Charles Van Doren

Charles Lincoln Van Doren (born February 12, 1926, New York City), a noted American intellectual, writer, and editor, is still remembered best for his involvement in television's quiz show scandals of the 1950s. He confessed in a public forum before Congress that he had been given the right answers by the producers of the hit show Twenty-One, whose producers used his on-screen appeal successfully to attract more viewers.

Background

The son of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and literary critic/teacher Mark Van Doren and novelist and writer Dorothy Van Doren, Charles Van Doren was a committed academic with an unusually broad range of interests. He earned a B.A. degree in Liberal Arts from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, and a master's degree in astrophysics and a doctorate in English, both at Columbia University. He became a Columbia instructor when his personal fascination with television game shows prodded him to apply to become a contestant.

Quiz show star

Twenty-One actually wasn't Van Doren's first interest. As several histories of the quiz scandals since have attested, and as Van Doren himself acknowledged when he eventually testified to the United States Congress after the rigging scandal had been exposed, he approached producers Dan Enright and Albert Freedman to appear on another game they produced, Tic-Tac-Dough. But Enright and Freedman were impressed by Van Doren's polite style and telegenic appearance, thinking the youthful Columbia teacher might be just the man to defeat their incumbent Twenty-One champion, Herb Stempel and boost the show's slowing ratings as Stempel's reign continued.

In January 1957, Van Doren entered a winning streak that ultimately earned him more than $129,000 and made him famous in his own right, including an appearance on the cover of TIME on February 11 1957. His Twenty-One run ended on March 11, when he lost to Vivian Nearing (whose first name is often misspelled as Vivienne^{[citation needed]}), a lawyer whose husband Van Doren had previously beaten. But he was offered a three-year contract with NBC News as a special "cultural correspondent" for Today, as well as to make guest appearances on other NBC programs. He even served as Today's substitute host when regular host Dave Garroway took a brief vacation.

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Charles Van Doren on the cover of Time Magazine

Quiz show scandal

When allegations of cheating were first raised, by Stempel and others, Van Doren denied any wrongdoing, saying "It's silly and distressing to think that people don't have more faith in quiz shows." But on November 2, 1959, he admitted to the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight, a United States Congress subcommittee, chaired by Arkansas Democrat Oren Harris, that he had been given questions and answers in advance of the show.

I was involved, deeply involved, in a deception. The fact that I, too, was very much deceived cannot keep me from being the principal victim of that deception, because I was its principal symbol. There may be a kind of justice in that. I don’t know. I do know, and I can say it proudly to this committee, that since Friday, October 16, when I finally came to a full understanding of what I had done and of what I must do, I have taken a number of steps toward trying to make up for it.
I have a long way to go. I have deceived my friends, and I had millions of them. Whatever their feeling for me now, my affection for them is stronger today than ever before. I am making this statement because of them. I hope my being here will serve them well and lastingly.
. . . I asked (co-producer Albert Freedman) to let me go on (Twenty-One) honestly, without receiving help. He said that was impossible. He told me that I would not have a chance to defeat Stempel because he was too knowledgeable. He also told me that the show was merely entertainment and that giving help to quiz contests was a common practice and merely a part of show business. This of course was not true, but perhaps I wanted to believe him. He also stressed the fact that by appearing on a nationally televised program I would be doing a great service to the intellectual life, to teachers and to education in general, by increasing public respect for the work of the mind through my performances. In fact, I think I have done a disservice to all of them. I deeply regret this, since I believe nothing is of more vital importance to our civilization than education.

The film version

The story of the quiz show scandal and Van Doren's role in it is depicted in the film Quiz Show (1994; he was portrayed by British actor Ralph Fiennes), produced and directed by Robert Redford and written by Paul Attanasio. A box-office hit, the film also earned several critiques questioning its use of dramatic license, its accuracy, and even the motivation behind its making.

The critics have included Joseph Stone, the New York prosecutor who began the investigations in the first place; and, Jeffrey Hart, a Dartmouth College scholar, senior editor of National Review, and old friend of Van Doren, who saw the film as falsely implying tension between Van Doren and his accomplished father, while suggesting also that Van Doren was a different kind of innocent.

Robert Redford's opinion, which he heightened in the script submitted to him, was that Charles sought out the crooked world of TV and the quiz show because he sought revenge of some sort on his father's Olympian status. This strikes me as completely gratuitous. I saw no evidence of hostility between them, but rather an easy and thorough friendliness . . . My guess is that the real Charles tried out for (Twenty-One) entirely as a lark, much as a group of young professors might go slumming at Atlantic City or seek out a really awful saloon--great because so awful--downtown somewhere. I think the real Charles initially got a kick out of the NBC zoo and its antics, and naively--he never struck me as very worldly--found himself way in over his head.

Aftermath

Van Doren was dropped from NBC and resigned from his post of assistant professor at Columbia University. But his life after the scandal proved anything but broken; as television historian Robert Metz wrote (in CBS: Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye), "Fortunately, ours is a forgiving society, and Van Doren proved strong in the face of adversity." He became an editor at Praeger Books and a pseudonymous (at first) writer, before becoming an editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica and the author of several books, of which the simplified text, A History of Knowledge may be his best known. He also co-authored How to Read a Book, with philosopher Mortimer J. Adler.

Presently, Van Doren is an adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut, Torrington branch.

Van Doren still refuses interviews or public comment when the subject is the quiz show scandals. But in a 1985 interview on The Today Show---his only appearance on the program since his dismissal in 1959, plugging his book The Joy Of Reading---he answered a general question on how the scandal changed his life. He has revisited Columbia University only twice in the 40 years that followed his resignation: in 1984, when his son graduated; and, in 1999, at a reunion of Columbia's Class of 1959, which entered the university when Van Doren first became a teacher there in 1955.

During the latter appearance, Van Doren made one allusion to the quiz scandal without mentioning it by name:

Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics, a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well. I remember better, because, despite the abrupt caesura in my academic career that occurred in 1959, I have gone on teaching the humanities almost continually to students of all kinds and ages. In case you don't remember, then, I remind you that according to Aristotle happiness is not a feeling or sensation but instead is the quality of a whole life. The emphasis is on "whole," a life from beginning to end. Especially the end. The last part, the part you're now approaching, was for Aristotle the most important for happiness. It makes sense, doesn't it?

External links

References

Thomas Doherty, "Quiz Show Scandals," The Museum of Broadcast Communications.
Jeffrey Hart, "'Van Doren' and 'Redford'," National Review, 7 November 1994.
Lina Lofaro, "Charles Van Doren Vs. the Quiz Show Dream Team," ]http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981447,00.html Time, 19 September 1994].
Robert Metz, CBS: Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye. (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1973.)
Joseph Stone, Prime-time and Misdemeanors: Investigating the 1950s TV Quiz Scandal---A D.A.'s Account. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992.)