Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 8, 1994 TAG: 9410280033
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOM ROBBINS NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
An unheralded civil servant, Stone spent most of his career behind a desk listening to other people's problems. And quietly, doggedly, doing something about them.
A clerk at age 16, Stone went to law school at night and later became a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney's office, then chief of its complaints bureau.
That's where he was Aug. 27, 1958, when a former TV quiz show contestant named Herbert Stempel walked in and told him the games were rigged.
``At first I thought Stempel was a nut,'' said Stone. ``But I'd never watched a TV quiz show in my life and I thought I'd better listen.''
He soon launched a grand jury investigation that heard more than 200 witnesses and uncovered the greatest entertainment scandal in the nation's history.
But even if you watch and listen closely during ``Quiz Show,'' Robert Redford's new rave-winning movie about the scandal, you won't see or hear a word about Joe Stone or his troupe of assistants who ran the investigation.
He's erased from history, Hollywood-style.
Instead, the movie's hero is a young, brash, cigar-chomping congressional aide named Richard Goodwin who graduated first in his class at Harvard Law School.
Goodwin, who was working for a congressional oversight committee when it decided to probe the quiz shows, later became a speechwriter for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and wrote a book about his experiences that became the basis for Redford's movie.
He did play a key role in the televised congressional hearings that came after Stone's grand jury probe. But even he admits that the movie depicts him doing things he didn't do.
Played by Rob Morrow, Goodwin is shown pounding city streets to find secret witnesses like Stempel after being blocked by a corrupt judge from obtaining the grand jury findings.
In real life, Goodwin was still in law school when Stone's grand jury was convened. Stempel and other whistleblowing contestants had been all over the city's newspapers for a year before Goodwin came to town. Goodwin and the congressional committee were given the grand jury testimony.
``Look, it's a movie,'' Goodwin said. ``You couldn't make a movie with everyone in it.''
Tell it to Joe Stone.
``This representation, that Goodwin unearthed all this, it's just preposterous. Some of the movie is misrepresentations and some is outright lies,'' Stone said.
``Sure my ego's involved, this is a slap in the face to me and all the guys and gals who worked so hard on this,'' he said.
Now a retired judge, Stone, 82, has four thick scrapbooks filled with newspaper clippings about his accomplishments. In addition to the quiz show case, Stone handled the first probe into the 1959-60 radio payola scandal and was the first to expose shameful conditions at Spofford and other youth detention centers.
More than 35 years later, he still recalls exact dates and names of the people he interviewed in the quiz show affair.
``I opened the grand jury on Sept. 17, 1958. We issued a flock of subpoenas. We were investigating larceny, extortion, commercial bribery and conspiracy.
``But when we looked at the contracts, there weren't any clauses claiming that the show was accurate. It was all make-believe, only the public didn't know.''
Stone, along with co-author Tim Yohn, wrote his own book about the case, ``Prime Time and Misdemeanors.''
He said the last time he heard from Goodwin was in a call from Hollywood several years ago.
``He told me he thought he could sell the story for a movie. I said, `Okay, I'm working on a book about it right now.' That was the last I heard from him.''
by CNB