What's My Line?: The Inside History of TV's Most Famous Panel Show

About this book

"Will the Mystery Guest enter and sign in please!" With these nearly-Immortal words Americas most popular most prestigious longest running and most successful television game show WHATS MY LINE? ushered in the famous near-famous and sometimes infamous. Movie stars senators film makers generals opera singers governors writers comedians Supreme Court justices composers athletes-all gathered to chitchat exchange compliments and play games with peer notables on Sunday evenings. Now Gil Fates the shows longtime producer goes behind the scenes to provide an entertaining chatty insiders view of just what it was that made WHATS MY LINE? a smash success and set the precedent for all TV game shows. And in so doing he highlights over two decades of glittering personalities. More celebrity party than game show WHATS MY LINE? was truly a phenomenon. Begun in a loft above Grand Central Station with pigeons looking on from the rafters it outlasted and outclassed all other game shows. Broadcast "live" at the same time every week 52 weeks a year it ran for seventeen years on the same network with no repeat broadcasts. It was slotted into Sunday nights at 10:30 an hour that audience researchers had solemnly proclaimed too late for the nations television watchers ...but thirty million Sunday night viewers promptly proved them wrong. The program changed a nations habits and the accepted way to finish the weekend soon became watching WHATS MY LINE. Bishop Fulton Sheen Chief Justice Earl Warren Carol Channing Jimmy Durante Dorothy Kilgallen Bennett Cerf Arlene Francis Steve Allen and John Daly- a veritable celebrities Whos Who of the fifties and sixties. Filled with show-biz gossip and told with verve style and humor WHATS MY LINE? is a unique nostalgic inside view of the television classic that not only paralleled the development of television but paved the way for the current game show craze.