More Than Mere Solutions (SS016)

Welcome back to our visit with Professor Quiz.

Last time, we touched briefly on the Professor's significance to radio & tv history. Though virtually unknown today, he was quite the celebrity in his time. You can see him here in this lobby card from the Three Stooges' movie Start Cheering...

...and even Superman was known to make reference to him:

The man was definitely a pop culture feature.

I told you yesterday how the questions for the show came from the listening audience. But that was only half of his genius for establishing himself as Professor Quiz. You see, he didn't ask the questions - he answered them. The players won their money if he failed to answer correctly. 
Here's a full breakdown on his show for you, courtesy of On The Air: The Encyclopedia Of Old Time Radio-

Another brilliant bit of radio with that payout in silver coins clinking by the microphone.
But more than being the artful master of quizzes, he was indeed a puzzle himself. Remember yesterday it was pointed out that he was only known as Professor Quiz when he began? Take a look at this old game card:

Note the elderly professor in the drawing above, bearing no resemblance to the photographs we've seen. His true identity was a carefully guarded secret in the early days. Those photos didn't start appearing until after Radio Daily outed the professor as actually being Dr. Craig Earle. After the secret was revealed, he started becoming more of a public figure in other media.

So, it probably should not have come as a great surprise to him when it was finally discovered that, too, was a masquerade. Dr. Craig Earle was another fictitious identity, hiding Arthur Earl Baird - a young man from Medford, Massachusetts, who had disappeared in 1935. It's much easier, you see, to avoid paying alimony and child support when you don't exist.

By the time this was discovered in 1942, Baird/Earle had remarried and had a new child. One can only speculate on the public reaction at this point, but he was ordered by the court to pay some $25,000 in back alimony and his show went off the air for a few years. Whether there was any relationship between those two events, you may determine for yourselves.

When he returned to the air, he was joined by his family, with Betty appearing as Mrs. Quiz and Professor Quiz Jr. In all, Professor Quiz produced 630 episodes the course of a dozen years. After the show ceased production, he eventually had his name legally changed to Craig Earle. He died 3 weeks shy of his 90th birthday in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, on 13 August, 1985.
If anyone can dig up more of this odd little tale, please do let us know!

Oh...
You probably want the answers to the quizzes, too, huh?
Here ya go:

quizzes from Miss America Magazine, v5 #s 1-3 (1936)

The Professor Of Quizdom

I've made mention that my so-called Comic Archeology digs actually mine all old publications with an emphasis on any with illustrations. Beyond the Un-Comics that are found that way, there are also comics who got their start in non-comic publications. One in particular is a featured character on the Netflix Marvel shows. Patsy Walker got her start in Miss America magazine, which was eventually supplanted by a comic book with the same title 3 issues into volume 7. Oddly for comics of the time, the actually started renumbering from 1 instead of continuing from 4. My guess would be that they were changing postal categories so they couldn't take advantage of the usual regulations loophole.

Today, however, we're going to talk about someone else. He only appeared in Miss America for 12 issues 80 years ago, in 1936 and '37. He only received a single column in each month's magazine, but he was quite the celebrity in his day. He was-

Professor Quiz!

Who was Professor Quiz? Well, that was quite the mystery in the beginning. He was the man who created and popularized the radio quiz game show, and grandfather of their tv show descendants. And the public had no clue  to whom the voice on the radio belonged, beyond the name Professor Quiz.
It wasn't until he'd been on the air for a year that Radio Daily finally broke the news that he was actually Dr. Craig Earl. And the world believed that to be true for the next five years...

So why are we talking about the man who brought us the quiz show?

It must be our regular ceremonial whimp-out of Friday Night Fights with our own-

Professor Quiz had quite the clever gimmick working for him, too. Instead of having to create all the questions himself, he solicited them from the radio audience. Not only did this provide his quiz database, but also fostered a sense of participation at home. The terrific success of his show led to the above Radio Stars cover in 1938, and the following special tribute inside:

Here's an easier to read look at the text above:

The Professor will be our Master Of Puzzles today, as you might already have guessed. These quizzes were usually topical to the month of publication, so we've got both a November and December quizzes here, and another bit less topical to round it out to three:

Yep - he changed to a bigger network there. Remember that these questions were asked in the late 1930s, and adjust your answers according as needed. (Though obvious modern answers will be accepted as no prizes are issued. (No, that's not how GG spelled it.))
 
Return tomorrow for the answers, and to see how the Professor's story take a hard turn into Odd country.

Professor Quiz tribute from Radio Stars v.13 #11 (1938)