Herb Stempel
1926 - 2020
Herb Stempel died on April 7 at the age of 93. His death was just made public yesterday.
Back in the nascent days of television, the 1950's, quiz shows were big, really big, and one of the biggest was a show called Twenty-One. From October to December, 1956, the nation watched as Herb Stempel, an Army vet and New York City postal worker, won match after match and amassed winnings of close to $50,000. It was TV ratings gold, but he eventually lost to a handsome and erudite college professor named Charles Van Doren, who went on to become a major celebrity of his own. It all came crashing down - and I'm making a long story short here - when it became known that not only were Van Doren, Stempel, and other contestants were being given the questions in advance, they were also given the answers. The whole television game show enterprise was rigged. Grand juries were convened, congressional hearings were held, and Herb Stempel became one of the foremost whistleblowers about the whole scheme.
Lives were changed, some lives were ruined, but television soldiered on, more or less unscathed. Van Doren was convicted of perjury and lost his teaching job at Columbia University. He spent his career working for Encyclopedia Britannia, wrote several scholarly books, and never talked about his experiences, save for an article he wrote in the New Yorker in 2008. He died last April 9, almost year to the day ahead of Stempel, at the age of 92. Stempel taught in the NYC public school system for a bit and then worked for the NYC Transit Authority. He would talk to anybody willing to listen about his days in the limelight.
The story of the quiz show scandals of the 1950's is quite fascinating. There have been books written on them, and in 1994, Robert Redford made a terrific movie about the whole affair called "Quiz Show." Find it and watch it. Ralph Fiennes played Charles Van Doren, and Herb Stempel was played brilliantly by John Turturro. Van Doren turned down $100,000 to serve as an advisor on the film. Stempel, still getting the short end of the stick, received $30,000 as an advisor on the movie.
RIP Herb Stempel.
In case you missed it, here is what I wrote last year upon Van Doren's death:
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