REMEMBERING QUIZ SHOW FALL GUY.
Contestant was coached with answers
Herb Stempel, who has died aged 93, was the central figure in the scandal of fixed television quiz shows that shocked 1950s America. Fans followed his prize-winning rise on Twenty-one, never suspecting that all was scripted.
Quiz shows offered large cash prizes. When Stempel watched Twenty-one he thought he might do well — with good reason.
Herbert Milton Stempel was born in New York on Dec. 19, 1926. When he was seven his father died; the family then lived on public assistance.
A precocious student, he gained a place at the highly selective Bronx High School of Science, again excelling at quizzes.
He enrolled at City College of New York but left to enlist in the Army, serving until 1952, working for some of the time as an intelligence analyst. He returned to New York and took a job in the post office. He married his first wife and returned to CCNY on the GI Bill.
He applied to go on Twenty-one, sitting a threeand-a-half-hour exam in which he claimed to have scored the highest-ever result, 251 of 363 questions correct. But when Dick Enright, who co-produced the show with its presenter, Jack Barry, visited his house to offer him a spot, he asked if Stempel would like to make US$25,000.
Stempel agreed and was groomed to be the man the audience wanted to see lose.
He was coached with the answers, and more important, in his delivery, instructed to seem anguished. Charles Van Doren was the good guy: the sponsors wanted a clean-cut, middle-class type, and he was a scion of a leading New York literary and academic family.
Stempel was promised that if he lost without fuss he would be given a consulting job; appear on another quiz, High-low; and be booked on other programs.
None of the promises came true. Enright reneged on $20,000 of Stempel’s ostensible $69,000 winnings, and persuaded him to sign a document saying he had not been coached.
A Congressional inquiry found Van Doren, Enright and others guilty of perjury.
Stempel lost most of his winnings to an investment con. He taught, then worked as a legal investigator.
Stempel is survived by a son from his first marriage.