Host Jack Barry (center) and contestants Vivienne Nearing and Charles Van Doren look tense on "Twenty-One." (Image by Orlando Hernandez / "New York World Telegram.")

The New York World Telegram archives provides this classic 1957 photo of three of the principals of the infamous Quiz Show scandal on the set of the program Twenty-One: Vivienne Nearing, host Jack Barry and beloved champion Charles Van Doren. Before long, all three would be targets of an investigation of the show’s practice of rigging outcomes. What’s amazing is that such intelligent people convinced themselves to do something so stupid, that is was somehow okay because that’s how it was done. It was a stunning level of self-delusion.

It must have been brutal picking up and continuing with life after such public disgrace, especially in an age before disgrace was just another marketing tool. Barry eventually regained his footing in the industry as host of Joker’s Wild. Van Doren resigned his professorship at Columbia and lost his job as an on-air personality on the Today show; he became a writer and editor and now is an adjunct English professor at the University of Connecticut. But what of Nearing, the lawyer and feminist who “dethroned” Van Doren and was convicted of perjury along with 13 others? Her 2007 obituary from the New York Times fills in the blanks:

“Ms. Nearing made headlines in 1957 when she dethroned Charles Van Doren as champion on Twenty-One, the popular quiz show on NBC. She won $5,500 in four appearances before she was defeated.

The glory of the victory came to an end and the headlines turned sour in 1960 when 14 contestants, including Ms. Nearing, were charged with second-degree perjury after falsely telling a grand jury that they had not been fed answers. She told the truth in a second grand jury statement, but was convicted of perjury.

Ms. Nearing was a lawyer for Warner Brothers at the time. She was disbarred for six months in 1962 after pleading guilty the year before to misdemeanor perjury. She eventually moved on to work at the New York-based law firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, where she became a senior partner and worked until her death.

Friends and family members said Ms. Nearing did not talk much about the scandal. If people broached the subject, she would change it, Ms. Kiemback said. She refused to be involved in the making of Quiz Show, a 1994 movie about the scandal, and gave up her dream of being a judge for fear of reviving the past.”