Jeopardy! featured a category on Friday's telecast devoted to the work of famed costume designer William Ivey Long, which marks the first time that the syndicated game show has presented an entire category about a single Broadway designer.
The six-time Tony Award winner is currently represented on Broadway with the musicals Cinderella, Bullets Over Broadway, Chicago, and Cabaret. His 65 Broadway credits also include Grey Gardens, The Boy From Oz, Hairspray, and The Producers.
Long was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 2006 and elected chairman of the American Theatre Wing in 2012.
The designer opened up about being gay and its affect on his mother, a Jeopardy! fan, in a 2006 New York Times profile. "It was never mentioned," he told the paper. "Though on her deathbed, we were in the hospice with the morphine pump, and my mother was answering questions to 'Jeopardy,' getting them right. And in between guessing the correct answer and the morphine pump, she would say, 'Oh, I still hope you find some nice girl and settle down and have children, because children are the greatest happiness in anyone's life.' Pump, pump. Not that this seared itself into my soul or anything. But there you have it."
Previous Jeopardy! categories have been devoted to Broadway musicals Cinderella and Wicked, as well as to theater luminaries Edward Albee and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Watch video of host Alex Trebek and contestants tackling the William Ivey Long category below.
