The Moneymakers

The quiz shows last week were still handing out the cash. On NBC's The Big Surprise, Rear Admiral Redfield Mason, U.S.N., 51, on active duty at Brooklyn's Navy Yard, broke through for the top award of $100,000 by naming six groups of women from Greek and Roman fables. And William and James Egan, a pair of outsized* lawyers from Hartford, Conn., were poised only a step away from the jackpot of CBS's The $64,000 Question.

The Egan brothers became quiz stars because Bachelor William got mad at Garry Moore: "I was watching I've Got a Secret one night, and the man's secret was that his great-grandfather had constructed the first U.S. bathtub. I said to my mother that the man was mistaken." Bill wrote Garry Moore a caustic letter pointing out that all his facts about the first bathtub were based on a famed newspaper hoax written in 1917 by H. L. Mencken. Garry Moore never answered.

All the Categories. Still incensed, Bill wrote another letter--this time to The $64,000 Question. "It was an ill-mannered one saying that I thought all quiz programs were dishonest." The show replied by sending him an entry blank. Taking the precaution to fill out the form, he sent it back with another blistering letter. These tactics, oddly enough, won him a personal interview. Bill announced that he was an expert on literature, but could see that his interviewers found this fairly dull.

"What they're really after is a street cleaner who's a Greek scholar or something like that. So I told them about my brother and said we could answer together. Then I swept my arms wide and said we'd take on all the categories." Bill confesses: "My brother is brighter than I am, and he didn't think my little idea was as smart as I did. But a few days later they called. There was no advance preparation at all. They just stuck us out there on the show, and we ran up $8,000 before we knew what was happening."

Precarious Profession. With no noticeable difficulties, the Egans breezed through nine categories--Great Art & Artists. Movies, Ancient History, Sherlock Holmes, Food & Cooking, Shakespeare, Spelling, Boxing & Jazz. They had made up their minds to quit as soon as they hit $16,000, but when they found that the $32,000 question would be on English literature--their specialty--they decided "we couldn't have 2-c- worth of self-respect and not go for it."

Jim Egan got his education at Hartford's Trinity College, Harvard and Oxford on scholarships. He began reading during the Depression because "it was the cheapest pleasure around." He hopes to come out of the show with enough money to take his wife to Europe on his first vacation in five years. Jim was recently appointed police court prosecutor in Hart ford. Bill works for the state tax commis sion. With these jobs and their private law practice, they have a combined yearly income of about $30,000. But there are many lean years behind them, and Jim, for one, was not inclined recklessly to risk what they have already won. "After all," he says, "the law is a precarious profession and it's not easy to come by this much money all at once." And he adds, with typical self-deprecation: "Especially for someone like me, whose one great tal ent is an infinite capacity for the trivial."

* William, 43, 6 ft. 5 in., 350 Ibs.; James, 40, 6 ft. 3^ in., 250 Ibs.

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