The Winners

The American who did best at the stock market last week was a ten-year-old boy. Leonard Ross, 4 ft. 4 in. tall, of Tujunga, Cal., started reading books about far-off Wall Street at the age of seven, when his father, a certified public accountant, roused his interest in the market. Once Lenny had acquired some learning, it was plain that the way to make a killing without risking the capital he didn't have was to become a contestant on a television quiz show.

The show with the best showmanship and most glamour is CBS's The $64,000 Question. But another test of a giveaway show is how much the show gives away. For seven weeks Lenny faced big questions about stocks and the stock market on NBC's The Big Surprise, the show that gives away more than any other in the world. Once, at the $50,000 question, Lenny gave the wrong answer, but the next week, under the show's rules, he was rescued and given another try. Last week, with no option, under the rules, but to try again, Lenny correctly answered an intricate, five-part question that required 13 answers, and became the fourth winner of the biggest quiz-show jackpot of them all--$100,000.

Asked what he will do with the money, the winner said he will give some to organized charities, treat his grandmother to a trip to Montreal, buy his father some high-fidelity phonograph equipment, give his mother a tape recorder, improve his knowledge of finance, buy himself a subscription to the Wall Street Journal. But the newspaper phoned right after the show to tell him that the subscription was free. Keith Funston, president of the New York Stock Exchange, was on hand to give Lenny another present in gratitude for the publicity: $2,500 worth of any listed stock he wants, plus $40 a month for five years to put into a monthly investment plan.

One financial lesson that Lenny will soon learn without benefit of study: after taxes, his winnings will add up to only about $33,000.

. . .

Bill Pearson, 35, a 106-lb. jockey who is an art expert with a leaning toward pre-Columbian primitives, had a tough going-over before he initially appeared on CBS's The $64,000 Question. Like any other promising candidate, he was thoroughly screened. The Question likes candidates to be "attractive TV characters" (i.e., "characters" without being too odd), to display a paradoxical facet of personality (e.g., a cop who likes Shakespeare or a Southerner who digs Lincoln), and to demonstrate a certain expertise in a chosen field of knowledge. For two hours a day on four consecutive days, Bill Pearson got the treatment: he was rigorously questioned by three men while a fourth silently looked on. Unnerved at last, Jockey Pearson pointed to the silent observer and asked: "Who's he?" "He," Pearson was told, "is the psychiatrist."

"I'm Sorry, Honey." Pearson, who lives in Pasadena, Calif., not only made the grade with the interrogators and the psychiatrist, but with televiewers as well. Last week he was on hand to say whether he would go for the $64,000 jackpot. Facing the cameras, he told millions of viewers that he had made a promise to three people close to him. They were his wife and the two men from whom he had learned to appreciate and treasure art: California Art Expert Millard Sheets, and Movie Director John Huston, amateur art collector and racehorse owner, for whom Jockey Pearson has ridden in California and in Europe. The promise Pearson had made, he announced, was that he would take the $32,000. Then he turned to his wife in the studio audience and said, "I'm sorry, honey. I lied to you."

With Expert Sheets in the booth to help him, Pearson was shown copies of six famous portraits and asked to name their subjects, painters and one person with whom each of the painters had studied. Tension mounted as each answer was ticked off. Pearson ticked off the first: Erasmus by Hans Holbein the Younger, student of his father, Hans Holbein the Elder. Then he identified Pope Innocent X by Velasquez, who studied with Herrera.

"I'm the Proof." Meanwhile, Pearson's wife nervously bit her fingernails. Director Huston was listening on the transatlantic telephone from Ireland at a cost of $435. Finally Pearson, with furrowed brow, got to the last tongue-twisting identification: Don Manuel Osorio de Zuniga by Goya, student of his father and of Jose Lujan y Martinez. He was right. But by then pretty Mrs. Pearson had passed the breaking point; she collapsed and spent the rest of the week in bed nursing a severe case of jitters. Jockey Pearson, down to 97 Ibs. from worry, celebrated by consuming large amounts of strong waters and crying, "I'm the best proof that clean living doesn't pay."

Next month he is off to the South Seas, where he will play a role (at $1,000 a week) in Director Huston's version of Herman Melville's Typee.

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