Robert Redford has directed 'Quiz Show' as entertainment, history, and challenge. And when Stempel blew the whistle on the whole setup, a Congressional investigator brought the deception tumbling down. Blinded not so much by money as by fame, Charles had agreed to cheat. Meanwhile, America liked his successor, an attractive, disarming intellectual named Charles Van Doren, who was a member of one of America's great literary families: his father, Mark, and his uncle, Philip, were beloved and respected. So they broke the news to him: He'd had a free ride long enough, and now it was time to lose. The executives decided his appeal was wearing thin. A grating know-it-all named Herbert Stempel won for weeks on 'Twenty-One,' partly because he was being given the answers. But across the street at NBC's 'Twenty-One' executives and sponsors watched the ratings, and realized that some contestants drew more viewers than others. The first show, CBS's 'The $64,000 Question,' was apparently on the level.
'Quiz Show' remembers it was also a decade when intellectuals were respected, when a man could be famous because he was a poet and a teacher, when TV audiences actually watched shows on which experts answered questions about Shakespeare and Dickens, science and history. The 1950s have been packaged as a time of Eisenhower and Elvis, Chevy Bel-Airs and blue jeans, crew cuts and drive-ins.
