Games - Twenty One

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	Games - Twenty One

Twenty One was one of the most infamous American game shows on record — a popular, yet thoroughly rigged, quiz show that spawned the single most popular contestant of the quiz show era, and which nearly caused the demise of the entire genre in the wake of Senate investigations. The 1994 movie Quiz Show is based on these events. In time, Twenty-One represented the longest hiatus (approximately 42 years) between a cancellation and a revived comeback of a television game show on the same network in the history of broadcasting.

Broadcast history

Twenty One was produced as a weekly live broadcast on NBC from September 12, 1956 to October 16, 1958. Jack Barry was the host and partnered in producing the show with Dan Enright.

Gameplay

Two contestants, a champion and a challenger, were placed in separate isolation booths, arranged so they could not see or hear each other. 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 to eleven points. The more points a question was worth, the more difficult that question was. A correct answer added those points to the player's score, while an incorrect one deducted them (though it could never drop into negative numbers). After the question, the challenger's booth is turned off and the champion is given the same category and choice of questions.

Neither player is made aware of his or her opponent's score. The object was to score a total of 21 points, or come closer to that number than your opponent. After two categories were played, both booths were opened up and both players given the option to stop the game right then and there. If either player elected to end the game, no matter which one it was, the player in the lead at that point would win. If the challenger reached 21 points before the champion, the champion was given one last chance to catch up and send the game to a 21-21 tie; in this case, the challenger's booth was left open so he or she could know what was going on.

Champions received money based on how large the difference in the scores was. Payoffs started at $500 for each point difference (for instance, a champion who won a game by a score of 21-17 would win $2,000), but 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; the risk to a champion's winnings was that if he or she was defeated, the new champion's first-game winnings were paid out of 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.)

Scandal

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 angrily ordered the rigging of Twenty One so as to prevent a repeat of this incident.

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 appear to 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 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 (being 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.

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Games - Twenty One

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