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 newspaper columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, with John Charles Daly as host (described as a “moderator.”) This episode was directed by Paul Monroe and aired on CBS on March 2, 1950. It is available on YouTube.
What happened: Thankfully Governor Hoffman seems to be gone, with Arlene and Dorothy both on the panel tonight. The first subject is Cormac McGowan from the Bronx, presumably a writer of literary Westerns. Arlene challenges him to smell a handkerchief, which he incorrectly identifies as having the scent of lavender.
McGowan is identified as a “house detective”, which Daly evidently rules is different from Hoffmann’s guess of “detective.” Apparently this is like a hotel security guard. Daly assures the guest that his work benefits society, which I find a little dubious. The group really pushes the consultation rules and manages to get it correct.
The next guest is Linda Stone from the Bronx, wearing a floral-print dress that may have been hideous in colour. Dorothy gets her to do the rumba. Everyone guesses sexualized occupations, but she’s a housewife. (This seems like cheating.) She says that she works both days and nights, which sounds like the mothers I know. Untermeyer gets it shortly afterwards.
Up next is the celebrity guest, jazz musician Artie Shaw. Dorothy recognizes his voice, and tries to get him to talk more. She asks if he’s dark and handsome, and he responds “kind of.” This is apparently enough for her to get it.
We go back to ordinary people, namely William Alman from Brooklyn. Untermeyer tries to get him to recite Shakespeare, which he just mumbles in response to. He’s an exterminator. Dorothy seems like she’s getting close before saying that she has no idea where she’s going. Alman says that he doesn’t work in a stinky place, which sounds dubious to me. Untermeyer gets it, and everyone says good night to each other.
What I watched: Again, we can see What’s My Line gradually inching towards being the show that (older) people remember. Here the show takes the radical move of having multiple women on the panel, with both Dorothy and Arlene making a good impression. Certainly they’re better than the vaguely sleazy-looking Governor Hoffman. Sadly, the segment where the viewer is also left in the dark doesn’t recur here.
Probably the most interesting segment, at least from a sociological perspective, is the one where the guest is a housewife. This segment asks us, and the panel, to think of being a housewife as work — which raises no small amount of categorical confusion, as when they ask whether Stone is in a profession or requires training.
For me, these questions immediately call to mind the writing of Italian feminist Silvia Federici, who argued that the kind of unpaid housework done by women was a crucial part of capitalism. Drawing on Marx’s labour theory of value, Federici presented the housewife as the ultimate exploited worker, receiving no compensation for her reproductive labour. This famously lead Federici to call for wages for housework, although this was always more of a symbolic demand than a detailed policy proposal.
However, What’s My Line had no real idea what to do with this confusion. The contradictions of the role of the postwar housewife — seen both as a valued labourer and a frivolous woman with an easy life — would be born out in conflicts ranging from stock sitcom plots to debates within second-wave feminism. Here on WML, it’s just another example of the gendered world of work. Men are allowed to be many things, but women must always be women first — lady wrestlers, hat-check girls, housewives, and other professions which first and foremost require a performance of femininity.
Other than that conceptual strangeness, the episode is mostly easy going. I did find myself wishing we could spend some more time with the guests. For instance, our dour-faced exterminator talks vaguely in the questioning about how he got that job. I’d love to hear more about how and why someone becomes an exterminator in 1940s New York. But alas, What’s My Line is not interested in sociological detail. Once the job is revealed, the game is done: one’s title is ultimately all that really matters.
What else was on?: NBC aired something called Night Court Drama, which I assume the 1980s comedy was a spin-off of. DuMont aired a Charlie Chan movie, while ABC had the variety show Stop the Music. Arlene Frances actually did double duty, also hosting the ABC show Blind Date at 9 PM. What’s My Line was pre-taped, so there was no scrambling between studios.
Coming up next: The Life of Riley once more delves into dysfunctional relationships.
The Eternal Couch Potato 