Prime Time and Misdemeanors: Investigating the 1950s TV Quiz Scandal.

Investigating the 1950s TV Quiz Scandal by Joseph Stone and Tim Yohn (Rutgers University Press - 349 p.) recounts in well-researched detail the great television quiz scandals of the 1950s, barely remembered today, but the focal point of much national outrage in their day. Stone knows what he is talking about. He was a prosecutor in the U.S. District, Attorney's office at the time, and it was to him that a quiz contender first came to complain that a minor program - Dotto - was fixed, with contestants given both the questions and the answers in advance.

It wasn't long before it became clear that the big quiz shows - Twenty One, The $64,000 Question and The $64,000 Challenge - were fixed as well. As Stone kept investigating, he walked into a morass of dishonesty, cover-ups, plain lies and - eventually - shamefaced confessions that ,made Charles Vandoren, a Columbia College English professor, a national villain, and ruined many reputations and careers.

The book is fascinating not only for its sober account of who did what, but - equally - for the ethics questions it throws up and over which millions of Americans agonized as the scandal exploded. Stone and Yohn correctly put the emphasis on what amounted to a kind of conspiracy between lawyers, agencies, networks and program creators, all determined to argue that entertainment was more important than ethics.

Stone and Yohn go into considerable depth in tracing the roots of the quiz show ruckus and it isn't surprising, considering that out of 150 people questioned only 50 initially told the truth, a magazine at the time asked, "Are we a nation of liars and cheats?" It turned out that contestants had not only been given the answers in advance, but one had even been instructed to "throw" the show to another player. They had all been carefully coached on how to agonize over the answers though they had been briefed on them in advance.

Even more astonishing are the brazen initial denials by producers like Daniel Enright and Shirley Bernstein who, eventually, had to admit their guilt, though arguing that it was all done for the good cause of ratings.