How a Disneyland Mouse Infestation Inspired a ‘Jeopardy!’ Category
Jeopardy! has had all varieties of categories. When you have to think of clues for questions for nearly 40 years, you’re eventually going to cover everything. Eventually the show would hire former contestants to help write clues and questions. In the early days of the show, there was a category about vermin. One clue was about a mouse infestation at Disneyland, which inspired the rest of the category.
Head researcher Suzanne Stone was a guest on the Hollywood & Levine podcast on June 29. Discussing her time on Jeopardy! which recently ended, Stone shared the true story behind the Disneyland mice and vermin category.
A ‘Jeopardy!’ writer called Disneyland in the middle of a mouse infestation
This was an example of art imitating life. Stone remembered the late Jeopardy! writer whose search for a Disneyland gift gave him inspiration for a whole category.
“One of our original writers, Steven Dorfman, who sadly passed away in 2004, he always came up with interesting ideas,” Stone said on Hollywood & Levine. “He had called up a Disneyland gift shop one day. He had a gift he was trying to find, I think a Disney themed gift. And they mistook him for the exterminator.”
Disneyland became a literally mouse haven
A real-life Disneyland mouse infestation is especially ironic considering Mickey Mouse is the symbol of Walt Disney. Mickey is wonderful, but tourists don’t want to feel real four-legged mice crawling over their feet.
“This is a true story,” Stone said. “They told him they were trying to get rid of mice in the Disneyland gift shop. And he was thrilled with this idea of doing a vermin category. This is like in 1984/85, building a whole category around vermin, not just the one clue about Disneyland. But other things about things that obviously we don’t like to have in our houses.”
‘Jeopardy!’ sets no limits on inspiration
Jeopardy! categories don’t always fall into their lap like that. Stone previously described the process for writing questions for categories. Though only five clues make it to air, writers usually have to come up with at least seven so they have backup.
“So you never know when inspiration will strike and depending on the head writers and also Alex [Trebek] sometimes, we’d run through things with Alex,” Stone said. “What would you do with this, what would you do with that? And he’d say yes, or he’d also suggest ideas for clues too. So it was give and take and it was always a stimulating environment.”
