Zalman’s a friend of the family who was on the prime-time version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire in 2001. His appearance merited comment in several area papers. The text of the articles is preserved here for posterity.
Hartford Courant, 18 August 2001
He Bagged A Lot of Dough, But Was Bagged By The Doe
For almost six years, Zalman Nakhimovsky has been asking customers at the Simsbury Stop & Shop: “Paper or plastic?”
Now Zalman Nakhimovsky has plenty of paper, and he can start working out on his plastic.
The 29-year-old supermarket clerk from Unionville - by way of Russia - won $125,000 on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” that was broadcast Thursday night.
Nakhimovsky got his bachelor’s degree in urban studies from the University of Connecticut, but it took him 6½ years because he was on the “John Belushi Animal House plan.”
He’d like to work in his field, but right now, he’s waiting to see what opportunities his newfound celebrity gives him. Until then, he’ll keep on working the register, bagging and running carriages.
Nakhimovsky had to keep mum about his success since the show was taped on June 27. But his friends must have suspected something when he invited about 125 people to watch the show at Szechuan Garden in West Hartford.
“Me and Reege really hit it off,” he said. “I was repartee-ing with Reege, left, right and sideways. People were laughing so hard they were gasping for air.”
Nakhimovsky brought five young, attractive women he works with to the show, and Regis Philbin had fun talking about his entourage.
“You win some bucks, you get a harem,” Philbin said to him.
“You should know,” Nakhimovsky shot back.
“Zalman just knocked-me-off-ski,” Philbin quipped in rapid return.
He had used all his lifelines when he got to the $125,000 question. Mike Moss, a music professor at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, helped him with a question on Joshua Bell. He had Dee Snider, disk jockey on WMRQ-FM, as an alternative lifeline but didn’t use him.
The question that was his downfall?
“Which of these was the name of Bambi’s girlfriend in the 1942 movie `Bambi”’? A. Faline B. Clarice C. Ena D. Flower. Answer: Faline.
So the man who brags he is so good at his job he can bag two registers at once went home with $125,000.
As for his co-workers’ reaction, he said, `They’re utterly freaked out and bemused.”
New Britain Herald, 17 August 2001
color=#000000 size=3>FARMINGTON — He wanted to be a millionaire,
but 29-year-old Zalman Nakhimovsky will settle for winning
$125,000.
size=2>Nakhimovsky didn’t know the name of Bambi’s girlfriend in the
1942 Disney film during last night’s episode of ABC’s “Who Wants to
be a Millionaire” and left the show’s hot seat.
Nakhimovsky,
who qualified for the game show earlier this spring and taped last
night’s episode June 27 in New York City, breezed through the first
few questions host Regis Philbin asked. A self-proclaimed trivia
buff, Nakhimovsky displayed his knowledge of everything from Ricki
Lake to what makes candy brittle.
Nakhimovsky even knew —
after usinghis 50-50 lifeline to narrow the only other choice to
William Shakespeare — that it was poet John Keats who wrote “Beauty
is truth, truth beauty,”but it was Bambi’s ladyfriend Faline that
threw him.
Female friends were a hot topic with Nakhimovsky
and Philbin. Nakhimovsky was joined in the audience by a number of
female friends and co-workers.
Philbin chided Nakhimovsky
that if he won the grand prize and became a millionaire he might
have a harem to call his own, to which Nakhimovsky quipped — to the
delight of the crowd - “You would know.”
An aspiring
political consultant, Nakhimovsky said his winnings won’t be enough
to let him quit his job as a grocery clerk at Stop &
Shop.
“I still need the insurance,” Nakhimovsky said. He has
worked at the grocery store to secure his benefits even while
working as a session clerk for the Democratic Party at the
statehouse.
He said he plans on buying a new car for his
71-year-old mother, Lina, who currently drives a beat-up 1991 Dodge
Dakota truck. “Some will go to debts and the rest to investments,”
Nakhimovsky said.
Nakhimovsky said he has been in training
for “Millionaire” since the show debuted two years ago and admits
only having missed a few episodes. “If I’m in the house I’m watching
it,” he said. “I’ve maybe missed a total of 20 episodes.”
“I
didn’t think I would stop at 125,” he said. “I thought I would at
least see the million-dollar (question).”
©The
Herald 2001
New Haven Register, 17 August 2001
color=#000000 size=3>NEW HAVEN — As it turned out, Mike Moss of
New Haven knew exactly what instrument classical violin whiz Joshua
Bell plays.
size=2>Good thing, too — especially for Zalman Nakhimovsky of
Farmington, the guy in the hot seat on Thursday’s edition of ABC’s
“Who Wants to be a Millionaire.”
Moss, 49, an assistant
professor of music at Southern Connecticut State University, was
Nakhimovsky’s “phone-a-friend” lifeline for classical music and jazz
— even though the two didn’t really know each other.
In fact,
Moss — recruited by a friend-of-a-friend after Nakhimovsky’s
original choice was unable to do it — had to call Nakhimovsky’s
house Thursday evening, a couple of hours before the show aired, to
make sure he told a reporter the right name.
“The guy who I
was a phone-a-friend for is a guy by the name Solomon Ak-I-something
?” Moss said before calling his own lifeline, Nakhimovsky’s mom. “It
sounds like ‘Akinofski,’” he said, “but I was never told it and I
never saw it in print.”
What mattered most was that when Moss
got the call during Nakhimovsky’s million-dollar shot — which
actually took place in June — he was there to help Nakhimovsky whack
that particular $32,000 question out of the park.
“Joshua
Bell is known as a virtuoso of what musical instrument?” Nakhimovsky
asked Moss — or “Professor Mike,” as Regis called him. “A, guitar.
B, piano. C, cello. Or D, violin?” Moss was armed with several music
reference books. But he didn’t need them. He had it
cold.
“Joshua Bell is a famous enough classical violinist
that people in this world have heard of him,” he said Thursday. “But
in fact, what I flashed on ? was the first moment I heard Joshua
Bell, when he played with the Atlanta Symphony at a concert I saw
when I was in grad school” at the University of
Michigan.
Moss immediately gave Nakhimovsky the right
choice.
“He sounds confident,” Nakhimovsky said before
calling it out as his final answer. He went on to win $125,000,
walking away when he didn’t know the name of Bambi’s
girlfriend.
On Thursday, when Moss joined Nakhimovsky at a
show-watching party Nakhimovsky hosted at a Hartford-area Chinese
restaurant, he gave Nakhimovsky a copy of the program from that
Joshua Bell concert in Ann Arbor.
Would he be a lifeline
again?
“Sure — it was fun!” Moss said. “The fun thing about
these shows is that the premise is that what you know could be worth
something.
“And in this case, it was.”
©New Haven
Register 2001