Charles Van Doren, the contestant at the center of the 1950s quiz show scandals, dies at 93

The New York Times

Van Doren, a member of a distinguished literary family who was played by Ralph Fiennes in Robert Redford's 1994 movie Quiz Show, captivated 50 million TV viewers for 14 weeks from late 1956 to early 1957 when he kept winning on the game show Twenty-One. He walked away with $129,000 in winnings, equivalent to more than $1 million today, and appeared on the cover of Time magazine. But in 1959, Van Doren testified that the shows had all been hoaxes and that he had been given the answers in advanced and coached to make his appearances more dramatic. “I would give almost anything I have to reverse the course of my life in the last three years,” he said. He lost his job teaching at Columbia University, pleaded guilty to second-degree misdemeanor and received a suspended sentence.