Charles Van Doren

Charles Lincoln Van Doren came from a family of intellectual achievers. His father was the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mark Van Doren (1894-1973). His mother, Dorothy Graffe Van Doren, was a novelist and writer, and his uncle, Carl Clinton Van Doren (1885-1950), was a noted historian and author. Van Doren himself earned his B.A. at St. John's College, an M.A. in astrophysics from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in English. After studying at the Sorbonne, Van Doren became a professor of English at Columbia, earning an annual salary of $4,400. After learning of the money to be made from quiz shows, Van Doren applied to the show "Twenty-One," where producers were looking for ways to bolster faltering ratings. In Van Doren, a 30-year-old charming academic with name recognition, producers saw an attractive winner who could popularize the show. Producers scripted the program, fed contestants with answers and coached them on how to act during the show, so that contestants would have a strin