"We can solve this quiz show scandal very simply," said a harassed TV executive last week. "All we have to do is announce: 'This show is fixed. Mrs. Smith is going to win it. Stay tuned in and see how she does it!' ':
The idea might be premature, but not by too much. The increasingly loud and indignant question among TV viewers this week is: Which of the quiz shows are rigged? From unquestionably crooked Dotto (TIME, Sept. 1), ruined by the revelations of a part-time butler, actor and near-professional quiz contestant named Edward Hilgemeier Jr., suspicion last week spread to the biggest of all, that hallowed battleground of Van Doren and Von Nardroff, NBC's Twenty One.
"Don't condemn us all in wholesale fashion," pleaded Twenty One's Packager Dan Enright. "Lift the mystery and establish the facts." Herbert Stempel, 31, one of the show's earliest big-money winners ($49,000), claimed to be doing just that. He was hardly a confidence-inspiring witness. He seemed bent on destroying the reputations of everyone connected with the show, admitted bitterly envying Charles Van Doren, the man who defeated him. ("I took my wife to the theater one night, and I overheard somebody saying, 'That's the guy who was beat by Charles Van Doren.' It hurt me egotistically.") The very mention of Producer Enright seemed to choke Herb with bile. But for all his vindictiveness, his detail-packed story commanded attention.
Acting School. After applying for a spot on the show in the fall of 1956, Stempel, then a C.C.N.Y. student, took a general information test, and did remarkably well. One night Producer Enright went to Herb's apartment and gave him another verbal exam. "Then," says Herb, "Dan leaned back and said, 'How'd you like to win a lot of money?' I said, 'Well, sure.' 'Look,' he said, 'kid, play ball with me and you'll win $25,000.' "
After that, Herb went on, Enright told him to get a "whitewall" marine-style haircut, and selected a worn-out suit and tie for him to complete the picture of the penniless G.I. He coached him in grimace and gesture, taught him how to "think" violently in the TV isolation booth ("I call it the Dan Enright school of acting"). All his questions, said Herb, were fed to him in advance by Enright.
After five winning weeks, said Herb, he hit his mentor for a $17,000 advance—and got it. "See," he crowed, as he told his story last week, "the show has to be phony, or I wouldn't have got the dough. Why, I could have lost everything, and Enright would have been out $17,000."
What seemed to irritate Stempel the most was the occasional insistence that he give a wrong answer. "I was forced to admit that I didn't know where the Taj Mahal is; I was forced to say that Gothic architecture originated in Germany when I know damn well it was France. See, that's the trend now: a big winner will have to flub the easy ones to make the American public look good." Eventually, said Herb, Enright told him, "We've reached a plateau. We need a new face." Herb was forced to lose to Van Doren—and that tore it.