So I've written a new book about the quiz show scandals of the 1950s. It's called "Truth and Consequences" and you can order it here.
My publisher asked me to interview myself about the book for their website. Since I am my favorite subject, I did it, and here it is:
Q. Mystery guest, will you sign in, please?
A. Hello! My name is David Inman and I grew up watching too
much television. Fortunately, I was able to parlay that into a gig as "The
Incredible Inman," a nationally syndicated TV and movie trivia Q&A
column that ran from 1981-2013. I've also supplied material for Turner Classic
Movies hosts Ben Mankiewicz and Dave Karger, and I've written several books
about movie and TV history, including Performers'
Television Credits 1948-2000 and TelevisionVariety Shows. I also have a podcast, The
Incredible Inman's Pop Culture Potluck, and my other writing about film and
TV can be viewed at www.theincredibleinman.com.
Q. How did this project originate?
A. It began back in the pre-internet days of 1990, when I
found myself at the Paley Center for Media (then the Museum of Broadcasting) in
New York City. After watching a few episodes of The $64,000 Question I found myself feeling what audiences at the
time must have felt -- the suspense of watching an everyday Joe/Josephine strain
their memory to win a lot of money and change his/her life. The show had it all
-- the dramatic roll of kettle drums, an audience full of anxious and excited
people, nervous contestants and frantic family members. It seemed like high
drama on a tightrope, all playing out on live TV. To see that -- and to realize
that everyone watching was being bamboozled -- led to my interest in the
subject.
Q. You started this in 1990? Are you a slow typist?
A. No, but life got in the way, mainly in the form of a full-time
job and two children arriving within 14 months of each other. I worked on the
project on and off until I retired at the end of 2022. Then I went into high
gear.
Q. Was big money the only draw on these shows?
A. I don't think so. At least at the beginning, the first
big quiz -- The $64,000 Question --
had an immense amount of human appeal. The contestants were simple working-class
people -- a cobbler, a police officer, a grandmother -- with unusual knowledge in
surprising subjects -- opera, Shakespeare and baseball, respectively. Seeing
these people win big money just because of their love of and expertise in certain
topics was heart-warming. It was an embodiment of the American dream and, to
audiences, a kind of validation of American exceptionalism at a time when we
were the world's dominant nation.
Q. Talk more about why this particular scandal is so
interesting to you.
A. The book begins in 1955, when television was a relatively
new medium, and the audience had no reason to doubt the authenticity of anything
they saw on that box in the living room. To say it was a less cynical time is
an understatement, and there was an unspoken trust between those who watched TV
and those who produced TV. Nowadays, television practically defines cynicism.
We have no reason whatsoever to believe anything billed as "real." We
have been fooled many, many times before. Not so in 1955.
Q. Anything else?
A. I've always been interested in the relationship between
art and commerce, and the staged, fake "art" on these shows was
directly ordered by "commerce" -- the sponsor -- in order to increase
ratings and thereby sales. This was in the days of unprecedented sponsor
influence, when a sponsor bought an entire block of time -- a half-hour or an
hour -- and totally dominated the production of the program, network be damned.
The fall of the quiz shows played a role in ending that domination.
Q. Do you find anyone or anything to admire in this book?
A. I have a great deal of sympathy for Charles Van Doren,
who was probably the best-known -- and therefore, most notorious -- of the quiz
contestants. He was a genuine scholar and an associate professor at Columbia
University at the time. He later admitted being fed answers and being coached
on how to respond during his time on Twenty-One.
He justified it to himself because he believed he was championing the cause of
teaching and education, and he received many viewer letters attesting to that
fact. Today, we live in an age of widespread shamelessness, of celebrity
redemption arcs, of bad behavior milked for more air time. After Charles Van
Doren's scandal was discovered and he confessed before a congressional
subcommittee, he had the sense of honor -- the decency? -- to just disappear
from public life. When he was offered $100,000 to be a consultant on the 1994
film Quiz Show, about the scandal, he
refused to participate.
Q. Speaking of Quiz
Show, how does this book compare to Robert Redford's film?
A. Quiz Show is a
great movie but it only covers one aspect of the quiz scandals. It doesn't deal
at all with the chicanery behind the scenes of the original rigged quiz, The $64,000 Question, and its spinoff, The $64,000 Challenge. On those two
shows, Charles and Martin Revson -- the men behind the sponsor, Revlon -- ruled
with iron fists, decreeing which contestants succeeded and which failed. In the
book we go into all-encompassing detail on what happened on those shows and on Twenty-One, where contestants were
literally rehearsed on how to provide pre-arranged answers.
Q. If we shouldn't believe much of what we see on TV today,
what about the quiz shows? Are they are crooked as ever?
A. Ironically, they're probably more above-board than many
other shows. Because of the quiz scandals, strict standards were put in place
to keep everything kosher. Watch an episode of Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy!
today and you'll see a little disclaimer at the end proclaiming that anything
edited out of the show had no impact on the final outcome and that, in so many
words, contestants received no answers in advance.
Q. Describe your book as a Jeopardy! question and answer.
A. "David Inman's book begins in a producer's Park
Avenue study and ends in a Washington D.C. congressional hearing room, with
lives and careers destroyed along the way due to Madison Avenue
chicanery."