Quiz Scandal (Contd.)

"We can solve this quiz show scandal very simply," said a harassed TV executive last week. "All we have to do is announce: 'This show is fixed. Mrs. Smith is going to win it. Stay tuned in and see how she does it!' ':

The idea might be premature, but not by too much. The increasingly loud and indignant question among TV viewers this week is: Which of the quiz shows are rigged? From unquestionably crooked Dotto (TIME, Sept. 1), ruined by the revelations of a part-time butler, actor and near-professional quiz contestant named Edward Hilgemeier Jr., suspicion last week spread to the biggest of all, that hallowed battleground of Van Doren and Von Nardroff, NBC's Twenty One.

"Don't condemn us all in wholesale fashion," pleaded Twenty One's Packager Dan Enright. "Lift the mystery and establish the facts." Herbert Stempel, 31, one of the show's earliest big-money winners ($49,000), claimed to be doing just that. He was hardly a confidence-inspiring witness. He seemed bent on destroying the reputations of everyone connected with the show, admitted bitterly envying Charles Van Doren, the man who defeated him. ("I took my wife to the theater one night, and I overheard somebody saying, 'That's the guy who was beat by Charles Van Doren.' It hurt me egotistically.") The very mention of Producer Enright seemed to choke Herb with bile. But for all his vindictiveness, his detail-packed story commanded attention.

Acting School. After applying for a spot on the show in the fall of 1956, Stempel, then a C.C.N.Y. student, took a general information test, and did remarkably well. One night Producer Enright went to Herb's apartment and gave him another verbal exam. "Then," says Herb, "Dan leaned back and said, 'How'd you like to win a lot of money?' I said, 'Well, sure.' 'Look,' he said, 'kid, play ball with me and you'll win $25,000.' "

After that, Herb went on, Enright told him to get a "whitewall" marine-style haircut, and selected a worn-out suit and tie for him to complete the picture of the penniless G.I. He coached him in grimace and gesture, taught him how to "think" violently in the TV isolation booth ("I call it the Dan Enright school of acting"). All his questions, said Herb, were fed to him in advance by Enright.

After five winning weeks, said Herb, he hit his mentor for a $17,000 advance--and got it. "See," he crowed, as he told his story last week, "the show has to be phony, or I wouldn't have got the dough. Why, I could have lost everything, and Enright would have been out $17,000."

What seemed to irritate Stempel the most was the occasional insistence that he give a wrong answer. "I was forced to admit that I didn't know where the Taj Mahal is; I was forced to say that Gothic architecture originated in Germany when I know damn well it was France. See, that's the trend now: a big winner will have to flub the easy ones to make the American public look good." Eventually, said Herb, Enright told him, "We've reached a plateau. We need a new face." Herb was forced to lose to Van Doren--and that tore it.

Ready Answers. Dapper Dan Enright had a ready answer: Stempel's story had long since been proved false. Stempel had indeed tried to peddle his story to the New York Post and the Journal-American more than a year ago, and neither paper had been sufficiently convinced to print it. He had also signed a "confession" for Enright, stating that his charges had been false. But last week, when Stempel repeated his fraud story to the district attorney, the World-Telegram & Sun and the Journal published it--and were promptly sued for libel by Barry & Enright Productions and NBC.

Stempel, too, had some ready answers. Why had he signed a retraction? Said Stempel:

"I did it in return for the promise of a job on another Barry-Enright show--a job I never got." Was it true, as Enright ominously suggested, that Stempel" had been under psychiatric care? Said Stempel: "Sure I've been to a psychiatrist; I suffered from an acute anxiety neurosis after I appeared on Twenty One."

Petty Chiseling. At week's end some of Herb Stempel's friends and a maid who had once worked for the family told newsmen that they could testify to the truth of Herb's claims. Herb, they said, had told them well in advance of his appearances on the show just which questions he would answer, which he would miss. Eventually a jury may decide whether or not Stempel is telling the truth. But the kind of blatant crookedness charged in Stempel's story was not the only issue.

The whole gloss and excitement of the quiz shows was being badly tarnished by evidence of corner-carnival showmanship and petty chiseling. Other contestants were coming forth to complain that not only the producers but their Schlockmeisters (prize procurers) were making ninnies of the public.

The fancy prizes that looked so fine before the camera have too often grown tarnished between victory and delivery; e.g., the all-expenses-paid vacation in Europe provided no hotel room, only a flight to Paris and home the next day. There was evidence that contestants on certain shows had signed away their prizes before going on, undertaking to accept their TV winnings for far less cash than their real value. The best defense that network officials and their spring-legged pressagents could make in private was that the quiz shows were not really crooked but only hippodromed, like a wrestling match; i.e., they merely rig the questions so that any contestant whose weak spots are known can be made to win or lose.

Long before the investigations cease, TV bigwigs may be ready to accept Herb Stempel's forthright solution for their scandal: "Get rid of giveaways. All these vaults and isolation booths are just obfuscation of the public. The networks can't control the gimmicks and the gizmos."

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