Back in the early electric days of American television -- from 1950 to 1967 to be exact -- there was a game show broadcast nationally on Sunday nights at 10:30 p.m. and it was called What's My Line?. It was not so much a game show as a grand and chic guessing-game party among well-coiffed New York City sophisticates, and it became America's national cocktail party of sorts, the last bit of comforting entertainment that millions of working citizens enjoyed before hitting the relentless Monday gri

Back in the early electric days of American television -- from 1950 to 1967 to be exact -- there was a game show broadcast nationally on Sunday nights at 10:30 p.m. and it was called What's My Line?. It was not so much a game show as a grand and chic guessing-game party among well-coiffed New York City sophisticates, and it became America's national cocktail party of sorts, the last bit of comforting entertainment that millions of working citizens enjoyed before hitting the relentless Monday grind again.



The game panelists consisted of an Ivy League publishing titan and master of the Dad joke -- Bennett Cerf, along with the elegant, charming, witty multi-media maven, Arlene Francis and the prickly and intense social gossip journalist, Dorothy Kilgallen, along with a galaxy of the best comedians, actors and other celebs, every one of them dressed to the nines with their diamond jewelry casting sharp sprites on the black-and-white TV cameras reflected from the hot studio lights. The host, John Charles Daly, from our perspective, was from another age altogether: erudite, composed, gentlemanly, poised, tasteful and diplomatic; a master of semantics, locution and vocabulary in ways no longer remotely seen on television since the 1970s when Eric Severeid retired from the CBS Evening News in 1977. We may not always have understood what these guys were saying but it was sure fun to hear them talk with such stentorian authority. Back then, there was still a hint of noblesse oblige on broadcast television. By the mercenary '80s, when standards and practices and regulations went out the window for the almighty buck, the pretense of elevating the public went with it.



I grew up with What's My Line? as a youth, but not the original '50-'67 version, which would have been on past my bedtime, but the 1968-1975 color syndicated show that ran after the evening news on weekdays. In retrospect, that revived version of the show was inferior to the original, but at the time I didn't know any better. The later version I find hard to watch today. It's cheesy and padded and lacks the elan and electrical theatricality of the original black-and-white version of the show. That '50- to '67- version is still considered to be TV's longest running network game show (as opposed to syndicated; that prize goes to The Price is Right).



The original What's My Line? was revived for the Game Show Network on cable in recent years and proved a hit, particularly among younger generations who would not have known it otherwise, and also attracted new fans via an exemplary Youtube channel that includes every extent episode. That's where I discovered it about six years ago or so, when randomly tooling around the Utubes. I watched some segments with Elizabeth Taylor, Jayne Mansfield, Groucho Marx, Danny Kaye, Ed Sullivan and Jerry Lewis and was so enamored at how charming, funny and "live" feeling these shows were that I became hooked, even addicted it.



The show's cult popularity accounts, somewhat, for the current market value of this long out-of-print book about the show, written by its studio producer, Gil Fates. Copies routinely go for hundreds of dollars, when one can be found. Luckily, a copy can be read online at The Internet Archive (archive.org; you have to sign up to use it), but you'll have to get on a waiting list to read it. I got on it and only had to wait 3-4 days before the copy became available, which is not too bad.



Fates' book comes from a guy who was there from the beginning till the end of the run. It's a solid and mostly well written rundown of the behind-the-scenes history of the series, providing some choice insights into the nerve-racking, hair-pulling days of live TV before the advent of videotape.



The book is a mixed bag, sometimes giving you too much information on some things and too little info on others. The book gets so digressive at times that Fates has to wrench his tale back on track with the awkward segue: "Anyway..."



Some of the digressive bits involve other Mark Goodson/Bill Todman game show productions that Fates worked on, similar sister programs such as I've Got a Secret and To Tell the Truth, though, to be fair, some of these stories are good and do relate. Fates talks at some length in the second half of the book about the syndicated color version of the show, starring Soupy Sales, which, I have to admit, was less of interest to me.



Overall, fans of the show will dig this written account, especially as it's the only extensive insider record we'll ever have of the goings on. One of the fun parlor games for the reader is trying to guess the "blind item" stories about the tactless behavior that some stars are alleged to have exhibited, but whose names couldn't be revealed at the time of writing. The internet now identifies for us some of their names, in light of new information. Without going into the stories, my naming them would be pointless. If you want to know, it's all out there.



Some of the most sociologically interesting stories deal with the kind of letters sent in by fans, whose ideas, bitching and other concerns prove that internet trolling has always existed in one form or another.



I wanted to write more, but the interest in this will be limited, so my recommendation on this is that anyone who enjoys the show will find plenty of backstage gems here.



kr,eg '19