Jack Barry (television Personality) - Quiz Show Scandal

Quiz Show Scandal

In 1956, Barry and Enright launched Twenty One (sponsored by Geritol) and Tic-Tac-Dough. Both quiz shows were hosted by Barry. In a 1991 PBS documentary, Barry's partner, Dan Enright, said that after the first unrigged broadcast of Twenty-One, sponsor Geritol complained to Barry and Enright the following day about the dullness of that episode (the two contestants repeatedly missed questions). According to Enright, "from that moment on, we decided to rig Twenty-One."

In 1958, a match between challenger Charles Van Doren and champion Herb Stempel was found to have been rigged, with Van Doren having been provided answers in advance. (The 1994 movie Quiz Show was based on the Stempel-Van Doren contests.) Within three months of the published revelation, Twenty-One was cancelled. Dough Re Mi and 3 other shows were taken over by NBC. Another Barry-Enright production, Tic-Tac-Dough, was cancelled as well. Barry next hosted the nighttime version of a new show Barry and Enright created with Robert Noah and Buddy Piper, Concentration. With the quiz show scandal ramping up, Barry left Concentration after four weeks. Barry and Enright were forced to sell their shows to NBC.

Though Enright and producer Albert Freedman actually carried out the rigging of Twenty-One, Barry admitted in the 1970s and 1980s his role in covering up for the partners. However, Barry himself was apparently not averse to "juicing" a show, even after the Twenty-One and Tic-Tac-Dough debacles left his career in eclipse. A veteran quiz producer once said that in the 1960s, when Barry was working on a pilot of a Mark Goodson-Bill Todman production featuring "spontaneous" filmed responses, Barry fed his respondents scripted lines to make them funnier, though it should be noted that most all game show television pilots contain scripted elements for the purpose of helping to "sell" the game to the network.