Mark Goodson

Mark Goodson (January 14, 1915 – December 18, 1992) was an accomplished American television producer who specialized in game shows.

Life and television career

Born in Sacramento, California, Goodson and long-time partner Bill Todman produced some of the longest-running game shows in television history. The long list of Goodson-Todman productions includes Beat the Clock, Family Feud, Match Game, Password, The Price is Right, To Tell the Truth, I've Got A Secret and What's My Line?. The shows endured through the decades, many over multiple runs, because of Goodson's sharp eye for production and presentation. While Todman primarily handled the company's business affairs in the early days, Goodson oversaw the creative end of the company. Goodson's knowledge of what made a successful game show work in terms of both format and presentation was pivotal to the longevity of the shows he produced.

Many of the actual formats were devised by producers working for Goodson-Todman. For example, Bob Bach co-created What's My Line?, Allan Sherman created I've Got a Secret, Frank Wayne created Now You See It, and The Match Game; Chester Feldman created Card Sharks; and Bob Stewart created Password, The Price is Right and To Tell the Truth. Goodson-Todman was involved with the 1969 pilot of The Joker's Wild along with creator Jack Barry and hosted by Allen Ludden. G-T had severed ties with Barry by the time he hosted the series in 1972. Versions of many Goodson-Todman game shows have appeared in other countries besides the U.S. — Family Feud, for instance, has run in the United Kingdom as Family Fortunes and in Mexico under the name of Cien Mexicanos Dijeron.

The company was not very successful when they tried their hands at other types of TV shows, including the anthology-drama The Web, a talk-variety show for famed insult comic Don Rickles, and what was possibly the company's biggest failure, a sitcom titled One Happy Family. However, Goodson-Todman Productions was involved with two Westerns that, despite their relatively short runs, became TV classics: The Rebel (1959-61), starring Nick Adams as an ex-Confederate soldier who travelled West after the Civil War (Johnny Cash sang the theme); and Branded, starring Chuck Connors as a soldier who had been wrongly given a dishonorable discharge from the Army.

For many years, the company was headquartered in the Seagram Building at 375 Park Avenue, 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 company's last New York-based show, To Tell the Truth, pulled up stakes in 1981.

Following Bill Todman's death in 1979, Goodson acquired the Todman heirs' share of the company and the company was renamed Mark Goodson Productions in 1982. Traditionally, shows would sign off as "a Mark Goodson - Bill Todman production." By 1984, all shows signed off as "a Mark Goodson television production".

Announcers Johnny Olson and Gene Wood were frequently heard on Goodson-Todman shows. Many of the company's game shows were produced internationally, some under different titles, and were distributed by Reg Grundy Productions. Family Feud, for example, has run in the United Kingdom as Family Fortunes and in Mexico under the name of Cien Mexicanos Dijeron. Today, Mark Goodson Productions, along with Reg Grundy Productions, are part of Fremantle Media. From the early 1960s, most of the music for Goodson-Todman's game shows was composed by Bob Cobert, Bob Israel's Score Productions or Edd Kalehoff, a pioneer in the use of the MOOG synthesizer.

Mark Goodson died on December 18, 1992 from pancreatic cancer at the age of 77 in Los Angeles. He is buried at Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City, California, where the inscription on his gravestone is designed to resemble the famous Goodson-Todman Productions / Mark Goodson Productions logo.

Post Mark Goodson

Some time after Mark Goodson's death, his family sold the rights to the library of shows in order to pay a hefty estate tax. A company called All American Television was the purchaser. That company was bought out by rival communications company Pearson Television which was, in turn, acquired by Fremantle Media which at one time was the distributor of Goodson-Todman game shows internationally. Fremantle now owns the rights to the Goodson-Todman library of game shows. While The Price is Right and Family Feud continue in production to this day, other classic Goodson-Todman shows have found a new life and a new audience in reruns on cable TV's Game Show Network.

Goodson's son, Jonathan, has continued with new game show concepts. He joined the company in 1973 as legal counsel, but began production work with the company's shows, including the original version of Card Sharks; eventually producing the 1990 version of Match Game. He stayed through corporate takeovers until 1998. He left to begin his own production company, Jonathan Goodson Productions, which produces both state lottery game shows and original game show concepts, with 2003's Dirty Rotten Cheater being the newest Goodson game, having already been sold internationally.

For the sake of tradition, and through special permission from FremantleMedia (a subsidiary of RTL), The Price Is Right continues to use the Mark Goodson Productions name, logo, and announcement at the end of each episode, even though the original company no longer exists. (The current production of Family Feud, also a former Goodson-Todman property, did initially use the logo and announcement; it ultimately abandoned this practice. The short lived 2001 version on Card Sharks as well as the 2000-2002 version of To Tell The Truth used both the logo and announcement.)

List of Mark Goodson-Bill Todman productions

Game Shows

Other

• Branded (1965-1966) -Western
• The Don Rickles Show (1968-1969)-Comedy/talk show
• Jefferson Drum -Western (1958)
• One Happy Family (1960) -Situation Comedy
• The Rebel (1959-1961) -Western
• That's My Line! (summer 1980; 1981) - Reality/Audience-participation show
• The Web (1950) -anthology drama

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