Charles Lincoln Van Doren came from a family of intellectual achievers.
His father was the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mark Van Doren (1894-1973). His
mother, Dorothy Graffe Van Doren, was a novelist and writer, and his
uncle, Carl Clinton Van Doren (1885-1950), was a noted historian and
author. Van Doren himself earned his B.A. at St. John's College, an
M.A. in astrophysics from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in English.
After studying at the Sorbonne, Van Doren became a professor of English
at Columbia, earning an annual salary of $4,400. After learning of the
money to be made from quiz shows, Van Doren applied to the show
"Twenty-One," where producers were looking for ways to bolster
faltering ratings. In Van Doren, a 30-year-old charming academic with
name recognition, producers saw an attractive winner who could
popularize the show. Producers scripted the program, fed contestants
with answers and coached them on how to act during the show, so that
contestants would have a string of ties to build the drama for one
eventual victory. The clean-cut Van Doren, playing his part, became the
new champion of "Twenty-One." Ratings for the show began to rise and
the bookish champ became an unlikely national hero. After 14 weeks, Van
Doren eventually earned a staggering $138,000. By the end of the
streak, Van Doren was a celebrity. "Time" magazine pictured him on
their cover and he received 500 letters a week. Van Doren signed a
$150,000 three-year contract with NBC for appearances as a guest on
Steve Allen's show, a guest host on the "Today Show," and a panelist on
NBC radio's "Conversations."
When the quiz show scandals broke, Van Doren asserted his innocence,
but eventually confessed in November 1959. Though many other
contestants had complied with the network's rigging, Van Doren drew the
most attention because of his prominent family. NBC ended its contract
with Van Doren, and he resigned from Columbia. Van Doren slipped into
obscurity, writing books under a pseudonym and becoming an editor for
Encyclopedia Britannica.
