Charles Van Doren - Film Version

Film Version

The story of the quiz show scandal and Van Doren's role in it is depicted in the film Quiz Show (1994; he was portrayed by British actor Ralph Fiennes), produced and directed by Robert Redford and written by Paul Attanasio. The film made $24 million by April 1995, and was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and Best Adapted Screenplay. The film earned several critiques questioning its use of dramatic license, its accuracy, and the motivation behind its making.

The critics have included Joseph Stone, the New York prosecutor who began the investigations; and Jeffrey Hart, a Dartmouth College scholar, senior editor of National Review, and a longtime friend of Van Doren, who saw the film as falsely implying tension between Van Doren and his accomplished father.

Until recently Van Doren had refused interviews or public comment on the subject of the quiz show scandals. In a 1985 interview on The Today Show—his only appearance on the program since his dismissal in 1959, plugging his book The Joy Of Reading—he answered a general question on how the scandal changed his life. He has revisited Columbia University only twice in the 40 years that followed his resignation: in 1984, when his son Adam graduated; and, in 1999, at a reunion of Columbia's Class of 1959. The graduating class of 1959 entered the university when Van Doren first became a teacher there in 1955.

During the latter appearance, Van Doren made one allusion to the quiz scandal without mentioning it by name:

Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics, a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well. I remember better, because, despite the abrupt caesura in my academic career that occurred in 1959, I have gone on teaching the humanities almost continually to students of all kinds and ages. In case you don't remember, then, I remind you that according to Aristotle happiness is not a feeling or sensation but instead is the quality of a whole life. The emphasis is on "whole," a life from beginning to end. Especially the end. The last part, the part you're now approaching, was for Aristotle the most important for happiness. It makes sense, doesn't it?