Ava Gardner

This month, we are looking at popular fifties stars and shows. While the show we are talking about today outlasted the fifties by almost another decade, it gained its popularity during the 1950s. Today we are learning about What’s My Line.

This panel game show was on CBS. It debuted in 1950 and ran until 1967. The show was produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, and the working title was Occupation Unknown. Perhaps the title should have been What’s My Schedule. The show began on Thursday nights as a live show. Later in season one, it switched to every other Wednesday and then moved to every other Thursday. In October of 1950, it landed on Sunday nights where it would remain throughout the rest of its life.

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.

Celebrity panelists ask contestants questions to figure out their occupation. While most of the contestants were not famous, there was a “mystery guest” segment. The panelists were blindfolded for this segment and asked questions to determine the celebrity. People enjoyed watching the panelists banter with each other and the sophisticated humor they shared with us.

Each episode had four panelists. The most famous panelists were Dorothy Kilgallen, Arlene Francis, and Bennett Cerf. John Daly was the moderator. The first show in the series featured New Jersey governor Harold Hoffman, Kilgallen, poet Louis Untermeyer, and psychiatrist Richard Hoffman. Later in season one, Arlene Francis came on board with Kilgallen, Untermeyer and writer Hal Block. In season two, Cerf replaced Untermeyer and Steve Allen took over for Block in season three. When Steve Allen left to host The Tonight Show, comedian Fred Allen was part of the panel from 1954 until his death in 1956. Kilgallen was killed in 1965 and her replacement varied for two years. Her death is a mystery itself and well worth reading about. Many people think she was killed because of her investigation into JF Kennedy’s assassination.

The panelists started the series wearing business clothing, but by 1953 they shifted to formal attire with the men showing up in suits and ties and women in formal gowns and gloves. Unfortunately, we never got to see the beautiful colors of these clothes. Until 1966 everything was filmed in black and white. In the final season, the show was broadcast in color, but the kinescopes were saved in black and white.

Both critics and television viewers liked the show, and it won an Emmy for Best Quiz or Audience Participation Show in 1952, 1953, and 1958.

Because it was a game show, most of the 700 episodes were on kinescope, 16 mm filming. Because many original shows in that era were recorded via kinescope onto silver nitrate film, many networks destroyed recordings to recover the silver. After learning that the network was not keeping the recordings, Goodson and Todman offered to pay for the broadcast and retained the recordings from season three on, however many of those were also lost along the way. A variety of the episodes are stored at different archive centers around the country. My home state houses one from 1951 at the University of Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research in Madison.

The remaining kinescopes which have been digitized have been seen on television on the Game Show Network and 757 of them exist on YouTube.

Many of us remember the reruns and seeing the contestant come on stage and write their name on a chalkboard as Daily said “Will you enter and sign in please.” The very first contestant was Pat Finch who was a hat check girl at the Stork Club.

The first mystery guest was New York Yankees shortstop Phil Ruzzuto. Many of these guests used fake voices to answer questions. Some of the mystery guests who appeared on the show included Julie Andrews, Louis Armstrong, Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, James Cagney, Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford, Salvador Dali, Sammy Davis Jr., Doris Day, Aretha Franklin, Ava Gardner, Judy Garland, Jackie Gleason, Alfred Hitchcock, Bob Hope, Ginger Rogers, Roy Rogers, Eleanor Roosevelt, James Stewart, Elizabeth Taylor, and John Wayne.

📷littlethings.com Blindfolds come out for a mystery guest

The emcee would choose a panelist who could ask yes or no questions. If the answer was yes, they could continue until they got a no response and then the next panelist would be able to pose questions. If the contestants answered no, Daily flipped a card; when the contestant had ten cards, they won $50.

If you have heard of or even used the term “Is it bigger than a breadbox?,” you might want to know that it came from the show. Steve Allen asked the question in 1953, and it became a standard question after that night. In fact, on one episode, the guest was a breadbox maker, and when Daly could not help laughing at the question, Allen figured it out.

In 1967 The New York Times broke a story that CBS was canceling many of their game shows. None of the panelists had been told that the show was not renewed. Despite the fact that the low costs of the game shows made them profitable, the low ratings led the network to conclude that game shows were no longer suitable for prime-time schedules.

After the show was canceled in 1967, it did go into syndication five days a week. Soupy Sales joined Francis and Cerf on the panel of the reboot. A variety of other panelists took the fourth seat including Joyce Brothers, Jack Cassidy, Bert Convy, Joel Grey, Meredith MacRae, Henry Morgan, Gene Rayburn, and Nipsey Russell. The show ended in 1974. Cerf died during the run of the syndicated series.

It’s hard to believe, but Colonel Harland Sanders was on the show as founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, although he was not easily recognized at the time, so he was not a mystery guest. While no president ever appeared while in office, Ford, Carter, and Reagan all appeared on the show.

📷youtube.com We switched to a first-name basis in the 70s

It would be fun to see this show on television today, but I’m afraid it would not be the same. In the way that Dick Cavett had a manner of interacting with guests to ask amazing questions with his humor and intelligence, this game show had that same atmosphere. Today, I think the banter would border more on crudeness than wit. There is something charming about a panel of very intelligent people talking with each other, trying to determine the identities of the people they were interviewing while being dressed to the nines that was fun to sit in on and be a part of. I guess that’s why this show is in our series where we are saluting the fifties because that was the era where it could shine.

Today in our Supportive Women blog series, today we are delving into the career of Stefanie Powers.

Stefania Zofya Paul was born in 1942 in Hollywood, California, Her parents divorced when she was little, and she rarely saw her father again. At age fifteen, she began dancing for Jerome Robbins. During her career she has appeared on the stage many times, the first time in 1964 in “Under The Yum-Yum Tree.” She also appeared on the British stage in several productions including “The King and I.”

She graduated from Hollywood High, although she was given her first contract at age 16 with Columbia Pictures. She made 15 films in those early years with some of the great stars including James Caan, Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis, Ava Gardner, Maureen O’Hara, Roger Moore, Lana Turner, and John Wayne.

Her first role was in the made-for-tv movie Now is Tomorrow in 1958. Out of her 118 acting credits, 25 would be big-screen movies with 37 made-for-tv movies. The other half of her appearances were on television series.

The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. Photo: pinterest.com

In the 1960s she showed up in many shows including the sitcoms The Ann Sothern Show and Please Don’t Eat the Daisies and dramas including Bonanza and Route 66.

In the middle of the decade, she was cast in her first starring television role as April Dancer on The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. Although it would only last one season, she became well known for her spy missions on the series.

In 1966 Stefanie married Gary Lockwood, another actor; with 95 credits, he also had a long and successful career. They divorced in 1972. Shortly after her divorce, she met William Holden and they were together until his death in 1981; Powers described them as soul mates.

Powers was kept busy in the seventies, making appearances on a variety of shows including Love American Style; The FBI; Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law; The Mod Squad; Barnaby Jones; McCloud; Marcus Welby, MD; Medical Center; Cannon; The Rockford Files; and McMillan and Wife.

Although she made a few random appearances on small screen series, her last three major roles were as a regular cast member on three shows: The Feather and Father Gang, Hart to Hart, and The Doctors.

The Feather and the Father Gang is not a show I remember at all. She starred with Harold Gould as a con man and she was his daughter, a lawyer, who helped him solve crimes.

Jennifer Hart is the role that Powers was best known for. She starred with Robert Wagner as her husband Jonathan on Hart to Hart. They are a wealthy married couple similar to Nick and Nora Charles on The Thin Man who continued to get mixed up in murders wherever they go. The show was on the air for five years from 1979 to 1984. Stefanie received two Emmy nominations for her role of Jennifer Hart. In 1981 she was beat out by Barbara Babcock for Hill Street Blues and in 1982 she was beat out by Michael Learned for Nurse.

Wagner lobbied for Powers to be cast as his wife because she had worked with him in an earlier show of his in 1968, To Catch a Thief.

Several other actresses who were being considered for the role were Lindsay Wagner and Suzanne Pleshette. Fun fact, if you watch Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman, you will see him wearing a red, sequenced dress that was worn by Powers as Jennifer two years earlier in the episode “Color Jennifer Dead” in 1980.

After the show was canceled, they paired up again for eight made-for-tv movies about the Harts. The couple also starred in a stage production of “Love Letters” at the Chicago Theater in 1993.

Ironically, Powers was in the same ballet class with Natalie Wood and Jill St. John. While Powers played Robert Wagner’s wife on the show, Wood and St. John were married to him in real life.

In 1993 she tried marriage again with Patrick Houitte de La Chesnais. They were together for six years before divorcing.

Powers has kept busy in the last two decades. In 2003, she released a CD, “On the Same Page,” songs from the great composers. She is a polo player and was one of the first foreign members of the Royal County of Berkshire Polo Club; in 2005 she competed in the Joules United Kingdom National Women’s Championship which was held in Ascot.

In 1982, Stefanie founded the William Holden Wildlife Foundation and became a director of the Mount Kenya Game Ranch and Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya. She and Holden were passionate about wildlife conservation. She also works with the Cincinnati and Atlanta zoos.

Powers spends her time in residences in Los Angeles, London, and Kenya. She apparently speaks six different languages.

With Soulmate William Holden Photo:tumblr.com

After smoking for twenty years, Powers was diagnosed with alveolar carcinoma, a type of lung cancer. She underwent surgery to remove part of her lung in 2009.

She was cast in a movie, Prism, that is in pre-production currently. It was apparently inspired by true events—as imdb describes it, “the infiltration of the Sinaloa Cartel and the inner sanctum of Joaquin El-Chapo Guzman by a US task force detective who goes deep undercover to expose Chapo and his criminal empire.”

Powers has had an amazing career and an even more amazing life. She is able to live on three different continents, enjoys a variety of activities, has a purpose in her life, and found her soul mate. Her life could easily become a movie script but if she was not available, I’m not sure who they would get to play her.

thewritelife61

How pop culture influences us

The Elegance of What’s My Line

Stefanie Powers Has a Hart for Acting