Elfrida von Nardroff, who won big money on fixed quiz show, dies at 96

NEW YORK — Elfrida von Nardroff, who won more money than anyone else on the 1950s television quiz show “TwentyOne” — but who later pleaded guilty to lying to a grand jury in Manhattan about receiving questions and answers in advance — died Nov. 11 in a hospice in Westhampton Beach, on Long Island. She was 96.

The cause was a stroke, her niece Elizabeth von Nardroff said.

Over several months in 1958, von Nardroff charmed television viewers as she defeated one opponent after another on her way to winning $220,500 ($2.1 million in today’s dollars). That dwarfed the $129,000 (nearly $1.3 million) that the show’s most famous contestant, Charles Van Doren, an English instructor at Columbia University, had won in 1956 and 1957.

The quiz show genre at the time was wildly popular with viewers, who were fascinated by watching ordinary people answer questions and win cash and prizes. “The $64,000 Question” on CBS became a big hit in 1955, followed a year later by “Twenty-One” on NBC, produced by a company run by Dan Enright and Jack Barry, who was also the host.

Newspapers and magazines began following von Nardroff’s progress on “Twenty-One” after she won $20,000.

“Neither scholar, mnemonic freak nor gambler,” Time magazine wrote when her winnings had reached $146,000, “Elfrida has hit the top in what is still the most demanding and sophisticated of all quiz shows.”

She finally lost to a teacher when asked which Nazi leader had committed suicide after being sentenced to death. She guessed incorrectly that it was Joseph Goebbels, not Hermann Göring. (Goebbels killed himself as the war was ending.)

In a magazine article published after her loss, she wrote that once she had passed the test to qualify as a contestant, she began analyzing the subjects ripest for questions (including history, geography and literature) and flung herself into research.

“I devoured almanacs, drowned myself in a sea of encyclopedias, spun globes and pored over atlases,” she wrote, with Leslie Lieber, in This Week, a syndicated Sunday newspaper supplement. “I haunted the New York Public Library to such an extent that one day a librarian asked me if I was triplets.”

She added, “I was completely determined to run the full circle of knowledge in a matter of months.”

How much of that was true would prove to be debatable.

Elfrida von Nardroff was born on July 3, 1925, in Northampton, Massachusetts. Her father, Robert, was a physics professor at Columbia University; her mother, Elizabeth (Smith) von Nardroff, was a drama teacher and actress.

After two years of substandard work at Duke University, von Nardroff was suspended for a semester. She described herself in This Week as having been a “rebellious, raccoon-skinned, Champagnetossing holdover from the ’20s.” She studied diligently after being reinstated, majoring in English, and graduated in 1947.

She held various jobs, including secretary to a diet doctor, ticket agent at Northwest Airlines, proofreader at House Beautiful magazine and personnel director at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. She was working at the institute, where she earned $500 a month, when she received a call in late 1956 from a woman working for Barry and Enright, whose company produced “Tic-Tac-Dough” as well as “Twenty-One.” She was looking for brainy contestants for both shows.

By von Nardroff’s account in This Week, her roommate watched “Tic-Tac-Dough” and peppered her with questions from the show, all of which she correctly answered. That success prompted von Nardroff to call back in April 1957 and ask to try out for the show; when she passed the 20-minute written test, she took another one, which lasted three hours, for “Twenty-One” and also qualified.

But she did not enjoy her time as a “Twenty-One” winner for long.

Within months of taking home the $220,500, Frank Hogan, the Manhattan district attorney, convened a grand jury to investigate quiz shows. Herbert Stempel, whom Van Doren had defeated on “Twenty-One,” had revealed that the producers had coached him extensively. An investigation by the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight in 1959 followed. (The scandal later became the focus of the 1994 film “Quiz Show,” directed by Robert Redford.)

Joseph Stone, an assistant district attorney in Manhattan who led the quiz show investigation for Hogan, later recalled that Albert Freedman, the producer of “Twenty-One,” had provided von Nardroff with questions and answers in his office and in her apartment in Brooklyn.

Stone delved into von Nardroff’s claims of deep research and found them dubious. He saw little evidence for her claim that she had analyzed “Twenty-One” topics so extensively that she had filled numerous notebooks.