Oh, come now. The “heroes” THINK they’re intellectuals and experts. In fact, they think they’re scientists, too. Not only that but the “expert” restrictions they impose on us don’t apply to themselves because, well, “intellectuals or experts.” They’re above their own rules because they’re fashioned of different clay that we ignoramuses are.
@@BunnySlippers82 AFAIK most were offered briefing. I participated in a quiz program and they told this story with much cynism as an ecample of 'no can do". Fast forward and I was eliminated on round 3 because I refused 'a little help'. "Do you think that American show winners won on pure merit? They all had that extra help!"
Rigged Quiz TV shows in the 1950's ... and it's still going on. Now we have "reality" TV shows where contestants are coached, manipulated, and directed to build tension and drama and garner the highest ratings.
I remember in the movie Quiz Show Richard Goodwin(Portrayed by Rob Morrow) made a statement near the end of the movie , which still sticks in my mind and he was right when he said quote " I thought WE were gonna get Television, The truth is Television is gonna get US"
Yes. Excellent screenplay. My favorite line was when Goodwin said to Van Doren: "Go ahead and mock me if you want but you can't envy me at the same time." So true. Those two actions contradict each other and people do them both all the time.
@@HMMELD The problem was the sponsors had too much control over the way the shows were produced. They should never have done that. Rigging is a dangerous practice.
I just watched Quiz Show for the first time. I came here to see what I could find about it. I have to say Rob Morrow’s final line really hit hard. I grew up a TV junkie. Now it’s RUclips and streaming platforms. I can quit anytime though!
Those montages in the opening credits really brought back memories.this episode was definetly from one of the early years of the PBS American Experience series.
I remember watching this as a kid when it first aired on PBS in January 1992...they really did a great job with it! Incidentally, Charles Van Doren had initially agreed to finally break his silence and participate, but later changed his mind (though he still received a mention during the credits). He would, however, finally talk about the scandals years later in a 2008 piece that he wrote for Time.
I was on the infamous quiz show "21", and I can tell you the beer did not come close to scratching the surface! And that's the truth! Thanks for watching kid!
The scene in the movie where Charlie (Ralph Finnes) confessed to his dad (Paul Schofield) is one of the most gut wrenching scenes in movie history. You must watch the film if you haven't.
Wasn’t that where the elder Van Doreen compared cheating on a quiz show to plagiarizing a comic strip? Of course, Schofield was brilliant in every film he did, and he was very choosy as to which films he would do. He was excellent in the underappreciated (largely because it was underpromoted) film version of “The Crucible”.
Saw the movie and as I was walking out of the theatre, two very young people wondered what the fuss was all about. "So, they cheated with the questions on the game show and why was that so important? Wouldn't anyone cheat if they had the chance to win big money??" I thought: 'NO, I would not!' Times have changed radically since the '50s.
I didn't think the film would be very interesting, but I was pleasantly surprised when I found it gripping and fascinating. A great achievement by Robert Redford, who directed and produced it.
I’m pretty sure that it’s spelled Ralph Fiennes and Paul Scofield ( I know.. spelling nazi alert😁) but otherwise bang on. I thought the movie Quiz Show was one of the best releases of the year.
@Phileas Fogg same w/ government. everyone knows politicians are lying, bribing, pedo, evil lizard people, but the public is so distracted and dumb compared to people 50 years ago that it doesn't matter. the average person has zero idea how shitty our quality of life is compared to other real first world countries.
Actually, it's been a federal offense to rig a game show since 1959 (and most of them shyed away from offering prizes comparable to their 50s counterparts for about 15 years afterwards), plus the networks added Standards & Practices departments, whose representatives are always on set during tapings to ensure the game is conducted fairly...in fact, the planned Fox primetime quiz Our Little Genius was pulled literally just before its January 2010 premiere when it was discovered that some of the young contestants had gotten far more "assistance" than they should've.
@@oldgringo2001 Hey man, do you know who I am? Yes, I'd probably ruin my career but no, hopefully I wouldn't be a jerk about it. I doubt the guy is still paying off student loans (or whatever) like the rest of us.
@@Milkmans_Son I can't say I know how you feel 'cause I have never had to pay off any student loans, mine or my only child's. But I had an old friend who had a ton of them between college and medical school. His solution? He joined the CIA. The folks at Langley took care of everything, even let him give firearms training. They even took care of the gambling debts his first wife ran up before she deserted him.
Wheel of Fortune remains a juggernaut of a game show in April 2022 because of these quiz show scandals. In 1963, Merv Griffin wanted to do a quiz show and his wife at the time suggested to give the answers and have the contestants come up with the questions. "What's the Question?" was tooled and retooled into Jeopardy!, which became an NBC Daytime mainstay from March 1964 until January 3, 1975. Lin Bolen, a new NBC Daytime executive had Jeopardy cancelled as the network wanted to appeal to a more modern time and audience. Part of the deal with Merv was in exchange for Jeopardy's cancellation, that Wheel Of Fortune would replace it on NBC daytime. From January 6, 1975 until September 1983, Wheel was strictly an NBC daytime game show. But in Sept 1983, Wheel syndicated and became a night time series which still airs to this very day. Oddly enough, only one year after Wheel's syndicated debut, Jeopardy! returned to the airwaves also in syndication, and continues to air to this very day as well. Talk about things coming full circle.
Loved watching Art Fleming's Jeopardy as a kid. Three close friends (all siblings) and I wrote up our own "answers" and played the game in their living room day after day during summer vacation in elementary school. Unsurprisingly, the eldest sibling graduated valedictorian in high school and went on to become an accomplished choral composer and director. The next-oldest became a poli sci professor. The youngest is a talented amateur rock drummer and I became an amateur mathematician who drives truck over-the-road for a living. Guess we all have Charles Van Doren to thank in no small degree, indirectly, for making academic knowledge cool.
Poor Patty..the nerve of those producers..forcing her to commit perjury before the grand jury..to save that damn TV game show and the producers tushies.
(Goodnight, Mr. Kramden. I’ll be seeing you.) I’LL BE SEEING YOU, IRVING CAMM AND SAMMY FAYE, 1939! (No, Mr. Kramden, it’s all over now.) IT’S ALL OVER NOW, BAZZY SIMON, 1927! (Please.) PLEASE WAS SUNG BY BING CROSBY . . . .Ralph shoulda just asked Norton what song that was that he always warmed up on the piano with! Poor Ralph! But at least he went out with a tiny smidgen of dignity, quite unlike the fraudster/liar Charles Van Moron (as called by the quirky John Turturro as Herb Stemple in Quiz Show).
Something I have never understood about the 1950s being described as "innocent" is how everybody overlooks that this was a decade after the end of WWII, with its concentration camps (in Germany AND in the United States) its horrible atrocities and deaths, its picture for all the world to see of what humanity can be. And then there`s all the history that happened before that... I grew up in the 1950s, and so it was an innocent time for me. But any grownups around me had to have known much more than I did. There is nothing "innocent" about the history of human kind. What`s with the pearl clutching? Doesn`t add up.
A number of people mention the movie "Quiz Show," which did take a few liberties with some of the facts, but the one thing I remember about it is that pretty much the only reaction from the people in the theater came at the end, when there was a caption pointing out something like, "Jack Barry and Dan Enright (the producers of Twenty-One) would return to TV in 1972 with The Joker's Wild. It made them millionaires." (The show that followed the premiere episode of The Joker's Wild? The premiere episode of The Price is Right.)
Philo T Farnsworth said that he regretted having invented TV when he saw how it was being used for junk. He had much higher expectations of Americans. Imagine how he would feel about the trash that's playing today!
I would imagine that they are part of the Congressional Record, as they were used by a House of Representatives Committee. In which case, it’s probably in the National Archives. Your House member might just be able to procure a copy, and it’s possible that the Congressional Library would have it on-line.
The show producers were incredibly shortsighted and stupid when it came to their treatment of Stempel, considering how easily he could bring them all down. Instead of letting him lose with some grace and dignity - which of course they could have done - he was essentially humiliated! The nebbish and over-confident, unlikable jew overwhelmed by the brain power of the personable and self-effacing white knight Van Doren -- and they expected Stempel to be fine with that! It's especially telling that when the producer first heard someone had made accusations against the show, he knew exactly who it was -- of course it had to be the man they had wronged so explicitly!
lol @ playing the anti-semitic card what a surprise, dude you want stupid look in a mirror. PS and FYI, Stempel couldn't "easily bring them down" because he had no proof. did you even watch this video?
Funny thing is that the producers of Twenty One, who set up Stempel, were also Jewish, Jack Barry (real name Barasch) and Dan Enright (real name Ehrenreich). Barry was also host of Twenty One and Tic-Tac-Dough, which was also rigged. The other two hosts who were most caught up in the rigged games, Jack Narz and Hal March, unlike Barry, were not involved in the rigging. March’s career never really recovered and he died fairly young, but Narz managed to come back and host some popular games in the 70’s.
If I was Stempel, instead of signing off on a reduced prize amount I would have told them they're paying me double or I go to the authorities. He had the upper hand at that point.
@@riverraisin1 the game shows didnt technically break any laws. those involved didnt break any laws till they lied to the grand jury, which was really a fishing expedition to determine if any laws were broken. herb couldnt consult with anyone...but he might have been smarter had he spoken to an atty before signing anything.
one of lifes mysteries you save something in case you need it later in life but when you need it you cant find it. i save things like nixon campaign pins and disney tickets from disneyland for decades then throw them out only to find i could sell on ebay a few years later..
The quiz show scandals inspired a rising star and hotshot producer named Merv Griffin to invent the game show "Jeopardy!", where the questions are the answers and the answers are the questions.
Marie Winn (the girl with the notebook) is a writer, whose elder sister was the late Janet Malcolm, reporter, essayist and author known mainly for her longtime work on The New Yorker.. most famous for "The Journalist and the Murderer", which delved into journalistic ethics. Ironic..
The producers didn't think they did anything wrong. So, they beefed it up a little bit - nobody got hurt, no laws broken, they made out like bandits. They tried it straight and was a dismal failure. My folks remembered this and told in great detail all about it.
In light of the quiz show scandals, networks not only implemented a policing system called "Standards and Practices" to ensure that no cheating is being done, and that the games are kept fair and random. They also implemented limits on how many times or days a contestant can be on a show, how much money they can win or both. NBC limited the amount of days or times they can be on a show. ABC limited the amount of times or days to five and implemented a limit on winnings like: 1972- $20,000 and 1982- $50,000. CBS implemented several limits on winnings seen here: 1972-1978: $25,000 1978-1982: $25,000-$35,000 1982-1984: $25,000-$50,000 1984-1986: $50,000-$75,000* (* denotes hard cap on winnings being implemented after Michael Larson took CBS and "Press Your Luck" for $110,237) Also starting on top of the $50,000-$75,000* they put limits on how many times a player can be on a show usually five days with "Body Language" imposing a six day limit. 1986-1992: $75,000-$100,000* 1992-2006: $125,000* Since 2006 there is no limit on winnings.
Plus the game shows largely stayed off prime time - so you didn't have the pressure to artificially keep the ratlngs high by having certain contestants or building tension week after week - as was mentioned, sponsor influence, which caused a lot of that - largely disappeared.
@@gregfrank4115 With the exception these days regarding shows like "The $100,000 Pyramid" and "Press Your Luck" and even then those shows are under the jurisdiction of "Standards and Practices".
And this evolved into what we have today. Reality TV! Where they give viewers total, honest insight into the contestants lives. Where on certain shows the contestants are obligated to drink a certain amount of alcohol between certain hours of the day. The shows today are just completely bull-it!
No, he didn't. Redford had Turturro make Herb look like a nerd and a lout. Stempel even went on record to say how "miffed" (his word) he was at how he was made to look in the movie. I guess your definition of "extremely well" differs considerably from mine and Herb Stempel's.
Remember the guy who crushed jeopardy for like a year or more. In the end I think they talked him into lossing on purpose because it got to the point where fans were getting bored and Alex Trebek was becoming obviously hateful towards him. I could never imagine a game show conspiring with a contestant to cheat though. I am too young for quiz show but my dad said it ruined game shows on TV for like a decade at least. It took awhile for people to trust them again. And when they came back the prizes were alot smaller.
In the early days of TV, the game shows were considered just another form of entertainment, and they didn’t think there was anything wrong with rigging it. The producers just treated it like pro wrestling. If you could fake a pro wrestling match, why not a quiz show? Also, quiz shows had been rigged going back to the days of radio. It only became a problem when big money became involved. Rig a game with a 5 or 10 dollar prize involved, and the sponsor ends up paying both contestants anyway, nobody cares. But when you rig it and someone loses out on $50 or 60 thousand dollars, you’re gonna have problems.
Ken Jennings' run lasted about 6 months, and I don't recall Alex being anything but courteous/professional towards him...also, while the big money quiz genre took about 40 years before successfully returning to TV with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, game shows endured despite the scandals, and some made it through said time period unscathed (What's My Line, I've Got a Secret, the original Price is Right, To Tell the Truth, Play Your Hunch, You Bet Your Life, etc), while some very successful ones premiered only a few years after the scandal (Password, Let's Make a Deal, the original Jeopardy, Hollywood Squares, etc).
The NY ADA Joseph Stone, interviewed in this film, wrote a detailed book in 1992 about the deception, called Prime Time and Misdemeanors, published by Rutgers University Press.
@@garyroth8855 what crime did they commit that there was a grand jury investigation? to have a grand jury investigation...there has to be a crime one is investigating
@@thewkovacs316 I don’t think there actually was a crime. The people who had a grievance were the contestants who the shows were rigged against, who never had a chance to win. It could be argued they were swindled out of the chance to make money. And I don’t mean Stempel, who was in on the rigging.
I did a phone interview with Dan Enright..the co-producer and co-creator of TV game shows like "21"and "Tic Tac Dough"hosted by Jack Barry(his late partner) before he died and he told me that he regretted that both he and Jack forced Poor Mr.Stempel to lose to Prof.Van Doren on"21".
"Poor Mr Stempel" got the answers too, so to me, it's pity for all of those people who lost to both Stempel and Van Doren. Imagine finding out you are going on a show that could change your life financially, not knowing that in reality you had no chance because the game was rigged. Sure, Stempel or Van Doren might have beaten most of them in a fair game, but almost certainly not all.
@@mitchellbaker9434 Herb Stempel's potential winnings of $111,500 were the equivalent of $1.5 million today. Pretty life-changing for a 29 y.o. on the GI Bill. Don't know if they were taxable.
I suspect a lot of people did. Herb Stempel admitted he told friends the night he was going to "take a dive". Unlike in Quiz Show, his wife did know the show was fixed and played along for the sake of her husband. In the 64,000 Question, one of the tricks used was to give a favorite contestant a few warm up questions and answers, then surprise them by asking those questions on the show. One of the early producers quit over this practice, saying that people will talk about what is going on. Get enough people talking and Time magazine will be paying a visit. So likely a lot of people knew or suspected things were not on the up and up.
@@gregfrank4115 Despite that people did talk and over 100 lied to a grand jury. At least Patty Duke told the truth and it didn't seem to hurt her career any.
Even my great uncle, Mark Van Doren, didn’t even know Charlie was lying. It was a blow to the whole family of very accomplished writers and professors.
America on the cusp, her metamorphosis from pristine moth to a very deceptively flawed butterfly. A moment in the 1950s when America's picture in the attic showed unmistakable signs of decay. The cake and cold milk scene in the movie, when Charles almost comes to confessing to his Dad, haunts us to this very day. Thank You, Milton Murdock.
It was pure laziness on the part of producers - they could have taken that as a sign to get a different format - one that didn't need to be rigged - instead they succumbed to pressure from Revlon and took the easy way out.
I’ve watched this video a few times now, it’s fascinating! I hope someone makes an updated or modern documentary, with full details and more perspectives. I’d like to know the full scope of the scandal and see if there were other shows not mentioned that were implicated in quiz show rigging. All the reading online mainly focuses on the 3 shows mentioned in this video.
"The Big Surprise" was also created and originally produced by Louis G. Cowan, the creator and original producer of "The $64,000 Question". The show began on NBC in the fall of 1955. NBC went to Cowan and gave him the Saturday 7:30 P.M. Eastern timeslot and mandated that this new game show have a top prize of $100,000, to "one up" CBS. The original "Big Surprise" emcee was Jack Barry, who left the show after a few months to host and co-produce "Twenty-One". As seen in this documentary, Mike Wallace succeeded Barry.
Ironically, according to that journalist, he wanted to print the story. It was the lawyers who killed it, not, alas, out of a sense of ethics, but out of a fear of being sued.
What's not explained is why the show's producers didn't simply tell Revlon and any other sponsor trying to manipulate outcomes that "There's companies LINING UP to sponsor this show, so you guys need to SHUT UP!" Maybe it's my simply not knowing enough about how TV show sponsoring went in those days, but why Mark Revson was allowed a say in anything and not simply told to buzz off escapes me entirely. The PRODUCERS are the ones with the goose laying all the golden eggs.
He's right about $64,000 being a small fortune in 1956...in 1992 dollars that'd be almost a third of a million! You might say it was the 50s equivalent of Who Wants To Be A One-Third Millionaire?
I remember when this happened the whole country watched but most quiz shows were booted off the air. People believed that if it was on tv then it was true.
It seems the producers never considered the possibility that keeping a secret among hundreds of former contestants, many of whom would be disaffected, might be impossible, and that if the secret did get out, the entire project would collapse. What fools.
I think there was much wider knowledge of the rigging in the industry than was made out. The reason I say this is the UK version of Tic Tac Dough, made by the usually unimpeachable Granada (a company with a reputation up with the BBC back in the day) was implicated, a minor scandal ensued and it was quietly dropped for a time. The UK had no sponsor pressure either as rules prevented sponsorship. This can't be a coincidence. This resulted in much restricted prize money here.
54:00 "Federal regulations were enacted against broadcast fraud" Quite the contrary, broadcast fraud appears to have become the national pastime and debate.
Wow. How stupid were the legal departments of these shows. It never occurred to them that an honest run show would never have to ask a contestant to sign a statement testifying to the shows honesty? I mean why would such a statement even be needed? Lol. Their attempts to cover themselves with statements was the most convincing piece of evidence that the cheat was in.
Oh, you know. The broadcast world was young, new and… not as innocent as we had always thought it was. Yes, I was there then. I remember this directly. You have no idea how this simple scheme scandalized America! Nobody expected to hear a LIE on TV 😂
I had once read that "Twenty-One" host/co-producer Jack Barry learned that Herb Stempel had gone public with the show being rigged one night when he was at a Chicago nightclub doing his stand-up comedy act. After Barry was finished, he went to his dressing room, where he found the first edition of the next morning's Chicago Tribune with a screaming headline that went something like "'Twenty-One' Fixed! TV's Top Game Show Rigged!"
As a result of this scandal, Jack Barry and Dan Enright didn't return to TV until 1972 when their production company created "The Joker's Wild". Barry remained the host until his death in 1984. Barry was not the original choice to host, due to his past involvement in the 1950s quiz show scandals. As a result, Allen Ludden hosted the first two pilots for CBS. Allen Ludden, Wink Martindale, and Tom Kennedy were the 3 top choices for the host; however, each had already committed themselves to a different game show.
Having grown up watching Barry on different shows, it’s hard to imagine him as a stand up comedian. On the other hand, Hal March of the $64,000 Question was a comedian. He started in an stand up act with Bob Sweeney right after World War 2. They had a popular (and pretty good) radio show in the late 40’s. Sweeney later became a big time director of TV episodes (many Andy Griffith episodes amongst other shows), and poor March got caught up in the quiz show scandals.
The guy at the 12:00 mark in the booth answering the question about roman numerals is Virgil Earp who was the nephew of Wyatt Earp. He was in Tombstone during the fight at the O.K. Corral.
when u have 100s of people lyin for the same cause, i guarantee u someone out of the group is either gonna get caught, or theyre gonna spill the beans.. its inevitable.
Of course, Americans aren't very good at learning lessons, so this is still happening. Sorry to burst the bubble of anyone who thinks America's Got Talent and all the other modern day competitions aren't rigged..
Is it fair to say that the sixty four thousand dollar ($64,000) question would, over time, transform itself into sixty four (64) gigabytes of lies? Yes?
As someone who loves history, I have stopped applying purity tests to historical-based movies. The only ones I have a problem with are those that engage in character assassination against people who aren't around to defend themselves (Ron Howard has a history of engaging in that practice). That said, I like the Quiz Show movie. I even own a copy. But after watching this I wish they had included the work investigators did before the feds got involved. Congressional hearings are often a bit of a dog-and-pony show, done to put some senator or representative on the national map. I think the movie would have benefitted if the screenplay had included some of the street-level work that laid the groundwork for that dramatic scene where Charles Van Doren comes clean and admits he was in on the fix. Van Doren went into seclusion after the scandal but I read an article where they asked him about the accuracy of the film. He pointed out inaccuracies such as the fact he was already a contributor to the Today Show by the time the scandal broke and the movie's claim that he never taught again was false. He didn't teach at Columbia but he did continue his teaching career. I read a book he wrote before I even knew about the quiz show scandal called The History of Knowledge. It is a well-written book but he gets a bit goofy at the end (I'll just leave it at that and let anyone who's interested find out for themselves). I didn't put him together with the scandal until the movie came out. As for the current shows; are they rigged? It's doubtful, but who's to say. As they point out here, cheating can be a subtle thing. Asking people questions you know they know, how difficult would that be? It's still entertainment at the end of the day. Personally, I think Congress had bigger fish to fry at that time than looking into game shows, but that's me.
A good assessment overall, thank you. That “21” was fixed doesn’t interest me. I feel Herb’s outrage that the snake Dan Enright didn’t honor his part of the con. As for the movie ‘Quiz Show’ I found the Jew vs Wasp sub-text tedious & irrelevant. Enright was the villain start to finish.
@@rsr789 They probably do have better memories than me. But, they are boring - they have all this knowledge stuffed inside them just itchin' to get out which I find totally annoying.
His self-aggrandizing non-apology at the end only made me think he’s even more of a douche. There were others doing the right thing from the get go. He drug out the lie as long as it brought him fame and fortune and admiration of others, morality be damned. He lied even when to do so seriously those hurt the ones telling the truth. Only when his back was against the wall did he tell the truth, after first going on the run. And you can tell by his speech that at the end of it all he *actually* thought he was still a good, upstanding, white male ivy leaguer. Full of wisdom etc.
"For the first time America's Heroes were intellectuals or experts..." So, essentially, the exact opposite of the way things are now.
Unless we can do something about it.
And they were conmen and liars 🤣🤣🤣
Oh, come now. The “heroes” THINK they’re intellectuals and experts. In fact, they think they’re scientists, too. Not only that but the “expert” restrictions they impose on us don’t apply to themselves because, well, “intellectuals or experts.” They’re above their own rules because they’re fashioned of different clay that we ignoramuses are.
@@LathropLdST I disagree, the players who went on the show were trusting what they saw on tv and really thought they had a chance to play fairly.
@@BunnySlippers82 AFAIK most were offered briefing. I participated in a quiz program and they told this story with much cynism as an ecample of 'no can do". Fast forward and I was eliminated on round 3 because I refused 'a little help'. "Do you think that American show winners won on pure merit? They all had that extra help!"
the low-key best documentary ever. It captures the times. you feel like you are there. love it.
Rigged Quiz TV shows in the 1950's ... and it's still going on. Now we have "reality" TV shows where contestants are coached, manipulated, and directed to build tension and drama and garner the highest ratings.
And yet these ppl still fall for this BS.
i remember hearing about those old quiz shows as they were called then. i remember seeing this special program about 30 years ago!
I remember in the movie Quiz Show Richard Goodwin(Portrayed by Rob Morrow) made a statement near the end of the movie , which still sticks in my mind and he was right when he said quote " I thought WE were gonna get Television, The truth is Television is gonna get US"
Yes. Excellent screenplay. My favorite line was when Goodwin said to Van Doren: "Go ahead and mock me if you want but you can't envy me at the same time." So true. Those two actions contradict each other and people do them both all the time.
They could have made it legitimately. Game shows made Merv Griffin a multi-zillionaire - that's not enough?
@@HMMELD The problem was the sponsors had too much control over the way the shows were produced. They should never have done that. Rigging is a dangerous practice.
Great movie. Robert Redford really nailed it.
I just watched Quiz Show for the first time. I came here to see what I could find about it. I have to say Rob Morrow’s final line really hit hard. I grew up a TV junkie. Now it’s RUclips and streaming platforms. I can quit anytime though!
Old school PBS. Great episode, thx!
Films are not made like this anymore. I really appreciate the simple matter of fact.
Audio is a little rough, but it's the best version of this film, I've seen for some time. Thanks.
A little?
Those montages in the opening credits really brought back memories.this episode was definetly from one of the early years of the PBS American Experience series.
... and redolent of the sights, smells and textures of those golden days of the 1950s.
@@robertrstevens thank you Robert
@@robertrstevens It clearly says "1992"
I remember watching this as a kid when it first aired on PBS in January 1992...they really did a great job with it! Incidentally, Charles Van Doren had initially agreed to finally break his silence and participate, but later changed his mind (though he still received a mention during the credits). He would, however, finally talk about the scandals years later in a 2008 piece that he wrote for Time.
He also wrote a piece in The New Yorker also in 2008.
But no "Mack the Knife" musical into with a fancy car..... no John Tuturo for that matter!
I was on the infamous quiz show "21", and I can tell you the beer did not come close to scratching the surface! And that's the truth! Thanks for watching kid!
S@@michael-4k4000 So tell us about it!
Ironically, many years later, "Dotto" winner Marie Winn would write a book criticizing TV (especially children's shows) titled "The Plug-In Drug".
T.V. The vast wasteland
@@rowdyrx6109 that we cannot get enough of at times
Plus she refused to talk about her time on Dotto.
Why are so many complaining about the sound quality? It’s fine. Be thankful this gem of a documentary is on. Thank you
The scene in the movie where Charlie (Ralph Finnes) confessed to his dad (Paul Schofield) is one of the most gut wrenching scenes in movie history. You must watch the film if you haven't.
Wasn’t that where the elder Van Doreen compared cheating on a quiz show to plagiarizing a comic strip? Of course, Schofield was brilliant in every film he did, and he was very choosy as to which films he would do. He was excellent in the underappreciated (largely because it was underpromoted) film version of “The Crucible”.
Saw the movie and as I was walking out of the theatre, two very young people wondered what the fuss was all about. "So, they cheated with the questions on the game show and why was that so important? Wouldn't anyone cheat if they had the chance to win big money??" I thought: 'NO, I would not!' Times have changed radically since the '50s.
I didn't think the film would be very interesting, but I was pleasantly surprised when I found it gripping and fascinating. A great achievement by Robert Redford, who directed and produced it.
I’m pretty sure that it’s spelled Ralph Fiennes and Paul Scofield ( I know.. spelling nazi alert😁) but otherwise bang on. I thought the movie Quiz Show was one of the best releases of the year.
@@cruiseguitar It won a bunch of Oscars
And yet game and reality shows are still fixed to this day.
Kinda like Wrestling,everybody knows it’s fake but they spend there money anyways.
@Phileas Fogg same w/ government. everyone knows politicians are lying, bribing, pedo, evil lizard people, but the public is so distracted and dumb compared to people 50 years ago that it doesn't matter. the average person has zero idea how shitty our quality of life is compared to other real first world countries.
They tried doing it not faked and ratings were dismal.
Actually, it's been a federal offense to rig a game show since 1959 (and most of them shyed away from offering prizes comparable to their 50s counterparts for about 15 years afterwards), plus the networks added Standards & Practices departments, whose representatives are always on set during tapings to ensure the game is conducted fairly...in fact, the planned Fox primetime quiz Our Little Genius was pulled literally just before its January 2010 premiere when it was discovered that some of the young contestants had gotten far more "assistance" than they should've.
Oh? How many have you been on and how did you do?
Rob Morrow really nailed it as Dick Goodwin in "Quiz Show."
Yes, and he decided he was too big for TV, quit *Northern Exposure*, and fell off the planet for a long time.
@@oldgringo2001 I'd do it the exact same way.
@@Milkmans_Son I hope you don't mean getting a big head from a minor success and and ruining your career.
@@oldgringo2001 Hey man, do you know who I am? Yes, I'd probably ruin my career but no, hopefully I wouldn't be a jerk about it. I doubt the guy is still paying off student loans (or whatever) like the rest of us.
@@Milkmans_Son I can't say I know how you feel 'cause I have never had to pay off any student loans, mine or my only child's. But I had an old friend who had a ton of them between college and medical school. His solution? He joined the CIA. The folks at Langley took care of everything, even let him give firearms training. They even took care of the gambling debts his first wife ran up before she deserted him.
"You're cooking a book...". Yes. They sure were..
Must've been a Freudian slip! 😆
My mom liked the quiz shows, but my dad said they were all fixed and would change the channel to wrestling.
Wrestling? How ironic.
Your comment made my day!
Wheel of Fortune remains a juggernaut of a game show in April 2022 because of these quiz show scandals. In 1963, Merv Griffin wanted to do a quiz show and his wife at the time suggested to give the answers and have the contestants come up with the questions. "What's the Question?" was tooled and retooled into Jeopardy!, which became an NBC Daytime mainstay from March 1964 until January 3, 1975. Lin Bolen, a new NBC Daytime executive had Jeopardy cancelled as the network wanted to appeal to a more modern time and audience. Part of the deal with Merv was in exchange for Jeopardy's cancellation, that Wheel Of Fortune would replace it on NBC daytime. From January 6, 1975 until September 1983, Wheel was strictly an NBC daytime game show. But in Sept 1983, Wheel syndicated and became a night time series which still airs to this very day. Oddly enough, only one year after Wheel's syndicated debut, Jeopardy! returned to the airwaves also in syndication, and continues to air to this very day as well. Talk about things coming full circle.
Loved watching Art Fleming's Jeopardy as a kid. Three close friends (all siblings) and I wrote up our own "answers" and played the game in their living room day after day during summer vacation in elementary school. Unsurprisingly, the eldest sibling graduated valedictorian in high school and went on to become an accomplished choral composer and director. The next-oldest became a poli sci professor. The youngest is a talented amateur rock drummer and I became an amateur mathematician who drives truck over-the-road for a living. Guess we all have Charles Van Doren to thank in no small degree, indirectly, for making academic knowledge cool.
Merv Griffin had a wife? A beard, you mean.
Thank you for our informational comment.
@@mathematrucker Lets Make a Deal came from that - don't have to do anything to earn a prize.
@@davidlincolnbrooks So did Elton John.
Imagine if Herb had have answered "Marty" -- what was that lowlife producer Enright going to do? Sue him for breach of contact?
Poor Patty..the nerve of those producers..forcing her to commit perjury before the grand jury..to save that damn TV game show and the producers tushies.
Right? And that just scratches the surface of how she was treated as a child actress. Disgraceful.
Thank you so much for posting! One of my favorite happenings in television history.
Imagine! We used to expect better from quiz shows than we do from our news media and presidents today. Why did we go so wrong?
SH - I'm imagining - now what.....
THIS WASN'T RIGGED...
"Who wrote Swanee River?"
"Hamina-hamina-hamina-hamina... Ed Norton?"
(Goodnight, Mr. Kramden. I’ll be seeing you.) I’LL BE SEEING YOU, IRVING CAMM AND SAMMY FAYE, 1939! (No, Mr. Kramden, it’s all over now.) IT’S ALL OVER NOW, BAZZY SIMON, 1927! (Please.) PLEASE WAS SUNG BY BING CROSBY . . . .Ralph shoulda just asked Norton what song that was that he always warmed up on the piano with! Poor Ralph! But at least he went out with a tiny smidgen of dignity, quite unlike the fraudster/liar Charles Van Moron (as called by the quirky John Turturro as Herb Stemple in Quiz Show).
I still have the vhs
Miss David McCullough's introductions. Always insightful. The episodes I have on DVD don't include them, unfortunately.
RIP David McCullough.
I have read several of David’s books and I cannot get enough of him nor his wonderful voice
Something I have never understood about the 1950s being described as "innocent" is how everybody overlooks that this was a decade after the end of WWII, with its concentration camps (in Germany AND in the United States) its horrible atrocities and deaths, its picture for all the world to see of what humanity can be. And then there`s all the history that happened before that... I grew up in the 1950s, and so it was an innocent time for me. But any grownups around me had to have known much more than I did. There is nothing "innocent" about the history of human kind. What`s with the pearl clutching? Doesn`t add up.
A number of people mention the movie "Quiz Show," which did take a few liberties with some of the facts, but the one thing I remember about it is that pretty much the only reaction from the people in the theater came at the end, when there was a caption pointing out something like, "Jack Barry and Dan Enright (the producers of Twenty-One) would return to TV in 1972 with The Joker's Wild. It made them millionaires." (The show that followed the premiere episode of The Joker's Wild? The premiere episode of The Price is Right.)
Philo T Farnsworth said that he regretted having invented TV when he saw how it was being used for junk. He had much higher expectations of Americans. Imagine how he would feel about the trash that's playing today!
Philo appeared on 'I've Got a Secret', was pretty interesting
Its called ratings
TV has become bubblegum for the mind.
I'd be curious to know where James Snodgrass's letters are today. Hopefully they're in a television museum
I would imagine that they are part of the Congressional Record, as they were used by a House of Representatives Committee. In which case, it’s probably in the National Archives. Your House member might just be able to procure a copy, and it’s possible that the Congressional Library would have it on-line.
The show producers were incredibly shortsighted and stupid when it came to their treatment of Stempel, considering how easily he could bring them all down. Instead of letting him lose with some grace and dignity - which of course they could have done - he was essentially humiliated! The nebbish and over-confident, unlikable jew overwhelmed by the brain power of the personable and self-effacing white knight Van Doren -- and they expected Stempel to be fine with that! It's especially telling that when the producer first heard someone had made accusations against the show, he knew exactly who it was -- of course it had to be the man they had wronged so explicitly!
all the shows were shortsighted on how they treated the contestants
they didnt understand the power of instant fame
lol @ playing the anti-semitic card what a surprise, dude you want stupid look in a mirror. PS and FYI, Stempel couldn't "easily bring them down" because he had no proof. did you even watch this video?
Funny thing is that the producers of Twenty One, who set up Stempel, were also Jewish, Jack Barry (real name Barasch) and Dan Enright (real name Ehrenreich). Barry was also host of Twenty One and Tic-Tac-Dough, which was also rigged. The other two hosts who were most caught up in the rigged games, Jack Narz and Hal March, unlike Barry, were not involved in the rigging. March’s career never really recovered and he died fairly young, but Narz managed to come back and host some popular games in the 70’s.
If I was Stempel, instead of signing off on a reduced prize amount I would have told them they're paying me double or I go to the authorities. He had the upper hand at that point.
@@riverraisin1 the game shows didnt technically break any laws. those involved didnt break any laws till they lied to the grand jury, which was really a fishing expedition to determine if any laws were broken.
herb couldnt consult with anyone...but he might have been smarter had he spoken to an atty before signing anything.
It’s mark Goodson’s foresight about the 64,000 question that led to Goodson-Todman to get through the quiz show scandals unscathed
i think they were out of action til they emerged in the 70s.
10:18 ... The origin of Ed McMahon's spiel for Carnak the Magnificent.
Siss Boom Bah …
@@johncronin9540 FUNNIEST ONE EVER!!!
Somewhere I have a DVD, transferred from VHS of this ep. I taped it 30 years ago. If I could just find it!
one of lifes mysteries you save something in case you need it later in life but when you need it you cant find it. i save things like nixon campaign pins and disney tickets from disneyland for decades then throw them out only to find i could sell on ebay a few years later..
RUclips found it for you!
@@riverraisin1 true, but I have it with better audio. I'm fairly certain I still have it.
The quiz show scandals inspired a rising star and hotshot producer named Merv Griffin to invent the game show "Jeopardy!", where the questions are the answers and the answers are the questions.
Marie Winn (the girl with the notebook) is a writer, whose elder sister was the late Janet Malcolm, reporter, essayist and author known mainly for her longtime work on The New Yorker.. most famous for "The Journalist and the Murderer", which delved into journalistic ethics. Ironic..
Man if they could only see us now.
Did they really say Charles Van Doren was attractive? 😂😂
Oh Charles is pure 💯 Beef Cake, what a hunk!
He is attractive, if u think of him as Ralph Fiennes 😂
David McCullough is an American treasure.
So is Trump! Trumps more of a Global treasure
The producers didn't think they did anything wrong. So, they beefed it up a little bit - nobody got hurt, no laws broken, they made out like bandits. They tried it straight and was a dismal failure. My folks remembered this and told in great detail all about it.
In light of the quiz show scandals, networks not only implemented a policing system called "Standards and Practices" to ensure that no cheating is being done, and that the games are kept fair and random. They also implemented limits on how many times or days a contestant can be on a show, how much money they can win or both. NBC limited the amount of days or times they can be on a show. ABC limited the amount of times or days to five and implemented a limit on winnings like: 1972- $20,000 and 1982- $50,000. CBS implemented several limits on winnings seen here:
1972-1978: $25,000
1978-1982: $25,000-$35,000
1982-1984: $25,000-$50,000
1984-1986: $50,000-$75,000* (* denotes hard cap on winnings being implemented after Michael Larson took CBS and "Press Your Luck" for $110,237)
Also starting on top of the $50,000-$75,000* they put limits on how many times a player can be on a show usually five days with "Body Language" imposing a six day limit.
1986-1992: $75,000-$100,000*
1992-2006: $125,000*
Since 2006 there is no limit on winnings.
Most importantly, they took shows away from any influence by sponsors.
The limits ended in 2006 because around that time money lost all its value.
Just kidding that was a joke!
Mostly.
Plus the game shows largely stayed off prime time - so you didn't have the pressure to artificially keep the ratlngs high by having certain contestants or building tension week after week - as was mentioned, sponsor influence, which caused a lot of that - largely disappeared.
@@gregfrank4115 With the exception these days regarding shows like "The $100,000 Pyramid" and "Press Your Luck" and even then those shows are under the jurisdiction of "Standards and Practices".
I guess it didn't apply to syndicated game shows because Thom McKee won $112,700 on the Wink Martindale version of "Tic Tac Dough."
Loved Quiz Show.
And this evolved into what we have today. Reality TV! Where they give viewers total, honest insight into the contestants lives. Where on certain shows the contestants are obligated to drink a certain amount of alcohol between certain hours of the day. The shows today are just completely bull-it!
All "Reality" shows are faked. There's a general premise or "script" & the cast is coached.
They should play this copy of it (if they can't find a better one) on PBS more often.
John Turturro played Herb extremely well
No, he didn't. Redford had Turturro make Herb look like a nerd and a lout. Stempel even went on record to say how "miffed" (his word) he was at how he was made to look in the movie. I guess your definition of "extremely well" differs considerably from mine and Herb Stempel's.
Love this series
Remember the guy who crushed jeopardy for like a year or more. In the end I think they talked him into lossing on purpose because it got to the point where fans were getting bored and Alex Trebek was becoming obviously hateful towards him. I could never imagine a game show conspiring with a contestant to cheat though. I am too young for quiz show but my dad said it ruined game shows on TV for like a decade at least. It took awhile for people to trust them again. And when they came back the prizes were alot smaller.
I remember it was Ken Jennings
And now Ken Jennings is in the running to be the permanent replacement as host of Jeopardy.
In the early days of TV, the game shows were considered just another form of entertainment, and they didn’t think there was anything wrong with rigging it. The producers just treated it like pro wrestling. If you could fake a pro wrestling match, why not a quiz show? Also, quiz shows had been rigged going back to the days of radio. It only became a problem when big money became involved. Rig a game with a 5 or 10 dollar prize involved, and the sponsor ends up paying both contestants anyway, nobody cares. But when you rig it and someone loses out on $50 or 60 thousand dollars, you’re gonna have problems.
@@dawngregory6549 Or Jen Kennings
Ken Jennings' run lasted about 6 months, and I don't recall Alex being anything but courteous/professional towards him...also, while the big money quiz genre took about 40 years before successfully returning to TV with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, game shows endured despite the scandals, and some made it through said time period unscathed (What's My Line, I've Got a Secret, the original Price is Right, To Tell the Truth, Play Your Hunch, You Bet Your Life, etc), while some very successful ones premiered only a few years after the scandal (Password, Let's Make a Deal, the original Jeopardy, Hollywood Squares, etc).
The NY ADA Joseph Stone, interviewed in this film, wrote a detailed book in 1992 about the deception, called Prime Time and Misdemeanors, published by Rutgers University Press.
I bought that book. You're right- it IS very detailed. Not a book for the light reader, but I'm really enjoying just how in-depth the book is.
did he explain what crime was committed?
@@thewkovacs316 The crime was perjury, for lying under oath to the NY Grand Jury investigating the quiz shows.
@@garyroth8855 what crime did they commit that there was a grand jury investigation? to have a grand jury investigation...there has to be a crime one is investigating
@@thewkovacs316 I don’t think there actually was a crime. The people who had a grievance were the contestants who the shows were rigged against, who never had a chance to win. It could be argued they were swindled out of the chance to make money. And I don’t mean Stempel, who was in on the rigging.
David Paymer was great casting for Dan Enright.
I did a phone interview with Dan Enright..the co-producer and co-creator of TV game shows like "21"and "Tic Tac Dough"hosted by Jack Barry(his late partner) before he died and he told me that he regretted that both he and Jack forced Poor Mr.Stempel to lose to Prof.Van Doren on"21".
you shouldve done an interview with al freedman
he went to his grave hating stempel
enright had to sound contrite in order to return to tv
"Poor Mr Stempel" got the answers too, so to me, it's pity for all of those people who lost to both Stempel and Van Doren. Imagine finding out you are going on a show that could change your life financially, not knowing that in reality you had no chance because the game was rigged. Sure, Stempel or Van Doren might have beaten most of them in a fair game, but almost certainly not all.
@@mitchellbaker9434 Herb Stempel's potential winnings of $111,500 were the equivalent of $1.5 million today. Pretty life-changing for a 29 y.o. on the GI Bill. Don't know if they were taxable.
Believe it or not my late father always had doubts about the authenticity of the 50s game shows
exactly - and who believes "big time wrestling" on TV is real?
I suspect a lot of people did. Herb Stempel admitted he told friends the night he was going to "take a dive". Unlike in Quiz Show, his wife did know the show was fixed and played along for the sake of her husband. In the 64,000 Question, one of the tricks used was to give a favorite contestant a few warm up questions and answers, then surprise them by asking those questions on the show. One of the early producers quit over this practice, saying that people will talk about what is going on. Get enough people talking and Time magazine will be paying a visit. So likely a lot of people knew or suspected things were not on the up and up.
@@gregfrank4115 Despite that people did talk and over 100 lied to a grand jury. At least Patty Duke told the truth and it didn't seem to hurt her career any.
Even my great uncle, Mark Van Doren, didn’t even know Charlie was lying. It was a blow to the whole family of very accomplished writers and professors.
A liar's response to being caught isn't to stop lying, it's to become better at not getting caught
America on the cusp, her metamorphosis from pristine moth to a very deceptively flawed butterfly.
A moment in the 1950s when America's picture in the attic showed unmistakable signs of decay.
The cake and cold milk scene in the movie, when Charles almost comes to confessing to his Dad, haunts us to this very day.
Thank You, Milton Murdock.
Flawed butterfly? More like knowing cockroach …
Gosh who knew the 90s were so wholesome and classy?
The 1890s were, don't you remember?
Married with Children really was just a modern Leave it to Beaver...
It was pure laziness on the part of producers - they could have taken that as a sign to get a different format - one that didn't need to be rigged - instead they succumbed to pressure from Revlon and took the easy way out.
Fascinating glimpse of the cynicism of the the industry.
I’ve watched this video a few times now, it’s fascinating! I hope someone makes an updated or modern documentary, with full details and more perspectives. I’d like to know the full scope of the scandal and see if there were other shows not mentioned that were implicated in quiz show rigging. All the reading online mainly focuses on the 3 shows mentioned in this video.
@Stranded NYer It's too late now anyway - too many have passed
"The Big Surprise" was also created and originally produced by Louis G. Cowan, the creator and original producer of "The $64,000 Question".
The show began on NBC in the fall of 1955.
NBC went to Cowan and gave him the Saturday 7:30 P.M. Eastern timeslot and mandated that this new game show have a top prize of $100,000, to "one up" CBS.
The original "Big Surprise" emcee was Jack Barry, who left the show after a few months to host and co-produce "Twenty-One".
As seen in this documentary, Mike Wallace succeeded Barry.
@41:30 the newspaperman says he can't print the story without proof or corroboration. Imagine that! 🤣😂 When journalists had ethics!! Yay!
They still do. Fox isn't journalism.
Yeah right.
They still do its only you conservatives that say EVERYTHING IS FAKE NEWS that gets in the way of real verifiable stories being told and believed
Ironically, according to that journalist, he wanted to print the story. It was the lawyers who killed it, not, alas, out of a sense of ethics, but out of a fear of being sued.
What's not explained is why the show's producers didn't simply tell Revlon and any other sponsor trying to manipulate outcomes that "There's companies LINING UP to sponsor this show, so you guys need to SHUT UP!" Maybe it's my simply not knowing enough about how TV show sponsoring went in those days, but why Mark Revson was allowed a say in anything and not simply told to buzz off escapes me entirely. The PRODUCERS are the ones with the goose laying all the golden eggs.
He's right about $64,000 being a small fortune in 1956...in 1992 dollars that'd be almost a third of a million! You might say it was the 50s equivalent of Who Wants To Be A One-Third Millionaire?
I remember when this happened the whole country watched but most quiz shows were booted off the air. People believed that if it was on tv then it was true.
It seems the producers never considered the possibility that keeping a secret among hundreds of former contestants, many of whom would be disaffected, might be impossible, and that if the secret did get out, the entire project would collapse. What fools.
Well done documentary.
Sonny Fox. I never saw him in his role as host of $64,000 CHALLENGER. Now WONDERAMA, I recall watching Sundays mornings with Sonny
I think there was much wider knowledge of the rigging in the industry than was made out. The reason I say this is the UK version of Tic Tac Dough, made by the usually unimpeachable Granada (a company with a reputation up with the BBC back in the day) was implicated, a minor scandal ensued and it was quietly dropped for a time. The UK had no sponsor pressure either as rules prevented sponsorship. This can't be a coincidence.
This resulted in much restricted prize money here.
We will miss you David.............
Brilliant and fascinating. Wish the sound quality was better, though.
54:00 "Federal regulations were enacted against broadcast fraud" Quite the contrary, broadcast fraud appears to have become the national pastime and debate.
Watch the movie about this The Quiz show. Superb!
Mark died right after this interview from pancreatic cancer, aged 75.
Enright died the same year too. 1992
Man, Paul Scofield was superbly cast
R.I.P. Mark Goodson
1915-1992
Ironically in On the Waterfront the Marlon Brando character was told to take a dive as a boxer ..
Wow. How stupid were the legal departments of these shows. It never occurred to them that an honest run show would never have to ask a contestant to sign a statement testifying to the shows honesty?
I mean why would such a statement even be needed?
Lol. Their attempts to cover themselves with statements was the most convincing piece of evidence that the cheat was in.
Oh, you know. The broadcast world was young, new and… not as innocent as we had always thought it was.
Yes, I was there then. I remember this directly.
You have no idea how this simple scheme scandalized America! Nobody expected to hear a LIE on TV 😂
...there was nothing of the sort, legal was there mostly for sponsor/ business and keep employees in line.
I had once read that "Twenty-One" host/co-producer Jack Barry learned that Herb Stempel had gone public with the show being rigged one night when he was at a Chicago nightclub doing his stand-up comedy act.
After Barry was finished, he went to his dressing room, where he found the first edition of the next morning's Chicago Tribune with a screaming headline that went something like "'Twenty-One' Fixed! TV's Top Game Show Rigged!"
As a result of this scandal, Jack Barry and Dan Enright didn't return to TV until 1972 when their production company created "The Joker's Wild". Barry remained the host until his death in 1984. Barry was not the original choice to host, due to his past involvement in the 1950s quiz show scandals. As a result, Allen Ludden hosted the first two pilots for CBS. Allen Ludden, Wink Martindale, and Tom Kennedy were the 3 top choices for the host; however, each had already committed themselves to a different game show.
Having grown up watching Barry on different shows, it’s hard to imagine him as a stand up comedian. On the other hand, Hal March of the $64,000 Question was a comedian. He started in an stand up act with Bob Sweeney right after World War 2. They had a popular (and pretty good) radio show in the late 40’s. Sweeney later became a big time director of TV episodes (many Andy Griffith episodes amongst other shows), and poor March got caught up in the quiz show scandals.
I remember when the quiz show scandal was going on I was around 4
The guy at the 12:00 mark in the booth answering the question about roman numerals is Virgil Earp who was the nephew of Wyatt Earp. He was in Tombstone during the fight at the O.K. Corral.
Virgil Earp, the older brother of Wyatt was in Tombstone, but not the nephew Virgil. He was the son of Newton Earp who was never in Tombstone.
24:28 Jay Jackson, the host of 'Tic Tac Dough', also played Herb Norris, the host of the "$99,000 Answer", in the same-named Honeymooners episode.
This about the movie quiz show isn't it? Awesome 😎
What's the name of the opening music?
"Tell me that the Iraqis have WMDs and I'll order an attack"
"Mr President, the Iraqis have WMDs"
"We attack tomorrow."
when u have 100s of people lyin for the same cause, i guarantee u someone out of the group is either gonna get caught, or theyre gonna spill the beans.. its inevitable.
Of course, Americans aren't very good at learning lessons, so this is still happening. Sorry to burst the bubble of anyone who thinks America's Got Talent and all the other modern day competitions aren't rigged..
Is it fair to say that the sixty four thousand dollar ($64,000) question would, over time, transform itself into sixty four (64) gigabytes of lies? Yes?
Well, I remember this era, and I remember being in Vietnam and being lied to by our Government! Is anything new about this? LOL
Well, look at all the contestants who not only lied, but who probably committed perjury.
QUIZ SHOW - kinda like fixing SOCIAL NETWORK. IS SOMETHING "BIGGER" coming after SOCIAL NETWORK?
Can I watch this anywhere with better sound quality? I’m very interested but can hardly understand half of what’s being said.
9:32 I had a job in the late 1970s where I worked with one of those IBM card sorting machines.
As did I. One day someone walked in with something called a floppy disk. We all gathered around and gazed with wide wonder. 👁️👁️
23:49 Time magazine never did have integrity. It still doesn't.
"Be sure your sin will find you out."
Like it´s something out of the ordinary.
There was even a board game on $64000 question we had one
Very distorted audio due to peak clipping. You should use an editor to attenuate it.
As someone who loves history, I have stopped applying purity tests to historical-based movies. The only ones I have a problem with are those that engage in character assassination against people who aren't around to defend themselves (Ron Howard has a history of engaging in that practice). That said, I like the Quiz Show movie. I even own a copy. But after watching this I wish they had included the work investigators did before the feds got involved. Congressional hearings are often a bit of a dog-and-pony show, done to put some senator or representative on the national map. I think the movie would have benefitted if the screenplay had included some of the street-level work that laid the groundwork for that dramatic scene where Charles Van Doren comes clean and admits he was in on the fix.
Van Doren went into seclusion after the scandal but I read an article where they asked him about the accuracy of the film. He pointed out inaccuracies such as the fact he was already a contributor to the Today Show by the time the scandal broke and the movie's claim that he never taught again was false. He didn't teach at Columbia but he did continue his teaching career. I read a book he wrote before I even knew about the quiz show scandal called The History of Knowledge. It is a well-written book but he gets a bit goofy at the end (I'll just leave it at that and let anyone who's interested find out for themselves). I didn't put him together with the scandal until the movie came out.
As for the current shows; are they rigged? It's doubtful, but who's to say. As they point out here, cheating can be a subtle thing. Asking people questions you know they know, how difficult would that be? It's still entertainment at the end of the day. Personally, I think Congress had bigger fish to fry at that time than looking into game shows, but that's me.
A good assessment overall, thank you. That “21” was fixed doesn’t interest me. I feel Herb’s outrage that the snake Dan Enright didn’t honor his part of the con. As for the movie ‘Quiz Show’ I found the Jew vs Wasp sub-text tedious & irrelevant. Enright was the villain start to finish.
And we're expected to believe that these sorts of deceptions no longer occur in TV gameshows...
Jeopardy may not be rigged - but anybody who has so much trivial crap stuffed in their head means they are suffocating bores in real life.
@@HMMELD Or they are smarter and/or have a better memory than you do?
@@rsr789 They probably do have better memories than me. But, they are boring - they have all this knowledge stuffed inside them just itchin' to get out which I find totally annoying.
audio is distorted...
He sent telegrams to himself with the instructions / questions to produce evidence. But telegrams are dated, WTF.
Well, after all these years, I didn’t think I could ever feel sorry for van Doren. But, I think I do.
I never will
His self-aggrandizing non-apology at the end only made me think he’s even more of a douche. There were others doing the right thing from the get go. He drug out the lie as long as it brought him fame and fortune and admiration of others, morality be damned. He lied even when to do so seriously those hurt the ones telling the truth.
Only when his back was against the wall did he tell the truth, after first going on the run. And you can tell by his speech that at the end of it all he *actually* thought he was still a good, upstanding, white male ivy leaguer. Full of wisdom etc.
@@pandamandimax still can't see how ANY of this family accomplished anything! bunch of scribblers-nothing else
Fortunately enough, there still was "What's my line" ... :0) Or was Dorothy Kilgallen briefed too in advance, to make sales of Stopette skyrocket ?
24:40 I would love to know the format of 'Do You Trust Your Wife?' 😃