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 is, fame, the and/or game:
“Fame sometimes hath created something out of nothing. She hath made whole countries more than nature ever did, especially near the poles, and then hath peopled them likewise with inhabitants of her own invention, pigmies, giants, and amazons: yea, fame is sometimes like unto a mushroom, which Pliny recounts to be the greatest miracle in nature, because growing and having no root, as fame no ground of her reports.”
—Thomas Fuller (1608–1661)
“The great difficulty is first to win a reputation; the next to keep it while you live; and the next to preserve it after you die, when affection and interest are over, and nothing but sterling excellence can preserve your name. Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.”
—Benjamin Haydon (1786–1846)
“If you read only the best, you will have no need of reading the other books, because the latter are nothing but a rehash of the best and the oldest. To read Shakespeare, Plato, Dante, Milton, Spenser, Chaucer, and their compeers in prose, is to read in condensed form what all others have diluted.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
“It is usual for a Man who loves Country Sports to preserve the Game in his own Grounds, and divert himself upon those that belong to his Neighbour.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)