The Quiz Show, 1994

Feb. 22, 2022 | JULIA PISANO

The film Quiz Show (1994) is based on rea- life events from the mid 20^th century and tells the story of how the company and producers of NBC decided to intentionally rig the game show Twenty-One in order to rake in huge amounts of money for the company and their sponsor Geritol from viewership. The movie begins with the contestant Herbert Stemple winning another round of the quiz show Twenty-One; despite winning several times in a row, the producers notice that the ratings of Twenty-One were plateauing. In order to boost viewership again, the producers decided to find a new contestant to replace Herbert as the reigning champion of Twenty-One; this was when they met the highly intelligent novelist and Columbia University professor Charles Van Doren. Van Doren wanted to try out for a separate game show, however the producers convince him to go on Twenty-One and the producers even state that they will give him questions he already knows the answers to. At this moment, Charles thought that comment was a tasteless joke and accepts the producers offer. To further ensure that Charles would be the new champion of Twenty-One, the producers told Herbert to lie about not knowing the name of the winning motion picture of 1955 (which was a movie called Marty). During Twenty-One’s matchup of Herbert vs Charles, Herbert intentionally answers the question “what is the name of the winning motion picture of 1955” wrong and Charles is asked questions he already knew the answers to resulting in his first win. Throughout the following weeks Charles was winning every game with rigged questions and became far more popular and famous than Herbert was. Before getting out of the show, Herbert was promised a side show, but the producers never gave it to him. Herbert was enraged and then took his case to court. However, the judge had a side relationship with the heads of NBC, and as a result they decided to seal the records regarding Herbert’s claims. The only thing regarding Herbert’s claims that went out into the public was a newspaper stating that a player claimed that Twenty-One was rigged.

This newspaper article eventually reached the lawyer Richard Goodwin; he decided to track down every player on Twenty-One to see if there was any proof that the show was staged. Unfortunately, he found no evidence at first outside of Herbert’s testimony. Herbert’s account mentioned that Twenty-One was scripted and that the judge sealed his records of this claim; he told Goodwin this information since Goodwin said it was just the two of them talking between themselves. While investigating further, Richard met with Charles and the two of them became acquaintances. Goodwin even visited Van Doran’s family and his father who was also a Columbia University professor. After being a contestant on the rigged quiz show Twenty-One for many weeks, Charles decided to spontaneously throw an answer that both he and his father knew the answer to. Charles did that because he did not want to be on the show any longer since the pressure was getting to him. Since NBC and America loved Van Doran and did not want him to permanently leave television, they convinced him to be on a separate television show.

Later on, Richard decided to watch old footage of Twenty-One episodes and noticed a contestant say the correct answer to a question when he was supposed to throw the question while he also saw the host do a double take. This made Richard believe that the show was scripted and unfair that he went to that contestant’s house and he confirmed with Richard that the show was scripted and handed Richard an envelope that contained questions and answers for a certain weeks questions. Meanwhile, Charles confesses to his father the truth about how episodes of Twenty-One were made since he felt guilty for dishonorably winning a quiz show repeatedly; the dishonest life Charles had dug for himself made his father disappointed. During the trial, Richard mentioned all of the evidence he found, however he did not mention Charles at first since he did not want to ruin his reputation. The evidence was confirmed true. Charles was later subpoenaed to court after purposely breaking a deal with Richard. He then confessed about how Twenty-One was rigged. This resulted in the producers of Twenty-One denying NBC’s involvement in this particular quiz show and took the full blame of the company’s actions. Despite the drama that occurred in court, the show throughout its run entertained the masses and made NBC and Geritol a lot of money.

Additional Resources

Videos: