Goodson-Todman Productions were also involved with three westerns: Jefferson Drum (1958–1959), starring Jeff Richards as a newspaper editor in the Old West; The Rebel (1959–1961), starring Nick Adams as an ex-Confederate soldier who traveled to the West after the Civil War (Johnny Cash sang the theme); and Branded, starring Chuck Connors as a soldier who had wrongly been given a dishonorable discharge from the Army.

For many years, the company was headquartered in the Seagram Building at 375 Park Avenue, New York City, New York. Most of the company's production moved to Hollywood in the early seventies (as did many other production companies), starting with the ABC revival of Password in 1971. The Los Angeles offices were based first at 6430 Sunset Boulevard and later at 5750 Wilshire Boulevard. The company's last New York-based show was the 1980s version of To Tell the Truth, but the New York office remained open and was used for East Coast Child'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 would sign off with "This is (announcer's name) speaking for (show name). A Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Production/A Mark Goodson Television Production." To pay off a massive inheritance tax, Goodson's family sold the rights (except for Concentration/Classic Concentration, which had been licensed from NBC) to All-American Television, which was subsequently taken over by Pearson Communications, and, in turn, was acquired by FremantleMedia which now owns the rights to the library from Mark Goodson Productions. At the close of each episode of The Price Is Right since then, the announcer credits the show as "a FremantleMedia Production."

In 1990, Goodson received the Emmy Award "Lifetime Achievement Award for Daytime Television", which was presented to him by Betty White. Two years later, in 1992, Goodson earned induction into the Television Hall of Fame.

Foreign versions

Many Goodson-Todman games were produced internationally, some under different titles, and were distributed by Reg Grundy Productions – Family Feud was known in the United Kingdom as Family Fortunes, and Card Sharks went under the title Play Your Cards Right. In Germany, Match Game was known as Schnickschnack (loosely translated, "something, anything" and used as a counterpart for the word "blank", for which there is no direct word in German). In the United Kingdom, it was known as Blankety Blank, while in Australia, it was known as Blankety Blanks (which, coincidentally, was the title of an unrelated American game show, created by former Goodson-Todman staffer, Bob Stewart).

Most Grundy-produced counterparts of Goodson-Todman games had low payouts, but made up for it with almost identical sets or unique sets of their own (e.g., Family Fortunes).

Shows

Of the numerous shows Goodson produced in his lifetime, four are still on the air and are being produced by successor companies (All-American Television from 1995 to 1998, Pearson Television from 1998 to 2002, and FremantleMedia since 2002) as of 2016: The Price Is Right, which has run continuously since 1972; Family Feud, which was canceled in 1995 but revived in its current form in 1999; and Match Game and To Tell the Truth, both of which were revived in 2016 after lengthy stints off the air.

Mark Goodson Productions (1982–1995)

Personal life and final years

In 1941, Goodson married his first wife, Bluma Neveleff, and moved to New York City, where he teamed up with partner Bill Todman. The pair's first radio show, Winner Take All, premiered on CBS in 1946. Outside of television production, Goodson and Todman went on to own several newspapers in New England as well as radio station KOL in Seattle, Washington. Bill Todman died in July, 1979, and in 1982 the Goodsons acquired the Todman heirs' portion of the company.

Goodson had two children, Jill and Jonathan (born 1945), by his first wife Bluma, and a daughter, Marjorie (who was a prize model on Classic Concentration from July 1987 until its finale in September 1991), by his second wife Virginia McDavid, Miss Alabama 1953. In 1972, he married his third wife, Suzanne Waddell, who had once been a guest on What's My Line?. They divorced in 1978.

Goodson died on December 18, 1992 in New York City.