The funniest thing about this summer childhood memory is that I'm still doing it. Thanks to the Game Show Network, the wonderfully infectious "What's My Line?" is still running on Sunday nights just like it was when I was staying up late on Sunday nights back when. It used to be situated right after "Candid Camera" and both those shows made me feel like I was part of the adult world. The adult world that was around the age of 7 or 8, but the adult world nonetheless.
"What's My Line?" was like a big party game at somebody's house. The panelists could have been some configuration of my parents, aunts, and uncles who used to attack some kind of board game after one too many Schaefer beers. Except the WML panelists were usually in formal attire with gowns by Bonwit Teller. They looked like they were having such fun guessing the occupation of a couple of nobodys.
But, for me, the best part of the show is when they would truck out a mystery guest for which the panel was blindfolded. Whoever was in NY showed up live on Sunday night to stump the panel. They were usually in town to promote some movie or their week-long upcoming engagement at the Copacabana. When you watch these damn things on the Game Show Network forty or fifty years later, it is like unopening some time capsule you buried in your yard ages ago. Watch as James Stewart shows up to promote his new movie "Take Her, She's Mine."
Danny Kaye pops in to talk about kids getting those little orange boxes to trick or treat for UNICEF. Beyond those stupid blindfolds, you can actually see the mental wheels turning on each of the regular panelists, Bennett Cerf, Dorothy Kilgallen, and Arlene Francis, who was so cool I wanted her to be my mother. They're all trying to figure out who's in town or who is opening in a play. One of the contestants had a job sorting out Minnesota Twins tickets for the 1965 World Series that was starting later in the week.
Since the show was live, host John Charles Daly often references something that happened that day. A blizzard. A heat wave. The Pope's visit. The New York Football Giants' winning field goal. It's such a great timeline of life that the show should run on The History Channel.
Of course, "What's My Line?" had to endure almost on-screen deaths of two regular panelists. On some night in 1956, Fred Allen dropped dead on the sidewalks of New York, while walking his dog. The very next night, he was supposed to be on WML, and, of course, with much grief, the show did go on. The same thing happened in 1965 when Dorothy Kilgallen went home from the program one Sunday night and promptly went buns up in bed. They just reran these shows in sequence on the Game Show Network and it is very eerie to watch someone on "live" TV who you know will be dead in less than 12 hours. They still don't know whether it was a combo of booze and pills that did her in. Or, reportedly, she had some inside dope on President Kennedy's murder and got offed by the mob. Nevertheless, the following week's show was a study in how people deal with heartbreak over the loss of a friend. And it is all there in black and white fuzzy tape. Whoever at producer Goodson-Todman had the foresight of taping all these live broadcasts was a genius. Because we can still enjoy this weekly cocktail party of life to this day. The darn thing ran for almost 18 years on CBS, and they amazingly have almost 98% of all the shows.
There was always a guest male panelist. And when it was the quintessential Groucho Marx, watch out.
Gee, why couldn't my parents be that funny at their parties?
Dinner last night: A Hot Dog at the Hollywood Bowl prior to Miss Gladys Knight.
4 comments:
The coolest WML I ever saw was in 1962, when Willie Mays was the celebrity guest. They must have run him down after the doubleheader at the Polo Grounds, which I had just attended.
BTW: I believe he was also supposed to be on the May 31, 1964 show. Unfortunately, he was detained by the longest doubleheader in history.
I also saw the WML episode from that 5/31/64 date. Not sure if Willie was supposed to be on, but both Bennett and John Daly mention that they have been watching the second game backstage. Daly provides a score update during the show.
I'm still relying on you to tell me when the 12/30/62 show will be on. That's the day I went to the Giants-Packers NFL Championship game at Yankee Stadium. Ray Nitschke (who recovered two fumbles and deflected a YA Tittle pass that wound up being intercepted) was the mystery guest and no one had any idea who he was.
If I recall, Bennett Cerf said he left the game not long after it started because he had never been so cold in his life. The temperature was 13 degees at kickoff with 40 MPH winds according to a story on the game. My father and I stayed for the whole game, with me standing on a seat in the lower deck in left field (corner of the end zone) so I could see over everyone else. They were standing all game long too, probably to keep their flasks from cracking.
It already aired. They are up to November 21, 1965.
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