Revisiting the original versions of the often-revived guessing games from back in the day.
I've Got a Secret, "Carol Channing has a secret"
OB: Monday night, January 13, 1964, CBS, 8 p.m. EST.
I was born the day after this show first aired.
What's My Line?, "Mystery Guest: Van Heflin"
OB: Sunday night, January 19, 1964, CBS, 10:30 p.m. EST.
I was five days old when this show first aired.
To Tell the Truth, "Will the Real John LeCarre Please Stand Up?"
OB: Monday night, April 27, 1964, CBS,, 7:30 p.m. EST
I was three months old when this show first aired.
Two reviews, two different shows, 52 years apart...but both shows were similar and came from the same family.
First, the TV Guide review by Cleveland Amory from the week of January 25-31, 1964, of What's My Line? Ouch. He really lets Arlene and company have it.
"The marathon dance that is known as What's My Line? has, in our opinion, not only run its course, it has, Massa, run it into the cold, cold ground," Amory begins with a rather unfortunate use of a racist Stephen Foster lyric. "When the show first went on the air, it was, our late grandfather once told us, highly popular. Since we last heard a favorable opinion, however, a whole new generation has been bored," of the blindfolds, the handshakes--geez, what did he have against handshakes?--the "mannered introduction" and "positively sick and tired of all the extraneous, intramural promotions." (He had a point with the last one. I watched a 1964 show recently on YouTube and actually groaned out loud when Arlene Francis, John Charles Daly and mystery guest Bert Lahr all went on and on and on about his new off-Broadway show, apparently to fill time because he was guessed so quickly.)
Fast forward to the night of June 14, 2016, the night ABC debuted a new revival of To Tell the Truth as one of a number of game shows (also including The $100,000 Pyramid and Match Game, both of which were especially well received by fans and critics) being used for a summer run. "I cannot lie, this show is caught in a TV time warp," wrote Cory Anotado on Buzzerblog, a blog devoted to game shows.
The 1964 To Tell the Truth panel |
Anotado makes it clear he's open to new twists on an old format...as long as they work and they complement the format, not hijack it in our current short-attention-span, texting-distracted world. He knows the days of the cosmopolitan Manhattan-centric interaction of What's My Line? are over forever (and even a bit laughable now, but still not as bad as Amory said), but still calls for better panelists than say, Nene Leakes and Jalen Rose. After all, the various versions of To Tell the Truth had panelists who were master interrogators, like Tom Poston, Kitty Carlisle and Orson Bean, and up-and-coming television legends sitting in on the panel occasionally, from Dick Van Dyke to Johnny Carson to (on the 2000 revival) Walter White himself, Bryan Cranston. Sure the show is now produced for a young demographic--the opening guest (and two imposters) all claimed to be a guy Taylor Swift dated in high school, and later wrote a song about.
But there's a reason the game was considered for a revival in the first place, even for an audience who may have been toddlers or in preschool or kindergarten when John O'Hurley's version ran in 2000: it's just plain fun, in its rawest, most pure form.
Although legendary game show producers Mark Goodson and Bill Todman actually gave us more than a few panel-type shows over the years, from The Name's the Same to, I guess you could say, Tattletales, their big three--What's My Line?, To Tell the Truth and I've Got a Secret will always jointly represent the gold standard of panel guessing games. For years, people mostly knew them by their revivals. In fact, when I first saw What's My Line? it was running five days a week with the polite but rather wooden Wally Bruner as host (he would later leave for the perhaps more suitable Wally's Workshop, to be replaced by the more charismatic Larry Blyden), and Soupy Sales and Arlene Francis as regular panelists (also the first I ever heard of Soupy Sales...that just seems wrong). I got to know To Tell the Truth the same way, with Garry Moore hosting (again, first I ever remembered hearing of him) and Kitty Carlisle, Peggy Cass and Bill Cullen (now Bill I did know, from Three on a Match) as the regular panelists. The glory days of the three shows from their CBS runs in the 1950s and 1960s just weren't available for reruns, even during their network runs (although I did catch the 1975 clip-filled ABC special, "What's My Line? at 25," and was fascinated).
The I've Got a Secret panel |
It's not always unusual for a cable network to mine the classic TV vaults for classic programming as an affordable way to fill their schedules, until they make enough money to license more recent programming and then produce their own new content. Long before giving us Key & Peele and The Daily Show, for instance, Comedy Central actually reran 1950s kinescopes of Steve Allen and comic bandleader Spike Jones, and such short-lived sitcoms as Captain Nice and When Things Were Rotten. AMC originally stood for American Movie Classics and had a format similar to Turner Classic Movies; their changeover to more recent fare was first met with gnashing of teeth (and troll defenders berating people over their definitions of "classic") before groundbreaking shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad meant all (or most) was forgiven.
Dorothy Kilgallen of What's My Line? |
Betsy Palmer of I've Got a Secret |
And they became experts over intricate details. In fact I'm pretty sure I'll get a fact or two wrong in this entry and probably hear from one or two of them. That's okay. Nearly all of them are my friends.
Panel games go back to old time radio, and one of the first, if not the first, was Information Please. Listeners would try to stump an intellectual panel of professors and editors--and at least one reasonably intelligent celebrity like Fred Allen, Groucho Marx or Oscar Levant--with questions on a variety of topics. (Future What's My Line? panelist Fred Allen took over as host for one round and utterly stumped the panel with his own series of especially tough astronomy questions, since that was one of his passions. "I sure could use those Encyclopedia Britannicas!" he said of the show's prize, to a studio audience roaring with laughter.) Others included Twenty Questions and the 1950s era Sez Who? the latter hosted by Henry Morgan, himself already a regular panelist on the TV version of I've Got a Secret.
What's My Line? debuted on CBS in February 1950; Dorothy Kilgallen, the controversial gossip columnist whose radio show she did with her husband was once parodied by Fred Allen, was there at the very beginning. The show's longest running panelist, actress Arlene Frances (an old time radio soap actress, TV hostess and Broadway player among many other things) showed up for the second show. (She later said she was supposed to be in the first broadcast but didn't make it, for a reason she later forgot.) Bennett Cerf first appeared later that first year, 1950. When panelist Fred Allen, who became a regular in 1953, died unexpectedly in March 1956 (and like Kilgallen, his death was reflected in an especially moving next show), his chair became a rotating one for guest panelists.
The point of the show was to try to guess the occupation of the person in question, by listening to their yes or no answers. Then there was a celebrity mystery guest. A number of television and Hollywood legends sat in that spot over the years--Lucille Ball held the record at six times, including once with her husband Desi Arnaz and once using her "Martian language" that she and Ethel used in an actual I Love Lucy episode that aired around that time. Alfred Hitchcock threw the rules out the window as he used goofy voices and lines like "that's impossible" instead of "no," for instance. Speaking of Goofy voices, GE Theater host and future U.S. President Ronald Reagan actually imitated the Disney character of that name. Andy Griffith even set aside his southern accent for a surprisingly convincing British-sounding one, while Sean Connery did the opposite, shedding his Scottish accent for a squeaky "Mr. Moose" voice. Rosalind Russell and Pearl Bailey even convinced the panel they were men, while Fred Astaire, Art Carney, Walter Brennan and Fred MacMurray convinced them they were female. MacMurray and Buster Keaton were even thought to be attractive blondes.
Steve Allen on What's My Line? |
It was during a pre-Tonight Show stint as a regular panelist that Steve Allen coined the show's most famous catchphrase, "Is it bigger than a breadbox?" This led to an especially hilarious moment when Kilgallen asked that question...to a man who actually made breadboxes for a living. Steve Allen, and the breadbox question, actually make a return appearance on the first What's My Line? of my lifetime, the one of January 19, 1964.
After a set of animated opening credits, a Kellogg's sponsor billboard and the familiar logo that was used again in the 1970s, I hear the legendary game show announcer Johnny Olson say those immortal words, "Now, let's all play What's My Line?!" It's the first thing I ever remember hearing him say, long before he ever said "Come on down!" or "Get ready to match the stars!"
The What's My Line? panel |
Bennett Cerf of What's My Line? |
Cerf, known especially for his wit and his hilarious efforts to trip up the host, introduced John Charles Daly as that "pristine gardenia on the lapel of American television." (That actually made me laugh out loud.) Daly then comes out and takes his own spot stage left (the audience's right) facing the panel across the stage, and says, "A gardenia would smell as sweet by any other name, I'm sure."
White House secretary Geraldine Whittington. |
The woman who signs in signs as Jerri Whittington...and she's about to make major history that the panel, the studio audience and the home audience are not going to expect.
As she takes her seat, Daly says the home and studio audiences will now see what her line is...and according to the super, it's "Secretary to President Johnson." "Miss Whittington is salaried and deals in a service," he tells the panel before questioning begins with Steve Allen.
...But first, I'm not going to bury the lede like the show does. This was a very significant moment not just in television history but American history. Geraldine Whittington has the distinction of being the first African-American to be the executive secretary to a sitting U.S. President. And this was the Lyndon Johnson administration's way of announcing it to the world. Apparently the White House felt more people would see it this way than if Johnson held a news conference. However, they never mention her groundbreaking role on behalf of her race. They simply talk about her being LBJ's secretary.
Steve Allen is able to get that both men and women may use her service...but not children. "That's one down and nine to go, Miss Francis," Daly says. His keeping count and flipping over the appropriate card is the game show equivalent to the chorus of a never ending song. ("That's two down and eight to go, Mr. Cerf.") And it does have that kind of rhythm to it, in fact. Repetition is one of the ways game shows will stay in your head. Woody Allen, himself a guest panelist a couple of times in 1963, even parodied all of this in two different movies of his.
Arlene Francis of What's My Line? |
All of the questions are supposed to be "yes" or "no" but Cerf actually gets away with getting a non-yes-or-no question answered, when he asks where James River, Maryland is located. She says it's halfway between Washington and Annapolis, thereby dropping a huge hint. Cerf gets a laugh with "Is this a non-profit-making organization?" then gets it out of her that it's a government job. Her "no" to whether she works in the armed services sends the questioning over to Dorothy Kilgallen.
Whittington describes Johnson as having "great warmth..fair, kind," but also as being a perfectionist who demands "total excellence at all times." She acknowledges working long hours with the President and even traveling with him to his ranch in Texas, which she enjoys. (Daly says he has friends in the White House press corps who say they do not enjoy that part of the job.)
The second challenger, Sabin Segal, has a line that says he "sells bird seed." Daly tells the panel he "deals in a product." (Lines that have to do with animals are often comedy gold on this show, especially if the panel hasn't yet realized the "line" is actually about an animal. Steve Allen's 1950s questioning of a man who made horse feed bags is the stuff of television legend...improvisational comedy in its purest form.)
"Do I take it that you have nothing whatsoever to do with breadboxes?" Cerf asks, the first "breadbox" reference of the night with Allen present. Cerf gets it out of Segal that the product is consumable, "taken internally," solid, and "some kind of food," but gets a no on whether it's "eaten in natural state as opposed to prepared," since it does go through a factory.
"Steve said its natural state is Arizona," Kilgallen quips, before asking "Is it something I can hold in my hand?" Segal says yes, and Kigallen notes it would be smaller than a breadbox. She gets a "no" on whether it can be eaten after it's cooked.
"I don't want to hear any jokes about muddah or faddah, but would describe this product as fodder?" asks Cerf, an apparent reference to I've Got a Secret producer Allan Sherman and his novelty song "Hello Muddah Hello Faddah."
After a Kellogg's commercial, Daly makes sure the panel has their iconic blindfolds in place for the "mystery guest" segment, and asks, "Would you enter, mystery challenger, and sign in please?"
Mystery guest Van Heflin |
Hollywood actor Van Heflin then signs in. The then-55-year-old character actor had been the lead man a few times--once as one of "The Three Musketeers" and once playing President Andrew Johnson--and was known for such 1950s movies as "Patterns" and the westerns "Shane" and "3:10 to Yuma." Here, his vocal disguise is as an older, vaguely New Yorkish man with a tobacco-stained voice that's almost a loud whisper.
In this round, Daly still grants $5 per non-affirmative "no," but the panelists take turns one question at a time this time. (I seem to remember the "One down, nine to go" part even being dropped from that round in the Bruner-Blyden years.)
"I pass," Dorothy Kilgallen says surprisingly. "I punt!" Steve Allen quips to loud laughter and applause from the audience. (He was every bit a great ad-libber as his fellow Allen panelist, Fred.) Figuring out who he is, Arlene Francis asks if he's appearing in a play based on a Louis Nizer work, which he was. In fact, after the applause and the panelists removing their blindfolds, they discuss that play, "A Case of Libel." At one point, Bennett Cerf asks about some ongoing investigations in the news concerning "box office speculation" (perhaps the inspiration for the 1968 movie "The Producers," later itself a Broadway musical). Heflin ducks the question almost literally, by saying all of that happens at the front door and he goes in and out the back.
John Charles Daly of What's My Line? |
Garry Moore of I've Got a Secret |
Right: former Beatle Pete Best. |
This had the most straight-forward and least gimmicky premise of any of the three; you simply had to guess something about the person. The panelists had to ask yes or no questions, but didn't lose a turn with each "no," and there was none of that "Three down and seven to go" business on this show. There were no gimmicks (except for the "secret whispering) but there were stunts, demonstration segments, and times Moore would hold up pictures or maps or play a little film.
There wasn't a regular "mystery guest" segment either, but the final segment usually involved a celebrity with a secret of their own. It could be a personal one, but was usually a setup for a stunt. One night, for instance, Vivian Vance's secret was that she wanted to introduce a new game--a guessing game in which you had to guess a word with only the help of other, one-word clues. Sure enough, she was helping Goodson-Todman try out a prospective game show format that the television world would later know as Password. Another time, Harpo Marx showed up with a secret...that he wasn't even Harpo. It was actually his brother Chico dressed as Harpo, and the two looked alike otherwise. That one stumped the panel. (Their brother Groucho was supposedly nixed from being a guest on the show on another occasion, because sponsor Winston Cigarettes didn't want him showing up with his cigar.)
And despite the lack of a "mystery guest," there were instances where panelists had to wear blindfolds...and one such round was played during the show that aired the Monday night before I was born, January 13, 1964.
"Good evening, this is Carol Channing, and this is I've Got a Secret!" the venerable Broadway actress says to open the show. (I'm disappointed she didn't say "I'm Carol Channing and I've got a secret!"). Announcer John Cannon then says, "Live from New York here is I've Got a Secret, starring Garry Moore!" followed by a sponsor billboard for Toni hair and beauty products.
Bess Myerson of I've Got a Secret |
Phyllis Diller guesting on I've Got a Secret |
Moore's banter with Diller is a point for her to plug her book, "Phyllis Diller Tells All About Fang." "Is Fang your dog?" Moore asks, about a still-new joke that became a baby-boomer icon associated with the comedienne. "That's my husband, what else would you call a man with one tooth that's two inches long?" she explains to a big laugh. "We call him Kukla!" Moore responds.
Moore brings out the first contestant, William Willis, of New York, and his secret is what he was doing on his 70th birthday. "I sailed a raft across the Pacific Ocean, ALONE!" the on-screen super tells us as the heavily bearded man whispers in Moore's ear.
Bill Cullen starts his round of questioning with, "I know what you were not doing on your birthday, shaving!" (Cullen's ad-libbing ability is perhaps the most underrated in television history.) Cullen gets it out of the man that what he did was unusual for a 70th birthday, or unusual for anyone, and not more likely for a woman.
Phyllis Diller is able to narrow his secret down to water, warm and not ice cold, and not freshwater; she was able to find out he didn't swim and didn't save a life except his own. Henry Morgan was able to rule out waterskiing, asking "Am I warm?" "Not on a night like this," Moore replies, referring to the blizzard conditions Johnny Carson also made fun of that week. "I have a slight case of pneumonia, I didn't know if I was going to die from smoking or this," Morgan replied. (By the way, I'm struck by the fact that this show airing live allowed so many topical references. The 2016 revival of To Tell the Truth was actually taped a full year before it aired...not that I'm disappointed at not hearing any gorilla-killing jokes or anything.)
Bess finally guesses that he was on a vessel, then narrows it down to a raft, but the buzzer at the end of her round beats her. Moore explains Willis sailed 7,500 miles across the Pacific Ocean, bringing himself ashore in Samoa only after his rudders failed. Moore explains Willis took his first ocean voyage from Germany, around Cape Horn, to America in 1908; jumped ship, and explored America. Moore shows his most recent voyage on a map, starting in Peru, on the raft "Age Unlimited. He says the toughest part is the solitude, and since he got word recently the rudders in Samoa have been repaired, he will soon head back there to resume and complete his journey...which he also did when he turned 60.
After a commercial break, we return to see an unusually blindfolded panel. Moore then welcomes "Miss X" (two young girls and a young boy) with their secret: "Our mother is Phyllis Diller."
After finding out they are not "wearing something odd," Morgan says "Oh boy!" He deduces whoever is speaking is using their (her, it's Phyllis' oldest daughter) actual voice, not speaking through anything but a harsh whisper, before the buzzer sounds. Myerson asks if the blindfolds imply these are recognizable people, and is told they might be, "by some on the panel." She also finds out they're not well known in show business, then asks, "Are you someone that we would know personally? Are we acquainted with you?" "Partly," she's told. After her 30 second turn ends and the buzzer sounds, Moore tells her she and Morgan can remove their blindfolds but don't say anything to the other panelists.
Specifically, it's son Harry, and daughters Stephanie and Sue Diller, three of her five children with the other two "tied up with projects." "They thought you might be a little nervous," Moore explains. Cullen then says the reason he passed is because he thought it might be either his own wife, "Fang" or the children. "I thought they were doing their paper routes," said Diller, but it turns out they came in from St. Louis "just before the storm."
Speaking of the storm, when the next segment begins, Carol Channing is back. She had just come straight from rehearsals for what would turn out to be her iconic, forthcoming Broadway role, "Hello Dolly," in which she plays a matchmaker. (I love these little bits of history.) But that apparently took some effort, and Moore says about a third of the audience couldn't make it to the live broadcast that night due to the snow conditions.
In honor of Channing's matchmaker role, she unveils a group of ladies sitting on bleachers, while their husbands are backstage. One will be blindfolded and will describe his wife, and the panel will try to see if they can spot her.
The guy wins $100 if Cullen correctly guesses, and it goes down when another panelist has to take a turn. But Cullen correctly guesses #18, saying "I'm looking for the one who looks madder than anyone else." Moore eggs it on: as the guy leaves for backstage, Moore says, "Wait right after the show, and your wife will come out and hit you right in the mouth."
"Ooh, there's someone making brownie points for himself," Moore says. The guy further describes his wife's hair as "dark tinged with gray," and says she has a "pert nose."
Phyllis Diller says she missed most of that description because "Bill's been telling me a dirty joke," getting a huge laugh. She guesses "I think this gentleman is married to 12, 13 and 19, and maybe going out with 5," but misses it when she narrows it down to 19. (She's actually #13, in fact. Her humor, by the way, gives us a hint as to what this show would've looked like in a more raucous era, like the 1970s Match Game.) So the poor guy then describes her clothing, black dress, red, maroon and black striped jacket (which she's not wearing), "earrings that are rather pinkish" to Henry Morgan, who misses. They run out of time, for this segment, and just to emphasize that this is a live broadcast, Moore misses his cue as the curtain closes and a commercial break comes up.
I've Got a Secret was the simplest format of the three shows and relied to two things--the collective personality of its host and panel, and the truly great stories that came with the guests. If there was ever a non-news show in history that proved the old journalism school adage, "Everybody has a story," even if it's "Garry Moore just pulled me off the street," it would be this show.
"One of these ladies is a housewife who recently made international headlines," begins announcer Johnny Olsen, as he then asks, "What is your name please?"
"Only one of these ladies is the real Jerri Mock," Olsen continues. "The other two are imposters and will try to fool this panel, Tom Poston, Peggy Cass, Orson Bean and Kitty Carlisle, on To Tell the Truth with your host, Bud Collyer!"
The smiling, bow-tied Collyer walks over and takes his seat at his particular podium, welcomes everyone to the show, and holds up a jar (it came in jars back then) of that week's sponsor's product, Easy Off Oven Cleaner. The avuncular Clayton "Bud" Collyer started his career in radio soaps but had one of the most memorable roles in that era: the title role in the 15 minute daily serial of Superman. When he took a break from the show, the writers invented the idea that Superman was trapped under a steel door for days. Why? Because it turned out, Kryptonite, a material from his home planet, made him weak. That was actually worked into the canon of the comics and it still part of the Superman lore to this very day.
On television, we know Collyer, thanks to those GSN reruns, not only as the man who presides over seven different people at a time on To Tell the Truth, but the friendly and energetic man who worked, and ran all over the place, with the couples competing on the original version of Beat the Clock (another Goodson-Todman classic whose reruns got a new life on GSN).
"Recently I took a months vacation from my husband and children," he quotes the real Jerri Mock as saying as a camera pans over the contestants. "Alone in our eleven year old family airplane, I flew some 23,000 miles. In so doing, I become the first woman in history to fly an airplane completely around the world. Signed, Jerri Mock." The three women, who were standing on an elevated stage, walk downstairs to their three seats. They will be peppered with questions that are not restricted to "yes or no" answers by four panelists who are especially good at interrogating them, as if they're making sure their stories are straight. In fact that was the whole premise of the show, as if the three were "on the stand" in the courtroom. So the questioning was sharper and keeping up with them would be more skillful on both sides. (The celebrity panel and panel of contestants sat across from each other with Collyer between them, the only one of the three panel shows set up this way. On the other two, the host and single challenger directly faced the four-person panel.)
Kitty Carlisle of To Tell the Truth |
"Now I know why I couldn't get Jerrie Mock for my daytime show!" Carlisle exclaims, as she begins her questioning. She gets #3 to say the trip took 29 days, #2 to say she wore dresses in flight, and #1 to say she stopped 21 times in 29 days, had a layover, and never ran out of fuel.
Orson Bean, a classmate of Peggy Cass and veteran character actor, asked about #2 "fighting off the sheiks" and others in Arabia, because they would be "only too anxious to get their hands on a nice American lady with her own plane." "They kept waiting for a man to get out of the plane," she replied. Bean asks #3 who cleaned and cooked while she was away, and it was her mother-in-law.
Tom Poston on To Tell the Truth |
Tom Poston has a weird explanation for voting for #2, saying he was just sorry that Kitty didn't get her turn, When reminded that she did (she actually started the questioning, in fact), he says, "Oh, I must've had another reason." (That sounds like something George Utley would've said.) Peggy Cass voted for #1 because of times she stopped in Pacific, saying it took her 29 days just to get across...in a boat (as Orson has her clarify). Orson Bean goes with #3, saying she has a "pretty All-American look, and when they make the film I think Doris Day will get the part." Kitty Carlisle goes with #3 because she says she stayed over in Bermuda for six days and has a suntan.
The other two are Lynn Dikes, who works for the Yellow Pages, and Mildred Whitlock, director of hospital volunteers at a hospital in Carlisle's hometown of New Orleans.
"I, David Cornwell, am a former England schoolmaster and a former member of the British foreign service," says Collyer, reading his affidavit. and goes on to say his third book is at the top of the best seller list and is being made into a movie, "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold." Seeing this described as if it were something new and current is a nostalgic treat for a pop culture history nerd like myself.
Peggy Cass of To Tell the Truth |
Kitty Carlisle asks #1 about the studio producing the movie (he says Paramount), and asks #2 who will play the lead in the film (he says Burt Lancaster; obviously we now know it was Richard Burton). She asks #2 about his pen name and gets an amusing answer, that it "has connotation in English of being square which I find amusing." Tom Poston asks #2, "Which side of the river is Eden on?" and is told it's on the right, facing downstream.
The real John Le Carre, standing up |
There's a third game in this show, and this time it's "Killer" Joe Piro, dance instructor to the upper class who taught ballroom dancing to a half million pupils, including Shirley Booth, Arthur Schlesinger, Margot Fonteyn, Eva Gabor, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. He's credited with introducing the mamba and the pachanga, to America, and is described in the affidavit as an expert on the watusi, surf, hitchhike, wobble, mashed potato, chicken back, and the frug. (Man I picked a great show to watch for this article.)
Tom Poston says "Only he would have the nerve to teach dancing to Dame Margot Fonteyn!" Then he disqualifies himself because he thinks he knows him. His disqualification will count as an "incorrect" vote. Peggy Cass asks #3 if the mashed potato is hard to do and is told no, then asks #2, "Is the chicken back anything like the Madison?" "No, it's a little busier," she's told. "The Madison is busy enough for me!" she responds. She asks #2 about the frug, "Can you do it alone?" and is told you can or with a partner. She's told by #3 you should stand away from your partner if you're doing the surf as opposed to touching your partner.
Orson Bean of To Tell the Truth |
Kitty Carlisle asks #3, which dance do you look "like you have a wooden leg," and is told the merengue. She gets #2 to say Arthur Schlesinger is 5'5", and tells #3 he taught Margot Fonteyn the twist and several others to take back, saying after "one lesson and she knew them all." Number two tells her if she wants to learn one quickly, the easiest is the frug.
Poston, who disqualified himself, just plugs the show's producers by writing "G/T" on the card. Cass chooses #3, saying "just sitting there I can tell he's got a natural set of rhythm." Bean also goes with 3, saying he "reminds me of George Raft, who was a great ballroom dancer, and someone once told me, when George Raft gets all dressed up he looks like a stolen car." (Wow, that was pretty good.) Kitty Carlisle follows her fellow panelists, saying "I think they're all marvelous," but #3 looks like he'd be called "Killer Joe" and "I think I'd like a dance with him."
"Killer Joe" is in fact, #3 (Carlisle passes on her chance to dance with him, saying she needs more lessons) and by request, he stands between the panels, under a spotlight, and demonstrates some of his dance moves. We hear the song "Having a Party," which mentions a bunch of those dances in the lyrics, and I don't know who's singing it but it doesn't sound like Sam Cooke's version. As for the other two, one is Bobby Lloyd, TV announcer for WHEZ-TV in Rochester, New York, and the other is Jules Field, co-owner of the Gas Light Clubs.
This prime time edition of To Tell the Truth would meet its demise, just like the other two, at the end of the 1966-67 season, but still outlasted the other two because its CBS daytime version didn't leave the air until 1968. It's the only one of the three that has any episodes from its CBS run preserved on videotape (as opposed to kinescope) and has any color episodes that exist.
By the end of 1969, however, Line? and Truth would be revived in syndicated, five day a week formats, just in time for the FCC to order the networks to give a half hour in early evening back to their affiliates. As a result, both of these revivals were immediately successful, especially the Moore-hosted Truth which was a runaway hit.
Having now seen all of these back to back to back, here are some takeaways:
1. New York is a big part of each show. The Broadway scene flavors the personality of all three and not only brings a certain level of guest but a certain level of arts awareness. I wonder how it would have played out in the eras of Andrew Lloyd Weber, Disney or "Hamilton."
A Hollywood version of What's My Line? still wouldn't be a total disaster on that one quality alone...but it still might be a different show. But then again, why? ABC's 2016 revivals of Match Game and Pyramid were actually shot in New York. It's not like it just can't be done anymore.
2. There's a reason these panelists have to be such eggheads. We get to play along at home with To Tell the Truth, trying to guess along with the panelists, but on the other two shows, the secret/line is revealed unless you want to slap your hand over your face at the right time. And you still can't do that with the mystery guest on What's My Line?
And precisely because you can't (necessarily) play along at home, the fun is pretty much watching other people play the game. And if you're doing that, no one wants to hear a celebrity ask one stupid question after another and desperately fall back on their one-liners and loud "personality" to try to cover for it. These are learned people--Cerf was a publisher, Carlisle and Francis actually had interview shows, Kilgallen was a relentless journalist and didn't leave those skills by the stage door, and Bean, Cass and Cullen were just eggheads who knew a little about a lot of things. And they all had sharp wit, which goes out the window with some reality show star trying too hard. Perhaps all of this is a holdover from the days of Information Please.
Bill Cullen on I've Got a Secret |
Still, just as ABC gave us the exact 2016 Match Game most people have come to expect (based on the 1970s version; the 1960s version is still so unrecognizable by today's audiences it would probably have to be called something else if that format were ever revived), we've come to at least expect a certain outline of all three games, and we usually get it, give or take a few tweaks. For all the weird ornaments hung on the 2016 revival of To Tell the Truth, they actually brought back the elevated stage of the Collyer years, and the audience yelling out who they think is the real person appears to be borrowed from the late 1960s audience polling. Even the way the "real" contestant stands up as the others pretend to get up, is now done to more dramatic effect, even with music. (And I still agree, guessing which of the two remaining imposters is associated with another story isn't a bad innovation.)
4. The panels, of course, were unfortunately not very diverse (give or take a few guest panelists). But the shows, Line? especially, at least gets points for having diverse guests when it probably wasn't very "fashionable." Mystery guests ranged from Marian Anderson to Muhammad Ali (more than once).
Henry Morgan of I've Got a Secret |
I've Got a Secret came back, Steve Allen and all, for a weekly syndicated version in the 1972-73 season, then for a four-episode summer revival promoting Bill Cullen to host in 1976. (I thought it was telling that the 1972 version looked like it picked up where the CBS version left off, while the 1976 version had a blinking neon sign of a logo denoting the 1950s nostalgia of the Happy Days era. Just three or four years could be a near eternity between game shows of that period.) Stephanie Miller hosted a revival on the Oxygen network in 2000, notable for scrapping all the panels and desks in favor of an apartment living room-type set, while Bil Dwyer hosted an especially well-received version on GSN in 2006 featuring an all-openly-gay panel. Secret always had the least detailed and most adaptable format of any of the "Big Three" so like all great game shows, it was suitable for a comeback.
But as for What's My Line? After the version that introduced me to the game that ran five days a week in syndication from 1968 to 1975, there have been multiple, unaired, unsold pilots that were produced from 1981 to 2014. So, those of us fans have been disappointed, waiting impatiently for an on-air revival since the administration of President Gerald Ford (himself a one-time WML? guest, as were his two successors, Jimmy Carter and Reagan, all before they became president).
It seems fitting that the remake that did take off, with the heavy Broadway influence and vision on the original CBS show, was, itself, a stage version, premiering in Los Angeles in 2004 and moving to New York in 2008. Real mystery guests like George Wendt and Lisa Loeb played, as did a few from the original series.
And perhaps it's the seeming, out of date politeness and high-class gamesmanship, in a world populated by younger generations who are offended if they aren't offended, that makes it harder to bring that particular show back. If you want something, you want it to work and you want it to be right. It's not that a sillier, more raucous panel would be "sacrilege." Bennett Cerfs don't come around every day, you know. (They didn't even back then.) They just need to know how to play the game and be committed to it, competitive like Dorothy Kilgallen but with the charm and humility of Arlene Francis. Once upon a time, before the swooshing lights and dramatic music and big prizes that became the norm briefly in the late 1990s and early 2000s and still inform the way new game show sets are built in the LED era, a simple parlor game was all we needed, and it was entertaining as hell. There's no reason it can't happen again...correctly.
Availability: The three I reviewed for this blog all came from YouTube. All known extant episodes of What's My Line? are there, courtesy the What's My Line? YouTube channel, including a long lost but now rediscovered October 1950 episode exclusive to that channel. A number of To Tell the Truth episodes are also on YouTube, including more than 200 courtesy the To Tell The Truth YouTube channel, and a number of I've Got a Secret shows can be found on the site as well from various users. Plus, reruns of some episodes of all three shows appear on the Buzzr classic game show channel.
Next time on this channel: The Hollywood Palace.
This blog is a member of the Classic TV Blog Association.
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