Charles Van Doren

Charles Lincoln Van Doren came from a family of intellectual achievers. His father was the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mark Van Doren (1894-1973). His mother, Dorothy Graffe Van Doren, was a novelist and writer, and his uncle, Carl Clinton Van Doren (1885-1950), was a noted historian and author. Van Doren himself earned his B.A. at St. John's College, an M.A. in astrophysics from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in English. After studying at the Sorbonne, Van Doren became a professor of English at Columbia, earning an annual salary of $4,400. After learning of the money to be made from quiz shows, Van Doren applied to the show "Twenty-One," where producers were looking for ways to bolster faltering ratings. In Van Doren, a 30-year-old charming academic with name recognition, producers saw an attractive winner who could popularize the show. Producers scripted the program, fed contestants with answers and coached them on how to act during the show, so that contestants would have a string of ties to build the drama for one eventual victory. The clean-cut Van Doren, playing his part, became the new champion of "Twenty-One." Ratings for the show began to rise and the bookish champ became an unlikely national hero. After 14 weeks, Van Doren eventually earned a staggering $138,000. By the end of the streak, Van Doren was a celebrity. "Time" magazine pictured him on their cover and he received 500 letters a week. Van Doren signed a $150,000 three-year contract with NBC for appearances as a guest on Steve Allen's show, a guest host on the "Today Show," and a panelist on NBC radio's "Conversations." When the quiz show scandals broke, Van Doren asserted his innocence, but eventually confessed in November 1959. Though many other contestants had complied with the network's rigging, Van Doren drew the most attention because of his prominent family. NBC ended its contract with Van Doren, and he resigned from Columbia. Van Doren slipped into obscurity, writing books under a pseudonym and becoming an editor for Encyclopedia Britannica.