Parlor Game

At dinner, as the Fred Van Deventer family finished the roast chicken, their radio-producer guest told how new programs were born. Any simple idea might do. "How about Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?" asked 16-year-old Nancy Van Deventer. "Why not?" said the producer.

Fred Van Deventer, a newscaster for New York's WOR, took Nancy's idea to WOR and Mutual. The Van Deventers had played the old parlor game--also known as "Twenty Questions"--for years; it had been a favorite of Fred's since he played it as a boy in Indiana. Mutual gave it a try, with the Van Deventers (minus Nancy, who had to go back to school) as the backbone of the experts' panel. In less than five months, the show was the new gee-whiz quiz in radio. Last week, Twenty Questions (Mutual, Sat., 8 p.m., E.D.S.T.) got its usual 10,000 to 12,000 fan letters and a nationwide sponsor (Ronson lighters).

In 20 questions or less, the panel tries to identify some object, suggested by a listener. Samples: Ben Hur's chariot, the lost arms of the Venus de Milo, a keyhole, Harvey (Mary Chase's mythical rabbit). An offstage filter mike confidentially cuts listeners in on the secret. Producer Herb Polesie (rhymes with so-lazy) provides the humor, asking such Oscar Levantine questions as "Can I give it to my mother-in-law?" or "Can I do it to my wife?" But the program's popularity is due largely to the expert questioning of Fred, Florence and Bobby Van Deventer, who have learned to narrow the field of possibility so quickly that they often guess the answer in six or seven questions.

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