Charles Van Doren was the son of famous literary scholar Mark Van Doren, a Columbia University English professor. Starting in January of 1957, Charles Van Doren began appearing on the television quiz show Twenty One, and he went on to win a large amount of money and to defeat the long winning stretch of Herbert Stempel. The show's producers were concerned that Stempel was not very telegenic, and they fed Van Doren the questions and answers ahead of the show so that he could defeat Stempel. Stempel began to raise questions about fraud, which Van Doren at first denied. Eventually, the charges led to a House subcommittee that uncovered the fraud. As a result, Van Doren had to resign from his job as an assistant professor at Columbia. Van Doren's story was told in the feature film Quiz Show, which came out in 1994. In 1960, Congress changed the Communications Act of 1934 to prevent future cheating on quiz shows.
No comments:
Post a Comment