Quiz Show (1994) on Netflix
In 1958, Herb Stempel is the champion of the quiz show Twenty-One. Producers bring on a challenger, Charles Van Doren, and Stempel charges the game is fixed. Lawyer Richard Goodwin investigates.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.5/1078,440 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes96%
Trailer
Plot summary
On NBC's Twenty-One, the reigning champion is Herb Stempel, a Queens man who answers everything he is asked. The network and its sponsor, Geritol, worry that his approval ratings are leveling off and want new talent on the show. Charles Van Doren, who teaches at Columbia University and comes from a noted literary family, auditions with the producers Dan Enright and Albert Freedman for a different program of theirs, Tic-Tac-Dough. They see in him a challenger for Stempel. Meanwhile Richard Goodwin, a young lawyer for a Congressional subcommittee, comes to New York to look into claims that quiz shows are rigged, and his visits take in both Stempel and Van Doren.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Quiz Show (1994)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Before production began in early 1994, Ralph Fiennes drove to Van Doren's home and, finding the owner reading on his front porch, posed as a lost motorist; he later called the experience crucial for nailing down Van Doren's distinctive transatlantic accent.
- For legal reasons the name of Matthew Rosenhaus, CEO of the company that owned Geritol, was changed to Martin Rittenhome, and his personality was modeled on Charles Revson, president of Revlon, which had sponsored another quiz show caught in the scandal, The $64,000 Question.
- Joe Stone, a congressional committee consultant who investigated the scandal for four years, was angered that the screenplay spotlighted Goodwin and that Goodwin accepted most of the credit for uncovering it; Goodwin's wife Doris Kearns Goodwin apologized to Stone about the film.
SPOILER
In reality the question was worth five points and the score was 16-0; Van Doren's next question was about Pizarro's conquest of the Incas and Stempel answered his own about Columbus correctly, forcing a 21-21 tie and a new game. The answer that doomed Stempel came in that second game, on newspaperman William Allen White.- John Turturro found it easy to assume Stempel's character, but he gained 25 pounds for the role and altered his voice to mimic Stempel's.
