Quiz Show - Historical Comparison

Historical Comparison

The movie has Goodwin starting his pursuit of Van Doren during the contestant's 1956-1957 run on Twenty-One, when in fact the Congressional investigation led by Goodwin came in Summer 1959.

The movie implies that NBC conveyed to Enright the desires of Twenty-One sponsor Geritol that Stempel be replaced, with network president Bob Kintner (Allan Rich) telling Enright "You're a producer, Dan. Produce." Neither Kintner nor NBC was ever implicated in the scandal and NBC cancelled the show when it heard about the scandal, but Enright claimed before his death that Geritol's complaints about the lack of drama and suspense in the unrigged premiere prompted the company to rig the show.

The movie shows Van Doren's win was directly because of Stempel's dive; while the question shown in the movie was the one that Stempel was told to take a dive on (even though he knew the correct answer), it did not end the game immediately, instead going on for another tie game and ending later in the show. The episode in which Stempel was defeated (which sent the ratings to a great high after Van Doren's win) aired December 5, 1956, as the thirteenth episode of the series.

The movie shows Jack Barry (Christopher McDonald) slightly recoiling when a contestant, James Snodgrass, answers correctly instead of incorrectly on a question on which he was supposed to take a dive. Barry, Enright's business partner and co-producer, was never implicated in rigging the show but covered up for Enright once he found out. In addition, Monty Hall had become host in early 1958 and was still hosting when the scandal broke.

The movie does not acknowledge the rigging practices of other 1950s quiz shows, the most prominent being The $64,000 Question, Dotto, and Barry-Enright's own Tic-Tac-Dough. Dotto's absence is particularly notable, as it was the show that sparked the investigations.

Journalist Ken Auletta, in a 1994 article in The New Yorker, noted that Redford conceded at a screening of the film that summer that "dramatic license" was taken in making Quiz Show, like most fact-based dramatizations. Redford made no apologies for the liberties, which included telescoping three years of scandal into one. Redford stated that he had tried "to elevate something so that people can see it … otherwise, you might as well have a documentary." Redford noted there had already been a documentary on the scandal, referring to the Julian Krainin-produced work for a 1992 installment of the PBS series The American Experience. (Krainin, like Goodwin, was a co-producer of Quiz Show.)

In a July 2008 edition of The New Yorker, Van Doren writes about the events depicted in the film, agreeing with many of the details but also saying that he had a regular girlfriend at the time he was on Twenty-One, who is not present in the film depiction. Van Doren also notes that he continued teaching, contrary to the film's epilogue which states he never returned to doing so.