What's My Line? - Senator Margaret Chase Smith (Jun 14, 1953) 

Jeff York -You are right. I w ish we could find this level of elegance, humor, decency and civility in the entertainment or political world today. So I watch WML as the antidote. Ld

I agree! I'm no spring chicken, although I don't go back quite this far. But I love this show, a look back at a more erudite time, and I am sure, as you are, that the participants know that we're watching now.

@@paulrollins2414 m

@@shirleyrombough8173 j

@@shirleyrombough8173 Is it not a shame that we have to go back 70 years to find TV entertainment that is classy, humorous, civil, and decent, wholesome entertainment. It's the reason I'm here and don't have the TV on. Literally thousands of channels available and I can't find anything with the qualities of WML. When I was a kid watching this show I liked it BECAUSE it was adults acting like adults -- but I appreciate it 10 X more now.

Dorothy suddenly recognised her with her clothes on?

Merrida100 he IS pretty witty

Quite a musician too!

Hi Merrida. My favorites are Bennett&Arlene.

Steve Allen was my hero growing up in the early 60s. _Such_ a quick wit, supremely intelligent, multi-talented, and a decent human being. I've patterned my sense of humor after his. The biggest paradox is that away from the limelight he was very introverted and didn't _seek_ the limelight. A very humble human being - a quality I respect most in others.

Steve and Tony Randall were my two favorites …. but all but one guest panel were wonderful. ❣️

I think he is funnier with off-the-cuff wit such as, “Do you mean she’s a bartender,” than he is when he uses the show writers’ gambits. I do understand that he was getting paid to do the gambits, but he was better without them. As soon as the occupation was revealed, I knew Steve would be called first, even though she was the first guest.

Whoever you are behind the “What’s My Line” symbol, be you a Mr. OR Mrs. OR Miss, wado for putting this old game show on here for people to watch and enjoy😊. I have no idea how hard it was to gather(for lack of a better word) these episodes PLUS to put them in the CORRECT order that they were each aired. I do not believe that I would have had the patience to do this, the reason that I say & admit my lack of patience is because I am sadly one of many impatient people who, after placing something in the microwave oven for say, 2 minutes, I end up yelling at the microwave oven to “Hurry Up.”😊. Today being Thursday November 24,2022, I want to say HAPPY THANKSGIVING to you and your family members.

It's times like this that you wish for color TV. Dorothy's face must have been beet red.

graperonto But she did not say the same to or of Steve! Lol

One of my favorite moments ever on the show.

corner moose I would not want to find out, not if any substantial amount of money was involved.

I agree

Bob Barker, Alan Ludden, and I'm sure there are more

Arlene Francis

He seemed to be the very definition of class and sophistication.

Roseanne

They also stood for Eleanor Roosevelt

Why they stood for Anna? She's just actress. Weird.

@@spongebobandplanktonshould2920 The ladies were probably awestruck by Magnani's reputation as the greatest actress in the world.

They also stood up Frank Lloyd the great architect

i assume the ladies stood out of respect for the office.

Some great occupations throughput the whole run

+David Soulier You're using your old account? :)

+What's My Line? eeekk, so I am. I got a new computer on Saturday, and I wonder how I managed to lock in on the David account.

Arlene discovered that the product was not, nor ever had been alive, and Bennett immediately asked if it was grown. Then, Dorothy discovered that the product was _not_ utilitarian, yet, Bennett still asked if it could be taken internally. Later, Bennett complained that he couldn’t get a _yes_ answer.

@@dutchtea8354 Yes agree, you&I both love Bennett.

ToddSF 94109 - They stood for the senator out of respect. As they should have in those days. So few these days deserve that symbol of respect.

Ms Smith was nearly chosen to be the 1st Woman on a party ticket to fill the Vice Presidential spot...seems it all came down to the ''back-room'' machinations' of Party politics as usual--though many felt that had she been put on the ticket...it would have given a decided enhancement....Sad, very sad that she Didn't get her Party's Nod......She had Brilliant mind and knew, Washington Politics--in and out AND knew just where all the skeletons in the closet where....

What do you mean by “yet another”?! I’ve only seen them stand for her, Eleanor Roosevelt and religious ministers, although I think Dorothy only stood for Catholic ones.

Contrast it with the way that the the animals cat call on the attractive female guests. No manners hide the sins of the time.

David Soulier that’s before people found out what scumbags a lot of politicians are.

They all stood up for Eleanor Roosevelt if my memory is correct...

And Marian Anderson (though one of the four was late in standing)

Both men and Arlene Francis stood for Billy Graham. Dorothy Kilgallen did not, pity.

That joke by Steve was a very special "treat"! :-)

@@loissimmons6558 He's overrated lol. Love his wife much more.

That was not Steve Allen who made that joke, it was John Daly! He was making a comment on Bennett's question about being able to eat it (fireworks) and compared it to a breakfast cereal.... snap, crackle and pop -- totally priceless!! LMAO!

Ditto, though I might add a portion of Bennett in mine too.

efesgirl999 -Are you ever right! If you find two save one for me!

@@ruffluff565 Agree, love Bennett.

Not as a patron, I'd have to agree. . but as a journalist? ;)

“Might I use this service?” Considering that there’s nothing except perhaps personal preference that would prevent you from using the service, we’ll have to give you a Yes.

Or in 2008 a black person was elected President of the United States.

dumbbo1 - Wow, I just read her bio. She was quite a woman. She left this business and got involved about 1961 in a transgender organization that promoted better understanding of gender identity et al. A big achievement for her within this period was to talk Johns Hopkins Medical Center into founding the nation's first Gender Identity Clinic. After 10 years in this line of work she was credited by many as the primary influence in gaining more understanding for gender dysphoria, homosexuality and other ostracized sexual identities people held, experienced. She was Zelda Yolande Roth Suplee. Her husband at the Nudist Park was Reed Suplee, thus the name she used here.

@@philippapay4352 But why would she change her first name merely because she married ?

@@Walterwhiterocks I don't know that she ever changed her name legally, beyond adding her husband's onto it. But she did use differing versions of her name as more or less brand names at different phases of her career. I don't think she changed her first name, but rather began using her middle name instead. You'd have to look up her bio which is complicated, but fascinating as she helped found the first transgender study center at Johns Hopkins. She was quite a smart character.

More: www.wikitree.com/wiki/Roth-4358

@@Walterwhiterocks Yolande was her middle name. www.findagrave.com/memorial/196922877/zelda-yolande-suplee

Perhaps he meant "prizes" in total. As there are multiple contestants, and hence multiple prizes.

Thought I was the only one to notice that. There's only one prize: a certain amount of money that depends on how many "no" answers they can give. In a similar vein, John always says they will start the "general questioning" with a given panelist. That made sense when there were free guesses, but after those went away there was no need to say "general": there was just questioning.

You probably get a year's supply of Stoppette.

+David Soulier They didn't really need a gambit for this one, did they?

+What's My Line? No. The audience would have howled at practically any question -- as it in fact did.

Steve has no idea how badly he’s getting into it. These are all getting roaring laughter from the audience, but are benign questions. “Is there a service?” Yes “Might I use this service?” Yes “Would it make me happy?” Yes “Would it change my appearance?” Yes She could be a barber, based on those questions.

@@SonnyBubba Dorothy and Arlene ended up getting the biggest laugh.

Yes, a rare geographical blunder by Bennett. He usually was spot on when he named the principal industry, hotel, department store, or bookshop in a contestant's home town; clearly he paid attention to these things on his lecture tours. Maybe he never had given a speech in Jacksonville.

A remark that Hal Block would have been lambasted for, no doubt.

@@loissimmons6558 Because he was constantly firing such comments like a machine gun. From Cerf it was unexpected and thus funny.

@@loissimmons6558 Stop hating Bennett, hate it or like it, he's big part of WML. Loved by everybody. He's very charming. Let people praise him. Ugh, people just won't let the others praise Bennett.

@@spongebobandplanktonshould2920 I loved watching Bennett. But I also liked Hal Block.

@@loissimmons6558 You brought Block up with aim to get people to forget that Bennett's good. And giving visible favor to Block which sounded like you found him OK and not creepy. Stop comparing, Bennett and Block differ. #Facts Can't you just let people enjoy Bennett? Must you butt in with Block comparison? Like I said in previous reply, "Ugh, people just won't let the others praise Bennett".

They blow it a lot and it’s so aggravating

​@@dinahbrown902I believe they shouldn't show the audience the line of guest until it's discovered! 😊

Aggravating as hell

The audience shouldn't be told till the contestant is done.😮

MrYfrank14 well the show was on at 10:30 at night . . .

?

@@dinahbrown902- !

@@MrYfrank14 😊👍

Not a talk show😊

A colony implies a place of full-time residence (from Latin "colōnus," settler) and may also have pejorative connotations of separation (leper colony). Resort, park, or camp better describe places visited for a day trip or a short stay. It's more about truth in advertising than about PC.

Only if everyone was adult and didn’t giggle like school kids.

lip readers can do a lot. law enforcement has used them to read the lips of people they have under surveillance. but i doubt, with the poor quality of TV back then, they could read very much from this show, today.

@@MrYfrank14 you say that but there is a clip here on youtube where a lip reader watches films of the BEF in WW1 and figures out what they are saying

@@Thedawnatnight - i stand corrected. I did not believe that was possible.

I have noticed that the audience reactions to questions asked or answered do help the panel in guessing the line of the guests. The panel deserves extra credit for being so observant to the audience.

@@erichanson426 Arlene is usually the first to pick up on their reactions (though Dorothy caught it first this time). Good actors learn to sense audience reaction to a play, and can even adjust their timing and emphasis to fine-tune the performance to the audience. That's part of the magic of live theater. Arlene certainly had extensive stage experience to help her in this regard.

Horace Ball I collect campaign buttons. I have one of her for Peresident.

dont tell the democrats in 2016. they insisted Hillary was first.

She delivered a famous speech against McCarthy and HUAC (and the Truman Administration's record of weakness against Soviet spying), but did not explicitly mention McCarthy by name, in June, 1950, nearly 4 years before the Senate voted to censure him, and three years before this episode. Unfortunately, the Soviet Union assisted North Korea in invading the South only a few weeks later, and anti-Communist sentiment supported McCarthy for longer than otherwise would have been the case.

She was a rabid anti-Communist herself though. Senator Smith may have disagreed with McCarthy's behavior and tactics, but she was no friend to leftists.

Thanks for the info!

+What's My Line? Just happy that I googled her and found a more than just an obit. Your subscribers are a wealth of knowledge. I was happy to share a bit to the community you created. 😊

Shocking "line" for 1953, running a nudist camp. I'm thinking she didn't want TV viewers to be able to locate her and subject her to negative mail and perhaps even phone calls after this appearance on TV, so she made up that pseudonym for herself. I can't think of any other explanation for it.

I wonder now how many of the ordinary contestants appeared under pseudonyms.

Christopher Tate Not many, I'm guessing. It would have been embarrassing for them when their friends saw them and recognized them. Of course, very few contestants ran nudist resorts or did anything else they'd not want to have associated with their real names.

That is the entire idea of using the audience during the MG segment or they would order the audience to also wear a mask over their eyes.

Only to some

Well, "senator" and "crooked" naturally go together. (No aspersions are intended in relation to Senator Smith -- the comment is a little joke inspired by general cynicism developed over a lifetime of watching politicians.)

I'm unsure which words you refer to, though if you're referring to John Daly's verbose explanations it's worth noting that the panel themselves often remark that they have no idea what he has said. It is possible that some adults nowadays would not recognise all the words on this programme, but that does not relate to a society-wide decline in language as you seem to imply but, rather, it relates to the simple fact that a living language evolves and so words come and go. It would be unfair to the people of 1950 to expect them to understand all the language of the present day, which is to say words like "vlog", "internet", and so on. It is also unfair to hold people of the present to the same standard, expecting them to understand all the language of a past time. I hope you don't mind my mentioning of this. It is worth mentioning either way though.

Not a special feature of a particular WML episode , but perhaps a special feature of WML as opposed to competing game shows.

From what I've read, they got an appearance fee that was in the hundreds of dollars. Not a large amount by today's standards, but a hundred dollars was a tidy sum in the 1950s. You could buy a car with it!

Joe Adams To each his own.

Joe Adams I like the shrills and shrieking gasps. I’ll take 1953. In some ways things seemed better in general to me.

I’m with you Joe. In fact I wonder if using technology not existent in 1953 to proclaim a preference for 1953 rises to the level of hypocrisy. Certainly, not every change since the middle of the last century has been for the better, but overall I’m thankful for the many benefits we have today.

What we have now is better. Who we were then was better.

Actually, McCarthy's war chest was filled with a MOUNTAIN of fresh ammo by the outbreak of the Korean War (he only fell apart when he went too far for even the hawks around 1954). Senator Smith herself, despite opposing McCarthy's methods and behavior, became one of the most pro-war members of the Senate and voted in favor of both the 1950 McCarran Act and the Communist Control Act of 1954 (which banned the Communist Party as a political institution and required all Marxist organizations to federally register). At one point, she even suggested using nukes on the North Koreans and Chinese if they refused to make peace. She may not have been a McCarthyite, but Senator Smith was a rabid anti-Communist who helped make life miserable for Marxists in this country, and was a gigantic supporter of the Cold War. Believe it or not, Eleanor Roosevelt became so angry towards her that she refused to shake hands after debating Senator Smith in 1956.

It's a con game, like religion.

Your comment is reprehensible. Shame on you.

Cold