American Icarus

摘要

HE SEEMED a very nervy contestant. Standing in the soundproof glass booth on the set of "Twenty-One", nbc's flagship quiz show during the winter of 1956-57, he'dbite his lip, furrow his eyebrows, blow out his cheeks. "Oh my goodness!" he would sigh, and then pull out a big white handkerchief and mop his face all over, taking care to pat not smear, as he'd been instructed. Week after week he returned to grapple with questions that seemed to get ever harder: about explorers and boxing and the American civil war, about newspaper history, the boundaries of the Black Sea and what happened to the six wives of Henry VIII. As his winnings grew—to $129,000 (worth $1.2m today), more than anybody had ever won on this new klondike, the television quiz show—America became transfixed. Nearly 50m people tuned in each week. Geritol, manufacturers of a tonic for "tired blood" and the show's sponsors, came to believe their own punchline: "Feel stronger fast." Women wrote to him in their thousands, more than a few proposing marriage. He appeared on the cover of Time.