What I watched: An early episode of game show What’s My Line, created by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman. The panel consisted of neuroscientist Dr. Richard Hoffmann, poet Louis Untermyer, actress Arlene Frances, and former governor Harold Hoffman (no relation), with John Charles Daly as host (described as a “moderator.”) This episode was directed by Paul Monroe and aired on CBS on February 16, 1950. It is available on YouTube.
What happened: The panel is introduced, with Arlene replacing Dorothy for this week’s episode. The first subject is Caroline Weston, a curly-haired woman who is a LADY WRESTLER. Hoffmann goes right back to creeping on the guest during the panel demonstration. Francis nails her as an athlete right away, but gets a little off track, and Untermeyer gets the win. Sadly, no one asks her if wrestling is real or not.
Next up is Edward Eisen, a man who is definitely not a wrestler. Instead he’s something much more frightening: an income tax detector. (The overlay happens a little too early.) There’s some confusion when Untermeyer asks if he’s in business or entertainment, apparently the two broad spheres of society. The poet thinks that he’s a mortician, causing both Daly and Eisen to crack up. The questions start going around in circles, and Daly threatens to call it, but Francis gets it at the last moment.
Next up is the “mystery celebrity”, and out come the blindfolds. It’s Elliot Roosevelt, famous aviator and Roosevelt. He says he’s in showbusiness, which sets the panel off down a blind alley. Elliot says that he has no political aspirations, and Daly acts like he’s telling the truth.
This leads the group astray, and the questions quickly fly away. Francis thinks that she recognizes his voice, but can’t quite place it. She’s able to nail it based on two questions: whether his father was an important man, and whether he once sold Christmas trees. I guess that was a famous anecdote or something.
We have one more non-famous person here, one Karen Archer. Her occupation isn’t revealed to the viewer, allowing us to guess along with the panel. The guys all talk about how hot she is, and Francis actually joins in a bit. With thirty seconds left ont he clock, Untermeyer makes the blind guess that she’s a dance instructor, which turns out to be right. I had no idea.
What I thought: This was the third episode of What’s My Line, and it’s evident that the show was still very much finding its feet. Daly has to keep asking the panel to stick to yes-or-no questions, without success. The most pleasant panelist from the first episode, Dorothy Kilgallen, is not back while the three boorish dudes are. It’s still an enjoyable show, but if the YouTube comments are anything to go by (a dubious proposition, I know), it will get much better.
One sign that WML is moving towards excellence is the addition of Arlene Francis, in what I suppose they imagined would be the token female role. Francis is shockingly good at the actual meat of the game, the guessing of peoples’ jobs. I’m still not sure how she came up with that last-second answer in the mass-guessing portion.
The line-guessing task is one that doesn’t seem to come from any kind of particular skill or specialized knowledge, but which some people are clearly better at then others, which makes it perfect game show material. For the most part, the audience is given the answer before the contestants are, and so the panel’s fumblings in the dark appear humorous. This dramatic irony especially creates comedy when guesses like Untermeyer’s mistaking of a tax collector for a mortician hit close to our social understanding of a job.
This episode, however, makes a formal twist in the last case by asking the audience to do the guessing. All of a sudden the viewer realizes the difficulty of the task at hand — or at least I did. Without the help of a television chryon, it’s remarkable that the panelists — even this relatively uncharismatic and tactless panel — get most of the cases right eventually.
The celebrity guest here is also a bit of a curiosity. Elliott Roosevelt was known as an aviator, at the tail-end of the period where there were still famous aviators, but he was also one of the more hawkish members of the foreign policy establishment at the time. Later in life he would be accused of fraud and of working to orchestrate a coup in the Bahamas. The only elected position he would ever hold was two years as mayor of Miami Beach, but because of his familial connections he had a substantial voice in global affairs.
This couldn’t be seen from his appearance on What’s My Line, where he’s treated as an amusing celebrity akin to the previous episode’s guest, Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto. It wouldn’t be the last time that a game show would be used to launder the image of a political or economic elite who had some unsavoury things in his locker.. Just ask the current President.
Coming up next: I ponder Chester A. Riley’s line, as he never seems to be working.
The Eternal Couch Potato 