Arthur Fleming Fazzin (May 1, 1924 – April 25, 1995), known professionally as Art Fleming, was an American actor and television host. He was the original host of the television Jeopardy!, hosting its first three versions as a network show on NBC (1964-1975 and 1978-1979) and as a weekly syndicated show (1974-1975).
Early life and career
Fleming was born in New York City. His parents, William and Marie Fazzin, a dance team popular in Europe, had immigrated to the United States from Austria. Fleming played varsity football at James Monroe High School in New York, where he earned a letterman award. He stood and weighed . He later attended Colgate University and Cornell University,
thumb|A 1970 NBC publicity photo featuring [[Art James, Bob Clayton, Jack Kelly and Fleming]]
Fleming's first television role was as a stunt double for Ralph Bellamy in the detective series Man Against Crime. In 1959, he starred as detective Ken Franklin in the ABC series International Detective, credited as Arthur Fleming. He also played attorney Jeremy Pitt in The Californians, an NBC Western set in San Francisco during the gold rush of the 1850s. Fleming also appeared in many television commercials in addition to anchoring the 11:00 news on WNBC.
Jeopardy!
In 1964, Fleming was living in New York City when he was contacted by Merv Griffin regarding his availability to host a daytime game show. Griffin and his wife Julann had spotted Fleming on a commercial for Trans World Airlines, and Griffin thought that Fleming was "authoritative, yet warm and interesting". Fleming auditioned, competing against two other candidates, During his tenure as host of Jeopardy!, Fleming never missed a taping.
Because he hosted a quiz show, and in part because he was an avid reader with multiple college degrees, Fleming earned a reputation as a storehouse of trivia. However, in 1990, Fleming admitted: "If I didn't have that sheet in front of me you wouldn't find me in the studio".
Jeopardy! was successful until 1974 when Lin Bolen, NBC's vice president of daytime programming, canceled the show. Bolen believed that the show had run its course and that Fleming was too old to attract younger viewers.. He also appeared in an episode of the television police drama Starsky and Hutch as well as episodes of shows such as Kingston: Confidential and the 1976 miniseries The Moneychangers.
Fleming also hosted a radio version of College Bowl for CBS Radio from 1979 to 1982. He hosted the NBC radio weekend magazine Monitor during 1972. Fleming reprised his role as host of Jeopardy! in the 1982 film Airplane II: The Sequel and "Weird Al" Yankovic's music video "I Lost on Jeopardy". Fleming was also often asked to host mock versions of Jeopardy! at trade shows and conventions.
When Merv Griffin began developing a new revival of Jeopardy! in 1983, he opted not to invite Fleming to host. Alex Trebek was offered the position, when suggested by actress Lucille Ball, and hosted the program until his death in 2020. However, Fleming claimed in interviews that he had declined the position.
In interviews conducted in the early years of the Trebek version, Fleming expressed his displeasure with the show's new direction and various changes that the revival's producers had implemented. He disapproved of moving production from New York to Los Angeles, suggesting that filming in California made the show feel superficial and anti-intellectual. He also claimed that the new show's questions and answers were too easy and feuded publicly with the staff of the modern Jeopardy! over the nature of the material, as he believed that the writers were inserting hints to allow the correct questions to seem more obvious and easier to guess.
Personal life
Fleming was a devout Christian. He served as a deacon at Marble Collegiate Church in New York City and was a friend of Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller. and they had a daughter, Jan. In 1954, he married actress Peggy Ann Ellis, who had worked on The Merv Griffin Show. Fleming denied having any children in a 1974 interview, conducted after his divorce from Ellis. Despite insisting he would never marry again after his divorce from Ellis, According to his obituary in the Los Angeles Times, he had been diagnosed with cancer two weeks before his death. On November 8, 2020, his successor on Jeopardy!, Alex Trebek, died of the same disease at the age of 80.
Legacy
As Jeopardy!<nowiki/>'s original host, the show is perhaps Fleming's most-remembered accomplishment. He was considered by many as the face of the show even after Alex Trebek took over as host. An article from The Washington Post written on the day of Fleming's death in 1995 asked: "Who will always be the embodiment of 'Jeopardy!' even if Alex Trebek plays the role for another 40 years?"
Because of network tape-wiping practices in the 1960s and 1970s, only a small number of Jeopardy! episodes hosted by Fleming currently exist, and only a fraction of these exist as complete color videotapes. However, there have been many recent efforts to uncover lost episodes from Fleming's tenure.
Filmography
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Year
! Title
! Role
! Notes
|-
|1957|| A Hatful of Rain || Jack - Mounted Cop ||
|-
|1959|| Career || Mounted Policeman || Uncredited
|-
|1959
|International Detective
|Ken Franklin
|
|-
|1964-1975; 1978-1979
|Jeopardy!
|Host
|
|-
|1977|| American Raspberry || Colonel Grant ||
|-
|1977|| MacArthur || W. Averell Harriman ||
|-
|1977
|Kingston: Confidential
|Ted Corbin
|
|-
|1977
|The Moneychangers
|Prosecutor
|
|-
|1977
|Starsky and Hutch
|Lt. John Blaine
|
|-
|1982|| Airplane II: The Sequel || Himself ||
|-
|1984; 1985
|Nova
|Host
|National Science Test
|}
See also
- Jeopardy!
- Broadcast of Jeopardy!