Early career His first television appearance came as a contestant on the original version of
Jeopardy! in 1969. He competed in the
Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions that year and won. Wolpert's upset win was notable for defeating the two highest-winning contestants in regular
Jeopardy! play up to that point, Jane Gschwend and Elliot Shteir.
Game show production Wolpert began his game show-producing career working for
Dan Enright in Canada. He later worked as a producer and creator of
game shows for
Chuck Barris Productions and
Goodson-Todman Productions. While at Goodson-Todman, he served as producer of
The Price Is Right with
Bob Barker from 1972 until 1978 and also created the game show
Double Dare with
Alex Trebek for CBS, which ran for a short time in 1976 (not to be confused with the later, unrelated
show that premiered a decade later on
Nickelodeon with
Marc Summers). Wolpert left Goodson-Todman to form his own production company Jay Wolpert Productions, and his first game show was the 1979 series
Whew! for CBS with
Tom Kennedy. Wolpert produced the series with
Burt Sugarman for most of its run.
Whew! was canceled in May 1980 after a thirteen month run, and Wolpert did not return to television with a series until January 1983, despite shooting several pilots in the interim. Briefly, he was VP of program development at
Metromedia after
Whew! got cancelled. On January 3, 1983, Wolpert's
Hit Man debuted on NBC with
Peter Tomarken as its host.
Hit Man lasted thirteen weeks on the air. Five years later in 1987, and after a failed syndication pilot based on the board game
Trivial Pursuit with Steve Morris (the game would get two other shows based on it,
one in 1993 and
one in 2008, both incorporating interactive elements), Wolpert returned to daytime television with the series
Blackout for CBS. Debuting on January 4, 1988, in place of
The $25,000 Pyramid with
Dick Clark, the
Bob Goen-hosted
Blackout ended after thirteen weeks of episodes and was replaced by a revival of
Family Feud with
Ray Combs (which began airing on July 4, 1988); new episodes of
The $25,000 Pyramid aired for thirteen weeks after
Blackout's cancellation. In 1990, Wolpert launched a new series on the
Lifetime network based on a pilot he had shot in 1981 with Tomarken as host. On February 5, 1990,
Rodeo Drive debuted with comedian
Louise DuArt hosting.
Rodeo Drive ended its run on August 31 of that year; the show had aired twelve weeks of new episodes prior to that and had been in reruns until the program was removed from Lifetime's lineup. After a hiatus, Wolpert returned to the Goodson Productions team in 1993 after serving as president of Jay Wolpert Enterprises, and produced a new
The Price Is Right series for Goodson and
Paramount Television.
The New Price Is Right with
Doug Davidson debuted in syndication in September 1994, with Wolpert producing. Ratings for
The New Price Is Right were lacking, resulting in a cancellation after sixteen weeks in January 1995. In 1996, Wolpert and
The Family Channel teamed up for two series. One was ''
Wait 'til You Have Kids with Tom Parks, a series based on The Parent Game with Clark Race. The other was Shopping Spree'' with Ron Pearson, which ran for nearly two years and was Wolpert's longest-running game show in his company's history. After
Shopping Spree went off the air in August 1998, Wolpert's company stopped producing programming. He was executive producer of the 1998 version of
Match Game with
Michael Burger. Wolpert was listed as a consultant during the credits of
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? with
Chris Harrison during the 2015–16 season, and had some input in that season's format changes.
Screenwriting and acting Wolpert turned to screenwriting, penning the script for
The Count of Monte Cristo (2002) and receiving a story credit for all films of the
Pirates of the Caribbean series. His minimal acting experience included playing the
OB-GYN in
Father of the Bride Part II who tells
Diane Keaton's character Nina Banks (née Dickerson) that she is pregnant. ==Death==