What's My Line? - Frank Gifford; Milton Berle; Stubby Kaye [panel] (Dec 2, 1956) 

Back when football players were real men and the game was incredibly violent!!

Indeed. I just made essentially the same comment before I saw yours.

Amazing

rocky marino So am I.

Today's meeting of WML Anonymous has been canceled because no one is willing to come.

Same here!

rocky marino I'm addicted too.

Oh? I've only watched one tonight...well alright 10 +.

I just love these. The panel members seemed to have so much fun together yet so much respect for each other as well. One could say I am addicted. And here comes Milton Berle who couldn't just leave!

Stubby's last screen appearance was as Mr. Marvin Acme in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988).

He was a lovely man.

Sinatra did it in 1966. It did not go well.

Jack Paar returned after his Mystery Guest appearance, wearing his coat and scarf and all!

Always loved the Giffer.

He was the workhorse

oobaka1967 - I can't deal with that. I would want them to live forever unchanged.

@@shirleyrombough8173 I feel the same about the "WML" cast! :) (Also, each time viewing "Gilligan's Island" I wish they were all with us AND at their respective ages during filming!)

I agree about Bennett Cerf's smile. I really like him and his genuine smile.

I feel as if they're all still here...

rip

Well, in his autobiography, Berle states that he was having an affair with Dorothy, so, it doesn't seem weird after reading that that he came back out to sit with her.

@@kbrock9146 wow, I have to read his book!

@@kbrock9146 lol. I haven't heard that one yet.

Indeed! **Frank Gifford** and **Steve Reeves** are still the best looking male athletes of All-time.

In 1956, pro football was still less popular and had less status than college football. Heisman Trophy winners, New Year's Day bowl games, big rivalry games like Army-Navy, Harvard-Yale, USC-UCLA and so on were much more prominent than pro football. The NY Giants were among the elite or more well-known teams, along with the Chicago Bears, Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions and LA Rams. But players on struggling teams like the Baltimore Colts (just before Johnny Unitas arrived), Green Bay Packers (a few years before Vince Lombardi arrived) and Pittsburgh Steelers mostly labored in obscurity, even in their own cities. On this day, the Giants beat the Redskins. 28-14, to clinch the Eastern Division title. It sounds like Frank Gifford had a hand in all four Giants' TD's. In 1956 for the second time in NFL history, the Giants would defeat the Bears on a frozen field where the Giants took advantage of being the home team and changing into sneakers while the Bears skidded on the ice while wearing football cleats. Although the two teams tied in their regular season contest, on 12/30/56 the Giants clobbered the Bears, 47-7 at Yankee Stadium. It was the first year that the football Giants called Yankee Stadium home. Previously, they played their home games (including the first sneaker game in 1934) at the Polo Grounds. Frank Gifford was selected as league MVP by all the major sources: UPI, a poll of the players and The Sporting News. (AP would start their award in 1957.) In what was then a 12 game regular season, he ran 159 times for 819 yards and 5 TD's (his highest yardage total during his career), caught 51 passes (also a career high, even though he later switched to wide receiver) for 603 yards and 4 TD's and also threw 2 touchdown passes out of 5 passes attempted. He was also occasionally pressed into service as a kicker, converting 1 out of 2 field goal attempts and 8 of 9 PAT's. And earlier in his career as a rookie, he was All-Pro as a defensive back. In the long run for his career, it didn't hurt that he played his college ball in one of the nation's media capitals and his pro ball in the other, and that he was photogenic and articulate.

College football was second. Pro Football barely got their boxscores in print (newspapers) and there was no national pro football telecast at the time this WML episode aired. After the war, it took the NFL twenty five years (1945-1970) to be on the same level as MLB and NCAAF.

In 1956 Boxing was more popular than Football and **Rocky Marciano** was almost as popular as our President **IKE**

Daly commented about how "The FBI Story" should have been written a long time ago. J. Edgar Hoover had been looking for the right publisher and author for a long time. One of Cerf's friends (George Sokolsky, a prominent conservative columnist of the day) accused him of being a "pinko publisher," implying that he only published books by communists. Cerf was so angry he went back to his office and sent off a list of his entire catalog, which included a number of conservative authors. Sokolsky apologized, and several months later approached him and asked if he would be interested in publishing a book about the FBI. The FBI had already picked Whitehead as the writer they wanted, (he'd just won his second Pulitzer for reporting) but they had hesitated about finding the right publisher. Every publisher in the country had longed for such an opportunity, and Cerf grabbed at it. It was a phenomenal best seller. ("At Random, the Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf," pages 245-248).

She was a very smart lady.

Yes, he sure looks gorgeous here, and so polite.

Nice, until he was found not so nice. Bakersfield, CA is known as a "ghetto" in a sense.

@@donnawoodford6641 Frank had a wandering eye like most men back then. I can only imagine all of the women that threw themselves at him. Arlene & Dorothy were drooling over him and even stubby wanted to look like him. Steeve Reeve is probably the only other athlete as good looking as him.

That’s because baseball was king in those times. And college football was way bigger (popular) than pro football. And not all folks had TV sets. Pro Football was rarely on TV. For sports, you mostly read stories and the box scores in the newspapers.

I wonder why the players back then didn't get the brain disease many players get today. You'd think they would have since helmets improved so much.

He even said how could anyone NOT know him?

If you mean the diamond heart ornament worn on a neck chain, it was a gift from her husband with a great deal of sentimental value. Even when she wore a dress or another necklace with which it didn't work, she put it on a longer chain and wore it beneath her dress.

This piece of jewelry must have been very special to Arlene.. she wore it many times... it was beautiful

@@richardpoplis6777: And it was stolen from her as she stepped out of a cab, some time after her husband died. :(

@@accomplice55 Yes I think it was snatched off her neck at the end of the 90s in NYC. There was a lot that in the big cities in the early 80s also from what I've heard.

Uncle Milty was the original Lng Dog Silva 13``

The date is correct.

I can't tell you enough times how much I appreciate your pointing out these little oddball moments in your comments!

What's My Line? As always Gary, it's my pleasure to be able to contribute to the world of WML. :)

The signature cards sell fairly frequently on eBay.

There was a memorabilia auction years back that had a bunch of these cards for sale. Wonder what they go for now.....

balconi71 This topic just came up on the WML Facebook page, and I learned for the first time that the guests signed in on black cards, rather than on an actual chalkboard. The Dorothy Kilgallen card recently sold for $1,700.00 (see this link: www.icollector.com/Dorothy-Kilgallen-Signed-What-s-My-Line-Card_i5971981), but someone else from the group who bought other cards said that Dorothy's was by far the most expensive one.

Boxing & Baseball were the 2 most popular sports back then and More People knew that Rocky Marciano was the Heavyweight Boxing Champ than the fact that Ted Williams from the Red Sox was the greatest hitter of All-time. Both Athletes were Boston Gods back then.

+wchumphries I was shocked that he wasn't the mystery celebrity. He was one of the greatest football players ever and he played for the local Giants. In his 12 year career he was an 8-time all-pro and had been in the league for 4 years when this show was filmed. In fact he was the Most Valuable Player in the league the year this show was shown. It's very weird that they thought that messing with his name a little would fool anyone, especially the men on the panel.

+Rick Hagedorn The panelists may have hated it, but this was definitely a time that they should have had the panelists blindfolded for the first segment and probably that Gifford sign in as Mr. X. Pro football was nowhere near the popular sport it was today, but on sight both Dorothy and Stubby Kaye suspected that he was a football player (Dorothy even mentions it and at the end of the segment Stubby says he thought so, too) and Bennett obviously knew the last name and basically told Arlene what to guess. Ironically, Arlene was the only one of the four who didn't seem to know him. Even if the NFL was not a very big deal in 1956, you are right that Gifford was a star on one of the better teams and a local team, a big fish in a small but growing pond.

I recently learned they did get clues before the show

She was just having fun.

+poetcomic1 Arlene was great at teasingly lusting after the great looking male guests. She was also the best of all panelists at praising the other artists and sports stars!!

Why, because she said he had a nice back, no matter what back it is?

@@ludenasan1 Arlene was a great Panellist, but Dorothy was by far, the SMARTEST one!

She was married to the same man for over 40 years.

They say he was also quite a nice man.

he died several years ago. I want to say he was around 85.

Lol, Kathie Lee would have been 3 years old at the time of this appearance 😱😄

Victor Gorge comes to mind

+ToddSF 94109 You are absolutely correct as far as the game play itself. Once the game play was over, Berle made sure he stayed on camera and hogged time during other segments. It looks like a good way to get injured was to get between Berle and a live camera. Or to put it another way (considering the occupation of the final challenger and the nature of Berle's antics), I'm not surprised that the show went to the dogs once Arlene guessed that the MG was Berle. Disclaimer: I have never had warm fuzzies for Berle. Some of it was based on some of his routines, some of it was his reputation for stealing other comics material, and some of it is that his personality rubs me the wrong way. There always seemed to be an arrogance beyond the confidence that performers generally need and an underlying meanness. I rarely find any of his shtick to be funny. Lorne Michaels banning him from returning to Saturday Night Live because of him taking over the episode that he guest hosted and his upstaging of the winners of the award he introduced during the 1982 Emmy Awards are prime examples of his obnoxious behavior.

Lois Simmons - I totally agree! He comes off as a bully to me, and not funny at all!

I recall reading that Jackie Gleason had a pincushion affair under his jacket so that when Berle grabbed his arm to upstage him, he got a fistfull of pins! Also, a TV network, I think NBC, made a contract with Milton Berle in 1950 to pay him $1 million a year for 30 years...

@@carolv8450 You're right, I could not figure out his appeal. He was not funny and I sensed not a nice person.

Maybe games with Frank were not televised