Charles Henry 9:22, daly probably got distracted by all the chatter between the panelists, another bug that needed to be worked out, they needed to be quiet and let john wrap up the guest appearance.
Only the 3rd episode and already several much-needed format changes! 1) I was glad to see that John came out to greet the contestants while they were signing in on this one. 2) The placement of John's/the contestant's desk facing the panel on the opposite side of the stage is much better than the previous arrangement, imo. 3) They don't have the chalkboard yet, but it looks to me as if they found a thicker marker for the contestants to write with, which makes their names easier to read. 4) And, of course it's good to see Dorothy and Arlene together on the panel! Has anyone here noticed any other specific improvements?
SaveThe TPC Not really a format change, but it is interesting to me that Artie Shaw was the first MG that was a show business celebrity. Before that we had Phil Rizzuto and Elliot Roosevelt.
SaveThe TPC Most of the changes were the work of director Franklin Heller, who joined the show on episode 2 and called for these revisions. He also made significant improvements in the camera angles -- which (in the first two shows) definitely needed improvement.
dizzyology I've grown to be too anti-Fates in my comments lately, I think, which is the only I refrained from making the same point you just did. The improvements, to my mind, were mostly the work of the director, Franklin Heller, not Gil Fates (who was there from before the show ever debuted, just not as formal producer until the 4th show. If he chose Heller, he deserves credit for that, yes, but most of what's different here are camera angles/setup/how segments are introduced and concluded, which would ordinarily be the director's job, not the producer's.)
What's My Line? I've been trying to find where, in his book, Gil claimed to have become producer only in the 4th show. True, he lists defects in the first show, but he goes on to say "The critics were kind in that they mostly ignored *us*." and "Somebody [at CBS] liked *us* because *we* were installed {opposite RQL's The Show Goes On." He seems to be clearly considering himself as an integral part of the team right from the start. Isn't it possible that it's just the title "Executive Producer" that began with the 4th show, but that GF's role was essentially the same?
dizzyology All good questions, and it might be clearer in the book than I remember (my memory is terrible). But I do very clearly remember his borderline insulting description of the debut programs and his posturing as the program's savior. But I don't have the stomach to reread the book tonight to try to nail down what he said. :)
The song the jitterbugging jukebox playing fella is playing is Les Brown's version of "Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief." It is fun to see these great old shows. Thanks for sharing with us!
@@sparrow-does-stuff easier to look down at the comments while they have the person's line on screen; and especially in these earlier episodes with the walk of shame portion (which is when I'm typing this)
OMG THEY NEED TO MAKE A MOVIE ABOUT THIS, Everything about the Life of WML and also like include the cast, how they came to all start, the personal lives of the main cast, based in the 50’s !! Omg I pray this would happen wow
Oh, yes, they can have a miniseries, or a limited series that lasts 20 episodes or something. With references to the unfortunate demise of one of the panelists and the conspiracy theories behind it, and lots of cameos of contemporary famous people playing the role of 50s and 60s famous people (they had Reagan on, that's more major than they knew). Imagine Marishka Hargatay playing Jayne Mansfield briefly.
3:24 What the heck. He actually guessed it! This is the first and only time I've seen the panel actually wild guess the occupation. And they didn't give it to him.
psygn0sis it’s odd they didn’t give it to him and yes this is the first time it’s happened and only on the 3rd episode! It has happened a handful of times, there is a compilation on this UA-cam channel.
psygn0sis, True! Great catch!! 🧐😃🙃 Arlene Francis came pretty close to guessing the contestants line on the shows second(?) episode. Search: What’s My Line? - Arlene Francis’s first show! - Elliot Roosevelt (Feb 16, 1950) The first guest is Caroline Weston. Arlene states for her ‘Free Guess’ that she believes the young lady to be a girl athlete (3:25). Arlene didn’t throw all her chips in on her Free Guess, but I think she already had Caroline figured out when she walked/interacted with the panel. At 2:57 you can hear Arlene say, ‘Ooh!’ after Caroline caught the object the governor tossed to her. And she looked pretty pleased/confident with the direction as to which she would point her questions as Caroline walked back towards Mr. Daly. At 5:13 Arlene comments: ‘... if she were a Lady Wrestler she might work with somebody.’ I used to watch these in random order, then decided to try to watch them in the order they were aired. In the comments from the first episode , I noticed another viewer already had the same idea. 💡🙃 I’m hoping the site I’m using is accurate. It’s called FANDOM, or wiki fandom(?) Be well, stay kind and blessings to all ~
a key to the success of so many of these game shows is how much fun the people on the show are having. you can see the enthusiasm and enjoyment of john, dorothy, and arlene right away. half the fun of this show was hearing the audience be in on the jokes.
I am thrilled to have come across the "What's My Line" channel. My DVR is always set to record WML during the two weeks each year when Game Show Network airs the reruns. WML was a great, classic game show, with an emphasis on grace and manners. I'm struck by how neat everyone's handwriting used to be. I chose to comment on this video because Mr. Untermeyer's time on the program is nearing the end but I thought he was very good on WML; maybe he wasn't exciting but in the first episodes, he guessed several lines. His life went into sort of a downward spiral after being let go from "What's My Line"...and it took a while for him to pull out of it.
Notice when Artie Shaw signs in, John Daly immediately announces him as a Mister. It took the producers a while to figure out the comic potential of WML mystery guest, notably the comic potential of the panel asking questions of a panelist they assume is of the wrong gender.
It's really amazing to see these early episodes. You can see they haven't quite worked out a little details yet. I noticed the scorecard used to hang over the front of the desk, and then later it's on top of the desk entirely.
Around 9:26 : Daly, trying to get trough all the talking around him; "And thanks for being our guest at What's My NAME"(!) Well, things are not always that easy ;)
Thanks for pointing this out-- I had noticed it when I watched the show for the first time a couple of weeks ago but forgot to note it, and then I couldn't remember which one it was in. So funny-- and what makes it even funnier is that the show is still so new at this point, no one even *notices* the mistake!
What's My Line? Yes, and when even Daly didn't seem to notice that little error, it tells something about the general confusion around the concept! :D They all seemed to me, like a group of elite-pupils, the very first day at school. All very eager to show their best, and their good-will as well..
I noticed this too -- especially so because I have recently been reading Arlene Francis's memoirs. "What's My Name?" was actually a radio game show in which Arlene appeared early in her career. Here are a couple of quotes from page 44 of "Arlene Francis: A Memoir" by Arlene Francis with Florence Rome (Simon & Schuster, 1978): 1) "'What's My Name?' was one of the first game shows on radio, and the contestants were selected from the audience. Budd [Hulick] and I impersonated various figures in public life and gave a series of clues to each contestant. If they guessed who we were supposed to be on the first clue, they got the terrific sum of ten dollars; on the second clue, nine dollars and so on." 2) The reason "What's My Name?" was so important in my life was that it was my first experiences with ad-libbing, of saying things which came into my head instead of sticking to a written script." Edit: I'm adding: Joe Postove & Stephanie McCoy to this post in response to your comments on the same subject further down the page.
The pilot for the Simpsons was a disaster too, it’s all about getting bugs worked out. And they did, 17 years later, it’s one of the longest running shows in TV history.😊
Artie Shaw retired from music only four years after this telecast. he spent much of his time writing novels. He lived to be 94 and died in 2004. By the way, he had eight wives.
A clip of this episode was used in the last episode in 1967 when one segment of the program was given over to John showing the panelists scenes from their very first appearances on the program. When the clip came up revealing Arlene's hairstyle (and darker color) a gasp went up from the 1967 audience!
In her memoir, Arlene notes that she started dyeing her hair because she did not like the way her dark hair made her face look on television. Here's her quote from page 14 of "Arlene Francis: A Memoir" by Arlene Francis with Florence Rome (Simon & Schuster, 1978): "When I first got my job in television on "What's My Line?" I got a chance to fool Mother Nature whether she liked it or not, because the dark hair created a halo around my face. (I would have liked a halo around my head, but this one was bad for the camera.) It was the beginning of restructuring what I had been born with, and since that time I've been twenty different colors and styles, but an English beauty, never!" I'm not sure what she thought of as "an English beauty," but I'm sure all of us here who are fans of Arlene's would agree that she was most certainly beautiful!
SaveThe TPC By "English beauty", she may have been referring to how English people, the people of England, typically looked. Her mother was English. She looked more Armenian (of which her father was), than she did English.
***** Yes, I think you're right. Earlier in the same paragraph, she says, "I have described what both my parents looked like, so can there be any question of whom I'd [i]rather[i] have taken after?" Edit: the [i]s were my attempt to duplicate Arlene's use of italics in the book, but it apparently didn't work. I haven't been able to figure out how to make text bold, italicized or underlined in these comments. I can make it look that way when I'm typing, but it always comes out in standard type when the comment gets posted.
Thank you so much for posting this series, Everyone so well behaved, yet more "real" back then. Respect even to the last show, and plenty of "back story" to these people. It was really a kind of New York City happening show when it got rolling. I am 65 now, the Arlene necklace story is still so tragic and romantic, Bennett in college starting Doubleday, and something about sad, Catholic Dorothy still CREEPS ME OUT !! UA-cam is my only T V now and thank you for your time and effort to make, "the good stuff", available again.
This show is great for learning how people spoke back then! Unlike trivia game shows they're having actual conversations, and unlike fictional programs they're not scripted.
you begin to see dorothy's sharp wit appear at 19:07. artie had been married 6 times up until this point, he would marry twice more. and again @ 12:52 when asking if the contestant, "do you paregrinate?" to which john marvelously skirts around because he has no idea what she is asking... john keeps forgetting to flip cards with no answers.
I love watching these old re-runs! For anyone who's trying to learn English as a second language, the host, John Daly, has a command of the language second to none. If you can learn to understand and speak the way he does, you'll be able to go anywhere English is used with no problem.
Curtis Taylor: I had trouble hearing everybody. Microphones weren't as well developed as they are now, either. Thank goodness for technological advances and innovations! 😊
The worst darkness seems to be on the shots that include the sign-in board. I wonder if that camera was adjusted for best legibility of the handwriting on the white paper? Compare the first episode, admittedly with a narrower marker, but almost illegible because the bright areas of the white paper "bleed" into the black line of the signature. I'd guess they tried to avoid that effect by stopping down the iris on the camera lens. Going to chalk on black posterboard proved to be a better solution.
There's also the phenomenon with television shows from this period and into the 1960s of a bright object, like a candle, causing the appearance of a 'dark halo' on screen. I'm only speculating but it's possible that the lighting of the set was not only uneven but too bright for the equipment being used. Note how there are dark halos round the head and shoulders of certain people here. I even wonder if this was committed to tape by filming, as they often did, the display of another television monitor. There could've been excessive shine upon the glass on that monitor causing the dark halos. It would also explain the distortion of shape occasionally due to the curve of the monitor being filmed. I realise I sound like a nerd now!
I tend to disagree. Untermeyer comes off as an educated man and he quips every now and then. There's an entire show built on that very foundation in Q.I
I'm glad Dorothy and Arlene stayed, but these earliest episodes cause me to appreciate Fred Allen more. Hal Block was good, if only he had recognized when "enough was enough."
I'm not a Shaw scholar or anything. If you meant Shaw had a great approach to pop music, sure. As far as him liking pop music, he had a disdain for loud dance jazz, didn't he? When I think of pop music, I think of popular music, music that is easy for people to remember. Glenn Miller had that imo, although, Shaw said he only became popular because of the plane crash/disappearance.
I wondered why they laughed after Dorothy asked Artie Shaw about marriage, but then I googled him and it turned out he was married eight time! Holy cow!
Another observation on these early episodes: I've been working backwards and these first 3, the panel seems to be a bit more aloof, arrogant & high brow. As time went by this seemed to be toned down quite a bit.
They've obviously switched Daly's desk from being on the left side of the stage as it was in the very first episode to the right side of the stage as it would stay for it's 17 year run.
I thought Arlene was going to pull the old "Does this handkerchief smell like chloroform?" trick on the contestant. ;-) But my goodness, correct guess on the first try... that psychologist really knew his stuff. :)
It is remarkable that 2 out of 4 panelists correctly suspected that the first contestant was some type of detective -- though Arlene's comment regarding the handkerchief test ("Well, he's no Sherlock Holmes..." [2:45]) was sort of the opposite. :) In later episodes, I think they would have had to grant the win to the panel without even going on with the questioning, but I guess they hadn't established that rule yet.
WML 1.3 unsponsored. The first time that Louie Untermeyer, Arlene Francis and Dorothy Kilgallen appeared together. It took three episodes to get them together. Gil Fate's book on WML claims G-T had Arlene Francis involved in prototype panels of WML Work in Progress as early as November 1949. G-T's preference for Hoffmann or that ex governor of New Jersey to Arlene is, to me, inexplicable.
soulierinvestments Another quote from Arlene's memoir (page 92): "I've always told everyone I was on 'What's My Line?' from the very beginning, and unless you want to quibble about it, that's true. If you [i]do[i] want to, the fact is that I missed the first show, and my place was taken by ex-Governor Hoffman of New Jersey. I don't honestly remember why I missed it, but I think I had committed myself to something else..." That's from the beginning of Chapter 9, and I'm assuming that the rest of the chapter will be all about "What's My Line?" but I haven't read most of it yet.
SaveThe TPC Thanks for that quote. I'm interested in reading Arlene's bio at some point, but from the reviews on amazon, I get the sense that she spends very, very little time talking about WML in the book.
What's My Line? I haven't read any of the reviews on Amazon, but I completely disagree with that assessment. Chapter 9, as I suspected, is basically devoted to "What's My Line?" and there are many other references to the show throughout the book. I can prove this empirically by telling you that the index lists references to "What's My Line?" on pages 46, 90-91, 92-102 [that's chapter 9], 104, 153, 156, 169, 186-187. Beyond that, having now finished reading it, I can tell you that many other parts of the book shed new light on things that I knew about Arlene from watching "What's My Line?" and from reading comments on your channel. To cite just a few examples, she talks about how much she loved doing the show, "Once More With Feeling" and discusses some of her experiences with it, she shares her emotional reaction to the tragic dumbbell accident (and to the warm support she received from so many of her fans after it happened), and she explains in some detail the various eye problems she's had over the years that sometimes led to her needing to wear an eye patch on the show. (Her explanations differ a bit from Gil Fates's, btw, and I would tend to think she knows best.) Now if someone said the same thing about Bennett Cerf's memoirs, "At Random," I would have to agree. Although he referred to it several times throughout the book also, he did not give much information about "What's My Line?" that you and I don't already know. (Index recap re: WML? = pages 136, 182, 213-15, 274-75, 286.) Having said that, I enjoyed both books thoroughly, including the parts that had nothing to do with "What's My Line?" because they helped me to get to know these two personalities in a way that goes beyond what I could glean for myself from watching them on WML? and to understand at least some of the context of what made them the people that I so enjoy watching on the show.
SaveThe TPC I appreciate the info on the book. By your list, though, the index cites a total of 19 pages where WML is mentioned (presumably, some of those page references are passing references). Assuming the book is at least 200 pages, that would mean at most 10% of it is devoted to WML, the show that brought Arlene her greatest fame, and which she was on for almost 25 years. Doesn't feel like that much to me. This is not to say that I don't want to read it, though, or that those 19 pages don't offer interesting insights on the show. And again, I appreciate your offering your observations into both Arlene's and Bennett's books.
I love how Arlene Francis lends such a sense of class and decorum to the panel. I used to love to wait to see what type of long lovely gown she would wear in the later shows and always at least a beautiful mid-calf cocktail dress with accessories. I was wondering if her heart necklace had something to do with her son. Because it was an open heart of diamonds with a single diamond hanging in it, I was thinking it might represent her son's birth or her anniversary of marriage to Martin Gabel.
The heart-shaped pendant was a gift from Martin Gabel, and she wore it constantly, until it was stolen by a mugger as she was leaving a taxi. That happened in 1988, long after WML had ended.
@@dizzyology7514 I've long wanted that necklace to surface, like on Antiques Road Show, and be returned to their son, Peter Gabel. A more likely explanation is that it got traded for drugs and some douche rocket has it today and has no idea what they have.
You know the panel missed a rare chance to get the character's line right with the first guess, after the free guess. Note what John Daly said, "I can't give you anymore." Not your wrong. Big hint there that the panel did not pick up.
It's counterbalanced by how bad the panel is at guessing the mystery guests at this stage. I was pretty surprised to see how often they didn't get the mystery guest at all, or took a really long time getting there. And this was without the "one question at a time per panelist" rule!
3rd show, up to this point it would seem every contestant is from nyc. definitely an improvement with the new set but they obviously still had some bugs to work out like the lighting, microphones and dropping the guess and contestant walk thru. the show got a whole lot better after untermeyer and hoffman left.
What's My Line? I was too young to have seen the first several years of production. I made the comment above, even though as a youth I looked forward to watching the show with my dad on Sundays at 9:30 Central. "What's My Line' became a staple in our home. I have enjoyed seeing the early years of the production that I missed as a child. Thank you.
And in this episode, it's Dr. Richard Hoffman with a lit cigarette on-screen (but only a teeny bit of a sighting, during the "Good night"s at the program's end).
Sometimes, Louis is delightful and entertaining. Too often he's wordy, professorial, and rambling. Not what this show needs. You can really see the tension between Daly adroitly trying to move the pace along, and the panelists' trying to prolong their questioning and conferencing.
mh K What's My Line? Well, I'm fairly certain it was a *clean* handkerchief! I don't know if it had some type of perfume (*not* lavender-based, apparently) on it that Arlene wanted to see if he could identify, or if it was simply the scent of her laundry detergent, but I'm sure she would have been just as horrified as both of you at the thought of offering him a *used* handkerchief -- especially if she were the one who had used it! ;)
I'm betting this is the first time an occupation is guessed with the "free guess". He didn't specify "House" detective, but did say "detective", but the obviously chose to ignore it. I can't believe this episode has been up only 5 days, but there are already over 140 comments. There are usually just a handful of comments on other episodes.
I admire G-T's genius for casting WML. It may be that they wanted to audition Dorothy and Arlene on separate broadcasts. Still, they got Arlene, Dorothy, and Louie all together by the third broadcast. I don't admire them for The Walk of Shame.
I would think that they would dispense with that Mr. X for the mystery celebrity quite soon. I mean c'mon, c'mon, He's a celebrity. I think the lack of good lighting may have had an effect on the writer's skulls.
In the first game, for the second time in as many broadcasts, a panelist -- Dr. H -- pretty much identified the occupation in the wild guess. Eventually The Wild Guess was the place for amusing lines and observations [probably thanks in large part to Hal Block in the early days]. However, at this stage of development, if I were G-T I would have been concerned about the whole idea.
soulierinvestments I was surprised that John didn't declare the game over when 2 of the 4 panelists correctly identified the first contestant as a detective in the free guesses! I think a couple of years later (maybe even a couple of months?) that is *exactly* what he would have done, and that type of thing did happen a few times. But I guess maybe they hadn't fully established the rules yet by then? Or maybe they just had no idea how they would fill the rest of the time on the show if the first contestant's segment was over so quickly!
soulierinvestments Yes, this demonstrates vividly the weakness of the "free guess" idea -- if the panel is good, there's no fun. The spot ends, the contestant doesn't get any money, the panel feels apologetic and the audience is bored. I agree that G-T ought to have recognized the problem, but they obviously didn't -- not for many years, anyway.
Is it possible that the wild guess segment was never meant to end the contest- just to see how close they could come? it would have been problematic to end a game that early and possibly run out of show before the half hour was up.
At the very beginning, the wild guesses were probably intended as serious efforts. But as early as this program (only the third WML produced) it was becoming clear that there was awkwardness (and little entertainment value) if the panel guessed -- or came close to-- the occupation right off the bat. (The panel actually got the occupation on 9 known occasions over the run of the show, and those of the 9 that are available for viewing support the notion that the idea was fundamentally flawed.) It would have made sense to drop the free guesses early on, but they were retained for five years, primarily with the idea that the guesses would provide an opportunity for wisecracks by the panel that might raise a laugh. Steve Allen was very good at such quips, and Hal Block often got a chuckle out of the audience. But the jokes became formulaic and tired, and they never generated enough laughter to justify the time they took. Finally, on April 17, 1955, the free guess concept was given its overdue funeral.
I was born in 1928 and being a housewife was a "job" alright. You were wife, mother, purchaser, cleaner, cook, driver (if you were lucky to have a car). It was WORK. Imagine trying to do all that if your husband didn't help? And few did.
@@1928gerry I remember seeing the washing machine and ringer that my grandmother used, and that was an upgrade. Then hanging it out on the line, which I used to love helping her do, then bringing it down and ironing all of it. M, no one has an iron. most things come out wrinkle free. So, being a house wife was a real job. With no days off or nights, if you had children. Oh and she was also a deputy sheriff in a small town on top of all of it. I bow down to the women of that time. but then again she also grew up on a farm in Indiana and literally had to feed chickens etc before she even went to school. So hard work was just something one did. I'll be forever grateful for the example she set for me.
Purple Capricorn From what I've read, a lot of people find him stuffy. I find him avuncular, of the same general type as Bennett, which makes sense considering they chose Bennett as his replacement (and note they were both from the literary world). It's also not fair for us to really judge him harshly on the basis of the very, very few of his shows we have available today, especially when most of them are from the very, very start of the show, when it was a bit stiff and stodgy overall. He was on the panel for over a year, and I bet if we had more of his later episodes available, he would be more fondly remembered for his time on WML.
I don't think he's all that bad myself. He's a fairly sharp cookie and if you notice, he flirts with Arlene somewhat (in a very classy way of course!) and she seems to genuinely like him. If anyone is stuffy it's the blasted psychiatrist, not Untermeyer. Stuffed shirt much? :/
He was married a total of eight times, although two of those were annulled. He once joked that he started his letters, "My dearest darling and members of the jury."
He was not proud of any of this, either. Each divorce was a painful one for him. Having to appear before HUAC was also very stressful for him, as well.
+Anna Ferrara Yeah, i played along without looking at her occupation. At frst I thought she was a model of some type being that she looks tall, thin, and has pretty striking facial features.
What's My Line? The incomplete episode of Fred's final show is darned interesting. Incomplete WML kinescopes do not happen often; the whole mystery guest sequence turned up missing. Did the kinescope machine malfunction? Or was there something in Dinah Shore's appearance that night [positive or negative] that got it cut from the record?? And we will never know at this point.
soulierinvestments My theory is that they cut out Dinah's segment and gave it to her personally. It's just speculation, but I can't imagine any other reason. If that was the case, I guess we're lucky they didn't give her the whole film. This is the only surviving episode I'm aware of that's incomplete.
Learned from this early show that hand writing analysis was part of the rationale for signing in. Interesting. By today's standards the meet n greet with panelists at times was a tad weird.
This is.director Franklin Heller's first broadcast This may account for the set improvement. Gil Fates in his book wrote in passing that the early set was lit like a police line up. Yes, but frankly the kinescope process of 1950 may account for why the program seems to be in the dark.
In my experience with the material I have available, almost all the early kinescopes look this way-- shots start off horribly overexposed and gradually settle down to watchable contrast levels, then are followed by underexposed segments, back and forth. Lighting on set may have been a factor, but I really think it's more a matter of the primitive nature of kinescope technology at this stage. When the same single camera shot starts off overexposed and then becomes "readable", it's not the set lighting that's changing. By the 60s, the same essential process of pointing a film camera at a live TV monitor yielded almost film-quality results, at least for a static show like WML. Comparing the 60s kinescopes against these early ones is pretty startling.
Zardon M I don't entirely understand your question. Kinescoping refers to the process of pointing a motion picture (not TV) camera at a monitor and filming the results. Videotaping records an electrical signal direct from the TV cameras. They're entirely different processes. I don't know whether the videotaped shows were kinescoped using the live broadcast signal or after the fact using the video tapes, but regardless, the process is the same and the flaws inherent in it are the same (flat lighting, exaggerated shadows, high contrast). By the 1960s, specially tuned equipment had been developed to improve the results of the kinescoping process, including recording the film at a frame rate to match the video signal (standard film frame rates ordinarily do not line up with video frame rates). That's why they look so much better. It has nothing to do with videotape.
Zardon M You didn't pay attention to a thing I wrote, did you? How exactly do you think videotapes were transferred to film? By kinescoping them, of *course*. Sigh. Believe whatever you want to believe.
It does seem that the shots are darker when John and the contestant are standing near the sign-in board than when the camera is trained on either the panel or the moderator/contestant desk, so studio lighting probably plays a role in the way this early episode looks as well.
Dorothy and Dr. Hoffman (I enjoy his beverages by the way) were on to his line as detective, and perhaps Dr. Hoffman should have gotten credit for his guess.
Lucky the first contestant wasn't allergic to whatever was on that handkerchief. Also, I wish Arlene didn't wear those huge pearls; they totally take away from the subtle beauty of the heart necklace.
After watching this very early episode, I don't know if I would have stayed with it. Some of the things the panelists said and did were irritating, and, well I guess for 1950 it was still a hit or miss proposition in putting together a new TV show. Knowing what we know now, "What's My Line" probably progressed more or as much as any other show in it's presentation. But when Dorothy uses a word like peregrinate I doubt the folks in Washtub West Virginia appreciated it very much. Me? I like the challenges to my vocabulary that WML presented through the years. Thanks for this upload!
I wish I had Bennett's "Random House American College Dictionary," but the definition of peregrinate from Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition is "vi (1593) : to travel esp. on foot : WALK ~ vt : to walk or travel over : TRAVERSE." At least John quickly asked Dorothy to rephrase her question on that one, so her alternate phrasing pretty much defined it for me (and the contestant & contemporary audience) even before I looked it up. I consider myself fairly well educated, but I don't remember ever hearing that word before. In later years, Dorothy often used the word "bifurcated" to refer to clothing such as pants/trousers. I learned that one from her too. My dictionary confirms that it means "two-pronged" or "divided into two branches or parts." There are many things about this and other very early episodes that make me think that if it had been in competition with other, faster-paced, better-produced, more interesting shows at the time, it never would have lasted long enough to evolve into the highly entertaining program so many of us enjoy. I suspect, though, that early television did not have all that much of better quality to offer, so it persisted and became better and better, in my opinion, as time went on.
SaveThe TPC Joe Postove I thought "peregrinate" meant "to travel in between different countries", wandering about, almost like a nomade, or a stranger?
2:25 This is the weirdest and most entertaining examination so far! 3:25 I'm confused, what's the point of the free guesses if getting it right doesn't win the game? 22:53 What did Daly think was wrong with this question?! 😂
As a teacher and married woman and the daughter of a dedicated housewife and teacher (2 over-full-time jobs), I am delighted that this early episode recognized "housewife" as an actual line of work. But what's up with her "No" reply to the question "Do you work at things that give value to people?"...?! There wasn't nearly enough hesitation before the "No"! A housewife works at innumerable "things" like providing a reliable source of nourishing food, providing books and other character-building resources, facilitating healthy play among children, maintaining a clean, safe environment for the young, etc etc etc. If working daily at projects like those that directly enable young human persons to develop into healthy, ethical, responsible beings isn't giving value to people, I don't know what is... but how did they understand this phrase at the time?
Dorothy Kilgallen @ 19:07: "Have you ever been married?" Sometimes a simple "yes" and not offering TMI can definitely avoid a lot of other potentially embarrassing questions 😂🤣🤣
Nothing. I think Mr. Daly was referring to the fact that most people at that time, watching that show , wouldn't know that word off the top of their head. He hoped that she would rephrase using some more generic language.
You can't judge the lighting well on the basis of this copy. The show as broadcast looked nothing like this kinescope. The early kinescopes were prone to lighting problems that caused portions to be heavily overexposed, compounded by whatever effect age had on the film itself. That said, the set couldn't have looked cheaper! I find it strange how tight the camera shots are, often framing two panelists in the same close up.
Joe Postove Hard as it is to believe sometimes, if you were watching this live in 1950 it would have looked just like a videotaped program does to us today with that "live" look. But we of course will never see any TV program of any kind older than 1958 with that kind of look where the videotape still exists! (one exception being the Ford Edsel variety special from late 1957, the first program CBS ever videotaped for broadcast which still exists in that format).
Joe Postove It's comparing apples and oranges-- and bear in mind, videotape didn't even exist in rudimentary form until the mid 50s, by which point the entire medium of television had evolved considerably. A properly preserved videotape will deteriorate more than a properly preserved film will. Usually, though, you're looking at improperly preserved videotapes from the most primitive days of videotape, aged 60 years. They're not going to look good. But videotape was a clearly superior format to kinescope in the 50s. The reason it wasn't used is that-- incredibly-- it was far cheaper to archive films than videotape. Some live shows were still being routinely kinescoped well into the 1970s.
![What's My Line? - Chuck Dressen; Abe Burrows [panel] (Sep 28, 1952)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/iROvYBc1wMU/mqdefault.jpg)
![What's My Line? - Jean Hersholt; Artie Shaw [panel] (Aug 31, 1952)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/IOef-5vI0V0/mqdefault.jpg)
Did I hear Mr. Daly suddenly re-name the program calling it "What's My Name' at one point?
Charles Henry 9:22, daly probably got distracted by all the chatter between the panelists, another bug that needed to be worked out, they needed to be quiet and let john wrap up the guest appearance.
Yes, you did! There is a video on this site that has WML bloopers that I watched last night, give that a try. I think you'll like it!
yes!
Bennett would have had a field day if he were part of the panel.
I think Whats My Name? would be a considerably easier game show if they still signed in in the beginning and a lot harder if they didn't
I absolutely LOVE that they have a housewife on the show! It certainly is a type of work if you do it well! :)
WM M %
It’s still work if you don’t do it well.
One of the hardest jobs.
Wives and mothers WORK 24/7365, and MOST do so out of LOVE FOR THEIR FAMILY😊.
The question about value was wrong. Housewives do incredibly valuable work!
I just caught John Daly in a blooper! When the house detective was departing he told him thank you for playing on "What's My Name"!
Yep lol
Thank you! I was going to comment and ask if anyone else heard that.
Only the 3rd episode and already several much-needed format changes!
1) I was glad to see that John came out to greet the contestants while they were signing in on this one.
2) The placement of John's/the contestant's desk facing the panel on the opposite side of the stage is much better than the previous arrangement, imo.
3) They don't have the chalkboard yet, but it looks to me as if they found a thicker marker for the contestants to write with, which makes their names easier to read.
4) And, of course it's good to see Dorothy and Arlene together on the panel!
Has anyone here noticed any other specific improvements?
SaveThe TPC Not really a format change, but it is interesting to me that Artie Shaw was the first MG that was a show business celebrity. Before that we had Phil Rizzuto and Elliot Roosevelt.
SaveThe TPC Most of the changes were the work of director Franklin Heller, who joined the show on episode 2 and called for these revisions. He also made significant improvements in the camera angles -- which (in the first two shows) definitely needed improvement.
dizzyology I've grown to be too anti-Fates in my comments lately, I think, which is the only I refrained from making the same point you just did. The improvements, to my mind, were mostly the work of the director, Franklin Heller, not Gil Fates (who was there from before the show ever debuted, just not as formal producer until the 4th show. If he chose Heller, he deserves credit for that, yes, but most of what's different here are camera angles/setup/how segments are introduced and concluded, which would ordinarily be the director's job, not the producer's.)
What's My Line? I've been trying to find where, in his book, Gil claimed to have become producer only in the 4th show. True, he lists defects in the first show, but he goes on to say "The critics were kind in that they mostly ignored *us*." and "Somebody [at CBS] liked *us* because *we* were installed {opposite RQL's The Show Goes On." He seems to be clearly considering himself as an integral part of the team right from the start. Isn't it possible that it's just the title "Executive Producer" that began with the 4th show, but that GF's role was essentially the same?
dizzyology All good questions, and it might be clearer in the book than I remember (my memory is terrible). But I do very clearly remember his borderline insulting description of the debut programs and his posturing as the program's savior. But I don't have the stomach to reread the book tonight to try to nail down what he said. :)
The song the jitterbugging jukebox playing fella is playing is Les Brown's version of "Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief." It is fun to see these great old shows. Thanks for sharing with us!
Randall Riley ...and having him on there is akin to having an O G rapper on today.
@@RobJazzful Les equivalent to an O G ? lol
Might have been said in the comments already but so glad they had a Housewife on as an occupation.
thanks for the spoiler
FermatWiles don’t read comments before watching a video. People comment on videos there lol.
@@FermatWiles lmao are you reading the comments while playing along at home?
@@sparrow-does-stuff easier to look down at the comments while they have the person's line on screen; and especially in these earlier episodes with the walk of shame portion (which is when I'm typing this)
Dorothy and Arlene did all the heavy lifting on that panel.
OMG THEY NEED TO MAKE A MOVIE ABOUT THIS, Everything about the Life of WML and also like include the cast, how they came to all start, the personal lives of the main cast, based in the 50’s !! Omg I pray this would happen wow
Oh, yes, they can have a miniseries, or a limited series that lasts 20 episodes or something. With references to the unfortunate demise of one of the panelists and the conspiracy theories behind it, and lots of cameos of contemporary famous people playing the role of 50s and 60s famous people (they had Reagan on, that's more major than they knew). Imagine Marishka Hargatay playing Jayne Mansfield briefly.
I’m pretty young compared to most people who watch this. What was the conspiracy theory behind the panelist who had an untimely demise?
Agreed!
@@bizzy9169 Dorothy! JFK 's team offed her cause shefound out who killed Marilyn Monroe😳
@@mslgizzle wow that’s tragic. I think I will take a deep dive into her life and see what I can find.
3:24 What the heck. He actually guessed it!
This is the first and only time I've seen the panel actually wild guess the occupation.
And they didn't give it to him.
psygn0sis it’s odd they didn’t give it to him and yes this is the first time it’s happened and only on the 3rd episode! It has happened a handful of times, there is a compilation on this UA-cam channel.
psygn0sis,
True!
Great catch!!
🧐😃🙃
Arlene Francis came pretty close to guessing the contestants line on the shows second(?) episode.
Search:
What’s My Line? - Arlene Francis’s first show! - Elliot Roosevelt (Feb 16, 1950)
The first guest is Caroline Weston.
Arlene states for her ‘Free Guess’ that she believes the young lady to be a girl athlete (3:25).
Arlene didn’t throw all her chips in on her Free Guess, but I think she already had Caroline figured out when she walked/interacted with the panel.
At 2:57 you can hear Arlene say, ‘Ooh!’ after Caroline caught the object the governor tossed to her. And she looked pretty pleased/confident with the direction as to which she would point her questions as Caroline walked back towards Mr. Daly.
At 5:13 Arlene comments:
‘... if she were a Lady Wrestler she might work with somebody.’
I used to watch these in random order, then decided to try to watch them in the order they were aired.
In the comments from the first episode , I noticed another viewer already had the same idea.
💡🙃
I’m hoping the site I’m using is accurate. It’s called FANDOM, or wiki fandom(?)
Be well, stay kind and blessings to all ~
Seth Gartner,
SAH-WHEAT!!! Thanks for the info on the compilation of these quests!
I’m going to have to watch that.
🙏🏼😁
@@grapetomatogirl2141have no
He didnt actually guess it. He said "detective", as in police detective. Hotel detective is a more specific occupation.
I like that they never did away with, as far as I remember, the good night portion.
No, they never got rid of the goodnights.
a key to the success of so many of these game shows is how much fun the people on the show are having. you can see the enthusiasm and enjoyment of john, dorothy, and arlene right away. half the fun of this show was hearing the audience be in on the jokes.
I am thrilled to have come across the "What's My Line" channel. My DVR is always set to record WML during the two weeks each year when Game Show Network airs the reruns.
WML was a great, classic game show, with an emphasis on grace and manners. I'm struck by how neat everyone's handwriting used to be.
I chose to comment on this video because Mr. Untermeyer's time on the program is nearing the end but I thought he was very good on WML; maybe he wasn't exciting but in the first episodes, he guessed several lines. His life went into sort of a downward spiral after being let go from "What's My Line"...and it took a while for him to pull out of it.
Very interesting and entertaining. Daly sounds very informed and intelligent, Also, a vast source of from whom to learn new words
As an aside, John Daly married the daughter of Chief Justice Earl Warren.
Notice when Artie Shaw signs in, John Daly immediately announces him as a Mister. It took the producers a while to figure out the comic potential of WML mystery guest, notably the comic potential of the panel asking questions of a panelist they assume is of the wrong gender.
It's really amazing to see these early episodes. You can see they haven't quite worked out a little details yet.
I noticed the scorecard used to hang over the front of the desk, and then later it's on top of the desk entirely.
Around 9:26 : Daly, trying to get trough all the talking around him; "And thanks for being our guest at What's My NAME"(!) Well, things are not always that easy ;)
Thanks for pointing this out-- I had noticed it when I watched the show for the first time a couple of weeks ago but forgot to note it, and then I couldn't remember which one it was in. So funny-- and what makes it even funnier is that the show is still so new at this point, no one even *notices* the mistake!
What's My Line? Yes, and when even Daly didn't seem to notice that little error, it tells something about the general confusion around the concept! :D They all seemed to me, like a group of elite-pupils, the very first day at school. All very eager to show their best, and their good-will as well..
I noticed this too -- especially so because I have recently been reading Arlene Francis's memoirs. "What's My Name?" was actually a radio game show in which Arlene appeared early in her career. Here are a couple of quotes from page 44 of "Arlene Francis: A Memoir" by Arlene Francis with Florence Rome (Simon & Schuster, 1978):
1) "'What's My Name?' was one of the first game shows on radio, and the contestants were selected from the audience. Budd [Hulick] and I impersonated various figures in public life and gave a series of clues to each contestant. If they guessed who we were supposed to be on the first clue, they got the terrific sum of ten dollars; on the second clue, nine dollars and so on."
2) The reason "What's My Name?" was so important in my life was that it was my first experiences with ad-libbing, of saying things which came into my head instead of sticking to a written script."
Edit: I'm adding: Joe Postove & Stephanie McCoy to this post in response to your comments on the same subject further down the page.
The pilot for the Simpsons was a disaster too, it’s all about getting bugs worked out. And they did, 17 years later, it’s one of the longest running shows in TV history.😊
Artie Shaw retired from music only four years after this telecast. he spent much of his time writing novels. He lived to be 94 and died in 2004. By the way, he had eight wives.
Interesting man. Also quite a crabapple in close quarters lol.
A clip of this episode was used in the last episode in 1967 when one segment of the program was given over to John showing the panelists scenes from their very first appearances on the program. When the clip came up revealing Arlene's hairstyle (and darker color) a gasp went up from the 1967 audience!
epaddon Even though it was not Arlene's actual first appearance.
Her actual first appearance was episode 2 (2/16/50).
epaddon No wonder their reaction. Arlene's fluffy blonde hairstyle had already become a part of her personal image.
In her memoir, Arlene notes that she started dyeing her hair because she did not like the way her dark hair made her face look on television. Here's her quote from page 14 of "Arlene Francis: A Memoir" by Arlene Francis with Florence Rome (Simon & Schuster, 1978): "When I first got my job in television on "What's My Line?" I got a chance to fool Mother Nature whether she liked it or not, because the dark hair created a halo around my face. (I would have liked a halo around my head, but this one was bad for the camera.) It was the beginning of restructuring what I had been born with, and since that time I've been twenty different colors and styles, but an English beauty, never!"
I'm not sure what she thought of as "an English beauty," but I'm sure all of us here who are fans of Arlene's would agree that she was most certainly beautiful!
SaveThe TPC By "English beauty", she may have been referring to how English people, the people of England, typically looked. Her mother was English.
She looked more Armenian (of which her father was), than she did English.
*****
Yes, I think you're right. Earlier in the same paragraph, she says, "I have described what both my parents looked like, so can there be any question of whom I'd [i]rather[i] have taken after?"
Edit: the [i]s were my attempt to duplicate Arlene's use of italics in the book, but it apparently didn't work. I haven't been able to figure out how to make text bold, italicized or underlined in these comments. I can make it look that way when I'm typing, but it always comes out in standard type when the comment gets posted.
When the first contestant wrote his name it thrilled me as I thought it could be Cormac McCarthy but then I remembered he was only 16 at the time.
The older, more mature John would have been shocked, shocked, at this John Daly allowing Dorothy to ask Artie Shaw to recite "Mary Had A Little Lamb".
Thank you so much for posting this series, Everyone so well behaved, yet more "real" back then. Respect even to the last show, and plenty of "back story" to these people.
It was really a kind of New York City happening show when it got rolling. I am 65 now, the Arlene necklace story is still so tragic and romantic, Bennett in college starting Doubleday, and something about sad, Catholic Dorothy still CREEPS ME OUT !!
UA-cam is my only T V now and thank you for your time and effort to make, "the good stuff", available again.
My pleasure, Jay. Glad you're enjoying the videos. :)
This show is great for learning how people spoke back then! Unlike trivia game shows they're having actual conversations, and unlike fictional programs they're not scripted.
you begin to see dorothy's sharp wit appear at 19:07. artie had been married 6 times up until this point, he would marry twice more. and again @ 12:52 when asking if the contestant, "do you paregrinate?" to which john marvelously skirts around because he has no idea what she is asking... john keeps forgetting to flip cards with no answers.
I love watching these old re-runs! For anyone who's trying to learn English as a second language, the host, John Daly, has a command of the language second to none. If you can learn to understand and speak the way he does, you'll be able to go anywhere English is used with no problem.
I realized that I didn't watch some of the earlier season of the show because I'm not the biggest fan walk through before thepanel.
TV cameras were very dependent on bright lighting and if the lighting was insufficient you got very dark and contrasty video like this.
Curtis Taylor: I had trouble hearing everybody. Microphones weren't as well developed as they are now, either. Thank goodness for technological advances and innovations! 😊
The worst darkness seems to be on the shots that include the sign-in board. I wonder if that camera was adjusted for best legibility of the handwriting on the white paper? Compare the first episode, admittedly with a narrower marker, but almost illegible because the bright areas of the white paper "bleed" into the black line of the signature. I'd guess they tried to avoid that effect by stopping down the iris on the camera lens. Going to chalk on black posterboard proved to be a better solution.
There's also the phenomenon with television shows from this period and into the 1960s of a bright object, like a candle, causing the appearance of a 'dark halo' on screen. I'm only speculating but it's possible that the lighting of the set was not only uneven but too bright for the equipment being used. Note how there are dark halos round the head and shoulders of certain people here.
I even wonder if this was committed to tape by filming, as they often did, the display of another television monitor. There could've been excessive shine upon the glass on that monitor causing the dark halos. It would also explain the distortion of shape occasionally due to the curve of the monitor being filmed. I realise I sound like a nerd now!
@@davidsanderson5918 kinescope was rough on video
Untermeyer is actually quite good at the game but not very telegenic.
You omitted personality......... loved his hair lift ... thank goodness comedians followed
I tend to disagree. Untermeyer comes off as an educated man and he quips every now and then.
There's an entire show built on that very foundation in Q.I
Liam - Oh, amen to that! What do these people want, a Kardashian?
I'm glad Dorothy and Arlene stayed, but these earliest episodes cause me to appreciate Fred Allen more.
Hal Block was good, if only he had recognized when "enough was enough."
WML lost something with Fred's passing. He was so witty. I remember him fondly.
Artie Shaw was a great genius of pop music
Before Elvis there was nothing.
@@bneale that's what your thinking tells YOU
That’s just what John Lennon said, and he was wrong.
@@jamesoleary8198 Yeah. Maybelline, The Fat Man, Rocket 88.
I'm not a Shaw scholar or anything. If you meant Shaw had a great approach to pop music, sure. As far as him liking pop music, he had a disdain for loud dance jazz, didn't he? When I think of pop music, I think of popular music, music that is easy for people to remember. Glenn Miller had that imo, although, Shaw said he only became popular because of the plane crash/disappearance.
dr hoffman's questions are always unusual
I wondered why they laughed after Dorothy asked Artie Shaw about marriage, but then I googled him and it turned out he was married eight time! Holy cow!
Reminds me of when Arlene asked Yul Brynner if he had long blond hair. Hilarious response from audience and Mr B.
His wives included Ava Gardner and Lana Turner!!!
Love this show!!!
Another observation on these early episodes: I've been working backwards and these first 3, the panel seems to be a bit more aloof, arrogant & high brow. As time went by this seemed to be toned down quite a bit.
They've obviously switched Daly's desk from being on the left side of the stage as it was in the very first episode to the right side of the stage as it would stay for it's 17 year run.
I thought Arlene was going to pull the old "Does this handkerchief smell like chloroform?" trick on the contestant. ;-)
But my goodness, correct guess on the first try... that psychologist really knew his stuff. :)
It is remarkable that 2 out of 4 panelists correctly suspected that the first contestant was some type of detective -- though Arlene's comment regarding the handkerchief test ("Well, he's no Sherlock Holmes..." [2:45]) was sort of the opposite. :)
In later episodes, I think they would have had to grant the win to the panel without even going on with the questioning, but I guess they hadn't established that rule yet.
WML 1.3 unsponsored. The first time that Louie Untermeyer, Arlene Francis and Dorothy Kilgallen appeared together. It took three episodes to get them together. Gil Fate's book on WML claims G-T had Arlene Francis involved in prototype panels of WML Work in Progress as early as November 1949. G-T's preference for Hoffmann or that ex governor of New Jersey to Arlene is, to me, inexplicable.
soulierinvestments
Another quote from Arlene's memoir (page 92): "I've always told everyone I was on 'What's My Line?' from the very beginning, and unless you want to quibble about it, that's true. If you [i]do[i] want to, the fact is that I missed the first show, and my place was taken by ex-Governor Hoffman of New Jersey. I don't honestly remember why I missed it, but I think I had committed myself to something else..." That's from the beginning of Chapter 9, and I'm assuming that the rest of the chapter will be all about "What's My Line?" but I haven't read most of it yet.
SaveThe TPC Thanks for that quote. I'm interested in reading Arlene's bio at some point, but from the reviews on amazon, I get the sense that she spends very, very little time talking about WML in the book.
What's My Line?
I haven't read any of the reviews on Amazon, but I completely disagree with that assessment. Chapter 9, as I suspected, is basically devoted to "What's My Line?" and there are many other references to the show throughout the book. I can prove this empirically by telling you that the index lists references to "What's My Line?" on pages 46, 90-91, 92-102 [that's chapter 9], 104, 153, 156, 169, 186-187. Beyond that, having now finished reading it, I can tell you that many other parts of the book shed new light on things that I knew about Arlene from watching "What's My Line?" and from reading comments on your channel. To cite just a few examples, she talks about how much she loved doing the show, "Once More With Feeling" and discusses some of her experiences with it, she shares her emotional reaction to the tragic dumbbell accident (and to the warm support she received from so many of her fans after it happened), and she explains in some detail the various eye problems she's had over the years that sometimes led to her needing to wear an eye patch on the show. (Her explanations differ a bit from Gil Fates's, btw, and I would tend to think she knows best.)
Now if someone said the same thing about Bennett Cerf's memoirs, "At Random," I would have to agree. Although he referred to it several times throughout the book also, he did not give much information about "What's My Line?" that you and I don't already know. (Index recap re: WML? = pages 136, 182, 213-15, 274-75, 286.) Having said that, I enjoyed both books thoroughly, including the parts that had nothing to do with "What's My Line?" because they helped me to get to know these two personalities in a way that goes beyond what I could glean for myself from watching them on WML? and to understand at least some of the context of what made them the people that I so enjoy watching on the show.
SaveThe TPC I appreciate the info on the book. By your list, though, the index cites a total of 19 pages where WML is mentioned (presumably, some of those page references are passing references). Assuming the book is at least 200 pages, that would mean at most 10% of it is devoted to WML, the show that brought Arlene her greatest fame, and which she was on for almost 25 years. Doesn't feel like that much to me.
This is not to say that I don't want to read it, though, or that those 19 pages don't offer interesting insights on the show. And again, I appreciate your offering your observations into both Arlene's and Bennett's books.
I love how Arlene Francis lends such a sense of class and decorum to the panel. I used to love to wait to see what type of long lovely gown she would wear in the later shows and always at least a beautiful mid-calf cocktail dress with accessories. I was wondering if her heart necklace had something to do with her son. Because it was an open heart of diamonds with a single diamond hanging in it, I was thinking it might represent her son's birth or her anniversary of marriage to Martin Gabel.
+Mary McGee It was a gift from Martin, yes. (It was stolen when she got mugged, two years after Gabel died.)
The heart-shaped pendant was a gift from Martin Gabel, and she wore it constantly, until it was stolen by a mugger as she was leaving a taxi. That happened in 1988, long after WML had ended.
@@dizzyology7514 I've long wanted that necklace to surface, like on Antiques Road Show, and be returned to their son, Peter Gabel. A more likely explanation is that it got traded for drugs and some douche rocket has it today and has no idea what they have.
You know the panel missed a rare chance to get the character's line right with the first guess, after the free guess. Note what John Daly said, "I can't give you anymore." Not your wrong. Big hint there that the panel did not pick up.
Back then it was way too easy identifying the mystery guest. They would not disguise their voice, like they would later on.
It's counterbalanced by how bad the panel is at guessing the mystery guests at this stage. I was pretty surprised to see how often they didn't get the mystery guest at all, or took a really long time getting there. And this was without the "one question at a time per panelist" rule!
What's My Line?
Dorothy did very well on this one, though!
3rd show, up to this point it would seem every contestant is from nyc. definitely an improvement with the new set but they obviously still had some bugs to work out like the lighting, microphones and dropping the guess and contestant walk thru. the show got a whole lot better after untermeyer and hoffman left.
It amazes me that this show was allowed to continue.
Producer Gil Fates said he had the same reaction when he was reviewing the first couple of episodes before he took over!
What's My Line? I was too young to have seen the first several years of production. I made the comment above, even though as a youth I looked forward to watching the show with my dad on Sundays at 9:30 Central. "What's My Line' became a staple in our home. I have enjoyed seeing the early years of the production that I missed as a child. Thank you.
Untermeyer had a great mind - but even I am surprised at his sharpness here
I remember the jukebox!!! GSN showed it in a commercial celebrating this program and of course To Tell The Truth
I would be born 20 years later on this day!
Wow thats amazing. Thank you so much for sharing.
Did you notice John misspoke and said "What's my name"?
And in this episode, it's Dr. Richard Hoffman with a lit cigarette on-screen (but only a teeny bit of a sighting, during the "Good night"s at the program's end).
Mr Untermeyer is as charismatic as a glass of lukewarm water.
Sometimes, Louis is delightful and entertaining. Too often he's wordy, professorial, and rambling. Not what this show needs. You can really see the tension between Daly adroitly trying to move the pace along, and the panelists' trying to prolong their questioning and conferencing.
I am SO glad they got rid of this parading by the panel and wild guesses.
If someone would ask me to sniff their handkerchief, I would run off the stage. That sounded so revolting.
mh K Ha! :) Yes, it's really creepy. "Reasonable requests from the panelists?" These are reasonable requests???
mh K What's My Line? Well, I'm fairly certain it was a *clean* handkerchief! I don't know if it had some type of perfume (*not* lavender-based, apparently) on it that Arlene wanted to see if he could identify, or if it was simply the scent of her laundry detergent, but I'm sure she would have been just as horrified as both of you at the thought of offering him a *used* handkerchief -- especially if she were the one who had used it! ;)
mh K He should have said, "It smells like chloroform," and then collapsed on the stage.
@@PhilBagels That made me literally laugh out loud. Thank you for that.
Perhaps it smelled like her favorite brand of cigarettes.
I'm betting this is the first time an occupation is guessed with the "free guess". He didn't specify "House" detective, but did say "detective", but the obviously chose to ignore it. I can't believe this episode has been up only 5 days, but there are already over 140 comments. There are usually just a handful of comments on other episodes.
Yes later in the series I think they would have rewarded the panel with a correct/winning free guess when they said “detective” at the outset
I admire G-T's genius for casting WML. It may be that they wanted to audition Dorothy and Arlene on separate broadcasts. Still, they got Arlene, Dorothy, and Louie all together by the third broadcast. I don't admire them for The Walk of Shame.
Mrs. Stone was beautiful & charming.
I would think that they would dispense with that Mr. X for the mystery celebrity quite soon. I mean c'mon, c'mon, He's a celebrity. I think the lack of good lighting may have had an effect on the writer's skulls.
At 9:25 John Daley said “Thanks for being our guest on What’s My Name.” Ahahahahahahaha! 🤣😂😅😀
In the first game, for the second time in as many broadcasts, a panelist -- Dr. H -- pretty much identified the occupation in the wild guess. Eventually The Wild Guess was the place for amusing lines and observations [probably thanks in large part to Hal Block in the early days]. However, at this stage of development, if I were G-T I would have been concerned about the whole idea.
soulierinvestments I was surprised that John didn't declare the game over when 2 of the 4 panelists correctly identified the first contestant as a detective in the free guesses! I think a couple of years later (maybe even a couple of months?) that is *exactly* what he would have done, and that type of thing did happen a few times. But I guess maybe they hadn't fully established the rules yet by then? Or maybe they just had no idea how they would fill the rest of the time on the show if the first contestant's segment was over so quickly!
soulierinvestments Yes, this demonstrates vividly the weakness of the "free guess" idea -- if the panel is good, there's no fun. The spot ends, the contestant doesn't get any money, the panel feels apologetic and the audience is bored. I agree that G-T ought to have recognized the problem, but they obviously didn't -- not for many years, anyway.
Is it possible that the wild guess segment was never meant to end the contest- just to see how close they could come? it would have been problematic to end a game that early and possibly run out of show before the half hour was up.
At the very beginning, the wild guesses were probably intended as serious efforts. But as early as this program (only the third WML produced) it was becoming clear that there was awkwardness (and little entertainment value) if the panel guessed -- or came close to-- the occupation right off the bat. (The panel actually got the occupation on 9 known occasions over the run of the show, and those of the 9 that are available for viewing support the notion that the idea was fundamentally flawed.) It would have made sense to drop the free guesses early on, but they were retained for five years, primarily with the idea that the guesses would provide an opportunity for wisecracks by the panel that might raise a laugh. Steve Allen was very good at such quips, and Hal Block often got a chuckle out of the audience. But the jokes became formulaic and tired, and they never generated enough laughter to justify the time they took. Finally, on April 17, 1955, the free guess concept was given its overdue funeral.
They consider a housewife a job, that is very interesting. Nowadays people don´t consider housewife as a job.
Lau Ra normal people still do
I was born in 1928 and being a housewife was a "job" alright. You were wife, mother, purchaser, cleaner, cook, driver (if you were lucky to have a car). It was WORK. Imagine trying to do all that if your husband didn't help? And few did.
@@1928gerry I remember seeing the washing machine and ringer that my grandmother used, and that was an upgrade. Then hanging it out on the line, which I used to love helping her do, then bringing it down and ironing all of it. M, no one has an iron. most things come out wrinkle free. So, being a house wife was a real job. With no days off or nights, if you had children. Oh and she was also a deputy sheriff in a small town on top of all of it. I bow down to the women of that time. but then again she also grew up on a farm in Indiana and literally had to feed chickens etc before she even went to school. So hard work was just something one did. I'll be forever grateful for the example she set for me.
I was hoping the first guy would sign "Cormac...the Magnificent!" ;)
I actually like Untermeyer. Too bad he didn't stay on the show.
I like him, too. We may be the only ones. :)
What's My Line?
Wonder why people don't like him.
Purple Capricorn From what I've read, a lot of people find him stuffy. I find him avuncular, of the same general type as Bennett, which makes sense considering they chose Bennett as his replacement (and note they were both from the literary world). It's also not fair for us to really judge him harshly on the basis of the very, very few of his shows we have available today, especially when most of them are from the very, very start of the show, when it was a bit stiff and stodgy overall. He was on the panel for over a year, and I bet if we had more of his later episodes available, he would be more fondly remembered for his time on WML.
What's My Line?
I agree.
I don't think he's all that bad myself. He's a fairly sharp cookie and if you notice, he flirts with Arlene somewhat (in a very classy way of course!) and she seems to genuinely like him. If anyone is stuffy it's the blasted psychiatrist, not Untermeyer. Stuffed shirt much? :/
Artie Shaw, appearing on this show at a time of increasing pressure in his personal life.
He was married a total of eight times, although two of those were annulled. He once joked that he started his letters, "My dearest darling and members of the jury."
He was not proud of any of this, either. Each divorce was a painful one for him. Having to appear before HUAC was also very stressful for him, as well.
Love this
This is better than looking at old antique Sears and Roebuck catalogs 😅
Nice to see one of the old boring guys off the panel and Dorothy back!
Mrs. Stone is as pretty as a movie star.
+Anna Ferrara Yeah, i played along without looking at her occupation. At frst I thought she was a model of some type being that she looks tall, thin, and has pretty striking facial features.
+Anna Ferrara And she's very relaxed considering she's not somebody that's used to being on camera. Also, the part in her hair is freakish.
Arti Shaw...from my home town...New Haven,Ct.
Today's rerun episode! (for Apr 22, 2015)
***** There's no complete version of that episode available, sorry. Goodson-Todman's own print is incomplete.
What's My Line? The incomplete episode of Fred's final show is darned interesting. Incomplete WML kinescopes do not happen often; the whole mystery guest sequence turned up missing. Did the kinescope machine malfunction? Or was there something in Dinah Shore's appearance that night [positive or negative] that got it cut from the record?? And we will never know at this point.
soulierinvestments My theory is that they cut out Dinah's segment and gave it to her personally. It's just speculation, but I can't imagine any other reason. If that was the case, I guess we're lucky they didn't give her the whole film. This is the only surviving episode I'm aware of that's incomplete.
Easy to see why Untermeyer's stay on the panel was a brief one! Aside from the fact that he was unfairly accused of being a Communist.
Artie Shaw was married 8 times and the previous Elliott Roosevelt was married 5 times -- is there a trend here?
no wonder there was so much laughter when Roosevelt was asked whether he had been married
Learned from this early show that hand writing analysis was part of the rationale for signing in. Interesting. By today's standards the meet n greet with panelists at times was a tad weird.
Who asks a woman how much loose change she carries???? Oh well, I guess it beats asking her to dance the rhumba!!!!!😂😂😂
That could be a useful question in helping to determine whether she's lower, middle, or upper class.
The housewife gives me a "modern" feeling for lack of a better term. Feel like she'd fit right in with today
This is.director Franklin Heller's first broadcast This may account for the set improvement. Gil Fates in his book wrote in passing that the early set was lit like a police line up. Yes, but frankly the kinescope process of 1950 may account for why the program seems to be in the dark.
In my experience with the material I have available, almost all the early kinescopes look this way-- shots start off horribly overexposed and gradually settle down to watchable contrast levels, then are followed by underexposed segments, back and forth. Lighting on set may have been a factor, but I really think it's more a matter of the primitive nature of kinescope technology at this stage. When the same single camera shot starts off overexposed and then becomes "readable", it's not the set lighting that's changing.
By the 60s, the same essential process of pointing a film camera at a live TV monitor yielded almost film-quality results, at least for a static show like WML. Comparing the 60s kinescopes against these early ones is pretty startling.
Zardon M No, you're completely mistaken. WML has been preserved exclusively on kinescope, including shows that were originally videotaped.
Zardon M I don't entirely understand your question. Kinescoping refers to the process of pointing a motion picture (not TV) camera at a monitor and filming the results. Videotaping records an electrical signal direct from the TV cameras. They're entirely different processes.
I don't know whether the videotaped shows were kinescoped using the live broadcast signal or after the fact using the video tapes, but regardless, the process is the same and the flaws inherent in it are the same (flat lighting, exaggerated shadows, high contrast). By the 1960s, specially tuned equipment had been developed to improve the results of the kinescoping process, including recording the film at a frame rate to match the video signal (standard film frame rates ordinarily do not line up with video frame rates). That's why they look so much better. It has nothing to do with videotape.
Zardon M You didn't pay attention to a thing I wrote, did you? How exactly do you think videotapes were transferred to film? By kinescoping them, of *course*.
Sigh. Believe whatever you want to believe.
It does seem that the shots are darker when John and the contestant are standing near the sign-in board than when the camera is trained on either the panel or the moderator/contestant desk, so studio lighting probably plays a role in the way this early episode looks as well.
in a juke joint lol
Dorothy and Dr. Hoffman (I enjoy his beverages by the way) were on to his line as detective, and perhaps Dr. Hoffman should have gotten credit for his guess.
Yes, Dr. Hoffman should indeed have received some acknowledgement for his deduction.
At 9:25 John refers to the program as What's My Name...
Notice even back then how people sneaked a smoke.
I don't think they were sneaking a smoke, you could still smoke even in hospitals back then. On Match Game in 1975 they smoked on the set.
LOL at Arlene 10:19 "Stay still both of you".
Very radio still. Charming, but not great TV yet!
The preliminary walk by the panel is creepy. And the show couldn't work today. Too much information available.
Lucky the first contestant wasn't allergic to whatever was on that handkerchief. Also, I wish Arlene didn't wear those huge pearls; they totally take away from the subtle beauty of the heart necklace.
After watching this very early episode, I don't know if I would have stayed with it. Some of the things the panelists said and did were irritating, and, well I guess for 1950 it was still a hit or miss proposition in putting together a new TV show. Knowing what we know now, "What's My Line" probably progressed more or as much as any other show in it's presentation. But when Dorothy uses a word like peregrinate I doubt the folks in Washtub West Virginia appreciated it very much. Me? I like the challenges to my vocabulary that WML presented through the years. Thanks for this upload!
I wish I had Bennett's "Random House American College Dictionary," but the definition of peregrinate from Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition is "vi (1593) : to travel esp. on foot : WALK ~ vt : to walk or travel over : TRAVERSE." At least John quickly asked Dorothy to rephrase her question on that one, so her alternate phrasing pretty much defined it for me (and the contestant & contemporary audience) even before I looked it up. I consider myself fairly well educated, but I don't remember ever hearing that word before. In later years, Dorothy often used the word "bifurcated" to refer to clothing such as pants/trousers. I learned that one from her too. My dictionary confirms that it means "two-pronged" or "divided into two branches or parts."
There are many things about this and other very early episodes that make me think that if it had been in competition with other, faster-paced, better-produced, more interesting shows at the time, it never would have lasted long enough to evolve into the highly entertaining program so many of us enjoy. I suspect, though, that early television did not have all that much of better quality to offer, so it persisted and became better and better, in my opinion, as time went on.
I consider myself rather well done but I had to look it up as well.
SaveThe TPC Joe Postove I thought "peregrinate" meant "to travel in between different countries", wandering about, almost like a nomade, or a stranger?
SuperWinterborn
Perhaps it is often used that way. As I mentioned, my only knowledge of the word comes from Dorothy's rephrasing in this episode and the dictionary definition I listed above. Here's a link to a slightly different definition, which may be more in keeping with your thought, as it also contains the word "journey:" dictionary.reference.com/browse/peregrinate.
*Edit:* I just looked further down the page that this link brings you to, and there is another definition (from the Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd.) that sounds exactly like what you wrote. The first one on that page is actually from a 2014 Random House dictionary. ;)
SaveThe TPC Thanks! ;)
They all knew how to use cursive handwriting back then too, not so much now.
I am glad that they learned to relax and be less formal. And got better panalist.
Poor John Daly, on first guest , said " thank you for playing what's my name,"
9:24 John says "thank you for being on 'Whats My Name'"
The tint is so dark of the guests you can't even see their eyes.. hmm..
2:25 This is the weirdest and most entertaining examination so far!
3:25 I'm confused, what's the point of the free guesses if getting it right doesn't win the game?
22:53 What did Daly think was wrong with this question?! 😂
Note that humorous asides by other panelists are tasteful and not screamed.
As a teacher and married woman and the daughter of a dedicated housewife and teacher (2 over-full-time jobs), I am delighted that this early episode recognized "housewife" as an actual line of work. But what's up with her "No" reply to the question "Do you work at things that give value to people?"...?! There wasn't nearly enough hesitation before the "No"! A housewife works at innumerable "things" like providing a reliable source of nourishing food, providing books and other character-building resources, facilitating healthy play among children, maintaining a clean, safe environment for the young, etc etc etc. If working daily at projects like those that directly enable young human persons to develop into healthy, ethical, responsible beings isn't giving value to people, I don't know what is... but how did they understand this phrase at the time?
Anyone catch 9:25 what John called the show lol..
Dorothy Kilgallen @ 19:07: "Have you ever been married?"
Sometimes a simple "yes" and not offering TMI can definitely avoid a lot of other potentially embarrassing questions 😂🤣🤣
They need to combine this show and I've got a secret and bring it back
What's wrong with saying 'peregrinate'?
Nothing. I think Mr. Daly was referring to the fact that most people at that time, watching that show , wouldn't know that word off the top of their head. He hoped that she would rephrase using some more generic language.
And, I also think he didn't want it to be confused with, "progenate", if someone wasn't listening very closely.
Primative production, no fill lights for the faces and somebody is on stage camera left @ 4:17 McGowan notices him. Was the easel being removed?
How famous were the panels at the time, what would be their modern day equivalent
He did say What’s My. Name, didn’t he?
Linda Stone was beautiful.
We not going to talk about the fact the guy with a hitler mustache is an exterminator?
Same price $50. 00 .It was much more than in 1958.
Har, har... housewife as "self-employed"! Well, that's one job among many gone today. My mother was a housewife, and definitely salaried.
I know this is 1950, but it IS network television and the lighting is horrible, when it doesn't disappear completely.
You can't judge the lighting well on the basis of this copy. The show as broadcast looked nothing like this kinescope. The early kinescopes were prone to lighting problems that caused portions to be heavily overexposed, compounded by whatever effect age had on the film itself. That said, the set couldn't have looked cheaper! I find it strange how tight the camera shots are, often framing two panelists in the same close up.
***** Right.The coaxial cable wasn't finished until 1951.
Joe Postove Hard as it is to believe sometimes, if you were watching this live in 1950 it would have looked just like a videotaped program does to us today with that "live" look. But we of course will never see any TV program of any kind older than 1958 with that kind of look where the videotape still exists! (one exception being the Ford Edsel variety special from late 1957, the first program CBS ever videotaped for broadcast which still exists in that format).
epaddon Watching early videotape, in my experience is far worse than kinescopes of the time
Joe Postove It's comparing apples and oranges-- and bear in mind, videotape didn't even exist in rudimentary form until the mid 50s, by which point the entire medium of television had evolved considerably.
A properly preserved videotape will deteriorate more than a properly preserved film will. Usually, though, you're looking at improperly preserved videotapes from the most primitive days of videotape, aged 60 years. They're not going to look good. But videotape was a clearly superior format to kinescope in the 50s. The reason it wasn't used is that-- incredibly-- it was far cheaper to archive films than videotape. Some live shows were still being routinely kinescoped well into the 1970s.