Fame Is the Name of the Game (1966) is an American TV-movie, that aired on NBC and served as the pilot episode of the subsequent series The Name of the Game. It was directed by Stuart Rosenberg. It was produced by Ranald MacDougall, who also wrote the teleplay, from the novel Three Women by Tiffany Thayer.
The film stars Tony Franciosa as investigative journalist Jeff Dillon. It also presents the screen debut of 20-year-old Susan Saint James as Peggy Chan, Dillon's new editorial assistant. (In the series, St. James's character is renamed Peggy Maxwell, and she is the research assistant to all three of the rotating lead characters.) In the film, Jeff Dillon writes for Fame magazine, a publication of Janus Enterprises, and Glenn Howard (George Macready) is just the managing editor. In the subsequent series, Dillon writes for People magazine, a division of Howard Publications, and Glenn Howard (Gene Barry) is head of the whole company.
The telefilm also features Jill St. John, Jack Klugman, and Robert Duvall.
In the weeks before the telefilm's first broadcast, NBC ran an unprecedented blitz of TV ads which erroneously billed Fame is the Name of the Game as television's first "world premiere" of a "major motion picture". The film garnered phenomenal ratings leading to the spin-off series.
Read more about Fame Is The Name Of The Game: Principal Cast
Famous quotes containing the words fame, the and/or game:
“The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“The great, the rich, the powerful, too often bestow their favours upon their inferiors in the manner they bestow their scraps upon their dogs, so as neither to oblige man nor dogs. It is no wonder if favours, benefits, and even charities thus bestowed ungraciously, should be as coldly and faintly acknowledged.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Good shot, bad luck and hell are the five basic words to be used in a game of tennis, though these, of course, can be slightly amplified.”
—Virginia Graham (b. 1912)