The Search for the Lost ‘Jeopardy!’ Tapes Is Over. The Mystery Endures

May 2, 2023 5:53 AM

In 1986, Barbara Lowe Vollick won five games of ‘Jeopardy!’ in a row. Her episodes were then taken out of circulation. What followed was a nearly 40-year hunt for the missing tapes—and a quest to find out what really happened between the show and its most enigmatic champion.
posted by Etrigan (56 comments total)

Man, that was a depressing read. "Woman has body, emotions, gets punished for it"
posted by restless_nomad at 6:37 AM on May 2, 2023 [32 favorites]

Yup. Like, good lord, did she need to be punished that much?
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:40 AM on May 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

Yup. Like, good lord, did she need to be punished that much?

FTFY
posted by Thorzdad at 6:42 AM on May 2, 2023 [10 favorites]

I can understand why they wouldn't want someone leaving the set in the middle of taping an episode--someone might be trying to cheat--but I would also hope that they'd understand that someone might have a case of nerves that manifested itself in physical symptoms and make arrangements for that possibility.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:45 AM on May 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Boy, Trebek really comes off as a complete piece of shit here.
posted by saladin at 6:46 AM on May 2, 2023 [27 favorites]

I can see them objecting to her being on other shows so I don't argue with their complaints on that one, but the rest of it, geeeeeeeeez.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:47 AM on May 2, 2023

I can see them objecting to her being on other shows so I don't argue with their complaints on that one, but the rest of it, geeeeeeeeez.

Except it seems like she disclosed her other appearances on her application.
posted by Gadarene at 6:56 AM on May 2, 2023 [19 favorites]

Textbook case of rampant misogyny, not something I'd expect from Jeopardy. Too bad Trebek and Eisenberg aren't here if for no other reason than to hear them try to justify their past actions.
posted by tommasz at 7:01 AM on May 2, 2023 [7 favorites]

Trebek does take a black eye here, but the story notes that at the end of her run -- when she committed the cardinal sin of expressing excitement when her rival missed Final Jeopardy and she knew she won -- Trebek says on camera that he's going to hug her. IOW, he was cool with it.

If you watched enough Jeopardy, you know Trebek could seem peevish or put-upon at times. It was part of the charm. Sounds like he had moments of both frustration and joy with Barbara. The part about him saying she cost the show money, though, yikes.

The producers and others, though, they were horrid. If you approved her for the show, you pay her the winnings. Any due diligence failure -- and it's not clear there even was a disclosure problem -- is on them. And the Soviet-style erasure of her is criminal.
posted by martin q blank at 7:03 AM on May 2, 2023 [10 favorites]

Lowe, he wrote, “appeared rather strange” and prompted the most letters objecting to a contestant’s “mannerisms and behavior” that the show had ever received.

The more things change...

If you like this story I recommend the documentary The Perfect Bid. Small world, IIRC Michael Richards who is in the Perfect Bid documentary as sort of a villain later became a Jeopardy villain when he allegedly tried to produce himself into a hosting job.

Boy, Trebek really comes off as a complete piece of shit here.

It's always interesting when men like Trebek die and become canonized in pop culture. I remember his on and off screen persona as being pretty similar to what's shown here.
posted by muddgirl at 7:09 AM on May 2, 2023 [9 favorites]

Small world, IIRC Michael Richards who is in the Perfect Bid documentary as sort of a villain later became a Jeopardy villain when he allegedly tried to produce himself into a hosting job.

Claire McNear, the writer of this piece, is the one who publicized the podcasts that bounced Richards off of Jeopardy!, and I will go to my grave insisting that she got robbed of a Pulitzer.
posted by Etrigan at 7:14 AM on May 2, 2023 [14 favorites]

Sounds like they repeated to each other for years about how horrible she was without watching the tapes...

Certain kinds of emotionality are punished though - then and today - because they challenge authoritative control. Sounds like Barbara had that kind of emotionality.
posted by subdee at 7:15 AM on May 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

ugh. one other thing - speaking as a former reporter, this story shows the problems you run into when investigating something so far after the fact. Two of the principal figures are dead. The videos support Barbara in some ways but also seem to somewhat conflict with her recall-- but the videos are edited, so you can't trust them, either. There's supposed to be a lawsuit, but it's not in court records. And so on. I've had editors who would not have run this story as is.

One thing is clear -- even if we can't know exactly what happened, the show clearly treated her terribly.
posted by martin q blank at 7:15 AM on May 2, 2023 [27 favorites]

Wow, she disclosed her game show appearances and they did not go against the rules at the time. So they just blew that up into bullshit (several SSNs? really?) and it's just misogyny all the way down after that. And then they cheated her out of her money. That's disappointing.
posted by ceejaytee at 7:15 AM on May 2, 2023 [5 favorites]

Wow, she disclosed her game show appearances and they did not go against the rules at the time

She said she disclosed all her game show appearances. As Martin pointed out, so much of this is dependent on unreliable or conflicting sources, and the two main other eyewitnesses are dead.

(Having said all that, I can't imagine a situation where you don't just pay her the winnings and move on. Even if the entirety of the case against her is true, having her episodes be the only ones not repeated seems excessive).
posted by Galvanic at 7:30 AM on May 2, 2023 [4 favorites]

It’s not too late for Jeopardy to invite her back…
posted by TedW at 7:33 AM on May 2, 2023

It’s not too late for Jeopardy to invite her back…

I think that would just open the shitfest anew to public scrutiny. An option could be, if in fact she did end up splitting the winnings, would be to quietly reimburse her the chunk the show took.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:51 AM on May 2, 2023

Never understood the lion/canonization of transparently smug, officious, petty and narrow minded Alex Trebek.
posted by jamjam at 8:30 AM on May 2, 2023 [6 favorites]

It's difficult to understand how the gastrointestinal issue would lead to such punitive behavior. Trebek had been hosting game shows for years at that point, and incidents like this must have popped up with some regularity. Stomach virus, nausea, menstrual onset, flu, nosebleeds, migraines, hiccups ... shit happens, not always conveniently — and that's just run-of-the-mill stuff. I'm sure other accidents and weird health stuff famously interrupted things on occasion.

Maybe he was just furiously embarrassed at being corrected on-camera about the name pronunciation, and really just wanted to bury that episode because of that?
posted by taz at 8:34 AM on May 2, 2023

I've auditioned for Jeopardy a few times, but Alex Trebek was only around once during an audition for college jeopardy. I remember him being an incredible asshole to a room full of college kids. He was very snide, at one point correcting a kids grammar. He seemed very put out to have to be there, which is crazy, since I think the show only films for a few months out of the year.
posted by uberfunk at 8:37 AM on May 2, 2023 [11 favorites]

Trebek does take a black eye here, but the story notes that at the end of her run -- when she committed the cardinal sin of expressing excitement when her rival missed Final Jeopardy and she knew she won -- Trebek says on camera that he's going to hug her. IOW, he was cool with it.

If you watched enough Jeopardy, you know Trebek could seem peevish or put-upon at times. It was part of the charm.

Austin Rogers' run on the show is an absolute blast to watch and I must not be good at reading Trebek because I got the impression, watching the episodes, that he found Austin delightful, but when I read about it online people talk like he hated the guy. Never been quite so surprised at having read an interaction differently.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:40 AM on May 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

Trebek hesitated a looong time before allowing my (correct) pronunciation of “Wollstonecraft.” You’d think they’d brief him on this stuff.
posted by doubtfulpalace at 8:52 AM on May 2, 2023 [13 favorites]

She said she disclosed all her game show appearances.

From the article:

"But Jeopardy! knew about these appearances, as well as a third, in advance of her games. A copy of Lowe Vollick’s original application to Jeopardy!, still held by the studio and described to The Ringer, shows that she listed three previous game show appearances: Wheel of Fortune in 1976, It’s Anybody’s Guess in 1977, and Bullseye in 1981."

Or, is the implication that she listed these while hiding others?
posted by Devoidoid at 8:53 AM on May 2, 2023 [11 favorites]

Trebek hesitated a looong time before allowing my (correct) pronunciation of “Wollstonecraft.” You’d think they’d brief him on this stuff.

I've always had the impression that the hosts often wait for the judges to signal correct/incorrect on any given answer, so perhaps that was what was going on? I think it's notably apparent when Mayim hosts, as there often seems to be a slightly extended pause between a contestant answering and her declaring it right/wrong.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:32 AM on May 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

...I must not be good at reading Trebek because I got the impression, watching the episodes, that he found Austin delightful, but when I read about it online people talk like he hated the guy. Never been quite so surprised at having read an interaction differently.

A good editor is worth their weight in gold.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:34 AM on May 2, 2023 [4 favorites]

When I was doing College Bowl on a team as part of the Chicano Club, the host asked a question (approximately) What was the most famous artist from To-lee-do.
I and my team were stumped. For all I knew Andy Warhol was born in Toledo, Ohio.
When the host gave the answer as El Greco, our entire team in unison shouted out, "To-lay-do."
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:39 AM on May 2, 2023 [31 favorites]

Yeah, sometimes Trebek would wait for a judges signal, sometimes he'd rule someone correct just before the judges would give a thumbs-down, sometimes it's not clear so production is stopped and the lawyers come out and everyone talks it over and figures out what to do, then the game resumes and it gets edited around in post.

There are sometimes similar stoppages when hosts stumble over a clue or pronounciation or something. It was a MUCH bigger deal when they had the run of various guest hosts.

Trebek and the rest of the crew had been doing it so efficiently that they'd get done with tape day by 5pm like clockwork. With the guest judges it was taking until 7pm.
posted by VTX at 9:40 AM on May 2, 2023

I would assume that both stories have an element of truth to them. They didn't like/were irritated with this contestant for all the reasons she listed. After her episodes aired, someone says "hey I recognize her from this other show!" Now in their minds her odd/annoying behavior is explained. She's a fraud or a cheat.

Game show producers seem to be, rightly or wrongly, very paranoid.
posted by muddgirl at 9:55 AM on May 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Or, is the implication that she listed these while hiding others?

Yes. We know that she listed three appearances on her application. We're relying on her that these were the only three that she appeared on -- something contradicted by other sources. I don't have a good way to choose between them.
posted by Galvanic at 9:59 AM on May 2, 2023

I've always had the impression that the hosts often wait for the judges to signal correct/incorrect on any given answer, so perhaps that was what was going on? I think it's notably apparent when Mayim hosts, as there often seems to be a slightly extended pause between a contestant answering and her declaring it right/wrong.

THAT IS WHAT THAT DELAY IS!!!! It is so noticeable when she does it!
posted by armacy at 10:15 AM on May 2, 2023

It's always interesting when men like Trebek die and become canonized in pop culture.

I have to wonder, if 3 years is the normal amount of time for the legend to start wearing rather thin. Would be interesting to conduct an informal study of the time between "the king of X is dead" to "actually... ".
posted by Dotty at 10:30 AM on May 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

But is "Leeb" the correct pronunciation of "Loeb"? My knowledge of German is rudimentary at best but "Leeb" sounds wrong to me.
posted by mpark at 11:46 AM on May 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

But is "Leeb" the correct pronunciation of "Loeb"?

"Loeb" generally came to the US as Löb, which is pronounced closer to "loob" or "luhb", and nowhere near "leeb". Umlauted vowels are often transliterated to "-e", and Germans pronounce the second vowel in a pair, so "leeb" is an overcorrection known as hyperforeignism.
posted by Etrigan at 12:12 PM on May 2, 2023 [7 favorites]

This whole thing is so over the top.

"People wrote in with [misogynist] complaints about a female contestant"
"ERASE HER FROM ALL HISTORY. SHE WAS NEVER HERE AND SHE WILL NEVER BE BACK"

Sometimes it just seems like such a hassle to be this mad at a woman - like could these behind the scenes men not just go "ugh, women" and move along?
posted by Emmy Rae at 12:19 PM on May 2, 2023 [6 favorites]

You'd probably have to find whatever dictionary or encyclopedia the judges referenced back in the day to re-adjudicate the Leeb ruling. Jeopardy fans are always rather boggled about when mispronunciations are ruled correct vs. incorrect. I'm sure they have a set of specific rules but trying to work backwards from the on-screen results is tough.

What's interesting in terms of modern day Jeopardy is that her objection wasn't edited out. The modern show is rather produced, once you notice you can see where they slice and dice episodes. My memory is bad so I can't recall if this started in the post-Trebek era with the less-experienced judges or if they occasionally edited around Trebek as well.
posted by muddgirl at 12:35 PM on May 2, 2023

As I think about this, I get increasingly confused. Trebek was certainly a grouch, but I don't remember there being complaints about him and women specifically. My sense was that he was an equal opportunity snob. Vollick was the only person treated this way (ie, disqualified and shows stricken from playing), right? I'm not a Jeopardy aficionado.
posted by Galvanic at 12:49 PM on May 2, 2023

Then, late last year, a longtime Jeopardy! fan came forward to share that they’d recorded nearly every single episode of the show through the first seven seasons with Trebek, stretching from 1984 to 1991. The haul—some 896 episodes spread out over a whopping 108 VHS cassettes—had been left sitting in a closet.

I'm impressed by this. I recorded a lot of stuff back in the day, and tried to get complete collections of things, but nothing this large, and I sure as heck don't have any of the tapes anymore.
posted by JanetLand at 1:00 PM on May 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

It appears like they cheated her out of a ton of her winnings because....she had to go to the bathroom.

Did they want her to just go right there, with no change of clothes? Production delays aren't sacred, people cause them all the time, I'm sure, and for far worse reasons.

Blech.
posted by 41swans at 1:33 PM on May 2, 2023 [7 favorites]

ps - I've been on a game show myself, and when we had to go to the bathroom (while waiting to tape) we were escorted there, waited for, and escorted back to where we waited. They were very serious about keeping an eye on us (and I knew why.)
posted by 41swans at 1:36 PM on May 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

Sometimes it just seems like such a hassle to be this mad at a woman - like could these behind the scenes men not just go "ugh, women" and move along?

If a good chunk of men could do that, we'd have a lot less problems. Alas, they absolutely cannot.

Such petty BS to deny a woman her hard-earned winnings, too.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:57 PM on May 2, 2023 [7 favorites]

Trebek was a preening dick in real life. At least he was to young, ol' Geography Bee Haggis. Herb Stempel, however
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 4:41 PM on May 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

Or, is the implication that she listed these while hiding others?

Yes. We know that she listed three appearances on her application. We're relying on her that these were the only three that she appeared on -- something contradicted by other sources. I don't have a good way to choose between them.

I mean, we have one account that seems supported by the documentation, and another that has multiple other exaggerations or mistakes that all seem to make Lowe seem like a worse person. But yeah, there's no way to tell which source we should give more weight to...
posted by Gygesringtone at 4:55 PM on May 2, 2023 [8 favorites]

But yeah, there's no way to tell which source we should give more weight to...


Vollick can't remember how many game shows she appeared on; the inaccuracies in one of the other sources (Eisenberg) were that he was off on the money amount (50 K vs. 35 K) and by one year on when she was on there (1987 vs. 1986). Those don't strike me as major errors (and Eisenberg reported the Loeb/Leeb pronunciation story correctly) The other sources (Trebek, Boden [though his testimony was reported by Eisenberg], Vosburgh] that mention the appearing on more shows than she should have weren't tagged for having mistakes.

You can take that as a slam dunk in one direction. I don't.
posted by Galvanic at 5:52 PM on May 2, 2023

Quoted from Eisenberg's memoir:

Rather than get into an argument with her right in the middle of the show, Alex went ahead and gave it to her.”

That's not what happened and not what has ever happened in the Trebek version of Jeopardy (as far as I know). And Eisenberg should absolutely know this. There is a panel of judges who adjudicate these kinds of answers. Per the tape, the judges were consulted and decided that she should be ruled correct. As I said in my last comment, mispronunciations are one of the trickier areas of Jeopardy rules.
posted by muddgirl at 6:40 PM on May 2, 2023 [5 favorites]

Like, Alex Trebek was not a genius, he knew the answers that were written on the cards. He didn't actually decide who is right and wrong.
posted by muddgirl at 6:42 PM on May 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

I mean, look, I had a whole thing about how the two claims are not equivalent and why it doesn't make sense to claim that there's an equal lack of evidence for either and so there's no way to decide who to believe. But the important point I want to make is that none of this is a value neutral "who's to say?" situation. This is powerful men, who were part of a big media corporation, smearing a woman. So, even if in this specific case they're not part of systemic misogyny, which is kind of doubtful given the nature of power and systemic issues, by defaulting to a position that it's unknowable so we can't just believe the woman, we'd be providing more cover for men who absolutely are a part of systemic misogyny.
posted by Gygesringtone at 8:16 PM on May 2, 2023 [8 favorites]

.... though, tbh, I did just watch some episodes from this millenia tonight. Trebek seemed mellower unlike his asshole, Canadian uncle persona from the last century. He put up admirably with that Brad Rutter character, though, who was far too obnoxious of a nerd to be on television
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 5:57 AM on May 3, 2023

This is powerful men, who were part of a big media corporation, smearing a woman.

A woman they had already cheated out of her winnings, both earned and possible future. They had no reason to continue smearing her. Except, you know, misogyny.
posted by bluloo at 8:10 AM on May 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

Metafilter: transparently smug, officious, petty and narrow minded
posted by Reverend John at 10:12 AM on May 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

@Gygesringtone I couldn’t make heads or tails of your logic, so I’m going to stay with my original thought that I can’t tell what the real story here is (but that Jeopardy should just have given the money no matter what they thought). If a systemic misogynist comes leaping in to take cover, I’ll trip them.
posted by Galvanic at 1:02 PM on May 3, 2023

Let me try one more time:

Believing that you can't trust a woman who's been accused of lying, because she's been accused of lying is taking a side. It's saying that you don't need proof to think that the woman is a liar. The fact that the pattern is that we (as a society) don't need proof to think that a woman is lying is used by men in position of power to punish women.
posted by Gygesringtone at 2:08 PM on May 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I now understand what a milkshake duck is, because of the woman from the Jeopardy story. Ugh. (that's her quoted in the article, wearing the hat and two shirts.)
posted by 41swans at 7:47 AM on May 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Believing that you can't trust a woman who's been accused of lying, because she's been accused of lying is taking a side. It's saying that you don't need proof to think that the woman is a liar. The fact that the pattern is that we (as a society) don't need proof to think that a woman is lying is used by men in position of power to punish women.


Got it. So: 1) I didn't say that Vollick Lowe had lied, I just said I didn't know who was reliable and there was no way to tell. Witnesses get things wrong for lots more reasons than lying; 2) I factored in the fact that this fits into a bad narrative when I said that I didn't have any idea whose story was correct.

(Also, it just occurred to me: where are the other contestants? There were five games played, so 10 other contestants. A couple of them are mentioned by name -- what was their experience on those shows?)
posted by Galvanic at 9:45 AM on May 4, 2023

I propose that a milkshake duck in reverse should be known as a malted goose.
posted by y2karl at 7:58 AM on May 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

y2karl, the joke is quite funny, but what would that mean?
posted by Night_owl at 10:23 AM on May 5, 2023

Sortir de la cage des volailles libre ou alors je crois.
posted by y2karl at 4:59 PM on May 5, 2023