Joan Crawford was such a huge star in Hollywood. It's almost hard to comprehend the magnitude of her star power. They don't make film stars like her anymore. Fun fact, during the 1930s and 40s, Crawford was consistently in the top 10 billing actors in Hollywood.
Have watched Mildred Pierce several times. A great job of casting and a great job by all in the cast. Love when a bit player who might be on for just a few minutes yet he gives his all.
Wow!!! The fashion that they are wearing is timeless and classy!!! When people used to dress, they acted with dignity and respect back then .... immaculate!!! CLASSY!! DRESSING WAS A MANDATORY ROUTINE FOR BOTH MEN AND WOMEN OF ALL SOCIAL AND ETHNIC GROUPS. SOCIETY NEEDS TO RETURN BACK. TOP QUALITY FABRICS...TIMELESS!!! LOVE IT!!!
At this point, Joan Crawford was one of the biggest stars the movies had ever seen. 30 years and she was still going strong. The mention of "long golden curls" was a reference to Mary Pickford, who at one point was Crawford's mother-in-law! Joan Crawford, one of the greats!
@drednm I think Dorothy asked about "long golden curls" (at 21:05) because she was thinking of Shirley Temple. Shirley Temple was no longer making movies in 1957, but she would have still been associated with motion pictures in the minds of most Americans at the time, so it would be sensible for Dorothy to think of her, based on the differing answers from Joan and John to Arlene's questions about her being associated with "pictures." Also, Shirley Temple had brought to life characters "from the pages of a book" in such films as _The Little Princess_ and _Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm_ .
I call them obfuscations and they were funny. However, by 1957, I think they had gotten a bit played out. I think on earlier shows, particularly how Fred Allen responded some of them were really funny. Btw, I took an engineering class in college where there was one teacher who did that when we were taking exams. After 15 minutes, he would "explain" something about one of the questions or how it was written that confused me.
Andrew Gilmore - Cheltenham? Abington? They were good school districts back then with some bucks, so I am pleased to know the girls were allowed to take shop, not just boys.
Joan really didn't disguise her voice much in this episode - I was surprised the questioning went on for as long as it did. She made several appearances as "Mystery Guest" during the WML show's long run. Her comment to Bennett at the show's end is very funny! Thanks for all the fun posts!!
Steven Chappell I think Bennett knew instantly. Watch his body language. He kindly let them have some fun and experience before revealing who they were. He’s a highly intelligent man. He knew his wife’s voice. I think his protest at the end, when he stated he recognized the other lady’s voice rather than wife Phyllis’s, was just a generous compliment to her.
Bennett seemed to enjoy himself immensely on this show. At times, it strikes me that there is still a lot of little boy in him. There's alway something that lights him up like a kid who just got his first hit in Little League.
@@mikejschin I think that applies to all men as far as having a little boy inside. Men and boys are put under a lot of pressure to talk, act, walk, etc. in a certain manner. Otherwise a lot of finger wagging and mean comments ensue. We would be better off to just relax and be ourselves.
The comments about eyebrows, ageing, adoption, family etc regarding Joan Crawford have a place. But there is no doubt that Joan Crawford did more to dignify the role of women in the movies than any actress ever. She was an incredible person with an amazing life story.
Joan thought she was through with movies, but that changed when her husband Al Steele (Pepsi Cola bigwig) died leaving her in debt. She continued to make movies until 1970.
According to wikipedia, Joan Crawford was very close to Dorothy and morose when she died. "In an interview with the Fort Lauderdale News, actress Joan Crawford said she was distraught over the death of her close friend Kilgallen. Crawford, who was traveling in Florida, said, “Perhaps it’s just as well I won’t be at the funeral. I hate them. I want to remember her as she was . . . her fineness, her beauty.”
At 13:18 John Daly refers to Arlene Francis as "Miss Hathaway." Hathaway Shirt Company had a series of ads that featured a very distinguished man with an eyepatch. It's considered to be among the best ad campaigns in American advertising history.
@Keith Hyttinen: Undoubtedly one of her stellar performances! Commenter "poetcomic1" also mentions "Humoresque" & "Mildred Pierce" but lets not forget another of her impactful performances in "Flamingo Road".
I’ve read/heard so many crazy things/stories about Joan Crawford as I was growing up. But, in this episode, she appears to be a very kind and personable lady.
Going back for a second round of viewing these in order... First, kudos to Arlene for balancing the diagonal strap of her eye patch with an off-one-shoulder neckline. Classy as always, even when injured. Second, it's amazing to see Joan Crawford in the process of getting used to appearing on live TV. She seems absolutely terrified in the beginning, but as she gets into the spirit of the show, her warmth and humor become evident, and by the end, she's seemingly comfortable with it all. Of course, the genial WML team spirit must have helped a lot; I'll bet she was glad to have used this program for her broadcast debut.
Neil, am on a second round myself. It never gets old and will third round it. Priceless entertainment. I thought Joan looked very unhappy at first. Maybe it was nerves as you posted.
1957. unlucky year for Arlene Francis. First her broken ankle and then an eye problem that required a patch. From 1953 to 1960, Arlene appeared on WML with an eye patch on 4 different occasions, and on another occasion, her eye problems necessitated wearing dark glasses on live TV.
There's a strange comment about Arlene's eye problems in the Gil Fates book-- he claims she had a habit of "sticking her fingernail in her eye". I've never heard of anyone doing such a thing before in my life. I guess this was a nervous habit?
At first I thought cataracts, but that doesn't make much sense. Conjunctivitis, maybe? Considering the costume and makeup changes she went through in a day it wouldn't be too strange. Also, if sticking her finger in her eye was a nervous habit why didn't we see it on any of the episodes? You don't just stop a habit like that for the cameras.
Dixie Alexander Yes, you can, Dixie, when you're a thorough-going professional like Arlene Francis was. Think about a celebrity who tended to bite his nails: would he be totally unable to stop doing so for 30 minutes while being broadcast to 40 million people live? If he was so unable, he wouldn't become a regular panelist on a top rated show! Nervous habit doesn't mean uncontrollable, constant compulsive behavior. It means something a person does when nervous.
Not nervous habit. Clutziness. Fates I think overstated his observation in his book to that point. So far as I can tell, Arlene appeared with eye problems maybe 5-6 times on Sunday night WML. What's My Line?
@@marilynwillett804 ron n maybe her kids said what they said because Joan was always busy with her career and maybe they did not get much of her money when she died,. The lord tells us not to judge others.
I love Joan Crawford. She started as a dancer and became an amazing actress. It's disgusting to me that her image and accomplishments have been tarnished by a book that was published after her death and to which she could not respond.
There were plenty of Joan's peers who backed up Christina's stories of what she and Christopher suffered at the hands of Joan. Joan's an incredible actress but used her adopted children to boost her image and as pawns, and she abused them horribly. She may be dead but that doesn't mean her acts weren't vile.
What's worse is the people who feel the need to comment "WhErE's ThE wIrE hAnGeRs" or "bEt ThE kiDS wErE tiED tO tHe BeD WIth KniTTiNg nEeDlEs" and crap like that, like they knew her and didn't just see a fictional movie.
A great movie. Recorded it a few weeks ago but did not watch as was just not in mood. Bette had to have had a ball with her character being overdressed and manic and mean as hell.
It gives me a strange feeling to see this, because she is 99 % same as my ex. My ex had almost as good looks too, but the demeanor is unmistakable. I feel I know exactly this type of personality, and I don't mean anything negative about it. Maybe some people who read this know what I mean.
Peter Ustinov was a wonderfully talented man, who excelled in acting on stage and screen, behind the camera as a director, and as playwright and author. However, he seemed overawed on this occasion, as his contributions were somewhat muted. I’m not sure whether this was because he was not truly comfortable being on this type of panel show. Although Ustinov was a highly intelligent man, he never seemed to get to grips with the appropriate line of questioning of guests.
"Auntie Mame" Forrest Tucker fell off a cliff... and young boy "he lifts the ropes everywhere" (with Peggy Cass) ... and he married at 23 with his wife. ;-)
Wow, did you hear Edith Young, the co-author with Bennett Cerf’s wife say that the show wouldn’t let her disguise her voice? Also, John Daly told the panel right up front that there were two of them, which he never does. Were the producers afraid Bennett would get upset if he didn’t guess them? I can’t think of any other reason. I can see Bennett pouting about something like that, though.
Were the acoustics & microphones quite antiquated in this studio? How many hundreds of times have we seen people asking for repeat Q&As because they just can't hear?
+wiguy3 The acoustics on this show are really about the worst I've ever seen on a regular program. Of other live and/or filmed before studio audience shows, the 70s Match Game had some people with bad hearing/acoustics problems, but that was mostly because they were all trying to crack jokes a mile a minute and weren't listening.
You'd probably get something similar to what Elvis sang about (with vocal backing by the Jordanaires) in one of his movies ... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-u7FWidbrEkw.html
@mermaidmotelxx and @ José Carlos C. Salazar I think Dorothy was probably thinking of Shirley Temple. It makes sense, since she said that she wasn't "associated with pictures" anymore, but John said that many people would definitely still associate her with the movies she had made in the past.
Dorothy, Arlene and Joan all appeared on the Monday, November 8, 1965 episode of TO TELL THE TRUTH. It was a relatively new gimmick started on the quiz show in which all three were covered by hats and dark veils while their voices were electronically altered and disguised. It was then up to the four TTTT panelists, through questions posed, to determine who was the REAL Joan Crawford. The strange thing about it all was that Dorothy had been discovered dead from an overdose of alcohol and pills in the early hours of November 8th. So, after the show ended, the CBS News came on with Douglas Edwards and he reported Dorothy' death, explaining the bizarre situation that had home viewers quite upset and puzzled. They learned that the 11/8 TTTT show had actually been taped on 11/2.
The love of the audience for Crawford is palpable and rightly so. Mind you, I'm interested that the applause for her is far far more robust than in recent weeks for people like Gene Kelly and Mickey Rooney. The latter for instance was the no.1 Hollywood attraction box office-wise for three years running. Interesting to see who stayed in favour with the public. Or at least the audience of WML! In all honesty I'm not keen on Crawford. The pedantic manner she exhibits with Serf (about her not being in movies any more!) before she leaves the stage is just the sort of passive-aggressive manner I don't like. I'm with 'team Bette Davis'!! :)
Faye Dunaway overacted and chewed the scenery all the way through it. I'm not a Faye Dunaway fan and I'm not a Joan Crawford fan. But I will admit that when Joan was good she was very, very good (Mildred Pierce, Humoresque, Possessed) and when she was bad she was horrid (Berserk. What a laugh fest).
Regarding this episode: Joan Crawford may have come across as a LITTLE (emphasis mine) bit difficult, but she also is still a very classy lady - and one just has to look at her eyes when she's on-screen, just as in all of her movie performances. And at least her answers were intelligible to the panel (unlike the previous week's Mystery Guest, Errol Flynn, whose (drunken, perhaps?) unintelligible responses thoroughly exasperated Martin Gabel)......
Crawford had never done live television at this point, and I think any "difficulty" she gave the panel during the questioning stemmed both from nervousness (and her tendency to fall back on "grahhhnd lady" mannerisms in such instances) and also her sincere, perhaps competitive desire to stump the panel. (I've rewatched this since reading your comment, and she seems to be enjoying herself, for the most part.) JC also displays a surprising amount of humor in her initial quip to Arlene, and just as she exits, with her parting shot to Bennett. And, in her many subsequent Mystery Guest appearances, once she'd become comfortable with both the format and the panelists, she's quite funny -- a sense of humor usually not something ascribed to Miss Crawford, perhaps unfairly.
I have noticed on the most recent episodes of WHAT'S MY LINE? that all of the contestants are now allowed to shake hands with the panel (on-screen) as they make their exit - not just the Mystery Guest. Any idea which episode that started with? (I think that it had to be some time in 1957, because the 1956 episodes that I've watched reserve that privilege to the Mystery Guest.)
+jmccracken1963 I've also been trying to figure out (or I guess I should just say "catch") when that started. Maybe our (RU-vid channel) "host" will chime in! (Though he probably has elsewhere on another clip....)
+jmccracken1963 It was a slow phase in. First they stopped the walk of shame, and just had people wander off-stage. And then a few people shook hands (in 1956ish), mostly on their own initiative, and then the show just made it part of the exit strategy, somewhere between March and May of '57. Anyway, Spring.
Did Crawford say that she was not associated with pictures any more? By the time this show was made, she had made eleven movies in the past seven years. What was she talking about?
Peter Ustinov was an amazing actor, director and writer, but like so many British celebrities who appeared on this programme he had very little knowledge of current Hollywood stars.
Watch whatever happened to baby Jane. Joan’s performance is hilariously bad, acting as if it were a serious drama, and not the camp fest that Bette Davis knew it to be. “You wouldn’t do these awful things to me if I weren’t in this chair.” “But ya ARE, Blanche! ya ARE in that chair!”
Joan made those ultra women's pictures, with great melodrama, face slapping, and storming around in some sort of near hysteria. Great to watch on a rainy afternoon....like 'Harriet Craig' or 'The Damned Don't Cry' or 'Female On The Beach.' They're almost comedic in their intense over acting......
@@dinahbrown902 Emoters? Who, who was, or who, who is, in hollywood is NOT an emoter? Is emoter ever a REAL word? i think you mean to write 'emotionalist'. That's it....
Judging by all the naive comments about Cerf in all these videos, it is no wonder he was able to scam tens of million$ from wannabe writers thru his Famous Writers School. With his WML acting appearances lowering people’s guard against their better judgement, I think he profited more off of WML than Goodson or Todman combined.
I apologize in advance, but...I think that Joan Crawford frankly looks like....hell. And for some reason she has a very negative aura about her in this appearance.
![What's My Line? - Edith Young & Phyllis Cerf; Joan Crawford; Peter Ustinov [panel] (Dec 8, 1957)](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
