Did Jeopardy Screw Up? 9/15

[Zakalwe]

@kapri

I could go on, but I don’t want to be a P.I.T.A.

Not at all (at least not from my standpoint). The reading was educational. It does however seem to be a pretty nascent genre designation which might be why I’ve never heard of it.

I’m normally not a big fan of genre definitions since a good book should be read as a good book without preconception (and I wouldn’t want Exapno Mapcase coming down on me), but the line between fiction and non-fiction serves a useful purpose and since I personally still class “creative nonfiction” books as fiction the name is a bit of an oxymoron IMHO.

[Leaper]

@Walloon

I once caught an error in a Final Jeopardy question about the movie Gone With the Wind, and reported it to the discussion forums at the official Jeopardy! website.

I was promptly blocked. :mad:

(Note: the below doesn’t necessarily describe you particularly, especially the first-timer bits.)

That’s because they regularly get a ton of posters who register just to come in heart all a-flutter to report errors. A good 80-90% of the time, one of the two following things (or both!) are true:

a) It’s been noticed and mentioned a dozen times already;
b) It’s the poster who’s wrong, and the question that’s right.

I suppose some mods have just gotten trigger happy on first-timers (or those with otherwise low post counts) whose first (or near first) actions are to “report errors.”

[Walloon]

Hmm, I was a first-timer at the discussion forum. And I did not check to see if the issue had been addressed, because I posted on the day of first broadcast.

But I was also right.

[Erdosain]

@Walloon

Hmm, I was a first-timer at the discussion forum. And I did not check to see if the issue had been addressed, because I posted on the day of first broadcast.

But I was also right.

What was the question and what year was it?

[Erdosain]

God, I love the Jeopardy Archive. Here is a list of every Final Jeopardy clue about or that mentions Gone With the Wind.

Final Jeopardy! Round clues

#5556, aired 2008-11-03
PULITZER-WINNING NOVELS: From this book’s penultimate paragraph: “There had never been a man she couldn’t get, once she set her mind upon him”

#5211, aired 2007-04-16
BEST PICTURE OSCAR WINNERS: Following “Gone with the Wind”, it would be another 12 years before a color film won again: this foreign-set musical

#4932, aired 2006-02-07
20th CENTURY BOOKS: In a classic book, this title phrase precedes the words “which had swept through Georgia”

#4639, aired 2004-11-05
LITERATURE: In early drafts, the heroine of this novel was named Pansy & her family home was called Fontenoy Hall

#4611, aired 2004-09-27
PULITZER PRIZE WINNERS: 1 of the 2 novels, both Southern, that won the Pulitzer for fiction & became Best Picture Oscar winners

#3932, aired 2001-10-09
WOMEN AUTHORS: In 1935 she sent a telegram to a Macmillan editor: “Please send manuscript back I’ve changed my mind”

#3689, aired 2000-09-21
LITERARY TREES: In a famous novel this type of tree grows beneath a bedroom window at Tara

#1193, aired 1989-11-08
THE OSCARS: Only Pulitzer Prize-winning novels to become Oscar-winning “Best Pictures” are “All The King’s Men” & this one

This is why the internet exists!

[Walloon]

I can’t remember the year (2000–2006), but the Final Jeopardy clue was something like, “This 1939 movie was fined $5,000 by the Production Code Administration for using the word ‘damn’”. The winning question, as I predicted it would be, was “What was Gone With the Wind?”

However, that is false. To quote Wikipedia:

Prior to the film’s release, censors objected to the use of the word “damn” in the film, a word that had been prohibited by the 1930 Motion Picture Association’s Production Code that began to be enforced in July 1934. However, before 1930 the word “damn” had been relatively common in films. Although legend persists that the Hays Office fined producer David O. Selznick $5,000 for using the word “damn,” in fact the MPA board passed an amendment to the Production Code on November 1, 1939, a month and a half before the film’s release, that forbade use of the words “hell” or “damn” except when their use “shall be essential and required for portrayal, in proper historical context, of any scene or dialogue based upon historical fact or folklore … or a quotation from a literary work, provided that no such use shall be permitted which is intrinsically objectionable or offends good taste.” With that amendment, the Production Code Administration had no further objection to Rhett’s closing line.

Sources:
• Leonard J. Leff and Jerold L. Simmons, The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code, pp. 107–108.
• David O. Selznick, Memo from David O. Selznick, Modern Library, 2000, p. 246n

BTW, the Jeopardy Archive is patchy; it does not claim to be complete, but transcribes only those episodes to which it has a copy.

[Erdosain]

@Walloon

I can’t remember the year (2000–2006), but the Final Jeopardy clue was something like, “This 1939 movie was fined $5,000 by the Production Code Administration for using the word ‘damn’”. The winning question, as I predicted it would be, was “What was Gone With the Wind?”

However, that is false. To quote Wikipedia:Sources:
• Leonard J. Leff and Jerold L. Simmons, The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code, pp. 107–108.
• David O. Selznick, Memo from David O. Selznick, Modern Library, 2000, p. 246n

BTW, the Jeopardy Archive is patchy; it does not claim to be complete, but transcribes only those episodes to which it has a copy.

The archive is pretty complete from 1997-present. They are missing 150 episodes from 2003-2004 for some reason, but that’s about it. Anyway, I found your Final Jeopardy based on your memory. The reason I didn’t find it before is because the words “Gone With the Wind” never actually appear in the clue or answer.

Show #5103 - November 15, 2006 - 2006 Celebrity Jeopardy! game 6.
From Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
Contestants: Harry Smith, a broadcast journalist from The Early Show
Miguel Ferrer, an actor from Crossing Jordan
Steve Schirripa, an actor from The Sopranos

Final Jeopardy! - MOVIE HISTORY
Producer David Selznick was fined $5,000 by censors for using this word in a 1939 film

Funnily enough, Bobby Baccalieri answered “sex sex.” That sounds about right.