Charles Van Doren Admits Cheating: Quiz Show Scandal Erupts

Charles Van Doren shattered the illusion of unscripted television when he confessed before a congressional committee on November 2, 1959, that producers of the game show Twenty-One had been feeding him questions and answers in advance. Van Doren, a Columbia University English instructor from one of America's most distinguished intellectual families, had become a national celebrity during his fourteen-week winning streak on the show, appearing on the cover of Time magazine and earning a regular spot on the Today show. His charm and apparent brilliance made him the perfect television personality for an audience that wanted to believe academic knowledge could produce entertainment value. The reality was grimmer. Producer Dan Enright and his team had coached Van Doren on answers, told him when to hesitate for dramatic effect, and orchestrated the defeat of the previous champion, Herb Stempel, who had been ordered to lose and then refused to stay quiet about it. Stempel's complaints eventually reached investigators, and a New York grand jury began looking into game show practices across the industry. Van Doren initially lied to the grand jury before reversing himself in his congressional testimony, telling the committee he had been "deeply involved in a deception." He was fired from Columbia and from Today. The scandal prompted Congress to amend the Communications Act, making it a federal crime to rig a broadcast contest. Van Doren largely disappeared from public life, spending the rest of his career as a quiet editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica.