Word: doren
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
RELATIVES and old friends of Charles Van Doren who have been cheering the new television sensation as he won $122,000 in ten appearances on NBC's quiz show, Twenty One, were suddenly submitted to some intensive quizzing themselves last week. When TIME'S Television & Radio section scheduled a fast cover story on Van Doren, queries went out to reporters all over the U.S., in England and France. Almost overnight back came a flood of reminiscences about Van Doren from poets and philosophers, from former teachers and old classmates, even from his landlady while he was a student...
...cigarette or Arthur Godfrey's tea bag. Clamped in a vise of earphones, the eyes roll heavenward and squeeze shut, the brow sweats and furrows, the teeth gnaw at the lower lip. But the weekly torment of concentration always ends in triumph for Charles Lincoln Van Doren, 30, who has already won $122,000-more than any other quiz contestant in history-and is still going strong on NBC's Twenty One (Mon. 9 p.m., E.S.T.). Van Doren. a Columbia University English instructor who inherits the brilliance of the literary Van Doren clan, also enjoys a stranger triumph...
Though he has never bothered to own a TV set, Charlie Van Doren now has such influence on the viewing habits of others that he may swing a major victory in the war between the two big networks. Besides cutting down Jackie Gleason-a deed performed by Perry Como-NBC has long yearned to break two other major CBS strangleholds on the TV audience: Sunday night's Ed Sullivan Show and Monday night's I Love Lucy. Last week, when Charlie Van Doren appeared as a guest on the Steve Allen Show, it topped the Sullivan show...
Across the Board. Van Doren, whom many a grateful parent regards as TV's own health-restoring antidote to Presley, is no narrow specialist like the culinary Marine captain or the opera-buff shoemaker of The $64,000 Question, but an agile Jack-of-all-subjects. He is an engaging, curly-haired, lanky (6 ft. 2½ in., 160 lbs.) image of the all-American boy-"so likable," gushed the Chicago American's TV Critic Janet Kern, "that he has come to be a 'friend' whose weekly visits the whole family eagerly anticipates." Along with this...
...contestants in glass-walled booths. Each tries to amass 21 points by answering questions in categories over which he has no choice. The questions are worth from one to eleven points according to difficulty, and by picking the number, he can choose how hard a question he wants (Van Doren's frequent strategy is to pick the tough 10-and 11-point questions and go for a quick 21). At the end of the second round, either contestant can stop the game if he thinks he is ahead. The winner gets $500 a point for the difference between...