Stewart usually stayed behind the camera, so his passing won't generate nearly as much attention as the recent death of Dick Clark. But to game show fans he was always a presence with his creative spark and practiced hand, which gave us some of the genre's very best formats.
Born Isidore Steinberg in Brooklyn, Stewart's big break came in 1956 when he joined Goodson-Todman. He developed The Price is Right, To Tell the Truth and Password for G-T before he left the organization in 1964. Mark Goodson famously promised to make Stewart a prince, but Stewart (just as famously) said he wanted to be a king. The story has always sounded like an urban legend to me, but it's apparently true.
As an independent producer, Stewart's greatest triumph was, of course, Pyramid. The all-lightning-round descendant of Password has gone through so many versions that it takes most of a Wikipedia article to track them all. The sad near-coincidence of the deaths of Dick Clark and Bob Stewart at least reminds us how superb the format was and is.
Stewart retired in the early 1990s, though his son Sande remained in the business as a fairly successful producer on his own. R.I.P.
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