TV & Radio: The Wizard of Quiz

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The Eleven-Point Question. Will Van Doren keep gambling on Twenty One? His friends and family are sharply divided on whether he should, and, in his own mind, so is he. Says St. John's Classmate Steven Benedict, now a U.S. Information Agency officer: "He's almost a Greek tragic hero, a vast commercial property being used by Geritol. He has strong opinions about the debasement of values by commercialism, but he can't condemn commercialism now. He's under a kind of Faustian pact with the devil." Says Laural Whipkey: "Charlie will play until he's beaten. That's the kind of guy he is." Van Doren's parents tell him that the show is taking up too much of his time, that he can't possibly be thinking of anything else. "I tell them it isn't so," he says. "But of course, it is." If he decides to stop, he will probably be swayed less by the risk of loss or the dwindling prospect of gain than by the time he needs to write his Ph.D. dissertation and attend to his calling.

The eleven-point question is not whether Van Doren will go on gambling on TV but whether his whole career may-not be about to veer again. His celebrity has drawn a swarm of offers: to appear on TV as guest star, panelist, moderator of his own series, to edit almanacs and write magazine articles. Barry & Enright want him to join them later as a consultant, and NBC is preparing to make him an offer as a performer. Says Charlie: "Everybody in the world knows what I should do except me. Before last November, I knew I wanted to teach and to write. But that acting experience [when he played in The Male Animal] is something I've never forgotten. The histrionic aspect of teaching is one of the things that interest me about the profession. I haven't decided against the TV business on principle. I have rejected a number of specific things simply because they didn't fit a particular image of myself which is very secure in me. I believe in TV as a medium of communication. I think it is potentially the greatest of all."