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Elfrida von Nardroff, 96, Dies; Won Big Money on a Fixed Quiz Show

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After two years of substandard work at Duke College, Ms. von Nardroff was suspended for a semester. She described herself in This Week as having been a “rebellious, raccoon-skinned, Champagne-tossing holdover from the ’20s.” She studied diligently after being reinstated, majoring in English, and graduated in 1947.

She held numerous jobs, together with secretary to a weight loss program physician, ticket agent at Northwest Airways, proofreader at Home Lovely journal and personnel director on the American Institute of Licensed Public Accountants. She was working on the institute, the place she earned $500 a month, when she acquired a name in late 1956 from a girl working for Mr. Barry and Mr. Enright, whose firm produced “Tic-Tac-Dough” in addition to “Twenty-One.” The lady was in search of brainy contestants for each exhibits.

By Ms. von Nardroff’s account in This Week, her roommate watched “Tic-Tac-Dough” and peppered her with questions from the present, all of which she appropriately answered. That success prompted Ms. von Nardroff to name again in April 1957 and ask to check out for the present; when she handed the 20-minute written check, she took one other one, which lasted three hours, for “Twenty-One” and in addition certified.

However she didn’t take pleasure in her time as a “Twenty-One” winner for lengthy.

Inside months after she took residence the $220,500, Frank S. Hogan, the Manhattan district lawyer, convened a grand jury to analyze quiz exhibits. Herbert Stempel, whom Mr. Van Doren had defeated on “Twenty-One,” had revealed that the producers had coached him extensively. An investigation by the Home Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight in 1959 adopted. (The scandal grew to become the main target of the 1994 movie “Quiz Present,” directed by Robert Redford.)

Joseph Stone, an assistant district lawyer in Manhattan who led the quiz present investigation for Mr. Hogan, later recalled that Albert Freedman, the producer of “Twenty-One,” had supplied Ms. von Nardroff with questions and solutions in his workplace and in her residence in Brooklyn.

“When he proposed to her the same old association, she was at first reluctant, however then agreed and reigned as champion till July 8, 1958, receiving help all alongside,” he wrote in “Prime Time and Misdemeanors: Investigating the Nineteen Fifties Quiz Present Scandal — A DA’s Account” (1992, with Tim Yohn).

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