Television: The Final Flashbulbs

The great television quiz-show scandal ended quietly last week. Pending for 15 months, the arraignments for the trial of ten erstwhile quiz masters were conducted in a Manhattan court. The great Hank Bloomgarden ($98,500) was there, and crop-haired Elfrida von Nardroff, whose $220,500 winnings were the highest of all. But every eye in court was on Charles Lincoln Van Doren, bearer of one of the great names in American letters.

Van Doren pleaded guilty like all the others, and like all the others he was given a suspended sentence (he might have had to spend up to three years in jail). Flashbulbs popped in his face once more, and he retreated to his $50,000 house on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, where he can throw open his French doors and walk in the small world of a semiprivate garden. “Charlie doesn’t come out very much,” says a neighbor.

Instead, he sits in his upstairs study, listening to music and writing. One organization now pays him well for his work but never identifies him as the author.