Twenty One was produced as a weekly live broadcast on NBC from September 10, 1956 to October 17, 1958. Jack Barry was the host and partnered in producing the show with Dan Enright.
Two contestants, a champion and an opponent, were both placed in separate isolation booths, arranged so they could not see or hear each other. In addition, because of the way the lights were designed and positioned in the television studio, neither contestant could see the audience. With the champion's booth turned off, the host revealed the category for that round of questions and asked the challenger to pick a point value to play for, from one point, which meant a relatively easy question, to eleven points, which meant the highest difficulty. A correct answer added those points to the player's score, while an incorrect one deducted them (but a negative score was reset to zero). After the question, the challenger's booth is turned off and the champion is given the same category and choice of questions.
The object of the game was to score a total of 21 points, or to come closer to that number. After two categories were played, both booths were opened up and both players given the option to stop the game--without knowing his or her opponent's score. If either player elected to end the game, the player leading at that point would win. If the challenger reached 21 points before the champion did, the champion was given one last chance to catch up and send the game to a 21-21 tie; in this case, the newcomer's booth was left open so he or she could know what was going on.
The difference in scores determined a champion's winnings: for each point separating the contestants, the champion won $500 (so, for example, a champion who won 21-17 would win $2,000); that figure increased by $500 each time the players went to a 21-21 tie. After each win, the champion was told a little bit about his or her next opponent and given the option to walk away. If a champion was defeated, the new champion's first-game winnings were paid from the outgoing champion's total (for instance, if a champion had $7,000 going into a game, was defeated, and the player who defeated him or her won $1,500, the defeated champion's final total would be reduced to $5,500).
The initial broadcast of Twenty One was played honestly, with no manipulation of the game by the producers. Unfortunately, that broadcast was, in the words of producer Dan Enright, "a dismal failure"; the first two contestants succeeded only in making a mockery of the format by how little they really knew. Show sponsor Geritol, upon seeing this opening-night performance, reportedly became furious with the results, and threatened to pull their sponsorship of the show if it happened again
The end result: Twenty One was not merely "fixed", it was almost totally choreographed. Contestants were cast almost as if they were actors, and in fact were active and (usually) willing partners in the deception. They were given instruction as to how to dress, what to say to the host, when to say it, what questions to answer, what questions to miss, even when to mop their brows in their isolation booths (which had air conditioning that could be cut off at will, to make them sweat more).
Charles Van Doren, a college professor, was introduced as a contestant on Twenty One on November 28, 1956, as a challenger to the dominant, if somewhat unpopular with viewers, champion Herbert Stempel. Van Doren and Stempel ultimately played to a series of four 21-21 tie games, with audience interest building with each passing week and each new game, until finally the clean-cut, "All American Boy" challenger was able to outlast his bookish, quasi-intellectual opponent, who at one point after the game was referred to backstage as a "freak with a sponge memory". The turning point came on a question directed to Stempel: "What film won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1955?" Stempel legitimately knew the answer to that question (Marty, one of Stempel's favorite movies), but had been specifically ordered by the producers to miss it. As Stempel later recalled, there was a moment in the booth when his conscience and sense of fair play warred with his sense of obligation; he almost answered it correctly, something that would have thrown the scripted outcome of the game into total disarray. In the event, however, he finally gave the incorrect answer (On the Waterfront) he had been ordered to give, which opened the door for Van Doren to win the game and begin one of the longest and most storied runs of any champion in the history of television game shows.
Van Doren's popularity took off as a result of his success on Twenty One, earning him a place on the cover of Time magazine and even a regular feature spot on NBC's Today show; at one point, the program even surpassed CBS' I Love Lucy in the ratings. He was finally unseated as champion on March 11, 1957, by a woman named Vivienne Nearing, after winning a total of $129,000.
Stempel, meanwhile, still somewhat upset over the fact he was ordered to "take a dive," attempted to blow the whistle on what exactly was going on behind the scenes at Twenty One, even going so far as to have a federal investigator look into the show. Nothing much came of these investigations until August 15, 1958, when a relatively minor CBS game show, Dotto, was abruptly canceled after a notebook containing the answers to every question on that show turned up in the possession of its champion. Suddenly, Stempel's allegations began to make a lot more sense. Still, the public at large didn't seem to want to believe it was true until Van Doren, under oath before a House hearing, confessed to being given the answers to all of his questions before each show.
Twenty One was cancelled without warning after its broadcast of October 17, 1958. A nighttime version of Concentration took over its time slot the following week. The scandal forced producers Barry and Enright into virtual exile. Barry would not host another national TV show for more than a decade, and Enright was forced to move to Canada to continue his production career.
From: Wikipedia.org
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