What's My Line? - Melina Mercouri; PANEL: Martin Gabel, Barbara Feldon (Jun 11, 1967) 

Would you believe I'm in love with 99? She's adorable, as is her voice and laugh.

Ms. Barbara Feldon is still with us !!

With all due respect to Ms. Feldon, her GET SMART character of Agent 99 struck me as being little more than a "piece of furniture"!

Yes, she was great as agent 99

Would you believe I had a crush on Barbara Feldon?

yes! i saw that one! it's definitely her- fascinating I wonder if anyone else was ever both a panelist and a guest?

@@carebohe This is the only situation where an arguably regular contestant became a panelist. But because the Ziegfeld Girls were treated as a mystery guest, it could be said that she wasn't a regular contestant. As for me, my long time love affair (alas, totally imaginary) with Barbara Feldon makes me want to believe that, because she wasn't THE mystery guest, she has the distinction of being the only person to be a regular contestant and later a panelist.

@@mikejschin i think it counts! she was clearly chosen out of all the girls as the spokesperson, so i'd say that makes her the contestant- because she was answering most of the queries from her own perspective, not for the whole group because the panel didn't know anyone else was there!

@@carebohe I'll buy that.

Johan Bengtsson That last one, "Will you sign in after you have come in and entered ...and gone up to the board, please," was so awkward it made me laugh out loud!

WTF ???????

I believe Ms Lange hosted a short-lived talk show called 'Take My Advice ' for NBC in the 70s.

She was on the NBC team of super stars at the time including Tom Snyder, Brian Gumbel and Kelly Lange. I may have missed someone. It was a hugely talented team!

As to your last comment: I thought that, too! But, according to her IMDB profile, apparently not. Her divorce from Lucien Verdoux-Feldon was finalized on 21 April 1967, and she wouldn't move in with Burt Nodella until the following year. By the way: She was also a big-money winner on "The $64,000 Question" back in 1957 - answering questions about Shakespeare.

Barbara Feldon never had children. As far as the dress, those tent style dresses were in fashion at the time. The first challenger also wears one.

jec1ny not only physically, but I also loved her voice. She did a advert for some men's fragrance around this time (it was named, 'Top Brass'; ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fy33kNEIwgw.html), which was seen by a lot of people, and if I'm correct, it was due to the great response which it recieved, that it led to her co-starring on Get Smart.

She wasn’t that good an actor

"Thumb up" (I don't know why it never works when I use the thumb-symbol?)

***** Do you know what the film was that he went to Jerusalem for, and whether or not he ever ended up making it? (20:07 -- Melina talks about her hopes for a "big, big and important film"; at 19:13 Martin mentions that he was on his way to Jerusalem with Irwin Shaw.)

SaveThe TPC Double-checking Jules Dassin's filmography on IMDB,it sounds like it was "Survival 1967", which Mercouri was not in. www.imdb.com/title/tt0205997/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_6 And yes, Joe Dassin was Jules' son, who died at 41 in 1980.

***** Thanks, Vahan. I found a bit more info. about the film here: www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/498517/Survival-1967/. Apparently Irwin Shaw was the screenwriter. (Please note that I edited my comment after reading the credits more carefully.) Sad about his son.

In Greecian? What formula did she use...I hope it was not #9 again. That's so old!

@@MrJoeybabe25 Greecian is old as that is a description of an ancient letters. But GREEK is still alive and thriving LOLLL

I hope Jerry is still with us, what a gorgeous woman.❤

And Barbara just ignores it.

This is true but it seems to be unintentional. It appears to me that he sat as he always did at the end of the show and mistakenly thought that the camera had already cut away from him when he stood up.

Captivating observations

Wikipedia seems to indicate it was this episode, but they've been wrong before.

We lost Betty last Dec. 31, 2021, at 99. We lost Pamela Tiffin on Dec. 2, 2020, at 78. First time I've seen Barbara F on the WML: panel! She was 34 then, celebrated her 89th this past Mar. 12 (2022). Hard to believe she was 32 when Get Smart premiered in Sep. 1965. She told TV Guide she was 24, with a 1941 birth year, but she fudged her age by 8 years, born in 1933. She still looked younger than 32 when GS premiered!

Get a life

Vahan Nisanian I'll respond properly to your point. It could be visual quality. This was a particularly blurred one.

***** Was that the same play for which a recent WML contestant was the orchestra conductor?

SaveThe TPC Yes.

SaveThe TPC In the early days, did WML ever have a live band?

It had a nice run of 320 shows and would run until 1968,

@@MrJoeybabe25 I don't believe it had a live band, although lots of early game shows did make use of live musicians.

+gero guy The very same. You can check out her info on wikipedia.

First woman to be a nightly news anchor in Los Angeles. KNBC-TV/KCBS-TV Tournament of Roses parade co-host December 14, 1937 (age 78)

That’s exactly what I was thinking

That would've been hilarious.

+kenp3L Ha! :)

Nor did the audience react. The cone of silence must have been lowered.

Can someone explain this joke for me please? I don't understand!

eden express Barbara Feldon was “Agent 99”

@@loissimmons6558 they missed it by that much.

soulierinvestments I'm intrigued. What do you mean? Do I detect a distaste for Northerners??

+519DJW She was a fanatic, maniac smoker. If she had to be remembered for something in her appearance, that would be her holding a cigarette. In fact, that is what finally killed her, sadly. (I think I had read an interview where she admitted that she loved smoking even if that would sometime be the death of her.)

nope. future "the edge of night" announcer hal simms. this is simms' foist announcing of "whats my line?" since 1961

***** Sorry guys. I spoke too soon. I fixed it.

lol that hokay. good episode tho

Hal always had the most cultured tone and inflection as an announcer. Still good at it tonight.

soulierinvestments Where was Johnny?

I've noticed a diminution of wolf whistles in recent weeks, especially for attractive non-celebrity challengers. Perhaps it was the beginning of the times changing so that now we get many posts on this channel decrying that practice.

Perhaps one should say that in the Greek alphabet, the letter shaped more or less like our English P is the letter rho, and is pronounced as an r.

Ανδρέας Παπανδρέου

YES !!! Especially the sloppy men in sloppy shorts.

On certain formal occasions men and women still dress up, as at formal dinners, weddings, and the symphony. However, you are correct in that a TV appearance is not regarded as an event automatically deserving of formal attire. Regards.

They need to bottom line. Especially for events like that.

1967 was also the first year of the North American Soccer League. It originally had a Chicago team, too - the Chicago Mustangs. (This was, of course, before the "glory decades" of the 1970s and the 1980s for the NASL, featuring the New York Cosmos and the Chicago Sting, among other teams.)

It's still invisible in America. It has had publicity, good and bad, from time to time. but as a sport Americans are just not into it. There's no excitement to watch a game for two hours then have it end in a 0-0 tie if not by kick-off scoring.

Yes, Kelly Lange went on to become, for approximately 30 years, a news anchor at KNBC Los Angeles for most of those years. And then same for KCBS in the latter couple of years.

She was a woman of many talents. Many Europeans probably associate her name with politics rather than entertainment. She was a notable figure in European politics for decades. She became politically engaged after the coup d'état in Greece, just a few weeks before this appearance on WML. When the military junta collapsed in 1974, she moved back to Greece to become a full time politician. She became a member of the Greek parliament in 1977, and held the position as minister of culture for many years, 1981-89 and again from 1993 until her death in 1994.

Steff2929again And she was famous for saying "I was born a Greek and I will die a Greek. Mr. Pattakos was born a fascist and he will die a fascist."

***** She minced no words. "The American Melodrama" said that she used to slap people who disagreed with her politically. [;^>) That would be refreshing in Congress.

America's got talent

I've always wondered what he looked like when he woke up in the morning.

WML tended to be as inconsistent on that definition as they were inaccurate on biology. It was a relatively minor flaw in an otherwise excellent and entertaining program.

Great remark..

+Neil Midkiff I can let them slide on the first contestant vis a vis dealing in a product because it is consistent with how they presented similar situations in the past. I was also scratching my head during the second segment related to clothing and/or jewelry and there never was an explanation of what that meant. The only thing I could think of, and it would be extremely tangential was that the sponsor for the traffic reports was either a clothing store or a jewelry store. It turned out that the explanation was different. As part of the sexploitation novelty gimmick of two female helicopter traffic reporters (they were not the pilots), "Dawn and Eve O'Day" wore silver lamé jumpsuits. But it worked out well for Kelly Lange. She would become a co-anchor of the news at NBC's local station in L.A. Not bad for a fashion model who got on line at a shopping center thinking that they were giving something away. She was also the most frequent co-host of the Rose Bowl Parade (often with Michael Landon). According to TV Guide, she was the first local newscaster to be paid more than $1 million per year. Note: not the first female, the first male or female.

@@loissimmons6558 Thanks for filling in the story about Kelly Lange! I still think the answers were misleading, but at least they're not inexplicable. I've just started my third sequential viewing of these episodes, and am catching up with helpful and interesting comments that you left a couple of years ago on some of the 1950 shows, so our mutual admiration and annotation society is continuing.

+Neil Midkiff Third time through? Wow! I'm just finishing my first go round and I'm not sure if I will immediately go back to the beginning and start again. That feels kind of like the never ending task of painting the Golden Gate Bridge. I only watch one episode a day, usually while eating dinner. And sometimes, like when I don't eat dinner at home, I miss a day. Somewhere a William Shatner imitator is saying, "RU-vid, the final frontier: this is the voyage of the good ship What's My Line; its three year mission ..."

@@loissimmons6558 I live only 42 miles south of the Golden Gate Bridge, so celebrating the achievements of an earlier generation of Californians comes naturally to me. I grew up in the Midwest, but came to the Bay Area in the late 1970s for graduate studies and feel as though Silicon Valley is home now. Fortunately my mother and brother are Californians now too, so family and professional ties are not in conflict.

+Neil Midkiff I could have chosen any long bridge with a large surface area to paint, but I used the Golden Gate because I remembered earlier posts that connected you with the Bay Area. I was using it only as an example of a project that once one gets to the end one immediately goes back to the beginning and starts over again. BTW, as one who began college as an engineering major with the intent of becoming a civil engineer with an emphasis on roads, rail systems and urban planning, I love bridges and marvel at the amazing engineering work that it took to build the Golden Gate, a bridge that many experts claimed would be impossible to build. I had the good fortune to cross it once, as part of a tour of SF in June 1981. I saw two other engineering marvels on that extended trip: the Pacific Coast Highway (CA Route 1) from SF to Santa Barbara and Hearst Castle in San Simeon.

I think he just doesn't give a anymore!

Imagine French president Charles de Gaulle enter and sign in and then give his answers only with 'oui' and 'non'. That would have been something!

We shouldn't be too hard on the memory of The Old General. After all, as he himself admitted, it is hard to run a country that has 213 different types of cheese.

soulierinvestments He is one of my favorite leaders from the '50s along with Harold MacMillan. :)

Johan Bengtsson Better than Franco?

Joe Postove Weren't they all?

@@loissimmons6558 Hi 2 years later!

@@MrJoeybabe25 Hi guy!

@@loissimmons109 🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂

No, but he is second cousin to Lord and Lady Plushbottom who live on Wump Street in Moon Mullins.

Sickos

Not sure but Hal Simms was still around to fill in.

1957, 10 years before her appearance as a panelist.

Like calling the United States a democracy when it’s really a Constitutional Republic. The president even does this. Most people don’t think on their own, very impressionable 😢

You are so correct..

Dinahbrown.., Most people Don't think On their own. It's incredibly worse today with the abundance of "Smart phones " & stupid. People.

@@dcasper8514 We live among insanity

A Girl Named Jerry, modeled after A Boy Named Sue (Johnny Cash). Now, either name can be either gender, anytime they feel like it!

+Joe Postove After World War II and the horrible extormination of six million Jews, those of them who were not killed but managed to survive, kind of felt guilt. Dassin fled to Israel during this war led by this feeling I guess. What is extraordinary though, is that he even lied to his beloved Melina in order to leave.

Except that Jules Dassin was American-born, and he spent World War II in Hollywood, directing "B" features at MGM. He was, indeed, Jewish (one of 8 children, I think). Heck, American operatic tenor Richard Tucker also went to Israel shortly after the end of the 6-Day War - and he sang near some of the "hottest" spots then, in fulfilling engagements which he had already been contracted to sing months before. They went to show solidarity with their fellow Jews; to me, that's the short of it.

Melina Mercouri was already in the U.S. for the production of Ilya Darling when the Greek dictatorship began. She then began her activism. The colonels revoked her Greek citizenship and declared her persona non grata. It was not the reason she went to the U.S., but it was the reason she remained abroad - subsequently in France until the dictatorship ended in 1974.

Get a life6

Arlene laughed so what she said was all in good fun.

You are not alone.

+Joe Postove You're alone. And she was Greek, not Italian. How American you are

2%

Hater Hater. See u later