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NEWSMAKERS

Charles Van Doren, figure in game-show scandals, dies at 93

HARTFORD, Conn.

Charles Van Doren, the dashing young academic whose meteoric rise and fall as a corrupt game-show contestant in the 1950s inspired the movie “Quiz Show” and served as a cautionary tale about the staged competitions of early television, has died. He was 93.

He died of natural causes Tuesday at a care center for the elderly in Canaan, Conn., said his son, John Van Doren. Funeral services will be private.

The handsome scion of a prominent literary family, Van Doren was the central figure in the TV game-show scandals of the late 1950s and eventually pleaded guilty to perjury for lying to a grand jury that investigated them. He spent the following decades largely out of the public eye.

“It’s been hard to get away, partly because the man who cheated on ‘Twenty-One’ is still part of me,” he wrote in a 2008 New Yorker essay, his first public comment in years.

Associated Press