All the Answers.(Charles Van Doren, 'Twenty One')(Personal account)

For fourteen weeks in the winter and spring of 1956-57, I came into millions of American homes, stood in a supposedly soundproof booth, and answered difficult questions. I was considered well spoken, well educated, handsome--the very image of a young man that parents would like their son to be. I was also thought to be the ideal teacher, which is to say patient, thoughtful, trustworthy, caring. In addition, I was making a small fortune. And then--well, this is what happened:

I don't remember the dinner clearly, except that at some point in the early fall of 1956 I was talking with a man named Albert Freedman, who knew a friend of mine. Freedman was about my age, suave and well dressed--certainly no bohemian, like most of my friends. He asked me what I thought of "Tic Tac Dough."

I didn't have a television set in those days, but I knew that Al Freedman was in the TV business. And I'd certainly heard about the game shows, where people could win a lot of money. Al told me that contestants on "The $64,000 Question" could win that amount and on some shows they could win even more.

"Your father's a professor at Columbia?" he asked, and, when I nodded, he asked if I was, too.

I told him that I was an instructor of English--a long way from being a professor. I was not comfortable talking about myself, especially when he asked me how much an instructor of English made. When I told him, he just looked at me.

Later, I asked my friend to tell me more about Freedman, and she said that he was a producer for Jack Barry and Dan Enright, who created shows like "Tic Tac Dough." Freedman called me a few days later. When I learned what he wanted, I telephoned Gerry--Geraldine Bernstein, the young woman I had been dating and whom I married six months later.

I told her that Al had persuaded me to take a test and that, depending on how I did, they might want me for a new show called "Twenty-One," which was structured like blackjack. "The winner gets quite a bit," I said. "The guy who's on the show now has already won something like twenty-five thousand dollars."