Mike Stokey and Stump the Stars

Mike Stokey (Sept 14, 1918 – September 7, 2003) created, produced, and hosted Pantomime Quiz, later known as Stump The Stars. The show ran on television for 23 years and has the distinction of being one of the few television shows to air on all four major networks—including Dumont—during the “Golden Age of Television.”

Based on the parlor game of charades, Mike Stokey was given 24 hours to go on the air at station KTLA on Sunday, November 13, 1947. The show was a wild and instant hit, and soon Mike was presenting all-star casts weekly that were not matched until years later when the Ed Sullivan show became a hit. Thus Mike came to be known as “the man who introduced the Hollywood stars to television,” and Pantomime Quiz’s intro became “the favorite show of the Hollywood stars.”

In January, 1949, at the First Annual Awards Banquet of the newly formed  Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Mike won the first Emmy ever as producer of “The Most Popular Television show—MIKE STOKEY’S PANTOMINE QUIZ TIME.” They misspelled “pantomime,” and he never let them change it—and never let them forget.