Classic 21 Question

[J.R.]

How exactly did he reign end ? Did he decided he had enough and dropped out ? Did they rig someone to beat him or was he realisticly beaten ? Or did the scandals break out during his run ?

Thanks !
-Joe R.

[WorldClassRob]

Charles was defeated... forgive me who it was, but her first name I believe was Vivian.  He did manage to take home more than $100,000 in 1956 dollars which is a lot of money back then.

[inturnaround]

Charles Van Doren was beaten after 13 weeks by Vivienne Nearing. Nearing tied Van Doren twice and then Van Doren couldn't name the king of Belgium.

I'm unsure if Nearing was cheating, but I think that since it was so dramatic then it must have been. I doubt anyone but the losers played fair and square...and even then, some of them cheated to lose.

The scandal wouldn't come out until three years later when Dotto was proved to be rigged. Then it hit the fan.

[whewfan]

Charles Van Doren apparently decided on his own to throw in the towel, according to the movie Quiz Show.
He was supposed to win the match, but he purposely blew a question he was supposed to answer correctly.

[joelvanderveen]

It's about $820,000 in 2002 dollars.

Source: \"The Inflation Calculator\" @ www.westegg.com

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'whewfan\' date=\'Jul 9 2003, 02:31 AM\'] Charles Van Doren apparently decided on his own to throw in the towel, according to the movie Quiz Show.
He was supposed to win the match, but he purposely blew a question he was supposed to answer correctly. [/quote]
 If you're using Quiz Show as an authoritative source of the details of the Charles Van Doren story, I'm afraid you're going to look rather silly, as Redford took quite a few liberties with the facts in the name of entertainment.

Which is not to say I'm not recommending the film, it's excellent, but it fails pretty fantastically as a historical document.

[inturnaround]

Make sure you get to watch the PBS show \"The American Experience\". They have an entire episode devoted to the quiz show scandals of the Fifties. It's far from comprehensive, but it does give a very good historical overview.

[Michael Brandenburg]

I saw a photo in a book that I think was from the match between Nearing and Van Doren that showed a game score of 17 to 10 in favor of Nearing.  Assuming this was the final score of that game, then it would have fit Van Doren's money totals before and after that game.

   Van Doren had $143,000 in prior winnings (which he could have left the show with) before taking on Nearing.  They would have played to three ties (in games worth $500, $1,000, and $1,500 a point, respectively), and then in their fourth game (worth $2,000 a point), if Nearing stopped the game after two question rounds with that 17 to 10 score, she would have won $14,000 (her 7-point margin of victory times $2,000), which would have come from Van Doren's prior winnings, leaving him with a final prize of $129,000 for his reign on Twenty-One -- which, according to what I've read on that show, was what he ended up with.


   Michael Brandenburg
   (Oh, yes -- add Williams Manufacturing Company's \"21\" pinball machine from 1960 to the list of pinball machines that were better than their TV game-show counterparts!  At least this one wouldn't let you cheat without lighting up that \"TILT\" sign on the backglass!)

[ChuckNet]

If you're using Quiz Show as an authoritative source of the details of the Charles Van Doren story, I'm afraid you're going to look rather silly, as Redford took quite a few liberties with the facts in the name of entertainment.

Yep...for starters, Van Doren didn't win on the H.W. Halleck question, which was actually one of the first to come up in the actual show. Also, Congressional investigator Richard Goodwin's role as portrayed in QS was greatly exaggerated, since it was NY assistant DA Joe Stone who did most of the work.

Chuck Donegan (The Illustrious \"Chuckie Baby\")

[Matt Ottinger]

I saw a photo in a book that I think was from the match between Nearing and Van Doren that showed a game score of 17 to 10 in favor of Nearing. Assuming this was the final score of that game, then it would have fit Van Doren's money totals before and after that game.

Prime Time and Misdemeanors confirms that  Van Doren lost to Nearing 17-10 in their third match together.

Charles Van Doren apparently decided on his own to throw in the towel, according to the movie Quiz Show.  He was supposed to win the match, but he purposely blew a question he was supposed to answer correctly.

Chris already scolded you about using Quiz Show as historical fact, and sure enough, this information is incorrect.  Again according to PTaM, Van Doren desperately wanted to be released from the show and Dan Enright orchestrated the dramatic loss to Nearing, the same way he orchestrated nearly every other game.  Even in defeat, Van Doren did what was expected of him.

Interesting asterisk:  For a very long time, Enright and Freedman held fast to the story that they never helped Nearing in her games.  (She lost to the very next contestant, after a few ties.)  She was a lawyer, and the producers were trying to protect her from potentially being disbarred over the incident.  She ultimately admitted that she had been helped as well.  

So the short answer to the original question is that Van Doren decided he'd had enough and the producers arranged for him to lose dramatically to Nearing, with the full knowledge of both contestants.  The scandals broke out much later.

[inturnaround]

An interesting story. I'd love to see a more in depth show on the era and the scandals, but I doubt it's something that GSN would want to do because the subject matter is in black and white. I doubt it would appeal to the demos they want to attract.

[DrBear]

Now, here's a programming idea (and please, no flames about how GSN doesn't have any of this; this is just dreaming)

Promote 21 with a '21' night.
7 pm: An episode of the original 21
7:30: A showing of \"Quiz Show.\"
10:00: Two new 21s

[CherryPizza]

It's interesting to note, in these days when the distinction between \"game show\" and \"reality television\" is becoming more and more blurred, the point about the shows being rigged so that they can best succeed as 'entertainment' may soon be a cause of greater scrutiny.

While moments which appear on reality television (the most annoying term since \"infotainment\") did \"really\" happen, they are also \"unreal\" in that: a) the situation was contrived by the producers, and b) they are seen in isolation, without the \"before\" and \"after\" moments that contextualise them.

In a program like Survivor, where contestant eliminations are undertaken before the program is edited, it is less easy to argue that producers determined who would lose (unless you look at elements such as their reasons for choosing which people to place together, or their choice of certain challenges at certain times), but on Big Brother, for example, where a lot of the outcome of the contest depends on how people view the edited material (since viewers are also voters), some could well argue that the game was in fact \"rigged\".

Oh and... ah, cynics may say that the whole purpose of going on a reality show is to give yourself a media career (although I don't see this happening so much now, with reality TV contestants being a dime a dozen). Perhaps ousted contestants could argue that the way that they were depicted on the show stood in the way of their potential for a truly glamorous milking of their fifteen minutes of fame

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'CherryPizza\' date=\'Jul 9 2003, 06:35 PM\'] but on Big Brother, for example, where a lot of the outcome of the contest depends on how people view the edited material (since viewers are also voters), some could well argue that the game was in fact "rigged". [/quote]
 Are they still, though? I'm aware this was a big knock on the first series, but I thought the second and third versions knocked people off wholly by the vote of the household. (I could be wrong, I admit I didn't watch all that closely, the lustre wore off when I couldn't watch the Internet feeds without paying for them anymore.)

[CherryPizza]

I know that that's the way it works in Aus (keep seeing the ads that say \"phone X to evit Y\"), but I don't watch the show, and am proud to know very little about anything to do with it...

Such a disgrace to the genius of George Orwell