From The Current Summer 2010 Issue

"The Quiz Kids"
America's Smart Alecks

BY Wayne Klatt

Where on earth would someone find an apteryx?

You might not know, but Gerard Darrow did. It didn’t matter he was only seven and his shoulders barely rose above his desk.

This was the first question asked a group of Chicago-area children when NBC radio launched The Quiz Kids on June 28, 1940. (By the way, the apteryx is a small bird that lives in New Zealand.)

The Quiz Kids were actually borne out of a successful quiz program aimed at adults. Producer Dan Golenpaul, who so disliked the typical radio quiz show — in which ordinary people were asked questions to show how little they knew — that he developed a program in which ordinary people would pose questions to intellectuals.

Of course, the point of the show — called Information Please — was for these “experts” to answer the questions, but the questions themselves usually ended up as a starting point for scholarly puns and entertaining discussions. As Information Please expert John Kieran said, “An uproarious error or a brilliant bit of irreverence was rated far above any dull delivery of truth.”

So when advertising and public relations man Louis Cowan (who had also helped to develop Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge for radio) thought up a pint-sized variation on Information Please, he knew he would need boys and girls who were personable as well as smart.

The search began when Cowan asked a Chicago Daily News editor about any bright children mentioned in recent news stories. The editor went through his clipping library and came up with the names of Darrow (a bird expert), and fellow locals Joan Bishop, Cynthia Cline, and Van Dyke Tiers.

So what Cowan thought might be the hardest part was actually easy. The easy part, choosing a quizmaster to interact with the children, turned out to be difficult. Cowan interviewed 15 to 20 people, including professors and radio announcers, before determining that the man who had the best rapport with the children was Joe Kelly, a third-grade dropout who was emcee of WLS’ National Barn Dance.

Short and plump, Kelly never had much of a childhood — his boyhood was spent singing in vaudeville — and he was still part-child at the age of 40. When the Kids rattled off answers to the questions he read from his three-by-five file cards, his expressed amazement was genuine. When the show finally debuted in 1940, the Kids’ facility caused Kelly to blurt out, “Sakes alive, am I ever dumb.” In fact, he was far from dumb; his mind could be quick — indeed, as Kelly was the arbiter of spellings and pronunciations, his mind had to be quick.

Cowan played his audition record for several advertising agencies, but a dozen sponsors turned him down because, as one executive put it,  “Nobody wants to listen to smart-alecks. Smart kids make other kids look dumb.”  But Barn Dance sponsor Alka-Seltzer decided to chance it, despite audience reservations against “highbrow” programming.

The show was signed up as a summer replacement for blind pianist Alec Templeton. Cowan staged the first broadcast with Quiz Kids Darrow, Tiers, Bishop, Mary Ann Anderson, and Charles Schwartz. Billboard and Variety praised the first show, and about 2,600 letters poured into the NBC national offices at the Merchandise Mart.

To shy away from any charges of intellectualism (which many radio folks considered a kiss of death), the show was packaged as entertainment. Kelly conducted the show in a brisk manner, as if it were an informal class. The children sat at simulated school desks with their names on slates and wore graduation caps and gowns.  “Recesses” (commercial breaks) were announced by the ringing of a school bell.

The children were never coached, but questions were often geared for their fields of expertise, which (depending on the children on the panel) included sports, astronomy, biology, physics, math, opera, popular music, or chemistry. Sometimes an organist would play musical clues.

One question asked the Kids to find the names of football teams in the constellations; another asked them to translate composers’ names into English (e.g. Giuseppe Verdi = Joe Green).

Other questions required split-second mental calculations, such as: “Would it be cheaper to buy a coat for $300, or a second coat, if there were $40 between the prices of the second coat and a third coat, three-fourths the cost of the second being equal to two-thirds the cost of the third?”

Kelly was given the questions well in advance and worked with program researchers to understand the subjects. But the young contestants still threw out unexpected facts that led him to say such things as, “Well, that’s a new one on me.” Since Kelly had to decide whether an answer was correct, he would encourage the panelists to come up with one closer to that which Kelly had been expecting. No wonder he sounded a little uneasy even after more than five years.

At the end of every show, a committee of judges graded each child in accordance with his or her age. The three highest scorers were carried over to the next week, and there were some 50 applicants eager to step in to a vacancy. But the eliminated scholars could reapply, and since the show was meant to be fun, popular support sometimes brought children (including Gerard Darrow) back for a return visit. Vacancies also opened when the children could not keep up regular appearances or when they reached their 16th birthday.
One of the more popular Kids was 14-year-old Margaret Merrick, who had to appear on crutches because of polio. The most successful Quiz Kid was future Nobel laureate James Watson, who appeared on the show three times as a 13-year-old. Later, Watson and his colleague Frances Crick would be hailed as the men who “co-discovered” the DNA molecule. Twelve-year-old Claude Brenner, born in South Africa, was so at ease speaking into a microphone that he filled in for Kelly four times.

The children received $100 savings bonds per show for their future education, although the bonds were just paper for most of the contestants. For Gerard (the youngest original Quiz Kid), the real reward came when his father took him out for a chocolate soda after the broadcasts.

Of course, the Kids weren’t the only ones who enjoyed it: the show had an audience of 10-20 million listeners during the war years, and the weekly mail reached 20,000 letters. As one-time Kid Ruth Duskin Feldman wrote in her memoir, Whatever Happened to the Quiz Kids?, the show “was a tonic to a nation depressed by food rationing and casualty lists.” Still, the show was more popular among parents and adults than among children. Radio Hall of Famer Chuck Schaden was not alone when he said that “The Quiz Kids gave me an inferiority complex.”

So, suppose you were a third grader, showed an engaging personality, and had been writing since you were 4. How would you get on the program? Well, after your parents or teacher sent a letter broaching the subject, you would receive a form asking you to write an essay (no longer than 250 words) about why you would like to join the panel. If the essay and letter passed muster, you would be given an audition.

As Ruth Feldman recalled, “Poise, quickness, originality, humor, modesty and mike (microphone) sense” were even more important than knowledge, although knowledge was certainly important. The IQs of the kids started at 130 and usually reached 180, with some scoring higher than 200. (To put these scores in perspective, the average IQ in the general population is 100, and anything over 140 is considered genius potential.) At the same time, the contestants were as funny and pleasant as the boys and girls who might be living next door — but, as Feldman noted, “Show-manship was crucial.”

Another factor in deciding who would be chosen was whether the children were especially knowledgeable in a certain field. That made their young minds seem more amazing since, in reality, the youngsters sometimes did not know things that were common knowledge among their age group (for example, that Clark Kent was Superman). Children with pushy, trouble-making parents were not welcome; even so, some mothers and fathers tried to mouth answers from the audience.

Not that the Kids needed the help. As Feldman recalled in her book, “Most of us were just voracious readers with flypaper memories, competitive instincts, and parents who encouraged our interests.” Kids who might have been put down as showoffs in school were glad to be appreciated.

Of course, some children got carried away by their star status. Math prodigy Joel Kupperman, whose IQ was over 200, had been so high-spirited in trying to be cute on and off the air that his mother would publicly spank him. Feldman’s parents hid newspaper articles about her in their basement so that she wouldn’t see them.

But the youngsters soon learned how special they were. As part of a traveling Quiz Kids group, Ruthie sat in Queen Elizabeth’s chair and Chico Marx’s lap, visited Henry Ford at his plant, and went backstage with Shakespearean actor Maurice Evans during her nine years on the show. The Kids even guested on other radio shows, opposite Eddie Cantor, Fred Allen, and Jack Benny — who did his best to stack the deck when the Quiz Kids took on his “Jell-O Kids.” On a 1946 Fred Allen Show, the star asked the Kids to name their favorite radio comedian; they replied “Jack Benny” in unison. “Someone has gotten to these children,” Allen muttered.

In turn, the Kids hosted countless guest stars as well, including James Stewart, Gene Autry, and Clifton Webb. On an April 1946 broadcast, physicist Glenn Seaborg mentioned — one day before the official announcement was to be made — that all chemistry books were now out of date because scientists had created two new elements: americium (element No. 95)  and curium (no. 96).

Kelly and the Quiz Kids moved to national television in March 1949 for a four-year run. The lights and cameras put the youngsters under an additional strain, but it turned out to be good training for 9-year-old regular Robert Strom, who went on to win a fortune on The $64,000 Question (produced by CBS President and Quiz Kids creator Louis G. Cowan).
Alka-Seltzer dropped the program in 1951 and the sputtering show lasted only one more season at CBS. A subsequent television version lasted only four months despite celebrity hosts that included Ralph Edwards, Fran Allison, and pianist-wit Victor Borge. When the show returned to television in 1956, the erudite Clifton Fadiman (longtime host of Information Please) was installed as quizmaster, but he was rather stiff with the children and the show lasted only a single season.

With his amazing talents and impish ways, Joel Kupperman lasted 10 years on the radio show, making 400 appearances! But once he “graduated,” his personality turned inside out; he was still a young man when he began teaching philosophy at Oxford and Cambridge.
Darrow, the first panelist chosen, was overwhelmed by the consequences of early fame. As he told Studs Terkel years later, “Reporters and photographers poking you and knocking you around and asking ridiculous questions. As a child you can’t cope with these things. I was exploited.” He died an alcoholic at the age of 47, although Feldman suggested his decline was probably not a direct result of the show.

As a Jesuit priest, former Quiz Kid Jack Lucal represented the Vatican at the United Nations, while Joan Bishop became a minor opera singer. Austrian-born Smylla Brind grew into a beauty, took the stage name Vanessa Brown, appeared in various movies (including The Bad and the Beautiful and The Late George Apley), and starred on Broadway opposite Tom Ewell as the sexy neighbor for 600 performances of The Seven Year Itch. Like Smylla Brind, Harve Fischmann changed his last name (to Bennett) and headed to Hollywood, producing several popular films and television features, including several films in the Star Trek series and the Emmy-winning docudrama A Woman Called Golda.

Being on The Quiz Kids opened the door for a few contestants, such as architect Kenneth Childers, but it had little effect on the careers of others. Some became doctors, lawyers, and consultants, as they might have done without the show. Others drifted into more mundane pursuits, such as homemakers and substitute teachers.

The show was never meant as anything more than entertainment, yet it may have moved America up a notch by showing that intelligent girls deserve encouragement, and that children can be brainy and completely normal at the same time.                                         

Tune in to Those Were The Days on September 11 to hear a broadcast of The Quiz Kids.

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