[The Modernaires – Hi-Diddily-i-Di]
It was the 1950s and the first Golden Age of television. Prerecording hadn’t been invented yet,
so all TV had to be live and that meant television was a non-stop live stream of teleplays, variety
programming, and most importantly game shows. The most popular of which was on NBC and
called Twenty-One, sponsored by the diet supplement Geritol and hosted by Jack Barry.
The rules are simple. Players must answer questions for various amounts of points,
and the first player to reach 21 points is the winner. To increase the tension,
each player is locked in a soundproof room and do not know the other player’s score. The winner
keeps returning weekly, winning more and more money, until they lose. Sounds entertaining
enough on it’s own but for some reason the producers decided to rig the whole thing.
Contestant: The king of Naples
Barry: That is correct and you now have the fully twenty one points!
Contestant: Richard Henry Lee.
Barry: Correct, for the full eleven points!
Contestant: Natty Bumppo Barry: You’re right for a full eleven points
Contestant: Eugene V Debs Barry: You’re right!
So there’s this one contestant called Herb Stempel, who’s winning really well and that’s
starting to become quite boring. The sponsor, Geritol, demanded the producers shake things
up a bit. Television broadcasting was very expensive and sponsors exercised control
over most programming to make sure they were getting their moneys worth of advertising.
Advertisements would last upwards of four minutes, the set would be covered in the product’s logo,
and presenters would be required to speak the name of the product as often as possible.
[TWA, TWA, TWA, HAZEL BISHOP, HAZEL BISHOP, TWA, TWA]
So when Twenty One was falling in the ratings, they demanded the show’s producer, Dan Enright,
to do something about it. Enright set Stempel up to play this guy,
Charles Van Doren, and would tell them how to answer each question so that they could
tie for three matches in a row. But on the fourth match Enright told Stempel
to lose on purpose to Van Doren as a shock upset to drive up ratings.
Van Doren was originally scheduled to go on another game show, Tic Tac Dough,
and he knew most of the answers, but as a teacher and scholarly man at Columbia University,
Enright thought such a nice telegenic man would be perfect to beat the smart but awkward Stempel.
In return for losing on purpose, Stempel could keep his winnings, and would be offered a job on
a panel show. Stempel was conflicted, thinking it was against the spirit of fair play, ha ha,
and wasn’t quite sure if he should go through with it until the last moment.
Barry: What motion picture won the Academy Award of 1955?
Stempel: ...I don’t remember. On the Waterfront?
Barry: Sorry, that’s incorrect.
That mistake brought his score down to par with Van Doren,
who then proceeded to beat him on the tiebreaker question about the name of
a popular Kansas editorial because Van Doren had been fed the correct answers.
Alright, no big deal. He’s got all that money and a new job lined up.
Except...there would be no panel show. Enright had lied, and refused all calls and
letters from Stempel begging him to reconsider. Feeling betrayed, Stempel went to a grand jury;
he told them of how the entire show was all choreographed and rigged, but nobody
believed him. He had no evidence to support his claim. It was just a sore loser trying to
discredit the man who had beaten him in a game show. And that would have been the end of it,
had it not been for a young woman on a completely different television program.
In the backstage of the game show Dotto, backup contestant Edward Hilgemeier Jr
discovered a notebook belonging to Marie Winn, the current contestant on stage at that very
moment. Inside were written the answers to all of the questions she was being asked.
Hilgemeier took it to the FCC, and Dotto was cancelled overnight.
Suddenly, everyone started paying a bit more attention to Herb Stempel.
It was time for the U.S. government to investigate.
House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight
Chaired by Oren Harris Regulatory power over:
Food and Drug Administration Federal Trade Commission
Securities and Exchange Commission ...and the Federal Communications Committee
A quick trial was convened, and one by one, game show contestants were called up to
testify. Some denied any wrongdoing while others confessed to cheating.
All in all, four game shows were discovered to have been a fraud;
Dotto The 64 thousand dollar challenge
The 64 thousand dollar question and Tic Tac Dough
but Twenty-One was the golden goose and still unproven, and couldn’t be proven without Stempel’s
opponent Van Doren admitting to being a fraud. Hey, what ever happened to Van Doren anyway?
[Big Band music plays]
Twenty One was back at the top of the ratings and Van Doren came back
for fourteen consecutive weeks, decimating the other contestants. His charismatic disposition
and politeness made him a favorite among the American public, being featured on magazines,
attending talk shows, and even doing guest spots presenting the news.
He eventually lost on purpose to Vivian Nearing, walking away with $129,000, the equivalent of $1.1
million today, and a job as a correspondent on The Today Show. The week after he lost, Twenty-One
lost 17 percentage points in the ratings and fell behind it’s main competitor, I Love Lucy.
When questioned by the press if he had cheated, Van Doren denied it again and again,
saying it was silly that people don’t have faith in quiz shows. Curiously, when he was subpoenaed
by the Subcommittee, Van Doren did the most unsuspicious thing he could think of and went into
hiding. With no Van Doren testimony, there could be no solid evidence that Twenty One was rigged.
James Snodgrass was another contestant on Twenty One, one of the coached winners.
However, unlike the other candidates Snodgrass had the foresight to write
down the questions he was going to be asked on TV and then mail it to
himself so that it would be timestamped by the post office before he went on the show.
This was indisputable proof the show was a fraud,
and with nowhere else to hide Van Doren came out of hiding to testify that yes,
he had been fed the answers by Dan Enright. He gave a rousing speech to the Subcommittee,
telling the complete story of what happened. He gave it uninterrupted and the committee members
asked no questions. At the end, observers applauded his apology. Immediately after,
Columbia University demanded Van Doren’s resignation and he was fired from the Today Show.
Immediately following was Dan Enright, who knew the gig was up and confessed all too,
but was very careful not to implicit NBC or the Sponsors in the scam. He became the fall guy.
So the show was rigged. What next?
Well...nothing. The show was canceled but
nobody went to prison. The host Jack Barry stayed out of the limelight for a while and
Enright temporarily moved to Canada. Before you knew it they were back in the industry.
Why not? Because it wasn’t illegal. NBC didn’t
promise it would be a fair contest. They just promised entertainment. And it was entertaining.
Game shows would nearly vanish from American TV screens for the next few years; what little shows
were left became impossible to rig by making them games of chance or physical ability.
However, in 1963, on a plane ride to New York, media mogul Merv Griffin and his wife
Julann came up with an idea; nobody trusts game shows these days because contestants
are just fed the answers. So why not make contestants provide the question instead?
A year later and Jeopardy! Hit screens for the first time,
and has been continually broadcast since.