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Elfrida von Nardroff

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TV Game Show Contestant

The Resume

    (July 3, 1925-November 11, 2021)
    Born in Northampton, Massachusetts
    Contestant on Twenty-One (May 19-July 8, 1958)
    Won more money than any other contestant on the show (totaling $220,500)
    Revealed to have been given the answers prior to her appearances
    Pleaded guilty to second-degree perjury before a grand jury (January 17, 1962)

Why she might be annoying:

    Elfrida? (Her nickname was Vonnie).
    She was groomed by NBC and Geritol execs for the same stardom as Charles Van Doren, whose total wins they arranged for her to exceed.
    She claimed in a magazine interview to have ‘haunted the New York Public Library to such an extent that one day a librarian asked me if I was triplets’ (investigators were later dispatched to that same library with her picture, only to find that no one there could identify her).
    She finally lost to a teacher after she incorrectly guessed Goebbels when asked which Nazi leader had committed suicide after being sentenced to death (it was Goering).
    It remains unclear whether she was told to give the wrong answer or whether she legitimately guessed wrong (although, it was most likely the former).
    She defended producers Enright and Freedman to Life Magazine, saying: ‘They were respectable and intelligent people, it is inconceivable they could have been fixed.’
    She was discovered to have lied to the grand jury formed to investigate allegations of fraud and was arrested with twelve other contestants on second-degree perjury misdemeanor charges (October 17, 1960). All of them received suspended sentences after pleading guilty.

Why she might not be annoying:

    She resembled Shirley MacLaine.
    Like Van Doren, her father was a professor at Columbia University (he taught physics).
    As was the case with many of the contestants, she was initially reluctant to be given the answers prior before being convinced by showrunners that it was above board.
    She told host Jack Barry she planned to use her prize money to attend school for a PhD in psychology.
    She held numerous jobs after the scandal, including ad agency executive and vice president at a real estate firm.
    She rarely if ever spoke publicly about the quiz show scandal.
    She raked in prize money amounting to $2.1 million in today's money (all for parroting predetermined answers on live television).

Credit: BoyWithTheGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 17 Votes: 52.94% Annoying