What's My Line? is an American panel game show that originally aired on CBS from 1950 through 1967, and which had subsequent revivals. The game uses celebrity panelists to question contestants in order to determine their occupation. The majority of the contestants were from the general public, but there was one weekly celebrity "mystery guest" for whom the panelists were blindfolded. The series is one of the longest-running American primetime network television game-shows. Originally moderated by John Charles Daly and most frequently with regular panelists Dorothy Kilgallen, Arlene Francis, and Bennett Cerf, What's My Line? won three Emmy Awards for Best Quiz or Audience Participation Show in 1952, 1953, and 1958 and the Golden Globe for Best TV Show in 1962.
More than 700 episodes exist as kinescope recordings, the prevailing recording medium for recording live television until the 1960s emergence of videotape. Many early episodes were lost due to budgetary limitations from 1950 and 1952. All episodes from July 1952 to September 1967 were preserved in the archives of producers Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, but by 1975, some of the episodes had been lost.
After CBS cancelled the series in 1967, it returned the following year in a syndicated version for local television stations that committed to airing it five days a week. This syndicated version was broadcast until 1975 and was hosted by Wally Bruner and later by Larry Blyden. There have been a dozen international versions, radio versions, and a live stage version. Revivals in the United States have been proposed several times, but all failed to go past the planning stages. New episodes have not been created for American television since December 12, 1974.
In 2013, TV Guide ranked What's My Line? ninth on its list of the 60 greatest game shows everFretts, Bruce (June 17, 2013). "Eyes on the Prize". TV Guide. pp. 14-15. and Time ranked it as one of the 100 "All-Time" TV shows ever.
Original CBS series (1950–1967) Produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman for CBS, the show was initially called Occupation Unknown before deciding on the name What's My Line?. The original series, which was usually broadcast live, debuted on Thursday, February 2, 1950, at 8:00 p.m. ET. After airing alternate Wednesdays, then alternate Thursdays, finally on October 1, 1950, it had settled into its weekly Sunday 10:30 p.m. ET slot where it would remain until the end of its network run on September 3, 1967.
In 1958, Goodson-Todman Productions decided to sell the series to CBS for an undisclosed amount of price, although Goodson-Todman decided to retain talent for the series. The practice continued long after the show moved to syndication, until 1971, when G-T bought back the property after CBS was spun off its syndicated division into Viacom.
Starting in July 1959, and continuing until July 1967, the show would occasionally record episodes onto quadruplex videotape for playback at a future date. In July 1959, this was state-of-the-art technology. At that time, the immediate concern of Mark Goodson and Bill Todman was that John Daly, anchor of the ABC network's nightly newscasts, would be allowed to visit Moscow to cover, in that capacity, a breaking news story. While Daly moderated the first live episode after his return from Moscow, he praised his employers' use of videotape. In such instances, cast and crew worked on two episodes consecutively during the same Sunday night: the "taped" one, followed immediately by the "live" one. The cast and crew began taking "summer breaks" from the show in July 1961, through July 1967. The closing credits of each prerecorded episode included an acknowledgment of the prerecorded status by the offscreen announcer.
Hosts and panelists
The host, then called the moderator, was veteran radio and television newsman John Charles Daly. Clifton Fadiman, Eamonn Andrews, and Random House co-founding publisher and panelist Bennett Cerf substituted on the four occasions when Daly was unavailable.
The show featured a panel of four celebrities who questioned the contestants. On the initial program of February 2, 1950, the panel comprised former New Jersey governor Harold Hoffman, columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, poet Louis Untermeyer, and psychiatrist Richard Hoffmann. The panel varied somewhat in the following weeks, but after the first few broadcasts, during the show's earliest period the panel generally consisted of Kilgallen, actress Arlene Francis, Untermeyer and comedy writer Hal Block. Publisher Bennett Cerf replaced Untermeyer as a regular panelist in 1951, and comedian Steve Allen replaced Block in 1953. Allen left in 1954 to launch The Tonight Show, and he was replaced by comedian Fred Allen (no relation),Steve Allen's birth name was Stephen Valentine Patrick Allen, while Fred Allen's birth name was John Florence Sullivan who remained on the panel until his death in 1956.
Fred Allen was not replaced on a permanent basis, and for the majority of the show's network run, between 1956 and 1965, the panel consisted of Kilgallen, Cerf, Francis and a fourth guest panelist. After Kilgallen's death in 1965, she was similarly not replaced with a permanent panelist, and for the show's final two years, the panel consisted of Cerf, Francis and two guests.
At various times, a regular panelist might take a vacation or be absent from an episode due to outside commitments. On these occasions, a guest panelist would take their spot. The most frequent guest panelist was Arlene Francis's husband Martin Gabel, who appeared 112 times over the years. Other frequent guest panelists include Tony Randall, Robert Q. Lewis and Phyllis Newman. Dick Cavett, in an early television appearance in Fred Allen's vacated chair in 1966, noted that the mystery guest was probably wondering who Cavett was.
Regular announcers included Lee Vines, who served from 1950 to 1955; Hal Simms, from 1955 to 1961; Ralph Paul, whose tenure was confined to 1961; and Johnny Olson, perhaps the best known of Goodson-Todman's television announcers, whose tenure began in 1961 and ran until the show's cancellation in 1967.
Timeline of regular panelists
Gameplay What's My Line? was a guessing game in which the four panelists attempted to determine the occupation (i.e., "line [of work]") of a guest. In the case of the famous mystery guest each week, the panel sought to determine the identity of the celebrity. Panelists were required to probe by asking only yes–no questions. A typical episode featured two standard rounds (sometimes a third, and very rarely a rushed fourth) plus one mystery guest round. On the occasions on which there were two mystery guests, the first would usually appear as the first contestant.
Standard rounds For the first few seasons, contestants would "sign in" by writing their name on a chalkboard, and meet the panel up close for a casual inspection, and the panel was allowed one initial "wild" guess. The first contestant on What's My Line? was Pat Finch, a hat check girl at the Stork Club. Finch appeared again on the fifth anniversary show (with the "line" of "chorus girl" appearing in the musical Fanny) and on the final broadcast in 1967 as a guest.
Beginning in 1955 Daly simply greeted and seated the contestant, who later met the panel at the end of the game. Additionally, starting April 17, 1955, the panel stopped taking initial guesses. The contestant's line was then revealed to the studio and home audiences, and Daly would tell the panel whether the contestant was salaried or self-employed, and from 1960 on, whether they dealt in a product or a service.
A panelist chosen by Daly would begin the game. If their question elicited a yes answer, they continued questioning. When a question was answered no, questioning passed to the next panelist and $5 was added to the prize. The amount of the prize was tallied by Daly who flipped up to ten cards on his desk. A contestant won the top prize of $50 by giving ten no answers, or if time ran out, with Daly flipping all the cards. As Daly occasionally noted, "Ten flips and they (the panel) are a flop!" Daly later explained, after the show had finished its run on CBS, the maximum payout of $50 was to ensure the game was played only for enjoyment, and that there could never be even the appearance of impropriety. Later in the series, Daly would throw all the cards over with increasing frequency and arbitrariness (frequently to give a particularly interesting or worthy contestant the maximum available prize money), evidence the prize was secondary to game play.
Panelists had the option of passing to the next panelist—or even disqualifying themselves entirely if they somehow knew the contestant's occupation or identity (especially in the case of a mystery challenger) before the round. They could also request a conference, in which they had a short time for open discussion of ideas about occupations or lines of questioning.
Panelists adopted some basic binary search strategies, beginning with broad questions, such as whether the contestant worked for a for-profit corporation or non-profit organization or whether a product was alive, worn, or ingested. To increase the probability of affirmative answers, panelists would often phrase questions in the negative starting with "Is it something other than..." or "Can I rule out..."
The show popularized the phrase, Steve Allen first posed this on January 18, 1953, and it was then refined over subsequent episodes. Soon, other panelists were asking this question as well. On one occasion the guest was a man who made breadboxes. Allen correctly guessed the guest's occupation when Daly could not restrain his laughter in response to Kilgallen asking, "Is it bigger than a breadbox?"
The mystery guest round
The ultimate or penultimate round of an episode involved blindfolding the panel for a celebrity guest appearance (originally called "mystery challengers" by Daly) whom the panel had to identify by name, rather than occupation. (In the first episode, the mystery guest was New York Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto.) In the early years of the show, the questioning was the same as it was for regular contestants, but starting with the April 17, 1955 edition, panelists were only allowed one question at a time. Mystery guests usually came from the entertainment world, either stage, screen, television or sports. When mystery guests came from other walks of life or were non-famous individuals whom the panel but not the studio audience might know, they were usually played as standard rounds. However, the panel might be blindfolded, or the contestant might sign in simply as "X", depending on whether they would be known by name or sight.
Mystery guests would usually attempt to conceal their identities with disguised voices, much to the amusement of the studio audience. According to Cerf, the panel could often determine the identities of the mystery guests early, as they knew which celebrities were in town, or which major movies or plays were about to open. On those occasions, to provide the audience an opportunity to see the guest play the game, the panelists and host would typically allow questioning to pass around at least once before coming up with the correct guess. at p. 744, 54:37. As Cerf admitted in the episode broadcast on November 27, 1966, his wife, Phyllis, was frequently told the name of the mystery guest beforehand.
Sometimes, two mystery guest rounds were played in an episode, with the additional round usually as the first round of the episode.