The Quiz Show Scandal

As television became a national obsession in the 1950s,
new heroes appeared on the American scene
contestants on the big-money quiz shows.

Patty Duke, John Glenn, Mike Wallace and Joyce Brothers

Twenty-One would take the ultimate step in quiz-show rigging.
Most contestants were cast as though they were actors,
every detail carefully orchestrated. Contestants
were now full partners in the deception.

Then, slowly and painfully,
a Congressional investigation
revealed that the shows were fixed
and America had been betrayed.

Lives were ruined, producers blacklisted, and many others,
like the most famous contestant of all Charles Van Doren,
remain in hiding even today.

The Quiz Show Scandal tells the extraordinary, true story
of how more than 100 million viewers were deceived
and how over a hundred average, ordinary Americans
perjured themselves before a New York Grand Jury.

Robert Redford's Academy Award Nominated film QUIZ SHOW
was based on this documentary.

"One of the most compelling and important documentaries
ever about the history of American broadcasting."
David Zurawik, The Baltimore Sun

"The Quiz Show Scandal is terrific - so facinating
I'm sorry it was only 60 minutes long instead of 90."
Chuck Rich, Mutual Broadcasting

"A lively episode of The American Experience,
devoted as much to American innocence
as to the scandal in television."
John Leonard, Sunday Morning on CBS

"Producers Julian Krainin and Michael Lawrence
do a far better job of showing something that was lost
in the nation's spirit after America discovered the big fix
in TV quiz shows than Oliver Stone does in JFK."
Ed Siegel, The Boston Globe

"What's the most interesting program on TV tonight?
The answer is The Quiz Show Scandal.
Television rarely takes a look at its past in this way.
The Quiz Show Scandal is a happy and wholly
engrossing exception and a fine model for other
sorely needed documentaries about TV."
David Bianculli, New York Post

Transcript

Credits

The American Experience - Quiz Show Scandal Web Page

This Emmy-nominated film is among the highest rated programs
in the history of The American Experience on PBS.

Directed and Edited by Michael R. Lawrence

Produced by Julian Krainin and Michael R. Lawrence

Associate Producer, Johanna T. Lawrence

PRESS AND ARTICLES

David McCullough

"Our story is a morality play and as timely and to the point now as then. 'I learned a lot about good and evil,' Charles Van Doren would later say. 'They are not always what they appear to be.'

"That he was not what he appeared to be stunned the country in a way that had never happened before and demonstrated as never before what unprecedented potential for deception lay in the new age of television."

DAVID MCCULLOUGH
Host, The American Experience

Joseph Cates

"Television was new then, and this was the most exciting thing that was part of it. It was unique to television. It couldn't have happened in any other medium. It was a new idea, a big-money quiz.."

JOSEPH CATES
Producer/Director, The $64,000 Question

Mark Goodson

"Lou Cowan called me in and said he had a very interesting idea for a show called The $64,000 Question and told me how it would work. I said, 'Lou, the only way this show is going to work is if it's rigged, if you fix it."

Mark Goodson
Television Producer

Daniel Enright

"The first Twenty-One broadcast lacked all drama; it lacked all suspense. And, the next morning, the sponsor called my partner, Jack Barry, and me and told us in no uncertain terms that he never wanted to see a repeat of what happened the previous night. And, from that moment on, we decided to rig Twenty-One."

DANIEL ENRIGHT
Producer, Twenty-One

Herbert Stempel

"I used to go down to Enright's office every Wednesday afternoon before the show, and Enright would pull out cards with the questions and answers that would be used that evening. I ran through them; he would instruct me when to pause, when to mop my brow. Everything was very carefully choreographed."

HERBERT STEMPEL
Contestant, Twenty-One

Charles Van Doren

"I said to the Committee this morning that I was kind of like a child who refuses to admit a fact in the hope that it'll go away. I got panic-stricken. I've been afraid for a long time. I've been living in a kind of dread for three years. They've not been a happy three years. But, I became almost panic-stricken then and I didn't act very well in the next week; and so I just ran away. And, my wife and I went up into New England; and I drove aimlessly around from town to town, trying to reach some kind of peace with myself, trying to come to some conclusion."

"I was so deeply involved with my family, my friends. I loved them so much. I could not bear to betray the faith that people had in me. My father had been saying to me, 'Tell the truth.' He didn't know what it was. I don't think he really cared what it was. It was just something that he knew was the right thing to do."

"I made a very, very big mistake; and I learned about making mistakes. I learned what you have to do when you make a mistake. I've also learned a lot about life and about human nature, about a man's responsibility."

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