The
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
quiz show scandals of the 1950s were the result of the revelation that contestants of several popular
televisionTelevision is a widely used telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images, either monochromatic or color, usually accompanied by sound. "Television" may also refer specifically to a television set, television programming or television transmission...
quiz showQuiz Show is a 1994 American historical drama film which tells the true story of the Twenty One quiz show scandal of the 1950s. It stars John Turturro, Rob Morrow, Ralph Fiennes, Paul Scofield, David Paymer, Hank Azaria, and Christopher McDonald....
s were secretly given assistance by the producers to arrange the outcome of a supposedly fair competition.
Background
In the 1950s, television burst into the mainstream. While at the beginning of the decade only 9% of U.S. households had a television, over half had one by 1954 - and 86% had them by the end of the decade. The medium proved to be a powerful influence on American society.
Over the same period, the United States was engaged in a technology race with the Soviet Union, as a component of the
Cold WarThe Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, and economic competition existing after World War II , primarily between the USSR and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, including the United States...
. American military and political dominance was bolstered by the nation's technologies that harnessed the power of the atom. This focus on technological superiority contributed to a national reverence of intelligence and knowledge.
It was against this backdrop that quiz shows became popular. Questions asked on these shows required substantial knowledge across a broad spectrum of cerebral topics. The spectacle of people achieving huge financial success through the exercise of brain power was riveting to a nation that revered intellectualism as well as wealth.
The 1954
Supreme CourtThe Supreme Court of the United States is the highest judicial body in the United States, and leads the federal judiciary. It consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight Associate Justices, who are nominated by the President and confirmed with the "advice and consent" of the Senate...
ruling in
Federal Communications Commission v. American Broadcasting Co., Inc. 347 U.S. 284, that quiz shows were not a form of gambling, paved the way for their introduction to television. The prizes of these new shows were astonishing in magnitude, and gave them an aura of significance that went well beyond mere entertainment.
The $64,000 QuestionThe $64,000 Question was an United States television game show brodcast from 1955 to 1958, which became embroiled in the scandals involving TV quiz shows of the day...
s predecessor radio show was The $64 Question
, and few prizes exceeded even $100. There was no gradual escalation; The $64,000 Question
debuted on June 7, 1955 with a top prize 1,000 times greater than its predecessor. ($64,000 in 1955 is equivalent to approximately $500,000 in 2007.)
The story is revealed
Herb StempelHerbert Milton Stempel is an American teacher who was famous for his celebrity as a television game show contestant—and for helping to expose what became known as the quiz show scandals after his long run as champion on the 1950s show Twenty One was ended by Columbia University teacher and...
's scripted loss on Twenty-OneTwenty One is an American game show that aired in the late 1950s. While it included the most popular contestant of the quiz show era, it achieved notoriety for being a rigged quiz show which nearly caused the demise of the entire genre in the wake of United States Senate investigations...
to the more-popular Charles Van DorenCharles Lincoln Van Doren is a noted American intellectual, writer, and editor who was involved in a television quiz show scandal in the 1950s...
occurred on December 5, 1956, and involved his deliberately getting the answer to a question about an Academy Award-winning movie wrong. (The correct answer was MartyMarty is a teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky which was telecast live May 24, 1953 on The Goodyear Television Playhouse with Rod Steiger in the title role...
,
one of Stempel's favorite movies.) After his scripted loss, Stempel blew the whistle on the operation. Initially, he was dismissed as a sore loser and it wasn't until August 1958 that his credibility was bolstered. Ed Hilgemeyer, a contestant on DottoDotto was an American television quiz show which aired on CBS from January 6 to August 15, 1958. Although it quickly became the highest-rated daytime game show on television, its end came when it became the unexpected first casualty---and ignition---of the quiz show scandals that rocked American...
, announced that he had found a notebook containing the very answers contestant Marie WinnMarie Winn, a journalist, author and birdwatcher, is known for her books and articles on the birds of Central Park, her Wall Street Journal ornithology column and her role in the quiz show scandals of the 1950s.-Early life:...
was delivering on stage. But the final stroke came from Twenty-One contestant James Snodgrass, who had sent registered letters to himself containing the advance answers. Such evidence was irrefutable.
By October 1958 the story was everywhere, and the quiz shows'
Nielsen ratingsNielsen ratings are audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...
were dropping. The networks denied everything and canceled the now-suspicious shows. Meanwhile, New York prosecutor Joseph Stone convened a
grand juryIn the common law, a grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether there is enough evidence for a trial. Grand juries carry out this duty by examining evidence presented to them by a prosecutor and issuing indictments, or by investigating alleged crimes and issuing presentments...
to investigate the charges. Many of the coached contestants, who had become celebrities due to their quiz-show success, were so afraid of the social repercussions that they were unwilling to confess to having been coached, even to the point of perjuring themselves to avoid backlash. The judge sealed the grand jury report for unknown reasons.
The 86th Congress, by then in its first session, quickly saw the political opportunity the scandals offered; in October, 1959, the House Committee on Legislative Oversight, under Representative
Oren HarrisOren Harris was a U.S. Representative and United States District Court Judge from Arkansas.-Background:Born in Belton, Arkansas, Harris attended the public schools....
's chairmanship, began to hold hearings investigating the scandal.
Anna Marie "Patty" DukeAnna Marie "Patty" Duke is an American actress of stage, film, and television. She was able to make the rare successful transition from child star to award-winning adult actress...
, then a child actress, testified to having been coached, as did Stempel, Snodgrass, and Hilgemeyer.
But the bombshell dropped on November 2 when Van Doren said to the Committee, "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."
Law and politics
The entire matter was called "a terrible thing to do to the American people" by President
Dwight D. EisenhowerDwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was a five-star general in the United States Army and the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. During the Second World War, he served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe, with responsibility for planning and supervising the...
. After concluding the Harris Commission investigation, Congress passed a law prohibiting the fixing of quiz shows (and any other form of contest). However, at the time, while the actions may have been disreputable, they were not illegal. As a result, no one went to prison for rigging game shows. The individuals who were prosecuted were charged because of attempts to cover up their actions, either by
obstruction of justiceThe crime of obstruction of justice includes crimes committed by judges, prosecutors, attorneys general, and elected officials in general. It is misfeasance, malfeasance or nonfeasance in the conduct of the office. Most commonly it is prosecuted as a crime for perjury by a non governmental official...
or
perjuryPerjury, also known as forswearing, is the willful act of swearing a false oath or affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to a judicial proceeding. That is, the matter lied about would affect the outcome of the case...
.
Contestants
Many quiz show contestants's reputations were ruined.
Charles Van DorenCharles Lincoln Van Doren is a noted American intellectual, writer, and editor who was involved in a television quiz show scandal in the 1950s...
, who had become a regular on
NBCThe National Broadcasting Company is an American television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices in Burbank,California...
's The Today Show
, lost his job in the television industry. He was also forced to resign his professorship at Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
. Van Doren took a job as an editor at Encyclopædia BritannicaThe Encyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopaedia published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., a privately held company. The articles in the Britannica are aimed at educated adult readers, and written by a staff of about 100 full-time editors and more than...
earning about 20% of what he had been making on The Today Show
, and continued working as an editor and writer until his retirement in 1982.
He refused requests for interviews for more than three decades and chose not to participate in the production of The Quiz Show Scandal
, a 1992 one-hour documentary aired in the United States on PBSThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television service with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. However, its operations are largely funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting...
. He later turned down an offer of $100,000 to act as a consultant on the 1994 Robert Redford-directed feature film Quiz ShowQuiz Show is a 1994 American historical drama film which tells the true story of the Twenty One quiz show scandal of the 1950s. It stars John Turturro, Rob Morrow, Ralph Fiennes, Paul Scofield, David Paymer, Hank Azaria, and Christopher McDonald....
after discussing the matter with his family members who, with one exception, were against his participation.
In 2008, Van Doren finally told his account of his quiz show experience in an essay-length memoir published in The New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry published by Condé Nast Publications...
.
Hosts and producers
Host Jack Barry and his partner, producer Dan EnrightDaniel "Dan" Enright was one of the most successful game show producers in American television. Enright worked with Jack Barry from the 1940s until Barry's death in 1984. They were partners in creating programs for radio and television...
, suffered the most from the scandals as the result of the rigging of Twenty-One
. Barry, who had no direct involvement in the rigging, did not work in national television for 10 years, while Enright headed to CanadaCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
to continue working in television.
Although he went through a difficult five-year period (according to an interview with TV Guide before his death in 1984), Barry moved to
Los AngelesLos Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the municipality of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123.445 inhabitants...
, eventually finding work on local television. Later he would admit in an article in TV Guide, in order to determine if he still had stains on his reputation (because of the requirement to have a license with the FCC), he raised the money to buy a
Redondo BeachRedondo Beach is one of the three Beach Cities in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The population was 63,261 at the 2000 census. The city is located in the South Bay region of the greater Los Angeles area....
radio station. Barry would return to hosting in the early 1970s and had success with
The Joker's WildThe Joker's Wild is an American television game show that aired at different times during the 1970s through the 1990s, it billed itself as the game "where knowledge is king and lady luck is queen", and was notable for being the first successful game show produced by Barry-Enright Productions after...
, which premiered in 1972. Barry and Enright would resume their partnership full-time in 1976. Their production of squeaky-clean game shows, notably the syndicated Tic-Tac-DoughTic-Tac-Dough is an American television game show based on the pen-and-paper game of tic-tac-toe. Contestants answer questions in various categories to put up their respective symbol, X or O, on the board. Three versions were produced: the initial 1956-59 run on NBC, a 1978-1986 run initially on...
(which Barry did not host) and The Joker's WildThe Joker's Wild is an American television game show that aired at different times during the 1970s through the 1990s, it billed itself as the game "where knowledge is king and lady luck is queen", and was notable for being the first successful game show produced by Barry-Enright Productions after...
(which he did) in the 1970s and 80s resulted in millions of dollars in revenue and, more importantly for both, forgiveness from the public for their involvement in the scandals.
Indeed, Barry and Enright were able to sponsor the teen-sex comedy film Private LessonsThe film title Private Lessons could refer to:* Private Lessons - an Italian film starring Carroll Baker as a piano-teacher, whose student falls in love with her...
, based on Dan GreenburgDan Greenburg is an American author and screenwriter.He was born in Chicago, Illinois.Greenburg has been married three times. His first wife was writer Nora Ephron; their marriage ended in divorce after six years. His second wife, from 1980-1998, was reporter Suzanne O'Malley, who wrote a series...
's novel PhillyPhilly may refer to:Things related to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:*Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a city in the United States, nicknamed Philly*Philly , an American television series*Philly cheesesteak, a sandwich...
and starring Eric BrownEric Brown may refer to:*Eric Brown , British test pilot*Eric Brown *Eric Brown *Eric Brown *Eric Brown...
alongside Sylvia KristelSylvia Kristel is a Dutch actress, model and singer. Her most famous role is in the French film Emmanuelle .- Early life :...
versus Howard Hesseman-Early life:Hesseman was born in Lebanon, Oregon, the son of Edna and George Henry Hesseman. His parents divorced when he was five, and he was raised by his mother and stepfather, a policeman. Hesseman attended the University of Oregon, and was later a founding member of the San Francisco-based...
, using revenue from their renewed success.
Other producers met the same fate as Barry and Enright, but were unable to redeem themselves afterwards. One of the more notable is Frank Cooper, whose Dotto ended up being his longest-running and most popular game.
Hosts such as
Jack NarzJohn William Narz, Jr. was an American television announcer and game show host. He was the brother of Tom Kennedy and the former brother-in-law of Bill Cullen. In his career, Narz hosted several game shows, including Concentration, Beat the Clock, Now You See It and Dotto...
and
Hal MarchHal March was a Jewish-American comedian and actor.-Early career:March first came to note as part of a comedy team with Bob Sweeney...
continued to work on television after the scandals. March died in January 1970 from lung cancer. Narz died in October 2008 from two massive strokes, having retired in 1980.
Television
Quiz shows all but disappeared from
prime timePrime time or primetime is the block of programming on television during the middle of the evening.The term prime time is often defined in terms of a fixed time period, for example, from 8:00 pm to 11:00 pm...
American television for decades. Those that continued to air had substantially reduced prizes, and many shows adopted limits on the number of games a player could win (usually five). Quiz
shows became game
shows, shifting focus from knowledge to puzzles and word games. A quiz for big money would not return until ABCThe American Broadcasting Company is an American television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. It first broadcast on television in 1948...
premiered 100 Grand100 Grand is a short-lived American game show hosted by game show announcer Jack Clark with Bill Wendell announcing.The series ran from September 15 to 29, 1963 on the highly-touted "New ABC" as the network's attempt to bring back high-stakes game shows after the quiz show scandals of 1958; this...
in 1963; it went off the air after three weeks. Big-money jackpots remained on NBC from 1959-1961 on Jackpot BowlingJackpot Bowling was a professional bowling show on NBC from January 9, 1959 to June 24, 1960 and again from September 19, 1960 to March 13, 1961....
, however relatively large jackpots (on the order of $10,000 or so) returned permanently in 1973 with the success of The $10,000 PyramidPyramid is the collective name of a series of American television game shows in which contestants tried to guess a series of words or phrases, based on descriptions that were given to them by their teammates. The title refers to the show's game board, featuring six categories arranged in a...
and "Big Money" Match Game 73Match Game is an American television game show featuring contestants attempting to match celebrities' answers to fill-in-the-blank questions...
, both daytime shows on CBS. Syndication showcased even bigger jackpots, usually as part of annual tournaments, such as The $100,000
Name That TuneName That Tune was a television game show that put two contestants against each other to test their knowledge of songs. Premiering in the United States on NBC Radio in 1952, the show was created and produced by Harry Salter and his wife, Roberta....
(1976), The $128,000 QuestionThe $128,000 Question was an American game show which aired from 1976-1978 in weekly syndication. This revival of The $64,000 Question was produced by Cinelar and distributed by Viacom Enterprises....
(1976), a revamped Jeopardy!Jeopardy! is an American quiz show featuring trivia in topics such as history, literature, the arts, pop culture, and science. The show has a unique answer-and-question format in which contestants are presented with clues in the form of answers, and must phrase their responses in question form.The...
and its annual $100,000 Tournament of ChampionsThe Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions is an annual tournament featuring the longest-running champions from the past season or seasons of the TV quiz show Jeopardy! The tournament began in the show's first season in 1964 during Art Fleming's tenure as host, and continued into the Alex Trebek era of...
(1984), and eventually the first game show to feature a top prize bigger than the quiz shows at their peak: The $1,000,000 Chance of a LifetimeThe $1,000,000 Chance of a Lifetime was an American game show which offered a $1 million grand prize to winning contestants. Based on a late 1970s unsold game show pilot titled The Letter Machine, the show aired in syndication from January 6, 1986 until September 11, 1987...
of 1986. Networks would not follow with a million-dollar prize until 1999, when ABC debuted the prime time game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.
Networks were forced to adapt winnings limits to meet Standards & Practices guidelines.
CBSCBS Broadcasting Inc. is an American television network, one of television's original "big three", which also include NBC and ABC. Like NBC, CBS started out as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System...
imposed a winnings cap limit which increased as follows:
- 1972: Any contestants whose total winnings reached $25,000 would retire from the show on which they played, and they could not keep any winnings over $25,000.
- 1978: Contestants still retired after winning $25,000, but were allowed to keep up to $35,000 (increased to $50,000 by 1982) of their winnings.
- 1984: Contestants could keep up to $75,000. Beginning in November, contestants retired after winning $50,000.
- 1986: Contestants retired after winning $75,000, but kept a maximum of $100,000.
- Early 1990s: The limit for daytime winnings increased to $125,000.
- 2006: As there is just one daytime network game airing, and syndicated (including CBS-distributed) game shows had abolished earnings caps, the daytime winnings limit was eliminated. This allowed prizes of over $100,000 to be offered, most notably on a June 11, 2007 episode of The Price is Right, during Bob Barker
Robert William "Bob" Barker is an American former television game show host. He is best known for hosting CBS' The Price Is Right from 1972-2007, making it the longest-running daytime game show in North American television history...
's final week, when a recreational vehicleIn North America the term recreational vehicle and its acronym, RV, are generally used to refer to a vehicle equipped with living space and amenities found in a home; they are sometimes called motorhomes. A recreational vehicle normally includes a kitchen, a bathroom, a bedroom and a living room...
prize in the Golden RoadGolden Road is a pricing game on the American television game show The Price Is Right. Debuting on August 19, 1975, it is played for three prizes: A prize with three digits in the price, a prize with four digits in the price and a prize with five or six digits in the price, usually worth more than...
pricing game was valued at over $100,000. The contestant never actually played for the RV, however. Also in 2006-07, a contestant won over $147,000 on the first episode of that season. By 2008, CBS had increased prize values for Punch a Bunch and the Showcase Showdown.
NBCThe National Broadcasting Company is an American television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices in Burbank,California...
game show limits involved the maximum number of games a champion could play, with no limit on winnings. One contestant, Barbara Phillips, became the first daytime game show contestant to win over $100,000 by retiring with over $150,000 on the 1980s version of
Sale of the CenturySale of the Century is a television game show format that has screened in several countries in various incarnations since 1969. The show found its biggest success in Australia, where it aired weeknights from 1980 to 2001...
.
During the 1970s, ABCThe American Broadcasting Company is an American television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. It first broadcast on television in 1948...
imposed a $30,000 cap limit which had been lifted by 1984.
The limit on winnings on The Price is Right
was a daytime limit of $125,000, but that limit was also removed when Season 35 featured two contestants winning over $140,000 -- $147,517 on the season premiere, and $140,235 on the season finale (Bob Barker's last show).
The game show earnings cap of $75,000, which resulted from the scandal, forced Jeopardy!
contestant Frank SpangenbergLieutenant Frank Spangenberg is a New York Police Department officer who garnered fame in 1990 when he set the five-day cumulative winnings record on the game show Jeopardy!, becoming the first person to win more than $100,000 in five days on the show.Spangenberg, at the time a member of the New...
to give up $27,597 of his $102,597 winnings to charity. After a second contestant gave up over $7,000, Jeopardy!
raised its earnings cap on regular season shows, first to $100,000 then to $200,000 after automobiles were awarded for five-time champions (this was before the 2001 doubling of values) and removed after the show went to unlimited champions, with Ken Jennings Kenneth Wayne "Ken" Jennings III holds the record for the longest winning streak on the U.S. syndicated game show Jeopardy! and, as of October 10, 2008, once again became the all-time leading money winner on American game shows. In 2004, Jennings won 74 Jeopardy! games before he was defeated by...
winning $75,000 on one game
(the final show of Season 20), which led to part of his $2.52 million in winnings.
Wheel of FortuneWheel of Fortune is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin. Three contestants compete against each other to solve a word puzzle, similar to those seen in the game hangman...
had imposed a winnings limit of $200,000, which was never reached partly due to the show's lack of returning champions since 1996. The limit was abolished in 2008 when the show began offering the possibility of a $1,000,000 grand prize if a player landed on a new space added to the wheel, survived the rest of the game without hitting Bankrupt, landing on the space on the bonus wheel containing the million-dollar prize, and correctly solving the bonus puzzle. This was achieved by contestant Michelle Loewenstein on October 14, 2008, winning $1,026,080.
Networks required game shows to be heavily monitored by their standards and practices departments. Contestants were kept away from anybody who might know questions to be asked. The scandal also marked an end to widespread naming of television shows by their sponsors. Future game shows like The New Price is Right
in 1972 and Let's Make a DealLet's Make a Deal is a television game show which originated in the United States and has since been produced in many countries throughout the world. The show was based around deals offered to members of the audience by the host. The contestants usually had to weigh the possibility of an offer...
were not sponsored by any one company.
Merv GriffinMervyn Edward "Merv" Griffin, Jr. was an American television host, singer, and media mogul. He began his career as a radio and big band singer who went on to appear in movies and on Broadway...
was irritated by the impossibility of offering a quiz show because of the scandals, and his wife Julanne suggested that he offer a quiz show where competitors were given the answers to questions—but the contestant had to give the correct question. This led to the 1964 introduction of Jeopardy!
and its peculiar answer-and-question format.
In addition, the major television networks took a greater hand in creative production to avoid similar problems in the future. This extended to changes to unrelated television series, like demanding that the premise of the dramatic series Mr. Lucky be changed from a riverboat casino to a restaurant to avoid the idea of games on prime-time TV.
See also
- College Bowl
College Bowl was a format of college-level quizbowl run and operated by College Bowl Company, Incorporated. It had a format similar to the current NAQT format. College Bowl first aired on US radio stations in 1953, and aired on US television from 1959 to 1970...
- Quizbowl
Quiz bowl is a family of games of questions and answers on all topics of human knowledge that is commonly played by students enrolled in high school or college, although some participants begin in middle or even elementary school...
- Charles Ingram
Charles Ingram is a former British Army major and novelist who made headlines in the United Kingdom after he was accused of cheating in the television show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? in 2001...
- 2007 British television phone-in scandal
External sources