The hearing of the House Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight had not lasted long before a picture emerged from memory and began to dominate the scene. It was a picture of a tall, handsome young man in the isolation booth, his face contorted with mental effort, his lips muttering a kind of private stream-of-consciousness through which he tried to find the answers to Twenty One's difficult questions. Bearer of a distinguished name, Charles Van Doren (TIME cover, Feb. n, 1957) had seemed the finest product of American education, character, family background and native intelligence. Could it be that all or much of that picture had been sham? That was the most disturbing question raised by last week's Washington hearings on the scandal of the television quiz shows.
By week's end no flat answer had yet come. Van Doren was in hiding, having added nothing to a midweek wire to Subcommittee Chairman Oren Harris that on the program he was "never assisted in any form." (Van Doren said that he had made the same statement to a New York county grand jury months ago.) His failure to respond to the subcommittee's invitation to testify had already caused NBC, which employs him at $50,000 a year as consultant and as a Today commentator, to suspend him. And many of the characters who had surrounded Van Doren during his 14-week climb toward his $129,000 winnings on NBC's Twenty One told the subcommittee that the show was blatantly rigged until NBC bounced it off the air a year ago. The crassness of the deceit, the number of people involved and the relative gullibility or negligence of network executives were startling.
"Explode with Answers." Twenty One's Producer Dan Enright, 42, testified that on many shows the fix "has been in force for many years." Herbert Stempel, the man who was defeated by Van Doren, admitted that he took a dive. And the woman who finally dethroned Van Doren, blonde Lawyer Vivienne Nearing, 32, was shown to have received $10,000 although she won only $5,500 under the rules of the game. Furthermore, Van Doren himself drew a $5,000 advance "for Christmas presents" at a time when he could have lost all his winnings—$20,000 at the time. Before the Congressmen and S.R.O. audiences in a huge, white-columned House caucus room, the witnesses gave a rare and disturbing backstage peek at carnival showmanship and cupidity.
In precise detail, Herbert Stempel, a paper genius (IQ: 170) and onetime patient of a psychiatrist, related how Twenty One's Enright had set him up for the fix ("How would you like to win $25,000?"), schooled him on how to perform ("Count off and mumble, suddenly open [your] eyes, give a dazzling smile and explode with the answers"), and ordered him to bow before the engaging erudition of Charlie Van Doren. Stempel walked off with a consoling $49,500 in winnings. But when he quickly blew the money, Stempel became disillusioned, started leaking stories of the fix to newspapermen.