Charles Van Doren passed away this week at age 93. No matter what else he accomplished in those years, he is remembered forever for a decision he made in 1956, at age 30, to be a contestant on the television quiz show Twenty One. The 14 weeks he spent sealed in an isolation booth on live television, answering questions about anything under the sun, made him a very famous man. He was respected, admired, and even became something of a national crush – a charming young man with all the answers.
Or so it seemed. In late 1959 he confessed before a House committee that he had been given answers on Twenty One. And after his admission, Van Doren spent the next six decades in a sort of exile. Instead of celebrity, Van Doren labored in the world of the mind, working as an author and editor, doing some teaching, and trying his best to build a good life. He didn’t like to comment on his moment of celebrity, despite numerous attempts by many parties to get him to talk or to participate in the making of documentaries or feature films. Not until 2008 did he tell his side of the story, when he wrote an essay for The New Yorker.1
Charles Van Doren is so often remembered for his association with Twenty One that it’s easy to overlook what immediately followed his time on the quiz show. NBC, eager to capitalize on the appeal this brainy young man from an intellectual family could bring to the network, signed Van Doren to a three-year contract worth $50,000 a year. He would advise the network on public service and educational matters. And in that capacity, he eventually found himself part of Dave Garroway’s team on Today.
As Van Doren recalled it, NBC News was given the task of finding him something to do, but not much seemed to stick. A stint writing radio newsbreaks didn’t work, and an assignment to help out in the Washington bureau became a minor disaster. But while those chores didn’t work out, Van Doren fared much better as a contributor to programs such as Wide Wide World, where a longer-form style and a more philosophical approach let him play to his strengths. In time Van Doren became what he called a “semi-regular” on the program, and it led to his opportunity with Today.2
At the time Van Doren started on the program, Today was still presented live. He had to get up each morning at five to be ready to go on the air for two hours. Then he had to write the next day’s segment, and then take the subway to Columbia University for his regular teaching job, “where my sudden celebrity seemed to impress no one.”
As Van Doren remembered, he was initially awkward on Today. But Garroway eventually gave him five minutes each day for a cultural and literary segment, and on Friday Van Doren would read some of the great poems and provide some insight about their authors. Other times he might provide a brief lesson on something like non-Euclidean geometry. The segments were well-received by the audience, and by Garroway.
But all the while, stories were circulating that the big-money quiz shows had been rigged, and in 1958 an incident on another program prompted a full-blown investigation. Van Doren maintained his innocence, both before a Manhattan grand jury and before the Today audience. On the air he insisted, “I myself was never given any answers or told any questions beforehand,” and he likewise insisted his fellow contestants had received no similar coaching. And all seemed well in the world of Today.
One morning in August 1959, as Van Doren reviewed some notes just after the program went off the air, a young Congressional investigator introduced himself. Richard Goodwin3 was working for a House committee that was looking into the quiz shows and planned to hold hearings. Goodwin told Van Doren that the grand jury testimony of the contestant Van Doren had defeated to become champion on Twenty One contradicted Van Doren’s own testimony, and that two of the show’s producers had come back to the grand jury and confirmed the contestant’s assertion. Goodwin and Van Doren adjourned to an empty office, where Van Doren learned that other contestants had lied. “From all that he said, I realized that the committee wanted my story to come out at hearings in Washington,” Van Doren later wrote. Goodwin advised Van Doren that it would be best if he said nothing to anybody.4
A month later things started to happen. Van Doren had been waiting to learn if NBC would renew his contract. His agent insisted NBC was just waiting for the quiz investigations to blow over. “There’s no problem, is there?” his agent asked. But Van Doren sensed that NBC executives were feeling uneasy. On October 9, he was suspended from Today. In late October, he and another Twenty One contestant returned to the grand jury and made what the district attorney called “substantial changes” to their original statements. Soon, Van Doren’s testimony to the House committee was scheduled for Monday, November 2. As all this played out, thousands of viewers wrote to NBC and pleaded for Van Doren’s reinstatement. Some letters asked when Garroway would say something about the situation. He would, but events would intervene.
On November 2, Van Doren made a public confession before the House committee. The next day, NBC terminated its contract with him.
That afternoon, as Today was being recorded for the next morning’s broadcast5, Garroway finally spoke. In a five-minute talk, Garroway spoke of Van Doren as being part of “a little family on this show,” of the bonds that form when you’re doing a show in the early hours of the morning, and that while he could never defend anything Van Doren had done wrong on the quiz show, he would remember the cultural pieces and philosophical essays, the friendship he had built with Van Doren and his family. “What do you want me to say?” Garroway asked, as he held back sobs. “I can only say I’m heartsick.”6 After the segment ended, an overcome Garroway had to leave, and Jack Lescoulie informed viewers that “Dave has gone home.”
Inside NBC there was some deliberation over whether it would be appropriate to show Garroway’s emotional essay about Van Doren. But producer Bob Bendick believed that running a program as recorded was essential to the show’s credibility.7 Therefore, Garroway’s teary farewell to Charles Van Doren was aired that morning, made headlines that afternoon, and was even featured in Life Magazine’s look at the aftermath of Van Doren’s confession.
The revelation that Garroway’s tearful farewell had been pre-recorded also brought fire. Critic Jack Gould slammed the “misuse of video tape recordings” as another “depressing development” in the quiz show scandal. Gould wrote that one could sympathize with Garroway’s emotions, but upon learning that the whole thing had been recorded and kept overnight to be put on the air, “there can only be one thing to say: Why?” Henry Lee of the New York Daily News wrote that NBC’s reluctance to admit Garroway’s tears were prerecorded “was TV’s fitting farewell to Charley.”
What happened to the relationship between Charles Van Doren and Dave Garroway? As Van Doren remembered, they wrote to one another a few times but eventually fell out of touch.
As for Charles Van Doren himself, the immediate aftermath of his confession meant the loss of his NBC job and his teaching job at Columbia University. He spent the remainder of his life keeping a much lower profile, finding fulfillment in being an author, editor, teacher and scholar. He turned down requests to take part in projects related to the quiz show scandals. In retirement he found happiness, living with his wife in an old house that had been in the family for a long time, finding joy in being a parent and a grandparent.
In these times we look back on the sins of Charles Van Doren and other quiz show contestants, and the whole matter seems…quaint.8 And others can say more, much more eloquently than I ever can, about how he took his lumps and retreated, to rebuild a life with some kind of dignity. But let’s take a moment to remember him as a sometimes-overlooked member of that little family on Today.
SOURCES:
- Steven Battaglio, From Yesterday To Today. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2011.
- “Dave Garroway Heartbroken Over Van’s Disgrace.” Monroe (La.) News-Star 4 Nov 1959: 10.
- “Garroway Cries Over Van Doren.” Pittsburgh Press 4 Nov 1959: 4.
- Jack Gould, “Contempt for Law Is Most Sickening Part of Scandal.” Corpus Christi Caller-Times 8 Nov 1959: 78.
- Robert Metz, The Today Show. Chicago: Playboy Press, 1977.
- Gordon T. Mills, “The Way I See It….” Burlington (Vt.) Free Press 7 Nov 1959: 12.
- Charles Van Doren, “All the Answers.” The New Yorker 28 July 2008.
- Read it. Seriously. Read it.
- Here is one of the many places where the movie Quiz Show completely screws up the real history. In the movie, Dave Garroway – played mildly convincingly by Barry Levinson – is waiting just offstage to offer Van Doren a job on Today immediately upon his defeat, and sort of eggs Van Doren into signing the deal on live television. It kind of makes Garroway seem complicit in a scheme NBC had cooked up. That’s not at all how it went. Then again, I could fill pages with what that movie got wrong. I look at it the same way I look at The Right Stuff. Both are absolutely gorgeous pieces of filmmaking that capture the feelings of an era. They both have smart and funny scripts. They are beautifully-realized motion pictures. But they both get the history so wrong, and in the process they both trample on some actual people who did not deserve it.
- Goodwin’s account of the investigation was included in his memoir Remembering America, and formed the basis for the movie Quiz Show. Goodwin’s account is very much at odds with the story Joseph Stone, then an assistant district attorney in Manhattan working on the quiz show investigations, told in his book Prime Time and Misdemeanors. More on that in a moment.
- When Jeff Kisseloff interviewed Joseph Stone for his book The Box, Stone ripped Goodwin as a “jerk” and “wily opportunist” who “double-crossed” Stone by promising that the minutes from the grand jury would be used only for reference and perhaps as an aid during cross-examination, but then using the grand jury testimony to pressure Van Doren into confessing. Stone had some other interesting observations – including his belief that Van Doren could have avoided being called by the committee, but a tactical error led to the whole public mess – but I’ll leave that to you to read on your own. It’s another reason why everybody who loves television history needs a copy of The Box.
- Today shifted to being taped in late September 1959.
- A portion of this segment was included on a DVD that accompanied the book This Is Today, published in 2002 to mark the program’s 50th anniversary.
- Some retellings of the story have Garroway defending Van Doren on tape prior to his testimony, only to have Van Doren confess before the tape aired, thus making Garroway look foolish. But the chronology of events, borne out by contemporary coverage of the story, doesn’t add up to this. Other retellings make it sound as if the tape was aired to make Garroway look foolish, as a form of retaliation by disgruntled someones. Robert Metz in his book The Today Show – for which he interviewed many of its principals, including Bendick and Garroway – wrote that both the producer and the host signed off on the decision to air the tape unedited.
- I’ve written more about that aspect in this piece for It’s About TV. In addition, I can’t help noting that on the week Charles Van Doren passed away, the reigning champion on perhaps the most highly-regarded game show presently on the air, who is currently on pace to break multiple winnings records, just happens to be a professional sports gambler.