Line #8 Trivia/WhatsMyLine


1	* ActorAllusion:
2	** When Creator/BobHope appeared as the Mystery Guest on the December 12, 1954 episode, Arlene asked several questions that showed she was closing in on the correct answer, then went for the laugh by guessing "[[Film/RoadTo Bing Crosby]]". It got a massive reaction partly because, unbeknownst to the blindfolded panel, Hope had signed in using [[Music/BingCrosby Crosby's name]] instead of his own.
3	** When Creator/AnneBancroft appeared as the Mystery Guest on the July 1, 1962 episode, she gave her first "Yes" and "No" answers in American Sign Language before saying anything, a reference to her performance as Anne Sullivan in both the stage and film versions of ''Theatre/TheMiracleWorker''.
4	* {{Blooper}}: There have been a couple of incidents with intruders on the show:
5	** On the May 10, 1959 episode, at the end of the Mystery Guest segment featuring Milton Berle, a man rushed onstage, shook hands with Berle, and disappeared as quickly as he came in. Berle ad-libbed that it was his agent, then asked the question everybody had on their minds: "Who was he?" [[https://youtu.be/sI5-8AZYbW0?t=23m Here's the video of the incident (starts at 23:00)]].
6	** During the Mystery Guest segment on the October 7, 1962 episode, an intruder managed to get into the soundstage while the panelists were blindfolded. He was quickly removed from the stage by Johnny Olson and Gil Fates, and after a brief explanation from John Daly, the round proceeded as normal, with guest panelist Creator/VictorBorge joking about the incident on his next question. According to [[WordOfGod Gil Fates]], the intruder was supposedly trying to promote a personal dating service. [[https://youtu.be/LDAi8WI2PUw?t=19m Here's the video of the incident (starts at 19:00)]].
7	* CrossDressingVoices: Creator/CarolBurnett kept the panel on their toes by affecting a deep male-sounding voice. Buddy Hackett, who had co-starred with her in a short-lived sitcom called ''Stanley'', recognized her anyway.
8	* DiedDuringProduction:
9	** Bennett Cerf died in 1971 during the syndicated run. Episodes featuring him on the panel aired after his passing, leading to confusion from viewers. Some even complained it was in poor taste, to which Gil Fates replied in a form letter that they were merely posthumously celebrating his work, carefully not mentioning the production costs that would've been wasted had the episodes been left unaired.
10	** Shortly after taping for the syndicated version ended, Larry Blyden was killed in a car accident in Morocco. A handful of episodes aired after his death.
11	* HeAlsoDid: Wally Bruner, after leaving the syndicated show, hosted a syndicated do-it-yourself home-improvement show called ''Wally's Workshop''. Johnny Olson was the announcer.
12	* HostilityOnTheSet:
13	** Nobody in the cast or on the crew cared for Hal Block, the show's first comedian panelist, for his crude, blunt questions, his leering at the female contestants (including, at least once, literal skirt-chasing on stage), and his refusal to conform to the show's policy of etiquette and good manners. Audiences enjoyed him, but reviewers - as might be expected in the famously repressed [[TheFifties '50s]] - singled him out for their harshest criticisms. His fate was sealed when he mocked the sponsor, Stopette spray deodorant, with the line "make your armpit a charmpit". In early 1953, when his contract was up, it was not renewed, and Block was replaced by a succession of much more intellectual, sophisticated comedians (Steve Allen, Fred Allen, Ernie Kovacs, Johnny Carson, etc.)
14	** Dorothy Kilgallen didn't endear herself to her co-stars by refusing to take anything they said to her in confidence, often publishing it in her next column.
15	* KeepCirculatingTheTapes:
16	** The {{missing episode}}s mentioned below are not part of Goodson-Todman's archives, which means they're not rerun on television.
17	** The April 18, 1965 show had its mystery guest segment with Marian Anderson featured in the 25th anniversary special (see below). The rushed editing of that special resulted in a portion of the master copy being cut up for the clips, and then reassembled in the wrong order, rendering the mystery guest segment unwatchable. A corrected version is up on Website/YouTube, but the TV reruns still use the mashed-up copy.
18	** Several shows exist in copies that include the commercials, network promos, and idents that were in the original broadcast. While they are of no interest for reruns, they do hold some historical interest and can be seen on [=YouTube=]. Also, as of February 2018, Amazon has 40 episodes of the show from 1955 available, complete with the original commercials.
19	* LongRunner: Ran on CBS for 17 years and 7 months, making it the longest-running game show in primetime history. It was also the longest-running game show overall until ''Series/ThePriceIsRight'' eclipsed it in April 1990.
20	* MilestoneCelebration: For its 25th anniversary as a series, a special two-hour retrospective aired in May 1975 on ABC Late Night. It was interesting in a number of respects:
21	## The show's presence on ABC, given that the original show aired on CBS and the current show was in syndication;
22	## Virtually all of the footage (except for a clip introducing then-sitting President UsefulNotes/GeraldFord) came from the original CBS run (and all in black-and-white kinescope--the Gerald Ford clip, which was available in color, was [[DeliberatelyMonochrome shown in monochrome]] to match the rest of the footage);
23	## The special was hosted by original host John Daly (who was not present at all during the syndicated run), although Arlene Francis and co-creator Mark Goodson were there;
24	## The syndicated version, which had been airing since 1968, was about to wrap up its successful seven-year run.
25	** Additionally, everyone who appeared on the show--celebrities and regular contestants alike--had to sign a release giving Goodson-Todman permission to air clips featuring them (even Goodson-Todman themselves). Despite all these quirks, it was critically well-received and seen as a very nice celebration of television's then-longest-running game show.
26	** The editing of the clips was done under deadline pressure in three days using the original episodes' only existing prints. Several of those prints were accidentally destroyed or damaged in the editing process and some film was left unspooled on the editing floor after the rented time at the facility they were using ran out. Those incidents led to some of the MissingEpisode examples mentioned below.
27	* MissingEpisode: Most of the first two-and-a-half years are lost because at the time they were judged worthless and unfit to rerun (the only reason kinescopes were made in the first place was as proof that sponsors' ads were shown correctly) and destroyed for their silver content. (An exception was made for the February 2, 1950 premiere, which can be seen [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxMBDPoeL_A here.]] As its copyright was not renewed, it's in the public domain.) For obvious reasons, magazines such as ''TV Guide'' didn't list the Mystery Guest's identity, and producer Gil Fates' work notes are the only resource as to the content of these early missing episodes. This went on until about July 1952, when Fates learned of the practice and saw to it that the films be saved and stored.\
28	Their value became apparent in 1975 when many episode segments were compiled for the special ''What's My Line? At 25'', and again in the mid-1990s when the series became the backbone of Game Show Network. In total, of the 876 episodes that the original series shot from 1950 to 1967, about 763 of them circulate among collectors. The remaining 113 have been lost to the ravages of time. The 1966-67 episodes, which were broadcast in color, only survive as black-and-white prints due to CBS junking the color videotapes.\
29	The original American version fares far better than many international versions, however. Only a handful of complete editions of the British ''What's My Line?'' from 1951-63 are known to survive. For example, in the "cultural exchange" in 1953 which saw British ''Line'' regular Barbara Kelly appear on the American version while Arlene Francis appeared on the British version, the episodes with Kelly on the American panel have survived, but those with Francis on the British panel have not. Also, only one episode of the French-Canadian ''Chacun son métier'' is known to circulate, although the appearances of regular panelist Nicole Germain (January 23, 1955) and moderator Louis Morisset (January 18, 1959) on the American show do survive.\
30	Here are some surviving shows of interest:
31	** The August 2, 1950 show is available at The Paley Center for Media. Mystery Guest: William O'Dwyer (New York City Mayor)
32	** A kinescope containing the long-lost October 1, 1950 show was found in 2016. The bad news: most of the fourth game and the entire fifth game are not on there. The good news: said kinescope also includes the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6LVCbg_gfk last few minutes]] of an episode of ''Celebrity Time'', a show that is otherwise entirely lost.
33	** The April 29, 1951 show is available at The University of Wisconsin Center for Film and Research. Mystery Guest: Hedda Hopper (Gossip Columnist). It was made available on Website/YouTube in August 2017, as shown here in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbpYEIcVJwA this video]].
34	** An audio-only portion of the December 2, 1951 show (only has part of Game 1 with Mrs. Virginia Hendershot as the Steam Shovel Operator from Bound Brook, NJ) exists.
35	** The January 6, 1952 show is available at the Paley Center for Media. Mystery Guest: Oscar Hammerstein II (one half of the songwriting team of Creator/RodgersAndHammerstein)
36	** Only a portion of the January 24, 1954 show is known to survive, which was best-known for having Music/DeanMartin and Creator/JerryLewis as the Mystery Guest duo. It was seen in ''What's My Line? At 25'', and it is believed that it got destroyed during the assembling of the special. The complete episode is rumored to exist in Jerry Lewis' collection, and people even claimed to have seen the ''full'' segment, with Dean and Jerry signing in, but nothing has been proven yet.
37	** The February 21, 1954 show featuring Creator/LucilleBall as the Mystery Guest seems to be missing from Goodson-Todman's archives, since it was never rerun on GSN. It does survive, however, and was made available by Shokus Video years ago, as shown in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sye0qwQ0nbI this video]].
38	** A portion of episode #097 (April 6, 1952), the full episode #533 (October 2, 1960), and the full milestone 800th episode (January 23, 1966) exist at the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
39	** In 2015, it was discovered that the March 26, 1967 show is available at The Paley Center for Media, and, apparently, was only recently donated to them. Guest panelists were Creator/SteveAllen and Creator/JayneMeadows, Game 1 had Creator/OrsonBean as a Mystery Guest, Game 2 had a normal contestant in Frank Mills as the president of a shopping cart company, and Game 3 had Creator/SidCaesar and Imogene Coca as the Mystery Guest duo.
40	** An April 1967 episode featuring Creator/CandiceBergen as the Mystery Guest and a June 1967 episode featuring Creator/BettyGrable and F. Lee Bailey as the Mystery Guests were destroyed in their entirety in the editing process of the ''At 25'' special.
41	** An audio-only excerpt from the otherwise lost June 18, 1967 show was found in, of all places, an LP called ''The Age of Television''. This album, which was put out by [[Creator/RCARecords RCA]] in 1971, featured interviews with TV personalities about the medium's first 25 years. One of these interviews concerned ''What's My Line?'' and included audio from the mystery guest segment featuring Betty Grable from that now-lost episode.
42	* OldShame: Surprisingly, it may well be the syndicated run. The ABC special ''What's My Line? At 25'' never mentioned the syndicated version whatsoever, and featured no more than '''two''' clips from it, both in monochrome. Then again, they only had 90 minutes (minus commercials and host segments) for the clips, and the syndicated Mystery Guest segments probably didn't seem as noteworthy as the CBS ones. Today, though, a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOGIFVIwRaU Leonard Nimoy]] segment might hold as much entertainment value as an [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rZEl46Y3AE Ed Sullivan]] one.
43	* TheOtherDarrin: Almost every female brought in to replace Dorothy Kilgallen.[[note]]However, it made it possible for Music/FrankSinatra to appear as a mystery guest (which he did on November 27, 1966); he previously snubbed the show due to his feud with Kilgallen, which stemmed from an exposé she published on the singer in 1956 called "The Frank Sinatra Story".[[/note]]
44	* ThePeteBest: The panel had two regular members in its earliest years who were dismissed for various reasons and are now largely overlooked except by the most seasoned ''What's My Line?'' fans.[[note]] Their cases are not helped by the fact that their tenures on the panel include a large number of {{Missing Episode}}s.[[/note]]
45	** Poet Louis Untermeyer was the original literary member of the panel, but Bennett Cerf recalled that he had an unfortunate habit of signing any piece of paper put in front of him, and he unwittingly signed papers supporting radical groups which led to his being branded a Communist sympathiser (though he was nothing of the sort). Goodson-Todman stood by Untermeyer for as long as they could, but when anti-Communist protesters began picketing the studio where ''What's My Line?'' was recorded in early 1951, they had no choice but to dismiss Untermeyer and replace him with Bennett Cerf.
46	** Hal "Dimples" Block was the panel's original "comic relief", the most likely to ask silly or suggestive questions. However, he was also the most likely to be warned by the network for inappropriate behaviour on air, and after ignoring one warning too many, he was fired in 1953 and replaced by Steve Allen.[[note]] As Steve Allen had already been sitting in for an absent Bennett Cerf on Block's final show, the latter's dismissal had the interesting side effect of shifting Cerf from the seat between Dorothy Kilgallen and Arlene Francis to the far right seat, where he remained for the next fourteen years.[[/note]]
47	* ScrewedByTheNetwork: CBS issued an order cancelling all their prime time game shows at the end of the 1966-67 season, claiming they were no longer preferable for those hours (not surprising, considering Fred Silverman, notorious hater of game shows, was an executive at the time). No one on the staff was ever notified with Bennett Cerf reading about it in ''The New York Times''.
48	* [[TheCharacterDiedWithHim The Show Died With Him]]: Robert Lembke died unexpectedly in January of 1989, ending the German version after 34 years. Though they would bring it back for 6 more years in 1999.
49	* WhatCouldHaveBeen: After Fred Allen's death in 1956, Goodson-Todman were ready to sign Creator/ErnieKovacs up as a regular panelist, but he eventually decided he wasn't interested. Therefore, the second male seat became a rotating seat. A few years later, Johnny Carson was considered to permanently fill that seat, but he was already busy with his own game show, ''Who Do You Trust?''
50	** Apparently, a similar situation happened upon Dorothy Kilgallen's death in 1965; TV Guide reported there was a search to replace her as a regular panelist. Some of the contenders for her position were Phyllis Newman, Sue Oakland, Suzy Knickerbocker, Creator/BettyWhite and Jayne Meadows. As with Mr. Allen, her seat ultimately became a rotating one.
51	** A daytime version was planned by Creator/{{CBS}} in 1963, but John Daly made it clear he would not host a five-day-a-week game show. He was so closely associated with the show by that point that CBS shelved the project instead of finding a new host.
52	** A revival was planned as early as 1981, pending the success of a ''Series/ToTellTheTruth'' revival from 1980. Details are sketchy and the revival never went past the talking stage and few if any other details are known, other than it was to be a five-a-week show.
53	** CBS tried to pick up a version (co-produced by [[Creator/MiramaxFilms Miramax Television]]) for the fall of 1999, but it didn't happen due to CBS thinking the show was "too costly and ambitious".
54	** A [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMz0xi3a42M pilot for a revival]] hosted by [[Series/NightCourt Harry Anderson]] (with Creator/CatherineBell, Creator/BryanCranston, Creator/BettyWhite and Creator/AlFranken on the panel) was taped in 2000. However, CBS passed it over in favor of ''Series/{{Survivor}}''. Imagine what TV would've been had they picked this up instead...
55	** Creator/DavidHasselhoff said in 2008 that he was going to work with Creator/FremantleMedia to revive the show. Nothing happened there.
56	** Another pilot was taped in the fall of 2014 for a potential syndicated revival. Again nothing came out of it.

Context Trivia / WhatsMyLine