Alex Trebek


George Alexander Trebek was a Canadian and American game show host and television personality. Regarded as a pop culture icon, he was best known for hosting the syndicated quiz show Jeopardy! for 37 seasons from its revival in 1984 until his death in 2020. Trebek also hosted a number of other game shows, including The Wizard of Odds, Double Dare, High Rollers, Battlestars, Classic Concentration, and To Tell the Truth. He made appearances, usually as himself, in numerous films and television series.
A native of Canada, Trebek became a naturalized American citizen in 1998. For his work on Jeopardy!, Trebek received the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show Host eight times. He died on November 8, 2020, at the age of 80, after 20 months with stage IV pancreatic cancer. At the time of his death, Trebek had been contracted to host Jeopardy! until 2022.

Early life

George Alexander Trebek was born on July 22, 1940, in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, the son of George Edward Trebek, a chef who had emigrated from Ukraine as a child and Lucille Marie Lagacé, a Franco-Ontarian. Trebek's second nickname, Sai, originated from his father's time in Japan. Trebek had roots in Renfrew County, Ontario, where his maternal grandmother was born in Mount St. Patrick near Renfrew. Trebek grew up in a bilingual French-English household. He was almost expelled from boarding school. Shortly afterwards, Trebek attended a military college in Quebec, but dropped out when he was asked to shave his head. Trebek's first job at age 13 was as a bellhop at the hotel where his father worked as a chef. Trebek attended Sudbury High School and then attended the University of Ottawa. He graduated from the University of Ottawa with a degree in philosophy in 1961. While a university student, Trebek was a member of the English Debating Society. At the time, he was interested in a broadcast news career.

Broadcasting career

CBC

Before completing his degree, Trebek began his career in 1961 working for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. According to Trebek, "I went to school in the mornings and worked at nights; I did everything, at one time replacing every announcer in every possible job." He would eventually read the CBC national radio news and cover a wide range of special events for CBC Radio and CBC Television, including curling and horse racing.
Trebek's first hosting job was on a Canadian music program called Music Hop in 1963. In 1966, he hosted a high school quiz show called Reach for the Top. From 1967 to 1970, Trebek was a host for the CBC, introducing classical music programs including performances by Glenn Gould. For one or two seasons, he hosted a weekly skating program. Starting on April 1, 1969, Trebek also hosted Strategy, a weekday afternoon game show. From 1971 until the end of 1972, he hosted I'm Here Til 9, the local morning drive radio show on CBC Toronto.
In 1971, Trebek was one of several to have been shortlisted to succeed Ward Cornell as host of Hockey Night in Canada. Although Trebek was the preferred choice of executive producer Ralph Mellanby, based on his audition and other CBC roles, Mellanby stated in 2020 that he ultimately chose Dave Hodge instead, because his boss did not want someone with a mustache to host Hockey Night.

Game shows

In 1973, Trebek moved to the United States and worked for NBC as host of a new game show, The Wizard of Odds. A year later Trebek hosted the popular Merrill Heatter-Bob Quigley game show High Rollers, which had two incarnations on NBC and an accompanying syndicated season. In between stints as host of High Rollers, Trebek hosted the short-lived CBS game show Double Dare. Double Dare turned out to be Trebek's only game show with the CBS network, and the first show he hosted for what was then Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions, as well as the second season of the syndicated series The $128,000 Question, which was recorded in Toronto.
Since the second incarnation of High Rollers premiered while The $128,000 Question was still airing and taping episodes, Trebek became one of two hosts to emcee shows in both the United States and Canada, joining Jim Perry, who was hosting Definition and Headline Hunters in Canada and Card Sharks, which coincidentally premiered the same day as High Rollers in 1978 in the United States. Trebek's francophone side was put on display in 1978, in a special bilingual edition of Reach for the Top and its Radio-Canada equivalent, Génies en herbe. In this show, Trebek alternated smoothly between French and English throughout.
Like other hosts of the day, Trebek made several guest appearances as a panelist or player on other shows. One of his guest appearances was on a special week of NBC's Card Sharks in 1980. Trebek and several other game show hosts competed in a 3-week-long round-robin tournament for charity. Trebek won the tournament, defeating Cullen in the finals. Trebek also appeared as a celebrity teammate on the NBC game show The Magnificent Marble Machine in 1975, and the Tom Kennedy-hosted NBC word game To Say the Least in 1978. Both of those shows were produced by Merrill Heatter-Bob Quigley Productions, which also produced High Rollers, the show Trebek was hosting during both of those guest appearances. Trebek also was a contestant on Celebrity Bowling in 1976, teamed with Jim McKrell. The duo won their match against Dick Gautier and Scatman Crothers.
After High Rollers was cancelled in 1980, Trebek moved on to Battlestars for NBC. The series debuted in October 1981 and was cancelled in April 1982 after only six months on the air. In September 1981, Trebek took the helm of the syndicated Pitfall, which taped in Vancouver and forced him to commute, as Trebek had done while hosting High Rollers and The $128,000 Question in 1978. Pitfall was cancelled after its production company, Catalena Productions, went bankrupt. As a result, Trebek was never paid for that series. After both series ended, he hosted a revival of Battlestars called The New Battlestars that ended after 13 weeks, then shot a series of pilots for other series for producer Merrill Heatter, for whom he had worked hosting High Rollers and Battlestars, and Merv Griffin. The Heatter pilots were Malcolm, an NBC-ordered pilot featuring Trebek with an animated character as his co-host, and Lucky Numbers, an attempt at a revival of High Rollers that failed to sell. For Griffin, he shot two pilots for a revival of Jeopardy! when original host Art Fleming declined to return to the role owing to creative differences. This revival sold, and Trebek began hosting it in 1984 and remained the host until his death in 2020. His final episode hosting Jeopardy! was to air on Christmas Day 2020; however, Sony announced on November 23, 2020, that the air dates of Trebek's final week would be postponed, with episodes scheduled for the week of December 21–25 being postponed to January 4–8, 2021, due to the delay caused by the cancellation of most November production dates and pre-emptions caused by holiday week specials and shorts.
Following Trebek's death, a series of guest hosts filled in for Trebek for the remainder of season 37 of Jeopardy!. On July 27, 2022, it was announced that Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings would succeed Trebek as the permanent hosts of Jeopardy! after alternating in multi-week stints for the remainder of the show's 38th season after Mike Richards was let go after taping a week's worth of episodes after various controversies came to light.
In 1987, while still hosting Jeopardy!, Trebek returned to daytime television as host of NBC's Classic Concentration, his second show for Mark Goodson. Trebek hosted both shows simultaneously until September 20, 1991, when Classic Concentration aired its final first-run episode. In 1991, he made broadcast history by becoming the first person to host three American game shows at the same time, earning this distinction on February 4, 1991, when Trebek took over from Lynn Swann as host of NBC's To Tell the Truth for Goodson-Todman, which Trebek hosted until the end of the series' run on May 31, 1991.
In 1994, Trebek returned to the CBS network for the first time since hosting Double Dare to host the Pillsbury Bake-Off, which he hosted until 1998. Trebek and Pat Sajak, host of Wheel of Fortune, traded places on April Fools' Day 1997. Pat Sajak hosted Jeopardy! and Trebek hosted Wheel of Fortune with Sajak's wife, Lesly, as Trebek's co-host. Sajak and Wheel of Fortune co-host Vanna White played contestants at the wheel, with winnings going toward charities. Trebek appeared on Celebrity Poker Showdown in 2005 and came in second place in his qualifying game, losing to Cheryl Hines.
On June 24, 2018, Trebek returned as a panelist on the ABC revival of To Tell the Truth. He hosted a Jeopardy! primetime special event titled The Greatest of All Time on ABC in January 2020, pitting the highest money winners in the show's history, Brad Rutter, Ken Jennings, and James Holzhauer, against each other.

Other appearances

Trebek made multiple guest appearances on other television shows, ranging from Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2008 and 2011 to The Colbert Report series finale. In August 1995, during a return to his broadcast-news roots, Trebek filled in for Charles Gibson for a week on Good Morning America. Trebek was also a guest star in season 3 of The X-Files, playing one of two "Men in Black" opposite Jesse Ventura, in the episode "Jose Chung's From Outer Space", which first aired on April 12, 1996. On June 13, 2014, Guinness World Records presented Trebek with the world record for most episodes of a game show hosted, with 6,829 episodes at the time. He has also appeared in multiple television commercials.
On October 1, 2018, Trebek moderated the only debate in the Pennsylvania governor's race, between Democrat Tom Wolf and Republican Scott Wagner. According to news outlets, he wanted to change the flow of the debate to be more conversational instead of the more traditional format. Trebek dominated the debate and talked for 41% of it, often talking about himself without giving candidates time to discuss their stances on political issues. Trebek also made remarks regarding the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. He later apologized for his performance, stating that he was "naive" and "misunderstood" the role of a moderator. "I offer my sincere apologies to the people of Pennsylvania, a state I dearly love," Trebek said.
Trebek was interviewed by Michael Strahan for an ABC special chronicling Jeopardy! and his career, which aired January 2, 2020.
On October 6, 2020, Trebek made a cameo appearance in the 2020 NHL Entry Draft, announcing the Ottawa Senators' third-overall draft pick, Tim Stützle, in the style of a Jeopardy! question.