1959 College Bowl research

• From: zimmsbio
• Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2001 11:27:55 -0800
• Message-ID: <000U2K95R.001O8PL51.12170551-quizbowl_at_...>

Greetings all.

I am doing some research
into the life of author John A. Bellairs (1938-1991)
who appeared on the 1959 GE College Bowl program as a
member of the Notre Dame team. His team won against
Georgetown University on March 8 and then lost to Barnard
College the following Sunday, March 15.

I have
been told by some of Johns friends that Bellairs was
much the hero of the March 08 broadcast: I don't know
that he contributed more correct answers than anyone
else, but he did run up the score when they offered
some number of bonus points for every line of
Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales that the team
could quote in Middle English. That was like throwing a
lamb chop to a wolf; he used to be able to empty rooms
with that very recitation. It looked as if he would
get through the entire Prologue and half of the
Knight's Tale before he ran out of breath, but there was a
maximum score and they stopped him much sooner than that.
When the students turned out to greet the returning
team, a chant was heard (to a two-note tune generally
used for such lyrics as Go Irish, Beat Navy!) of Go
Bellairs! Quote Chaucer! It was a moment to make any
English major's heart beat proudly.

It sounds as
if it was one heckuva show. We have been researching
this College Bowl angle and asking around some
questions, hoping for answers....

1. Does anyone know
if footage of these two programs exists and, more
importantly, how about one goes to finding it?

Notre
Dame and Georgetown University have provided me with a
number of photographs from the various programs but
video...film...of these would be fascinating to view. We contacted
the fine folks at collegebowl.com and although they
do not have archives going that far back, they did
mention contacting the various schools as schools
purchased copies of the programs. Neither ND or GU has such
a copy. Oh well.

2. I am trying to create a
timeline of the broadcasts for that year. I have the
following dates thus far:

01/04/1959  College Bowl
becomes a network television show.
01/24/1959 
Georgetown University beat Northwestern,
170-120
02/12/1959  GU tied Princeton, 115-115
02/19/1959  GU
beat Princeton, 215-70
03/01/1959 - GU beat Tulane,
180-170
03/08/1959  Notre Dame beat GU, 205-90
03/15/1959 
Barnard over ND, 

I believe the next game would
have put Southern California at Barnard College, but I
am told Barnard lost. Later on down the line I was
found the following:

10/04/1959 - Stanford
University beat University of Oregon,
195-110


Does anybody by chance have additional dates and
scores to fill in the gaps? Or perhaps where one would
go to find them?



Any sort of feedback
into this is greatly appreciated. Thank for your
help.

Craig and Jon
the Bellairsia staff