Quiz Kids - New York and Chicago

New York and Chicago

In 1949-50 the program was expanded to New York, where a series of competitions determined the panelists. Students from the New York City area were chosen from questionnaires distributed to elementary schools, and were "interviewed" in panels where questions simulating those sent in by listeners were used. Those chosen from the interviews competed weekly for Quiz Kid of the month, with the two weekly winners from each show going on to the monthly "finals". Monthly winners later competed against each other on another panel, from which the overall winner was chosen. There were also parallel shows hosted by Durward Kirby, involving some of the same panelists.

Norman Lane, age nine, was the winner of the monthly competitions and went on the air in Chicago in one show with the Chicago group. Malcolm Mitchell, age 12, won the three competitions on the parallel series of shows, with Lane second each time, and was selected by the producers to be on several shows with the Chicago Quiz Kid group at NBC Studios in New York. These notably included one where the Kids defeated a group of university professors from New York in "general knowledge" topics. Mitchell, later a medical professor at Yale, had the special talent of "perfect pitch" (able to identify musical notes and chords with certainty), which made for interesting radio moments aside from answering straight questions.

A television program, now in The Paley Center for Media in New York and Los Angeles, was filmed in 1950 with Milton Berle as guest host and featured the Chicago Quiz Kids. The popularity of the television series never approached that of the radio programs, which first aired on Wednesday evenings and later on Sundays and had a devoted following of both adults and children. The Quiz Kids not only spawned a host of quiz shows starring both extraordinary and ordinary people, but also gave rise to the now more-popular term "Whiz Kids," first applied to the 1950 Philadelphia Phillies "Whiz Kids", and later to several cabinet members in the Kennedy Administration. One of the notable ex-Quiz Kids is the Nobel Prize-winning biologist James D. Watson. Others include actor and dialect coach Robert Easton, legendary Hollywood acting coach Roy London, producer Harve Bennett, poet Marilyn Hacker, Mayo Clinic Chief of Staff Richard Sedlack, and actress Vanessa Brown (deceased).