Mark Goodson
Mark Leo Goodson (January 14, 1915 – December 18, 1992) was an American television producer who specialized in game shows, most frequently with his business partner Bill Todman, with whom he created Goodson-Todman Productions.
Mark Goodson
December 18, 1992 (aged 77)
University of California, Berkeley (B.S., Economics, 1937)
Television producer
1937–1992
Early television game shows and Goodson-Todman Productions
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Bluma Neveleff(m. 1941, divorced)
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Virginia McDavid(m. 1956, divorced)
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Suzanne Waddell(m. 1972; div. 1978)
3, including Jonathan Goodson
Early life and early career[edit]
Goodson was born in Sacramento, California, on January 14, 1915.[1] His parents, Abraham Ellis (1875–1954) and Fannie Goodson (1887–1986), emigrated from Russia in the early 1900s. As a child, Goodson acted in amateur theater with the Plaza Stock Company. The family later moved to Hayward, California. Originally intending to become a lawyer, Goodson attended the University of California, Berkeley. He financed his education through scholarships and by working at the Lincoln Fish Market. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1937 with a degree in economics.
That year, he began his broadcasting career in San Francisco, working as a disc jockey at radio station KJBS (now KFAX). In 1939, he joined radio station KFRC, where he produced and hosted a radio quiz called Pop the Question in which contestants selected questions by throwing darts at multicolored balloons.