Herb Stempel - Life After The Scandal

Life After The Scandal

Following the scandal, Stempel finished putting himself through college on the G.I. Bill. He went to work for the New York City Transit Dept for the next two decades, doing examinations before trial, which meant he represented the Department in depositions by opposing counsel, testifying to various records in the city's possession.

It was not until he was approached, some thirty years later, by the producers of the documentary The Quiz Show Scandals for PBS's American Experience, that he finally agreed to be interviewed on the subject. Julian Krainin, who co-produced the film, also co-produced the 1994 feature film Quiz Show, in which Stempel was portrayed by John Turturro. Stempel actually made an uncredited film debut in that movie, portraying a different contestant being interviewed by the congressional investigator Dick Goodwin, played by Rob Morrow. In spite of being "a little miffed by the portrayal, it was an over-the-top sort of portrayal of me". When Quiz Show was released, Stempel embraced the renewed public interest in him, giving interviews on radio and television (notably appearing on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, taped in the same NBC studio Twenty One once occupied), as well as lecturing at some colleges about the quiz scandals.

Every time 'Quiz Show' is shown on television, invariably the phone rings and some character at the other end says, 'What picture won the Academy Award in 1955?' — Herb Stempel, 2004

In 2008, Charles Van Doren broke his long silence, and in an article in The New Yorker described the overtures Robert Redford's production company made to him to cooperate with the filming of Quiz Show. He claimed that Barry & Enright Productions staffer Al Freedman was actually responsible for scripting the entire Stempel-Van Doren competition, and refuted the image of Stempel as a penurious CCNY student:

In fact, he was a Marines veteran married to a woman of some means who once appeared on the set wearing a Persian-lamb coat and was quickly spirited away so that she wouldn’t blow his cover.

Van Doren wrote that until he viewed WGBH's American Experience documentary The Quiz Show Scandals he was ignorant of the fact that the show had once been honest - at least for one episode - and that: "Herb Stempel was the first to agree to the fix".

This last remark is actually debatable. Dan Enright has stated that due to the sponsor's displeasure he began to rig the show immediately after the premiere episode debuted on September 12, 1956. Whether the contestants in the five weeks prior to Stempel's choreographed October 17 appearance unwittingly received the answers in "practice sessions" the way Richard Jackman described, or were openly coached the same way Stempel was, is unclear. According to Jackman, Enright was extremely nervous prior to his appearance on the show and stated, to Jackman's bewilderment: "You are in a position to destroy my career." After Jackman, a struggling author, told Enright he could not continue on a rigged show, Enright tried various types of persuasion and offers of money to persuade him to change his mind. Jackman finally accepted a check for $15,000, and for continuity's sake promised to appear again so he could publicly choose to take his "winnings" and depart at the beginning of the show. Kent Anderson portrays Enright as someone who would make certain his next contestant would cooperate. Enright is described as deliberately targeting Stempel's emotions, as he did with other contestants; leaving no angle overlooked when trying to gain their full participation.

I had been a poor boy all my life, and I was sort of overjoyed, and I took it for granted that this was the way things were run on these programs...I was stunned, I didn't know what to say...I told him I would do it. — Herb Stempel