Just something I was wondering while watching QUIZ SHOW on TCM last night that I remember wondering the first time I saw it.
Okay, so on the show (as, presumably, in real life), the contestants risked everything they had won so far when they went into a new match. This is actually stated on one of the show’s ads within the movie- something like “Will Herb Stempel win $60,000 or lose everything he’s earned in the past 7 weeks? Tune in tonight on 21!”
However, as Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes) becomes the brainiac heartthrob on the show and wins more and more money, he buys a house and a car and expensive gifts for his family, etc., so apparently they won something as they went along. And of course if a loss meant you lost everything then nobody would ever walk away from the show with anything.
Any idea about how this show worked? (Not referring to the rigging but to the official rules about the money.)
Trivia: The real Van Doren recently returned to college teaching for the first time in almost 50 years as an adjunct professor at the U. of Connecticut. Herb Stempel, also still very much alive, has tried since the movie came out almost 15 years ago to get numerous sources from Bill Gates to Jeopardy to fund a charity match twixt him and Van Doren for millions of dollars with “no tricks this time”, but whether he’s found a donor or not doesn’t matter as Van Doren still refuses to even discuss the matter even after half a century.
If the defending champion lost, his opponent’s winnings were deducted from the defender’s previous winnings, but he got to keep the difference. (The defending champion also had the option to walk away from a match and keep his winnings.)
If I’m reading it right, it sounds like BOTH bits of the movie you mention (“lose it all” vs. “being able to buy stuff”) are wrong, unless Van Doren’s winnings, at some point, reached such a high amount that no one game would wipe it all out, and he was paid that difference immediately.
ETA: Dammit, one minute shy. But the Wiki link has better stuff, IMO.
According to the BBC link Van Doren could well have started spending before his run ended. He won $129,000 even when he finally lost. Since he could only lose a few thousand when beaten he could have started spending long before he lost.
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