Later, as the triumph unraveled into scandal, he initially denied he had been given advance answers, but he finally admitted that the show was rigged. “Just by being himself,” Time wrote, “he has enabled a giveaway show, the crassest of lowbrow entertainments, to whip up a doting mass audience for a new kind of TV idol - of all things, an egghead.” In a February 1957 cover story on Van Doren, Time magazine marveled at the “fascinating, suspense-taut spectacle of his highly trained mind at work.” He made 14 electrifying appearances on “Twenty-One” in late 1956 and early ’57, vanquishing 13 competitors and winning a then-record $129,000. “It’s been hard to get away, partly because the man who cheated on ‘Twenty-One’ is still part of me,” he wrote in a 2008 New Yorker essay, his first public comment in years.īefore his downfall, he was a ratings sensation. In a February 1957 cover story, Time magazine marveled at the “fascinating, suspense-taut spectacle of his highly trained mind at work.”
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