The Peculiar Truth about the Pop Psychology Pioneer

• 1955: A game show on CBS, The $64,000 Question, became popular after only six months on the air. Think of it as a forerunner to Jeopardy.

• Part of the show’s appeal was matching contestants with topics that seemed odd for their stereotype. For instance, Marine Corps Captain Richard McCutcheon was the first contestant to win the top prize. His category was cooking.

• One contestant was a 28-year-old housewife and mother with a degree in psychology. She had to answer questions about boxing.

• While other game shows became scandalous for cheating, she played fairly and squarely - even though the producers tried to make her fail.

• She later created a career as a pop psychologist and became a household name.

• She was Dr. Joyce Brothers.

• Born Joyce Bauer in 1927, she grew up on Long Island. Her parents were lawyers. Her only sibling, a sister, grew up to join the bar, too, and later became a judge.

• Joyce attended Cornell University. Her major was home economics. But she took an interest in psychology and went to Columbia University to study. She received a doctorate degree in 1953 and then went on to teach.

• Years earlier, she met her future husband, Milton Brothers, a medical student. They married in 1949 and raised a daughter, their only child.

• To help earn money for the family while Milton went through medical school, Joyce came up with a plan. She knew The $64,000 Question gave away big cash prizes. Why not audition for the show and try to win?

• What she didn’t know at the time was that the TV game show was rigged. Some contestants had surreptitious conversations backstage with show personnel that tipped them off to the answers. The producers manipulated outcomes.

• Not with Joyce Brothers, however. They didn’t really want her on the show and gave her increasingly difficult questions.

• No problem. Joyce had read everything there was to know about boxing and employed her keen memory to come up with the correct answers.

• There was a problem, though. The program’s sponsor was Revlon. The company CEO disapproved of Dr. Brothers because she wouldn’t wear makeup.

• As a result, the producers quietly asked her to fail when she reached a middle level. She refused. The questions got harder.

• For her chance at the grand prize of $64,000 (over $750,000 today), she was asked the following: “What are the ring names of the four heavyweight boxing champions whose real names are Rocco Marchegiano, Arnold Raymond Cream, Joseph Paul Zukauskas, and Noah Brusso?” No one believed she could answer correctly.

• She aced it and became an instant celebrity.

• Dr. Brothers used that overnight fame to her advantage. In 1958, she got her own daytime talk show. She and her guests openly discussed psychological and marital issues that were generally considered taboo in that era. Her approach was erudite, never lurid.

• In the decades to come, she created a niche for herself as a pop psychologist. She appeared on countless talk shows, in magazines, had a syndicated newspaper column, and in a few films and TV shows cast as herself. She wrote a bestselling book about her life as a widow. In a twist, she also appeared on numerous 70s game shows as a celebrity, not a contestant.

• Dr. Joyce Brothers pioneered the TV pop psychology field that was previously unknown but would have many imitators.

• It all began because she correctly - and fairly - answered the $64,000 Question.