What's My Line? - Dr. Norman Vincent Peale; Judy Holliday; Robert Preston [panel] (Mar 17, 1957) 

Me, too. She had a great personality, ideal for television where she appeared as herself. She had a great sense of humor and a great sense of style -- and she knew how to flirt to make people laugh. Definitely nothing mean about her at all. She didn't seem to take herself too seriously and that counts for a lot, too. All of that is in addition to her career as an actress, mostly on stage.

Me too. Just love her..

Arlene maintains a great public persona. Not sure I could be a bff.

Was wishing same

A class act. Very cool and classy too.

+Chiedu Egbuniwe Yes she is. And it is also true that all of the men on stage had already flipped for Miss Toni West.

Arlene does something here that, for one as sharp as she is, baffles me. She had it! All she had to ask was, "Are you a judo instructor?" And yet she let the opportunity go by and allowed Bennett to do that. I mention this because Arlene seems to do this semi-often.

@@lemorab1 Yep. Sometimes I wonder if they like throwing ball to each other - well to everyone except Dorothy lol

@@MajorImpact As much as I love John Daly, sometimes he makes a major error in timing and judgment. Like the one you just gave. Also, when a panelist gets a "yes" answer and he mistakenly calls it a "no" and flips the card, and doesn't let the panelist continue questioning the guest. He has done this with Dorothy, but that may have been during the Mike Wallace dust-up, when John wasn't speaking to her. But, he kept up hosting for 17 years with very few missed nights, and nobody's perfect. I don't watch the WML shows after John Charles Daly left.

Arlene and the late opera singer Beverly Sills formed a club because they said they wanted to be loved. They would meet for lunch once or twice a year and would talk about people who had not been nice to them...sometimes critics...

MOST times Arlene was nice.

I've heard a few things come out of Arlene's mouth that altered my opinion of her and I decided that she's just human, after all. I have to take into account the differences in social decorum between her time and ours. But all in all, I still like and respect her immensely for her charm and intelligence.

Unfortunately, she's is gone.

She's wonderfully witty and so chic! ❤️👏👏

He also believed in being a crook -- with his "Famous Writer School" fiasco.

"Crook" is VASTLY, VASTLY, VASTLY overstating things. Bennett's involvement with the Famous Writers School is a black mark on his otherwise exemplary career as publisher, but his involvement didn't go beyond lending his name to this shoddy enterprise. Calling him a crook makes it sound like he personally created a scheme to defraud the public, which wasn't at all the case. Read the Atlantic magazine piece on this to get a better sense of what Bennett's relationship to the Famous Writers School was. He doesn't come off well in it, but he certainly doesn't come off as a "crook" either, by any stretch. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1970/07/let-us-now-appraise-famous-writers/305319/

What's My Line? -- I'm certain that lending his name to the Famous Writers School was something Bennett Cerf came to consider a foolish move on his part. I suspect everything looked good at the outset and he had no idea that it was a scam or the damage it would do to his reputation. But that involvement was, as you said, nothing even close to anything criminal on Bennett Cerf's part, and it certainly doesn't negate the rest of his career and all he accomplished, not to mention the good that he did. I note that both George Burns and Jack Benny were involved in something criminal when they bought jewelry for their wives that had been smuggled into the United States, smuggling being a definite crime -- and Burns and Benny knew something was bogus about that jewelry when they bought it, but the price was right and they did it anyway. I would never categorize either George Burns or Jack Benny as "crooks", however, because of the error they both made, and I've never heard anyone call them crooks. So, I think, Bennett Cerf doesn't deserve to be called a "crook" because he was taken in.

ToddSF 94109 And maybe he was also trying to make it habitual for authors to mention their publishers.

Yeah....when you're King of the World, sitting on a kiloton of gold coin, you can afford to toss an alm to the less-fortunate.

Sara Vazzana He was also a great character actor. Very underrated.

I still cannot believe Kilgallin died of an "accidental overdose of alcohol and prescription drugs". She was tied to JFK and so was Marilyn Monroe and both died the exact same way. Hmmmmmm..

@@frankcastle7036: She didn't. She knew too much.

Want to chat?

kudos

This toy knowledge is the first non-celebrity to exit meeting the panel, before they finally made it standard procedure, long after they dumped the "perp walk" at the intro earlier in the year (some of the semi-q

Semi celebrities had recently also broken through)

*to my* (knowledge)

Actually it was about a year after they dumped the perp walk in early 56

Yeah, then when she did the same thing exiting, the cameraman kept the camera on Daly,,,?

She's trying way too hard to be like Marilyn Monroe.

@@cookielady9995 I suspect a little bit of direction goes on before the broadcast, but it's not always this obvious, with Judy Holiday following with the similar imitation of Marilyn.

@@slaytonp Edie Adams did It best

Come to think it, more so was standard practice for the original WML? to verbally advertise a contestant's doings as opposed to visually advertising them. Both visual and verbal advertising would be equally exercised during WML's second life (in color syndication) from 1968 to 1975...

I was eight years old when this was on and I feel the same way you do. Plus, now I get much of the humor, asides, and cultural references that I didn't when I was a kid. This show is such a time capsule. And, it's mid boggling how erudite and smart the panelists and Mr. Daly are. This was a mainstream show for the entire public, not aimed at intellectuals or well educated viewers, in particular. The producers assumed, correctly, that a broad spectrum of the TV audience would understand the level of discourse.

That would be mind boggling

That is the year I was born. I watched it in the 60s.

I was also 12 then. This was the only show I remember the entire family watching together. I'm sure there were others, but my memory of all of us enjoying WML together still endures.

Elizabeth Morgan and they still sell quite well. He also founded the magazine “Guidepost” which is still published and loved my millions.

He was a charlatan and an evil person.

@@caroler01 yea

Cool!

If I remember correctly, Judy, who was still new to Hollywood except for her role in 'Adam's Rib', won the Best Actress Oscar for 'Born Yesterday', defeating Gloria Swanson, Eleanor Parker, Bette Davis and Anne Baxter that year. She also won a Golden Globe for the film...

@@terencedove5047 That's quite a distinguished list. Bette is one of my favorite actors and have her on auto-record.

@@jerrylee8261 ...I found out that information by reading Garson Kanin's book, HOLLYWOOD. Kanin was a screenwriter at MGM under Sam Goldwyn's watch, and documented a lot of the goings-on and so forth back then...

Ah, cripes! I misheard. Thanks for the correction-- I changed the video description.

PRESTON! It starts with P and that rhymes with T and that stands for trouble ... right here in The Hidden River City!

He was brilliant in The Music Man.

I think she was cuter.

Sister, maybe a twin. That would have made for a good plot.

@@kennethlatham3133 Wow, wish they had done that. They could have played twins in a comedy caper. They should have set up another musical for Marilyn and Jane Russell.

"Dick" used to be a slang term for "detective" in the U.S.A. and you'll run into it if you read American detective fiction, especially the "hard-boiled" type of detective fiction, especially books written in the 1930s, 40s and even the 50s. Then it fell out of fashion as a term meaning "detective" because of its other connotations.

Many years ago, I had a co-worker who was born in Germany whose first name was Heinrich and his middle name was Peter. When he lived in Germany, he went by his first name, but in the U.S. he went by his middle name. He loved to tell the story of how his father was upset that he stopped using the first name that his father had given him. He patiently explained to his father what "Heinie" meant in American slang. Then he would pause for a moment in his story and then say, "But I didn't have the heart to tell him what "Peter" meant in American slang.

@@ToddSF Indeed, there was even a 1940 W.C. Fields movie called "The Bank Dick".

@@loissimmons6558 There was a baseball player named Heinie Groh (given name, Henry Knight Groh) who played third base for the New York Giants, Cincinnati Reds, and Pittsburgh Pirates from 1912-1927. He was the manager of the Pirates for one year.

@@jackkomisar458 Yes, I have heard of him. He is probably most known these days for being Cincinnati's third baseman in the 1919 World Series, forever remembered as being the World Series associated with the Black Sox scandal. But he was also the starting third baseman for the Giants in the 1922 and 1923 World Series and led all Giants hitters with a .474 average as they bested the Yankees in five games (four wins and a tie). He would have been the Giants starter in the 1924 World Series except he had a serious knee injury late in the season that limited him to one pinch hitting appearance (he singled) and opened the door for future member of the Hall of Fame, Freddie Lindstrom, to become the Giants third baseman. The knee injury pretty much ended his career as he hung on with the Giants for a year and a half before they released him. The Pirates signed him in the middle of the following year to add a veteran to their bench for their pennant drive and to give their great third baseman, Pie Traynor, an occasional day off. He had one more World Series pinch hitting appearance that fall when the Yankees swept the Pirates. And then he retired as a player. But he never managed the Pirates. His only experience as a major league manager came at the end of the shortened 1918 season when he served as interim manager of Cincinnati for the last ten games of the season. And he managed in the minors. He was a little guy who started his big league career playing sparingly for the Giants in 1912 when they were NL Champs, but he rode the bench for that World Series. His manager, John McGraw, suggested he would be a better hitter if he used a bat with a bigger barrel. But his hands were too small for the bats with big barrels. So working with the bat manufacturer, they invented they bottle bat. Some authorities consider him the best all around third baseman of the dead ball era. He had the best fielding average of any third baseman who was a regular before 1920. He hit over .300 four times and had a lifetime average of .292. He also walked a lot because of his stature and led the NL twice in on base percentage. But so far he hasn't been considered quite up to Hall of Fame standards.

Jeez no kidding! I honestly think she played up the Marilyn thing knowing she had the looks and the sex appeal; and I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was her marketing technique.

so was Judy Holiday

Cerf wasn't a Jew

@@peternagy-im4be He was Jewish but wasn't practicing. He liked to tell the story of how he asked his parents if he could have a bar mitzvah, not because he wanted the ceremony but because another kid got a new bike for his and Bennett wanted one. :)

Care to share?

All fake

Great comment, David But wait-- what's this, no mention of Judy Holliday? :) I admit, I'm a sucker for her every time I see her.

I love Judy Holliday -- a great talent with a great personality. It's a shame she died way too soon. I'm glad, at least, that when they made the film version of the Broadway musical "Bells Are Ringing," they got Judy Holliday to reprise her role. It's reported that she had a genius-level I.Q. (172) and that she was a whiz at higher mathematics. Despite that, what she really loved was acting, singing and dancing -- and entertaining people in the process.

+jmccracken1963 no one was as bad as Wally Cox the human statue...........

Robert Preston was excellent--a very charming, sunny personality.

@@orgonkothewildlyuntamed6301 He, Borge and Groucho were horrible panelists. I don't watch when they are on the panel.

@@orgonkothewildlyuntamed6301 oh come on man. Wally Cox was hilliarous on this show.

Miss West said, "Never," and John Daly did say ,"No." The card was not flipped and the questioning didn't move on to Dorothy Kilgallen as it should have. If you hadn't commented, I might have missed it. I went back to rewatch the footage.

Yes, absolutely. She won the Best Actress Oscar in 1950. You can't get much more A list than that.

Our judo instructor was a sixth Dan black belter from Kodokan Judo institute of Japan

I don't recall the degree of black belt my judo instructor in college had. One day after class, one of the students asked him what he would do if attacked by a member of the Cleveland Browns (we were in Cleveland). In reply, he laughed and said, "Oh. They big. They easy throw."

It sounds quite clearly like "Julie Andrews" on my speakers.

+Neil Midkiff Wow. OK. She hadn't even been in Cinderella yet! Though actually... now that I look that up, it was going to be on on March 31 of that year, so it would have been good publicity. I rescind my doubt! Thank you.

+juliansinger She had been the ingenue lead Polly in "The Boy Friend" in 1954-55 and had starred as Eliza Doolittle in "My Fair Lady" for about a year by this time (opened March 15, 1956), so she was hardly unknown on Broadway, even if the national audience didn't know her until the television "Cinderella."

Very good point. I was thinking they didn't usually get Broadway-specific people, but then I kept finding exceptions to that 'rule', so: Nevermind me, then!

+juliansinger I just remembered that Julie's name and voice would have been known nationally from the Broadway cast album of My Fair Lady, which was a big hit LP.

Pun was definitely intended.... ; )

Galileocan g As a Dick, I resent that (lol). Sort of like Bennett calling John "infagitable" (I guess he meant indefatigable) at 1:36

Actually he did say indefatigable.

172

Einstein never had an IQ test. Does anyone doubt he was a genius? IQ tests are not normed for standard deviations above 3, meaning scores above 148 to 151 (depending on the test) cannot be reliably ranked.

@@cherylfrederick7228 Wow, she had a genius IQ.

+John Fuentes She was. She even got Marilyn lessons from Marilyn herself! This was one time she seemed to really disguise her voice...only guessed by Bennett by process of elimination.

Poor Bennett! He'd been looking for the real Miss Monroe for years. I think the two ladies did a pretty good job of it though : )

@@hcombs0104 The spy who knows judo, a real femme fatale!

During Jim Crow you mean? 😂😂😂

I would have loved to see her throw the Cerf guy to the ground

@@frankcastle7036 This was indeed a missed opportunity. It could've been payback for all the dumb, clueless comments Bennett made to various female guests on the show over the years. And I say this as someone who likes Bennett on the show.

Seems as if she passed in 2019 from Parkinsons.

For some reason John forgot to ask her that question. :)

And usually Bennett will call that to John's attention, to see if that information was intentionally omitted. Methinks that Bennett and John were a wee bit distracted with Miss West.

I expected at least four "small conferences!"

A BIT distracted? It seemed as though Toni had emotionally (if not physically) thrown the men over a barrel [so to speak]...

Tax loopholes 😅

that would be bigamy

Liza Minnelli married David Guest at his church in Manhattan (many years after )

@@preppysocks209 and also an indication of bisexuality - at least, based upon the construction of the sentence.

Wow, it's hard to imagine Lucy wanting Peale to marry her! I wonder if she read and admired his books. You never know.

That was a given.

Here are some possible objections en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Vincent_Peale#Criticism_and_controversy

Thank you for this link. I just read it and re-watched the show, paying particular attention to NVP. He comes across as smug, self-important, judgmental, and cold as ice. He's got hard, beady eyes. I watched this before I read the critiques of his "teachings." But, I have to say that he anticipated New Age hucksters by more than a decade. Different wolf, same sheep.

@@stevekru6518Yes, just read his bio from a commenter above and Good Lord he’s worse than I thought. A Father Coughlin supporter, an outspoken antiCatholic, a personal friend to Nixon, Fred Trump’s favorite. I disliked him for his quack psychology but now I see him as a more racist Dr. Phil.

Lois Simmons try "John's got the Toni" (Tony Award). i do hear an S at the start of the word. Miss Toni?

I can help. Back in the 1950's, there was a product called the "Toni Home Permanent." Ladies didn't have to go to the hairdresser. I was subjected, as a five year old, to several of these. The ads in magazines featured twins, attractive young women dressed and styled identically, with the caption, " Which twin's got the Toni?" I think that is what Bennett and John are referencing here. The ads, and that horrible Toni product, were ubiquitous in those days. The audience would've understood what they were talking about.

@@lemorab1 I remember the product and the ads. I didn't hear the "T" sound in the word, however.

I didn't clearly hear the"t" either, but punning on Toni West's name by quoting an ad is exactly the kind of thing Bennett reveled in doing, and did frequently.

@@lemorab1👌🏼 especially after John Daly’s “Go West!” pun

Yes, but the devil may have gone first en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Vincent_Peale#Criticism_and_controversy

Ironic guest for St Patty’s Day too-Peale was a prominent antiCatholic

They probably don't care a bit WHAT they win. Most of them gave it to charity.

Often this is because the celebrity is loathe to acquiesce to an acclamation. For example, modesty and good taste might cause the celeb look at John rather than answer affirmatively “are you very beautiful (or talented, or the most popular, etc.)?

@@stevekru6518 Oh yes I agree with you in those circumstances if they wanna be modest. But sometimes the question is not about anything like that but they act like they’re confused LOL!

I always got the impressions that the acoustics were bad in the theater.

@@PaulDA2000Theyre hearing the speaker from across stage, not clearly as mic’d by us the home audience. Even if the mics run to live speakers, if youve ever spoken on stage or performed into a microphone you know its hard to process your own (amplified) voice or others while on stage in a big room.

I adore the younger Marx Brothers of the 1930's ("Duck Soup") and whenever I see Woody Allen in the courtroom scene from "Bananas" or a Monty Python sketch, I symbolically tip my hat to the Marx Brothers' genius that inspired so many who came after. But….. the older Groucho on WML, Cavett, et al is about as entertaining as a kid with ADHD in an elementary school classroom. My friends who are fans of SML absolutely LOVE the Groucho episodes and I absolutely avoid them. One viewing was more than enough. Thank God Miss West did not have to contend with Groucho on this one!

Wow. Jewish. Just like Jesus. Amazing.

What gets me is the way the planet Uranus is used to get a fifth grade giggle. It never occurred to me to see that phrase in that planet.

Yes the dogs being sicced on Black children and the rallies blocking Black children from entering school were so civilized, so germane to high society…

You're reading way too much into that. it was imply a good-natured comment. sheesh.

+maremacd I quite agree. When did goodness and decency become purely Christian qualities?

+WATCHMAN 117 Good natured and well intended, to be sure. It's also insulated thinking.

Norman Vincent Peale wasn't much of a Christian as what he wrote about was more was more New Thought. Also, people back then weren't habitually offended by everything.

Ironic guest for St. Patrick’s Day when Peale was an outspoken anti-Catholic

No episode needs Hal