Herbert Milton Stempel (December 19, 1926 – April 7, 2020) was an American television game show contestant and subsequent whistleblower on the fraudulent nature of the industry, in what became known as the 1950s quiz show scandals. His rigged six-week appearance as a winning contestant on the 1950s show Twenty-One ended in an equally rigged defeat by Columbia University teacher and literary scion Charles Van Doren.
Early life
Stempel attended P.S. 89 in Queens, and was a self-described "avid reader" who was "interested in everything". He was skipped ahead several classes in school, so much so that his mother worried he was being pushed too far. When he was seven, his father died, and Stempel, his mother, and his older sister Harriet moved to what he describes as a "poorer part of the Bronx". It was in the midst of the Depression, and the struggling family was on public assistance for years.
Twenty-One was not Stempel's first quiz show. At a very young age, Stempel realized he had what he called a "retentive memory", in that he could read a page about a subject and summarize that page months later. He represented his elementary school, P.S. 6, on a radio quiz show, Americana History, where he remained undefeated for several weeks. He was one of the "Kid Wizards", a three-man team who represented The Bronx High School of Science in competitions against New York high schools, remaining undefeated throughout the year. He claimed his IQ was measured at 170.
At a time when the top five highest-rated programs on television were quiz shows, Twenty-One was a mainstay for Barry & Enright Productions and NBC, which aired the show:
Contestants on Twenty-One were given the questions and answers in advance and were coached as if they were actors, receiving instructions on which questions to answer correctly or incorrectly and how to behave during the game.
Several weeks later, Enright paid Stempel a visit while his wife was out at the theater and he was looking after their young son, and posed the fateful question: "How would you like to make $25,000?" Stempel immediately understood the implications; Enright was not going to pay him just for appearing on the show, when he could be easily defeated.