The film chronicles the rise and fall of the popular contestant Charles Van Doren after the rigged loss of Herb Stempel and Congressional investigator Richard Goodwin's probe of Twenty Ones game-fixing.

Despite knowing the correct film, Stempel gives the wrong answer, allowing Van Doren to get a question he previously answered while in Enright's offices ; he provides the winning response.

Visiting a number of contestants, including Stempel and Van Doren, he begins to suspect Twenty One is indeed a fixed operation.

Stempel desperately confesses to being in on the fix himself, and further insists that if he got the answers in advance, Van Doren did as well.

Stempel testifies before Congress and, while doing so, implicates Van Doren, forcing Goodwin to call him in as a witness.

The movie shows Van Doren's win was directly because of Stempel's dive ; while the question shown in the movie was the one that Stempel was told to take a dive on ( even though he knew the correct answer ), it did not end the game immediately, instead going on for another tie game and ending later in the show.

The episode in which Stempel was defeated ( which sent the ratings to a great high after Van Doren's win ) aired December 5, 1956, as the thirteenth episode of the series.

) After his preordained loss, Stempel spoke out against the operation, claiming that he deliberately lost the match against Van Doren on orders from Enright.

* Herb Stempel, the man Van Doren defeated on Twenty One, continued working for New York City, and considered the profession of the man who beat him which was a social studies teacher in the New York school system.

Enright and Freedman were impressed by Van Doren's polite style and telegenic appearance, thinking the youthful Columbia teacher would be the man to defeat their incumbent Twenty One champion, Herb Stempel, and boost the show's slowing ratings as Stempel's reign continued.

When allegations of cheating were first raised, by Stempel and others, Van Doren denied any wrongdoing, saying " It's silly and distressing to think that people don't have more faith in quiz shows.

Van Doren upended critical impression the film left regarding his engaged friendship with Congressional investigator Richard Goodwin while he was Twenty Ones reigning champion ( and as Herb Stempel had begun his bid to expose the show's rigging ).

I told Herb Stempel that he was going to be losing that night to Charles Van Doren.

Van Doren defeated Stempel before 15 million viewers, and went on to become the single most popular contestant in the quiz show's early history, while Stempel became the forgotten man.

Stempel and Van Doren went on to yet another game during the same show.

" The miss kept Stempel at zero, and Van Doren answered the questions in the category " Kings " successfully.

" Stempel answered the question correctly, but when offered their standard opportunity to stop the game, Van Doren stopped it and became the new Twenty One champion.

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 ".

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.

Van Doren replaced Herb Stempel, who himself had been given answers over his extended run on the show, but was eventually forced to lose ( so that the more telegenic Van Doren might replace him ).

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:

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?

It was only when other contestants came forward about game show rigging did they take Stempel seriously.

When Stempel, who by then had gone through his winnings, later demanded Enright follow through on his original promise, Enright demanded he first sign a statement affirming he had never been coached on Twenty One.

As Twenty One's emcee and co-producer, Jack Barry did not directly rig the shows himself ( even quiz-show scandal investigator Joseph Stone questioned his involvement, and Herb Stempel has said in interviews that he believes Enright hid the rigging from Barry until it was exposed ), yet he admitted in interviews given in the 1970s and 1980s his role in covering up the rigging for Enright.

The Dotto revelations prompted the New York Journal-American, at last, to take seriously the previously-presented accusations by deposed Twenty One champion Herb Stempel that the popular nighttime quiz had been rigged, and the quiz show scandals were on in earnest.

One of the questions Stempel got wrong involved the winner of the 1955 Academy Award for Best Motion Picture.

He went back to Frankfurt in 1947, where the type foundry Stempel offered him a position as artistic head of their printshop.

Enright soon treats Stempel to dinner at an upscale restaurant, where he breaks the news that Stempel must lose in order to boost flagging ratings.

In 1978, Stempel was appointed general manager of the Pontiac Motor Division where he worked on the Fiero – which used a plastic-body / space frame technology that became integral to GM's subsequent minivans and the Saturn linenup.

After waiting for Enright to fulfill his promise of a job in exchange for throwing the match, Stempel realized it would never come and went to the authorities.

The evening's main attraction is Queens resident Herbert Stempel ( John Turturro ), the reigning champion, who answers question after question.

Several weeks later, Enright paid Stempel a visit while his wife was out at the theater and he was babysitting their young son, and posed the fateful question: " How would you like to make $ 25, 000?

( The correct answer was Marty, one of Stempel's favorite movies ; as instructed by Enright, Stempel gave the incorrect answer On the Waterfront.

Optima is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf between 1952 and 1955 for the D. Stempel AG foundry, Frankfurt, Germany.

Stempel was a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Society of Automotive Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the Engineering Society of Detroit.

Though he suffered a heart attack soon after leaving GM in 1992, Stempel continued to visit the North American International Auto Show and continued to maintain his interest and passion for automobiles and the automobile industry.

Before retiring in 2007, Stempel was chairman of Energy Conversion for almost 12 years.

Ovshinsky called Stempel " a visionary who saw the need for the U. S. to be independent of foreign oil.

" Before retiring in 2007, Stempel was chairman of Energy Conversion for almost 12 years.

In 1950-1951, the public rejection of the validity of the list by some German politicians resulted in prison penalties for " rejecting the electoral law of the German Democratic Republic " ( as in the case of LDPD leader Günther Stempel ).

Stempel remained in the Army for the next seven years, attending counterintelligence School in Baltimore, Maryland and serving " as an agent " until 1952, when he began work in the United States Post Office as a clerk.

" Stempel immediately understood the implications ; Enright was not going to pay him just for appearing on the show, when he could be easily defeated.

Stempel was the undefeated champion for six weeks, ostensibly winning $ 69, 500, until he was informed of Enright's kickback scheme, which was presented to him as an unnotarized " settlement " agreement.

When Enright subsequently told him the promise could not be kept because he had sold his shows to NBC itself, Stempel called Jack O ' Brian, a columnist who covered television for the Journal-American.

During most of the story, Spock has lost his memory and is cared for by Stempel, who passes him off as his nephew " Ishmael " and helps him hide his alien origins.

He had previously tried to create a calligraphic typeface for Stempel in 1948, but hot metal composition was too limiting on the freedom of swash characters.