What did Charles Van Doren prove to America?

American author and editor

Charles Van Doren
Van Doren in 1959
Born	Charles Lincoln Van Doren (1926-02-12)February 12, 1926 New York, New York, U.S.
Died	April ix, 2019(2019-04-09) (anile 93) Canaan, Connecticut, U.S.
Alma mater	St. John's College Columbia University
Occupation	Author and editor
Known for	1950s quiz show scandals
Spouse(south)	Geraldine Ann Bernstein ​ ​ (g. 1957)​ [1]
Children	ii
Parents	Mark Van Doren (father) Dorothy Graffe (female parent)
Relatives	John Van Doren (brother, 1928–2019)[2] Emerge Van Doren (daughter-in-law)

Charles Lincoln Van Doren (February 12, 1926 – Apr 9, 2019)^[1] was an American author and editor who was involved in a television quiz show scandal in the 1950s. In 1959 he testified before the U.Due south. Congress that he had been given the correct answers by the producers of the NBC quiz testify Twenty-Ane. Terminated by NBC, he joined Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. in 1959, condign a vice-president and writing and editing many books before retiring in 1982.

Background [edit]

Charles Van Doren was built-in in New York City, the elder son of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, critic and teacher Marking Van Doren and novelist Dorothy Van Doren (née Graffe), and a nephew of critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Carl Van Doren. He graduated from the High School of Music & Art in New York, and earned a B.A. degree in Liberal Arts (1946) from St. John's Higher in Annapolis, Maryland, too every bit an M.A. in astrophysics (1949) and a Ph.D. in English (1955), both at Columbia University. He was also a student at University of Cambridge in the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland.^[three]

Quiz show celebrity [edit]

Vivienne Nearing, Jack Barry and Van Doren on Twenty-1 (March 11, 1957)

On November 28, 1956, Van Doren made his starting time appearance on the NBC quiz testify Twenty-1.^[iv] Twenty-Ane was not Van Doren's start game show interest. He was long believed to have approached producers Dan Enright and Albert Freedman, originally, to appear on Tic-Tac-Dough, another game they produced. Van Doren eventually revealed—five decades after his 20-Ane championship and fame, in a surprise 2008 article for The New Yorker—that he did not even own a television set, but had met Freedman through a mutual friend, with Freedman initiating the idea of Van Doren going on television past way of asking what he idea of Tic-Tac-Dough.^[v]

Enright and Freedman were impressed past Van Doren'south polite style and telegenic appearance, thinking the youthful Columbia teacher would be the man to defeat their incumbent Twenty-I champion, Herb Stempel, and boost the show's declining ratings as Stempel's reign continued.^{[ commendation needed ]}

In Jan 1957, Van Doren entered a winning streak on Twenty-One that ultimately earned him $129,000 (the equivalent of $i,188,665 today) and made him famous, including an advent on the cover of Time on February 11, 1957. His run ended on March 11, when he lost to Vivienne Nearing, a lawyer whose husband Van Doren had previously defeated. Later his defeat he was offered a three-year contract with NBC worth $150,000.^[i]

There take been numerous suggestions since that Van Doren was almost immediately offered a chore as a special "cultural correspondent" for Today, hosted by Dave Garroway. Nonetheless, Van Doren reminded people that his offset task (though brusque-lived) was as a newswriter, earlier he began doing minor pieces for a weekend cultural program, Broad Wide Globe, as well hosted by Garroway. Those pieces quickly led to Garroway inviting Van Doren to bring together Today. Van Doren also made guest appearances on other NBC programs, even serving as Today 's substitute host when Garroway took a brief vacation.^[5]

Scandal [edit]

When allegations of cheating were get-go raised by Stempel and others, Van Doren denied any wrongdoing, saying, "It'due south silly and distressing to retrieve that people don't accept more faith in quiz shows." As the investigation past the New York District Attorney'due south role and somewhen the United States Congress progressed, Van Doren, now host on Today, was nether pressure from NBC to evidence. Instead, Van Doren went into hiding in order to avoid the congressional subpoena. It was some other former Twenty-I contestant, artist James Snodgrass, who would finally provide indisputable corroborating proof that the show had been rigged. Snodgrass had documented every respond he was coached on in a series of registered messages he mailed to himself prior to the broadcast.^[6]

One month after the hearings began, Van Doren emerged from hiding and confessed earlier Congress that he had been complicit in the fraud.^[7] On November two, 1959,^[8] he admitted to the Firm Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight, a congressional subcommittee chaired by Rep. Oren Harris (D-AR), that he had been given questions and answers in advance of the evidence.

I was involved, deeply involved, in a deception. The fact that I, too, was very much deceived cannot go along me from being the principal victim of that deception, considering I was its master symbol. There may be a kind of justice in that. I don't know. I practice know, and I tin say it proudly to this committee, that since Fri, October xvi, when I finally came to a full agreement of what I had washed and of what I must do, I have taken a number of steps toward trying to make upwardly for information technology. I have a long way to go. I accept deceived my friends, and I had millions of them. Whatever their feeling for me at present, my affection for them is stronger today than e'er before. I am making this statement because of them. I hope my beingness here volition serve them well and lastingly. I asked [co-producer Albert Freedman] to let me continue [Xx-I] honestly, without receiving help. He said that was impossible. He told me that I would not have a chance to defeat Stempel because he was too knowledgeable. He too told me that the show was merely entertainment and that giving help to quiz contests was a common practice and but a role of show business. This of class was not true, but perhaps I wanted to believe him. He also stressed the fact that by appearing on a nationally televised program I would be doing a nifty service to the intellectual life, to teachers and to instruction in general, by increasing public respect for the work of the mind through my performances. In fact, I think I take done a disservice to all of them. I deeply regret this, since I believe nothing is of more vital importance to our civilization than education.^[nine]

Authorities differ regarding the audition's reaction to Van Doren's statement. David Halberstam writes in his book The Fifties:

Aware of Van Doren's great popularity, the commission members handled him gently and repeatedly praised him for his artlessness. But Congressman Steve Derounian announced that he saw no item bespeak in praising someone of Van Doren's infrequent talents and intelligence for simply telling the truth. With that, the room all of a sudden exploded with applause, and [Congressional investigator] Richard Due north. Goodwin knew at that moment ordinary people would not so easily forgive Van Doren.^[10]

By contrast, William Manchester, in his narrative history The Glory and the Dream, recounts a diametrically opposite response:

The crowd at the hearing had been with Van Doren, applauding him and his admirers on the subcommittee and greeting Congressman Derounian's comment with stony silence.^[xi]

An Associated Press story dated November 2, 1959, seems to verify Halberstam's version of events:

While there was a burst of adulation when Mr. Harris dismissed Mr. Van Doren with a "God bless you", there was adulation, too, when Rep. Steven B. Derounian, Republican, New York, declined to proceed with compliments that other committee members showered on the witness for telling the truth. "I don't think an adult of your intelligence ought to exist commended for telling the truth," Mr. Derounian declared in severe tones. Mr. Van Doren winced, flushed, and ducked his head.^{[12] [thirteen]}

Subsequently career and death [edit]

Van Doren was dropped past NBC and resigned from his post as an English teacher at Columbia University.^{[14] [15]} He became an editor at Praeger Books and a pseudonymous (at first) author, before becoming an editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica and the author of several books, of which his 1991 popular-market A History of Cognition may be his best known. Van Doren also co-authored a well-received revision of How to Read a Book with its original author, philosopher Mortimer J. Adler,^[sixteen] and co-edited with him a one,771-page anthology titled Cracking Treasury of Western Thought (1977). He had already worked with Adler on an xviii-volume collection of documents covering American history, entitled The Annals of America (1968), which was accompanied past a two-book, i,300-page "topical index" organized around 25 themes and entitled Smashing Bug in American Life: A Conspectus.^[17]

In his 2008 article in The New Yorker, Van Doren revealed that he had actually been contemplating the Britannica job even at the height of his celebrity. His father had suggested the possibility to him during a long walk effectually the farmlands they both loved. The elder Van Doren mentioned to his son that Adler, the philosopher and a member of Britannica 's board of editors, had spoken of making Van Doren its editor-in-master. Van Doren eventually accepted the job, he would write, past mode of intercession from a former higher roommate. Van Doren retired from Britannica in 1982.^[5]

Van Doren likewise revealed he had been offered an opportunity to participate in a PBS series on the history of philosophy, simply that its tentative producer, Julian Krainin, might really take had in mind Van Doren'southward explicit cooperation on a planned PBS program recalling the quiz show scandals. When that did non occur (though the program thanked Van Doren explicitly, among other credits), he wrote, Krainin later sought his cooperation and consultation when Robert Redford was beginning to make Quiz Show—even conveying that Van Doren would be paid in six figures for it. After wrestling with the thought—and, he wrote, noting his wife's objections—Van Doren rejected information technology.^[18] Van Doren finally bankrupt his silence on the quiz show scandal in the New Yorker article.^[v]

Van Doren had refused interviews or public comment on the field of study of the quiz testify scandals. In a 1985 interview on Today—his just advent on the plan since his dismissal in 1959, promoting his book The Joy of Reading—he answered a general question on how the scandal changed his life.^[19] He revisited Columbia University only twice in the twoscore years that followed his resignation—in 1984 when his son John graduated; and in 1999 at a reunion of Columbia's Grade of 1959.^[20] During the latter advent, Van Doren made ane innuendo to the quiz scandal without mentioning it by name:

Some of you read with me forty years ago a portion of Aristotle'due south Ethics, a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well. I remember ameliorate, because, despite the abrupt caesura in my academic career that occurred in 1959, I have gone on teaching the humanities almost continually to students of all kinds and ages. In case you don't call back, then, I remind you lot that co-ordinate to Aristotle happiness is non a feeling or awareness but instead is the quality of a whole life. The emphasis is on "whole," a life from offset to terminate. Specially the terminate. The last role, the part you're now approaching, was for Aristotle the most important for happiness. It makes sense, doesn't it?

In 2005, Van Doren joined the kinesthesia of the University of Connecticut, Torrington;^[21] the campus was closed in 2016. Van Doren spent the last years of his life with his wife, Gerry, in a "pocket-sized, old house" (his words) on the land his parents bought in Cornwall, Connecticut, in the 1920s.^{[22] [23]}

Van Doren died in a retirement community in Canaan, Connecticut, on April nine, 2019 at the age of 93.^[one]

Cultural references [edit]

"The Quiz Show Scandal" [edit]

"The Quiz Prove Scandal" is a documentary that kickoff aired on PBS on January 6, 1992, as an episode of the 4th season of American Experience. Produced by Julian Krainin and Michael R. Lawrence, the one-hour programme explored the corruption of the 1950s quiz show scandals, peculiarly that involving Van Doren and Twenty-One. Van Doren spoke with the producers but somewhen declined to participate in the program. "The Quiz Show Scandal" was i of the most pop episodes of the serial.^{[24] [25]}

Quiz Prove picture show [edit]

The story of the quiz show scandal and Van Doren's office in it is depicted in the film Quiz Testify (1994), produced and directed past Robert Redford, in which Van Doren is portrayed by Ralph Fiennes. The film fabricated $24 million by April 1995, and was nominated for University Awards in the categories of Best Picture, All-time Manager, Best Role player in a Supporting Role, and All-time Adapted Screenplay.^[26]

The moving-picture show earned several critiques questioning its use of dramatic license, its accuracy, and the motivation behind its making. The movie'due south critics accept included Joseph Rock, the New York prosecutor who began the investigations; and Jeffrey Hart, a Dartmouth College scholar and senior editor of National Review; and a longtime friend of Van Doren, who saw the film as falsely implying tension betwixt Van Doren and his accomplished father.^[27]

Freedomland UsA.: The Definitive History [edit]

Van Doren is mentioned in a book, Freedomland U.South.A.: The Definitive History (Theme Park Printing, 2019), that references his connection to the Freedomland U.s.a.A. theme park that was located in The Bronx in New York Metropolis. He was the emcee for the groundbreaking event for the park on August 26, 1959.^{[ citation needed ]}

Published works [edit]

Books [edit]

• 1957: Lincoln'due south Commando: The Biography of Commander W. B. Cushing, The statesN. (with Ralph J. Roske). OCLC 522555
• 1959: Letters to Mother; An Album (editor). OCLC 968352356
• 1968: The Annals of America, 20 volumes, (executive editor, with Mortimer J. Adler, editor in chief). OCLC 1139
• 1969: The Negro in American History, three volumes (editor, with Mortimer J. Adler, general editor; George Ducas, executive editor). OCLC 10992
• 1972: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading, with Mortimer J. Adler; updated and rewritten version of the book originally published by Adler in 1940. ISBN 978-0671212803
• 1977: Great Treasury of Western Idea, co-edited with Mortimer J. Adler. ISBN 978-0835208338
• 1980: Shakespeare: Reading and Talking. ISBN 978-0932676207
• 1984: Webster's American Biographies (editor, with Robert McHenry, associate editor). ISBN 978-0877792536
• 1985: The Joy of Reading. ISBN 978-0517555804
• 1991: A History of Knowledge: Past, Present and Time to come. ISBN 978-1559720373
• 2013: The Lion of Cortona: A Novel of the Middle Ages (three volumes). ISBN 978-1484989647

Articles [edit]

"All the Answers" [edit]

The July 28, 2008, upshot of The New Yorker included a personal reminiscence titled "All the Answers", written by Van Doren, in which he recounted in item the scandals and their backwash.^[5] Other than very occasional and ofttimes very abbreviated references to it, Van Doren had never before spoken publicly about the scandal, his role, and its effects on his life.^{[ citation needed ]}

He referred to the film Quiz Show, saying he was bothered most by the closing credits' reference that he never taught again: "I didn't cease pedagogy, though it was a long time before I taught again in a higher." Merely he also said he enjoyed John Turturro's portrayal of his Twenty-One rival, Herb Stempel.^{[ commendation needed ]}

The article also contradicted many impressions of Van Doren that the film had created: the film portrayed him equally a bachelor when he was actually engaged; it suggested he had a fascination with the burgeoning, popular television quiz shows when in fact he did non even own a idiot box set; that the only reason he became fifty-fifty mildly acquainted with Twenty-One was because co-producer Al Freedman shared a mutual associate with 1 of Van Doren'southward friends; and that he had been offered his job with Today promptly after losing to Vivien Nearing when, in fact, NBC was non certain at commencement what to do with him, until he did work for Dave Garroway'due south Sunday afternoon cultural show, Broad Broad World, which then led to the invitation to join Today.^{[ citation needed ]}

Van Doren also addressed and denied the film's insinuations that he had been friends with Congressional investigator Richard Goodwin while Van Doren was Twenty-One 'due south reigning champion (and during and after the showtime of Herb Stempel'due south efforts to betrayal the show's being rigged). According to Van Doren, the two men had not met until Baronial 1959, when the subcommittee Goodwin served as counsel for had begun investigating the quiz shows and Van Doren was already established on The Today Testify. ^{[ citation needed ]}

References [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b c d} McFadden, Robert D. (ten April 2019). "Charles Van Doren, a Quiz Show Whiz Who Wasn't, Dies at 93". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November fourteen, 2021. Retrieved 10 April 2019.
2. ^ "JOHN VAN DOREN Obituary (2019) New York Times". Legacy.com . Retrieved 7 November 2021.
3. ^ "Charles Van Doren". Encarta. Archived from the original on 2009-10-29. Retrieved 2008-08-thirteen .
4. ^ Karp, Walter (May–June 1989). "The Quiz-Show Scandal". American Heritage. Vol. 40, no. 4. Retrieved 2018-06-07 .
5. ^ ^{a b c d e} Van Doren, Charles (July 28, 2008). "All the Answers". The New Yorker . Retrieved 23 Jan 2018.
6. ^ "'A Brand-Believe World': Contestants Testify to Deceptive Quiz Show Practices". History Matters. George Mason University. Retrieved October 30, 2019.
7. ^ Richard L. Lyons (Nov 3, 1959). "The Quiz Show Scandal". The Washington Mail.
8. ^ "Text of van Doren'southward Testimony at Firm Hearing on Fixed Television Quizzes; Subcommittee is Told of Rehearsals and Coaching for the '20-one' Evidence" (PDF). Timesmachine.nytimes.com.
9. ^ "Charles Van Doren testimony". History Matters. Retrieved 2008-08-12 .
10. ^ David Halberstam, "The Fifties" 1993, Ballantine Books, div. of Random House, chapter 43, p. 663.
11. ^ William Manchester, "The Glory and the Dream" 1973, 1974, Little, Brown & Company (Boston & Canada), Volume ii, chapter 26, p. 1043 (affiliate notes reference The New York Times, xi/v/59 and 11/6/59).
12. ^ Associated Press (Nov iii, 1959). "Van Doren Confesses Boob tube Gear up". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. pp. 1, 4. Retrieved 2018-06-07 .
13. ^ "Text of Van Doren's Testimony at House Hearing on Fixed Television Quizzes; Subcommittee Is Told of Rehearsals and Coaching for the 'Twenty-i' Show". The New York Times. Nov iii, 1959.
14. ^ Alex Beam (July 21, 2008). "After 49 years, Charles Van Doren talks". The New York Times.
15. ^ Sandomir, Richard (22 Apr 2017). "Albert Freedman, Producer of Rigged 1950s Quiz Show, Dies at 95". The New York Times. Albert Freedman, a television producer who became a central figure in the quiz-show scandals of the 1950s for giving questions in advance to contestants—notably Charles Van Doren, an English instructor at Columbia University—died on April 11 in Greenbrae, Calif. He was 95.
16. ^ "How to Read a Book with Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren". YouTube . Retrieved 23 January 2018. ^{[ dead YouTube link ]}
17. ^ In the "Editor's Preface," Mortimer Adler says that Charles Van Doren, as his "closest associate and executive editor," was the person who "coordinated and supervised the varied and complicated editorial operations involved in producing this set of books." Van Doren was as well the chief author of the historical essays that accompany the index as well as the menstruum sketch that accompanies each volume of the document gear up. Mortimer Adler, "Editor's Preface," The Register of America: Great Issues in American Life: A Conspectus, Vol. I (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1968), p. vii.
18. ^ Stephens, Bret (12 April 2019). "Trump and the Annihilation of Shame". The New York Times . Retrieved 15 April 2019.
19. ^ "Today Bear witness". The Today Show. December 4, 1985. NBC.
20. ^ "The Biggest Claiming of All". Columbia University. Archived from the original on 2008-03-09. Retrieved 2008-08-13 . In June, an invitation from the Class of 1959 to speak at its reunion brought Charles Van Doren back to Columbia for merely the second time in 40 years.
21. ^ "Guest Bio for Charles Van Doren". UCONN The Web People Litchfield County Writers Project. University of Connecticut. Retrieved 23 January 2018.
22. ^ "Scoville Library Speaker Series: Charles Van Doren – "The Panthera leo of Cortona"". Oblong Books & Music . Retrieved 23 Jan 2018.
23. ^ McGee, Celia (October 15, 2011). "In New England, Taking on High german Expressionism". The New York Times . Retrieved 2018-07-05 . .
24. ^ "The Quiz Show Scandal". Michael Lawrence Films. Retrieved 2018-07-09 .
25. ^ Rosenberg, Howard (January vi, 1992). "A Fascinating Documentary on the '50s Quiz Testify Scandals". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 2018-07-09 .
26. ^ "Quiz Prove - IMDb" – via www.imdb.com.
27. ^ Hart, Jeffrey (7 November 1994). "'Van Doren' and 'Redford'". National Review.

Farther reading [edit]

• Thomas Doherty, "Quiz Show Scandals," The Museum of Broadcast Communications.
• Jeffrey Hart, "'Van Doren' and 'Redford'," National Review, 7 Nov 1994.
• Lina Lofaro, "Charles Van Doren Vs. the Quiz Bear witness Dream Team," Time, nineteen September 1994.
• Robert Metz, CBS: Reflections in a Bittersweet Center. (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1973.)
• Joseph Stone, Prime-fourth dimension and Misdemeanors: Investigating the 1950s Tv set Quiz Scandal – A D.A.'s Account. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992.)
• Como Ler Livros – O Guia Clássico para a Leitura Inteligente, É Realizações Editora (Brazil, 2010)

External links [edit]

• Twenty-One: Full Stemple and Van Doren Episode
• "The Remarkable Van Dorens", Time, Feb. 11, 1957

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Van_Doren#:~:text=Charles%20Lincoln%20Van%20Doren%20(February,NBC%20quiz%20show%20Twenty%2DOne.

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