Charles van doren new yorker article

I'm always catching up on a backlog of New Yorker magazines-- in the July 28th issue, there was a "Personal History" piece by Charles Van Doren, infamous for his role in the 1950s quiz show fraud scandal.

I found the tone of the article a bit hokey and over-earnest, somehow, but of course I was interested in the role money played in Van Doren's troubles.

Here's what happens when he first meets the TV producer who gets him onto the show "Twenty One," the man who later tells him to lie about the outcome being rigged:

I told him that I was an instructor of English [at Columbia]-- a long way from being a professor.

Charles van doren movie

I was not comfortable talking about myself, especially when he asked me how much an instructor of English made. When I told him, he just looked at me.

Van Doren decides to do the show, and cooperates with the producers as they feed him answers and even tell him how to speak them.

He plays the perfect, handsome, wholesome young man, and audiences eat it up as he appears to