Second Careers
Not Your Average
  Game Show Host
Straddling Artistic
  Worlds

 

  
  

 
   

NOT YOUR AVERAGE GAME SHOW HOST CONTINUED [ 2 OF 2 ]

How did he get into show businesss? As arts editor for The Wall Street Journal, working in California, he began freelancing and writing screenplays. He was at Paramount talking with a friend when director John Hughes heard his voice and immediately cast him as the boring teacher in Ferris Bueller -"totally serendipitous," says his wife, Alexandra Denman. Other roles include a rabbi in Miami Rhapsody, a public works official in Ghostbusters II and science teacher Mr. Cantwell in the television series The Wonder Years. Al Burton, a friend who was a producer in Hollywood, pitched the idea of the game show to Stein in 1997.

"When he asked me if I wanted to do it," Stein recalls, "I thought they'd be giving me the answers. I didn't think they'd cheat - I just figured they would put a notice in the credits about it. But it's worked out fine after all." In addition to the game show, Stein also hosted a talk show on Comedy Central for a couple of seasons. What separated that show from other talk shows was that Stein would sit with one guest for a half-hour, permitting more in-depth conversations. "You could learn something," says Stein.

Thirty-six years after graduating from Columbia, Stein numbers several classmates among his closest friends - David Paglin, Arthur Best, Neill Brownstein and Larry Lissitzyn, all members of the Class of 1966, and fraternity brothers Radford West, Chuck Hamilton and Charlie Hewes, all '66, and Clem Sweeney '64. Another close friend from Alpha Delta Phi was Grant Roberts '66, now deceased.

"My Columbia friends," he says, "all wish they had careers like mine. I have a friend who's a venture capitalist and who makes a million times more in a few minutes that I will make in a lifetime. But he doesn't get the enjoyment out of life that I do. I get a kick out of being rich and famous - you get a certain amount of adoration wherever you go. There are some people who say you're a scumbag, but they are aberrant personalities."

Being rich and famous and smart is all well and good. Being a Columbia graduate is icing on the cake. But there are better measures of worth, Stein will tell you. There's his wife of 32 years, Alexandra ("a saint"), and his 13-year-old son, Tommy ("a god"). And there's the chance, like Ferris Bueller, to appreciate it all.

"'Life goes by pretty fast - if you don't slow down, you might miss it,'" Stein quotes. "That's totally true. I try to be conscious of that. Sometimes, I go into my son's room and just sit there and watch him play video games. I became a parent later in life, and I am grateful for the blessing. I think the great majority of humans fail to understand how important it is to be grateful for the everyday moment."

Hollywood doesn't seem so far from Morningside Heights, after all.


Nancy Fitzgerald, a freelance journalist and the parent of a a College alum, has never appeared on Win Ben Stein's Money, but was once a contestant in the play-at-home version of The Price Is Right. She won a year's supply of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco Treat.

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