American Folk Figure. He was a contestant on NBC's 'Twenty-One' who helped expose the rigged television quiz shows of the 1950s. A Bronx native with an IQ of 170, Stempel appeared on 'Twenty-One,' hosted by Jack Barry, for six weeks in 1956, winning $49,500. He later said that he was given all the questions and answers in advance by Dan Enright, a producer and co-creator of the show, and knew the eventual outcome of every game he participated in — including the one in which he would lose to Charles Van Doren, after being asked to name the winner of the 1955 Oscar for best picture. He followed orders and replied "On the Waterfront" when he knew the correct answer was 'Marty,' which he had already seen several times. Stempel later said he "took a dive" to Van Doren because Enright had promised him a job as a question consultant on 'Twenty-One' as well as a job as a permanent panelist on another game show, 'High Low.' When Enright reneged on his end of the bargain, Stempel contacted several newspaper reporters and then the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, and soon the infamous quiz show scandal was exposed, with Congress getting involved. Van Doren who went on to win $129,000 and parlayed that success into jobs at NBC as a White House correspondent and as a cultural reporter on the 'Today' show, insisted for months that he was unaware of the cheating, but later admitted to lying, which led to an end of his TV career and in 1959, he pleaded guilty to second-degree perjury. Though vindicated, Stempel quickly lost most of his prize money to a con artist through a bad investment. He went on to work as a legal researcher for the New York City Department of Transportation. In 1994, Stempel was portrayed by John Turturro in the Academy Award-nominated film, 'Quiz Show,' directed by Robert Redford.