They were spared jail terms by a judge who said the nation’s scorn was punishment enough.Īfter the scandal broke, Van Doren lost the $50,000-a-year job NBC gave him when he defeated Stempel. In 1962, Van Doren and nine other winners from three NBC shows - “Twenty-One,” ''Tic-Tac-Dough" and “Hi-Lo” - pleaded guilty to lying to a grand jury that had investigated the scandal. He said he was told to lose because the show’s producers thought Van Doren had star potential. Stempel later went public and said contestants were fed the answers to the questions prior to the show. He went on to win $129,000 on the show after defeating Herbert Stempel, a New Yorker portrayed by John Turturro in the movie. His uncle, Carl Van Doren, received a Pulitzer in 1939 for a biography of Benjamin Franklin.Ĭharles Van Doren was himself a rising young academic at Columbia when he became famous on the quiz show. His father, Mark Van Doren, was a critic, biographer and poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1940. Van Doren’s family had a proud literary standing at the time of the scandal. He said he had been tempted to take a consulting fee from the producers, but his wife talked him out of it. He also disclosed that he eventually did watch “Quiz Show” and laughed at an insulting reference that a character made about him. In light of the large profits the rigged game shows were making, he added, “why would they?” “People who knew the entertainment business didn’t have much doubt about what was going on, although they didn’t speak out,” he wrote.
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