Producer/creator Bob Stewart passes away

[CaseyAbell]

Crossposted from the Classics board, my entry on the blog...

Another death in the family

The obituaries keep piling up. Bob Stewart, legendary producer of The Price is Right, Password, and Pyramid, has died at age 91.

Stewart usually stayed behind the camera, so his passing won't generate nearly as much attention as the recent death of Dick Clark. But to game show fans he was always a presence with his creative spark and practiced hand, which gave us some of the genre's very best formats.

Born Isidore Steinberg in Brooklyn, Stewart's big break came in 1956 when he joined Goodson-Todman. He developed The Price is Right, To Tell the Truth and Password for G-T before he left the organization in 1964. Mark Goodson famously promised to make Stewart a prince, but Stewart (just as famously) said he wanted to be a king. The story has always sounded like an urban legend to me, but it's apparently true.

As an independent producer, Stewart's greatest triumph was, of course, Pyramid. The all-lightning-round descendant of Password has gone through so many versions that it takes most of a Wikipedia article to track them all. The sad near-coincidence of the deaths of Dick Clark and Bob Stewart at least reminds us how superb the format was and is.

Stewart retired in the early 1990s, though his son Sande remained in the business as a fairly successful producer on his own. R.I.P.

[emerilzap]

R.I.P. Bob Stewart.

[matchgame74fan]

From Drew Carey's twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/DrewFromTV/st...31462110715904

[espnews26]

From Drew Carey's twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/DrewFromTV/st...31462110715904

That was nice of him. I don't think if Barker ever used Internets or Twitters, he would acknowledge him.

[AlohaDave]

Limiting myself to just what I can name off the top of my head, in chronological order:

• Eye Guess
• The Face is Familiar
• Three on a Match
• Winning Streak
• Jackpot!
• Blankety Blanks
• Shoot for the Stars
• Pass the Buck
• Chain Reaction
• Go!
• Double Talk

...and about a dozen or so failed pilots, including:

• Caught in the Act (two different shows of that title, in fact)
• Get Rich Quick!
• The $10,000 Sweep
• $50,000 a Minute
• Twisters
• The Riddlers
• Money in the Blank

Not to forget "Personality" and "You're Putting Me On".

I went to a taping of The Davidson version of The $100,000 Pyramid in 1991 and couldn't believe Bob Stewart was right there, hands on, participating in every aspect of the show. I hate to use the term micromanaging, because that can be terrible thing for fellow employees, but Bob certainly appeared invested in his production and welcome by every member of the staff and crew. I never expected to see him at the taping. It was clear that he loved his job. I thought he was just a name in the credits by that point of his career but I was wrong. He worked that stage!

[Lingofan97]

Very sad. He in my opinion was best known for The Price Is Right

[sshuffield70]

Very sad. He in my opinion was best known for The Price Is Right

You clearly don't know what you're talking about. The only thing about Price he created was the auction format (currently known as the One Bid or the IUFB). That's all Price was. The carnival atmosphere came in 1972 after Stewart left Goodson. Stewart's best known format was Pyramid...hands down.

[TheKid965]

Pyramid is Stewart's best-known creation, hands down and quite deservedly so. I would, however, have to put Password as a very close second, if not tied; it was the first show of its kind to put a celebrity on the same team as a civilian contestant, a pattern that countless other games -- including Pyramid itself -- would emulate over the following decades. After that, running a rather more distant third in my book would be To Tell the Truth, which never had a significant format change from Stewart's days at G-T... and to this day, "Will the real So-and-so please stand up?" is a well-known tagline even among non-game show nuts.

Price has the longevity to be sure, but Stewart's involvement in its creation has (justly or not) been largely forgotten. It's probably just as well, however, since the modern Price has almost no relation to the show as originally conceived save for Contestant's Row and the title itself.

[Lingofan97]

The only thing about Price he created was the auction format (currently known as the One Bid or the IUFB). That's all Price was. The carnival atmosphere came in 1972 after Stewart left Goodson. Stewart's best known format was Pyramid...hands down.

He helped improve the show, but I know he didn't create the show on his own from the start.

[matchgame74fan]

https://twitter.com/#!/GSN/statuses/199643734328094721

[Lingofan97]

That was just posted today? What took GSN so long?

[BillCullen1]

Limiting myself to just what I can name off the top of my head, in chronological order:

• Eye Guess
• The Face is Familiar
• Three on a Match
• Winning Streak
• Jackpot!
• Blankety Blanks
• Shoot for the Stars
• Pass the Buck
• Chain Reaction
• Go!
• Double Talk

...and about a dozen or so failed pilots, including:

• Caught in the Act (two different shows of that title, in fact)
• Get Rich Quick!
• The $10,000 Sweep
• $50,000 a Minute
• Twisters
• The Riddlers
• Money in the Blank

Complete for the most part. The one show you left out was The Love Experts, but even Stewart might want to forget that as well as the host (Cullen). He also did a pilot here in NYC called The Finish Line with Alan Kalter (yes THAT Alan Kalter). It was a word game. Soupy Sales & Adrienne Barbeau did the pilot.

[TheKid965]

Bob Stewart, it seems, held off on moving to LA longer than any other producer; IIRC, his first series based on the West Coast was Chain Reaction (taped at NBC in Burbank), but feel free to correct me if I'm misremembering. Even after that, however, the various Pyramids stayed in New York until the $50K incarnation quietly fizzled out in 1981. (While it's true that Goodson-Todman still had To Tell the Truth at 30 Rock for the 1980-81 season, that was an aberration.)

[BillCullen1]

Actually, the previously mentioned Love Experts was taped at Merv Griffin's old studio in Hollywood. You are correct about the 50K Pyramid and the '80-'81 TTTT.

[Melyssa56]

Eye Guess, Three on a Match, and Blankety-Blanks were the shows I watched the most. The timing must have been good as far as school days went, unlike say TTTT, which I could only watch Friday afternoons or Monday nights back in the 1960s.