Herbert Stempel, the Bronx-born brainiac who became a central figure and whistleblower in the game show rigging scandals of the 1950s, a cultural turning point later chronicled in the 1994 movie "Quiz Show," died April 7 at a nursing home in New York City. He was 93.
His death was not publicly announced and was first reported on Sunday by the New York Times.
Stempel displayed an uncanny intelligence and viselike memory from his earliest years. Raised by a widowed mother during the Great Depression, he spent long hours at New York City libraries and showed particular aptitude for geography and history. As a boy, he participated in radio quiz shows.
By age 29, he was an Army veteran attending college on the G.I. Bill and struggling to support his wife and toddler son. He thought he found a solution when, on Sept. 12, 1956, he watched the premiere episode of the NBC game show "Twenty-One."
He quickly sent off a note introducing himself to the show's producers. "I have thousands of odd and obscure facts," he wrote, "and many facets of general information at my fingertips."
Producer Dan Enright and host Jack Barry agreed to test Stempel's knowledge and found that he scored better than any previous applicant. Enright soon made Stempel a proposition: "How would you like to win $25,000?"
The offer, however, hinged on Stempel's willingness to obey instructions about how the game could be conducted. "I had been a poor boy all my life, and I was sort of overjoyed," he would later tell a congressional panel investigating game shows in 1959, "and I took it for granted this was the way things were run on these programs."
"Twenty-One" featured two contestants who sat in isolation booths and were required to answer questions of increasing difficulty. The debut episode was a ratings dud. The producers decided to ramp up drama by treating the contestants as characters.
