Hilarious unintended innuendo with Dorothy's "are there any other ways of doing it?" (the look she gets from Bennett is a scream) and the laughter is compounded with John's "I know what you had in mind". PS..the audience seems extra boisterous on this episode, with people yelling things out.
This episode aired on my 4th birthday. It would be quite a few years before I was old enough to watch the show as it was broadcast. Even then, I had no real appreciation for it. It is wonderful to be able to go back and see these through the prism of a lifetime's experience. John Daly and the panelists were great and the shows were extraordinarily entertaining. Thanks for the prodigious amount of work in making this classic available to us.
The second guest, General Blackshear M. Bryan, subsequently lost 2 sons in the U..S. army, one in an aircraft training accident in 1967 in Viet Nam and another in an aircraft accident in 1977 in Arizona. Both of them were Majors at the time of their death.
Watching chronologically for 2021. Terry Moore while not the first guest who is still alive, she is the first one who is still performing. Moore has several credits upcoming on her imdb page, one a movie called Silent Life that will be released on May 7. I mainly know her from Mighty Joe Young (the old one but she's in both of them) and Peyton Place
Yeah, I'd never heard of her either, and I'm pretty well versed on entertainment from the 1930s to 50s. It surprises me how few mystery guests are basically forgotten names today. They sure got big stars.
What's My Line? She was in Gaslight (44) Mighty Joe Young(49) Peyton Place (57) even in Batman(67tv) Mighty Joe Young again in 98 plus many others. (those were the ones I recognized) She lived with Howard Hughes in the 40s, when he died in 76 she claimed they secretly got married in 49 and said they never divorced although she married 3 other men in the years between. She's 84 now.
What's My Line? Her best and probably best-known role was as the sexy interloper who comes between Shirley Booth and Burt Lancaster in the classic drama, "Come Back Little Sheba."
rick charles Very interesting info. Thanks, Rick and Todd. Seems her best known roles are all in movies that, for no good reason, I've never gotten around to seeing. I have seen the Batman movie many times, though-- who does she play in that?
She wasn't in the Batman movie, she was in a three part episode of the TV series in the 2nd season known as the "Zodiac crime" trilogy which features Joker and Penguin teaming up (though Penguin is absent in Part 2). She plays Joker's henchmoll Venus, who ends up switching loyalties back and forth over the course of the three-parter.
terry moore had so many voices she had to practically give herself away. she definitely had bennett cerf going with the marilyn monroe voice. you could tell the panel skipped a heart beat at the thought of marilyn being on the show. pretty sure there would have been audience pandemonium if that were the case.
I thought she didn't disguise her voice very well at times when she wasn't quite as breathy. And she should have been well-known to the panel by now, if for nothing else than her role in "Mighty Joe Young" and an Oscar nomination for "Come Back Little Sheba" a few years earlier. Even so, there was nothing especially distinctive about her voice as there was for someone like Gracie Allen or Bette Davis.
It would have been such a treat if Marilyn had appeared on WML but her business partner(Green)discouraged her from appearing on tv. Slaps him upside the head. 1955 she would have been at her best.
The show seems so fresh, even though it's over 60 years ago,most guests would be late 80s at least. Is there anyone important that never appeared on this classic show. Love it
Terry Moore is 94 and still occasionally appearing in films. She was nominated for an Oscar in 1952 for her supporting performance in Come Back, Little Sheba which starred Shirley Booth (who won the Oscar), Burt Lancaster and Richard Jaeckel.
If this was baseball my favorite starting line-up would be Dorothy Kilgallan at 3rd base, Bennet Cerf at first, Steve Allan at short and Arlene Frances at second base.Starting pitcher John Daly and catching would be Fred Allan.
I never understood Bennett either. I've read that he was supposed to be the funniest person on the panel and the one that got all the laughs, but from all I've seen he only did terrible puns and got groans. If anyone was the funniest it would've been Arlene or Steve. I also don't understand why people disliked Dorothy so much. The object of the game was to find out the occupation, was it not? I think if there wasn't someone like Dorothy on the panel , they would never finish with a contestant. Dorothy may not have produced the kind of jokes that Arlene did, but I felt she was much funnier and more likable than Bennett and even Fred at times. Personally, I think she's adorable and it's a constant toss up deciding between her and Arlene regarding who my favorite panelist is. And anyway I think people often forget that she was primarily a reporter, not a comedian. So it's only natural that her questions would sound more reporter-ish than comedic. I don't know. I guess it's just where your personal sense of humor is at. Anyway my two cents turned into a long post. (OOPS)
dum dum There’s a documentary here on RU-vid...(hopefully) it’s still there, Bennett Cerf talks about how Dorothy was more the outcast of the group because she was a reporter. Any gossip or things talked amongst them she would write about it.
She explained to them that any info revealed was fair game. Bennett didn't really "get it" but Daly tried to play Dorothy for a chump in giving an explanation as to why he would not have Mike Wallace on the show at a certain time. In reality he hated Wallace & Wallace despised Daly both as a reporter and as a man. Daly was quite angry when the story came out-not under her byline-& not hewing to his line. There was no percentage in trying to play Dorothy!
@Peter Gabe I totally agree. Would that we had more television performers like Dorothy or Arlene or Bennett or John today. And I'll add Steve Allen to that mix. Most television and movie performers today are just so vulgar.
There is something about Fred Allen that reminds me of Humphrey Bogart. I think it is around the mouth and his voice. Both were first class entertainers and sadly missed.
Once again, I note that times have changed. In 1955, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point only admitted men as was established in this episode of WML. The U.S. Congress authorized the admission of women in 1975 and the first female cadets were enrolled at West Point in 1976. Currently, West Point advises that the student body is 17% female with 4,591 students. (Part of what makes watching these WML episodes so interesting is noting, from time to time, how things have changed during the past 60-odd years.)
I have been on this channel about 2 weeks now. Love WML! I notice that John Daley often hints what the guest does or is. For example, John Daley says of the Commanding general from West Point, "we will begin the GENERAL QUESTIONING with Ms Kilgallen. LOL! No one ever picks up the subtle hints he often gives. (not always to be sure).
John should not have flipped the card at 14:53. Fred's question was a negative, and the answer should have been "yes". John seems to do this a lot with Fred in particular. Seems to me he wants to move it along to someone who might get it right.
John could also have been getting signals from the stage manager or show director to pick up the pace a little. You can see the opposite whenever John Daly tugs on his ear lobe. This is his signal to the panelists that there is a lot of time left, so drag out the questions and don't be in a hurry to get the right answer.
@@TheCometHunterThis is how Bennett Cerf explained why John pulled his ear, "Gradually I began to introduce some of my awful puns and jokes and Hal [Block] became second banana. He also became more and more risque. In fact, John Daly invented the trick of pulling the ear, which meant, stop this line of questioning, because somebody--usually Block--would be venturing on thin ice."
lovebug83197 (who I can't reply to directly, thank you AGAIN broken comments system): The object of the *game* was to guess the occupations. The object of the *show* was to be entertaining. Dorothy sometimes lost sight of that, especially in the earlier shows. When she would ask 12 questions in a row to to make sure she got some "yes"s without actually learning anything useful whatsoever, it was a bit irritating. I would never have wanted anyone to replace her, and I think the show lost some of its magic permanently after she died, but she could be a bit a grating on viewers, as attested to by the mail the show received. She was expected to fill this role by the producers, and she did it beautifully. As for Bennett, I've never heard anyone, ever, say that he was the funniest panelist on WML. The 4th slot on the panel (after Arlene, Dorothy and Bennett) was specifically intended to be the comic slot: from Hal Block, to Steve Allen, to Fred Allen, to many of the guests who followed after Fred died. Bennett role was not intended to be the quickest, funniest wit around. After all, he was best known for making awful, groan-worthy puns and John was known for rolling his eyes after every one of them.
tomtriffid I sort of drifted out actively watching the reruns when they got to the period after Dorothy's death, so Im going to be watching a lot of those later shows for the first time myself when we get around to them. I'm sure they'll be more entertaining than I remember feeling they were at the time (not having even known that Dorothy died during the run of the show, it was pretty shocking to me). But I do think it's true that the show lost some its lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry without her.
+What's My Line? Agreed. Dorothy was bigger than life, though she looked rather tense at times while ambitiously pushing her way to the final success of discovering the line of the person. Correct me if I am wrong, please.
I agree Dorothy was so emblematic for this show as Larry King for his own one, however she was a little bit overambitious and pretentious sometimes. As far as Bennett Cerf goes well he was an awkward guy I must say; texanian accent, silly jokes and lack of knowledge on biology and anatomy were strikingly difficult to understand. It would have missing someone on the show without him anyway !!! That's life...
I can't imagine what a "texanian accent" is, especially not in connection with Bennett Cerf. As to a lack of knowledge when it comes to biology and anatomy, I'd say that was a condition affecting the whole panel and the moderator, too. More than once, Arlene thought that snakes and worms were somehow related (apparently "reptile" wasn't a class of animals for her), her husband Martin Gabel swore he'd been taught in school that insects weren't in the animal kingdom, and John Daly thought that worms were in a class known as "larva" (good Lord). So I wouldn't single Bennett out in that regard. Miss Kilgallen took herself way too seriously, I find, whereas the others were there to play the game and have fun, and if they got it right, all the more fun. Dorothy Kilgallen also used to ask incremental questions that didn't advance the process of determination, but were designed to get "yes" answers so she could hog the camera -- Bennett didn't like it and, according to him, Arlene really hated it. My other critique of Dorothy Kilgallen is how often she assumed "facts not in evidence" -- she'd ask a question that ruled one thing out and she assumed it meant something else was a certainty when MANY more possibilities still existed and hadn't been ruled out at all -- in other words, fairly often her logical reasoning wasn't really logical at all.
Yes, Dorothy could be grating at times and it is interesting to learn that was her specific role on the show. But what I found interesting about her game play was that she took detailed notes. She might ask to clarify something, but she didn't waste time asking the same question that another panelist had asked and received the answer to previously. She was very actively employing deductive reasoning, which stood her in good stead in coming up with the correct answers. And she also was capable of making an inductive leap (as women, we tend to use our right hemisphere more than men, especially those brought up in the West - call it women's intuition if you will). Sometimes it was during her turn, but she also had her "weenies" during someone else's turn. Others have them as well, but she seemed to have them more often and the other panelists identified them with her. And they were usually accompanied by what sounds like a sudden "aha" moment. Another nugget from the Jayne Meadows interview I watched recently was her statement that Goodson-Todman wanted good game players on their panel shows. Yes, they also wanted interesting personalities to the audience. But they also claimed that the audience wanted panelists who played the game well because it made it more fun for them to play along at home even though they already knew the answer in WML and IGAS. (TTTT gave an actual opportunity for the viewer to play along.) They wanted to see the panel challenged and also see them do a good job of meeting the challenge. Whether they actually got the answer was irrelevant. The importance was how well they did the questioning. Fred Allen may have been an exception to the good game player rule. I felt that Robert Q. Lewis was a much better player. But he wasn't nearly as likable. And since Dorothy already filled that role, you didn't need two on the panel. Nor was Lewis anywhere close to being as funny as Fred Allen. So if that was the comedy seat, Fred filled it better. As far as the other two seats, it would seem that Arlene was to be the most charming and Bennett to appear to be the most erudite and scholarly. And they all had something to plug, pretty much all the time, which someone else would do for them, of course.
+orgonko the wildly untamed Since your post, she appeared in an episode of "Ray Donovan" and in the TV mini-series "Enforcer TV Series". And she is in an upcoming independent film (judging by the way they are asking for donations on their website) that is still being filmed and is currently scheduled for release in Nov. 2017.
I was a fan of Terry from my Marine Corps days, and she and I were both young kids. I can assure you some of the pictures she posed for for the troops never made Playboy. They were eye openers.. I still like her.
RE: Bennett Cerf's comment about animals and firecrackers; industrial-scale production of various elemental compounds sometimes does rely heavily on the by-products of normal animal bodily functions; particularly manure, urine, and guano.
What a rude comment Dorothy made to Terry Moore. When asked if she appeared on stage she states "yes". Dorothy then asks if she has appeared on stage in NYC. When Terry Moore says "no", Dorothy say in a snide voice,"Then you haven't really appeared on stage". Yikes!
Gully R. -- I've watched a couple hundred of WML episodes so far, and I can tell you that, many times, Dorothy Kilgallen made remarks indicating that she thought that there was no culture in the United States west of the Hudson River. In my opinion, she definitely had some annoying qualities and that was one of them.
Terry More tried to sound like Marilyn Monroe. I wonder if they ever tried to get her as a MG on the show? It would have torned the house down completly!
Johan Bengtsson The possibility came up quite often, at least in terms of her being guessed during the mystery guest rounds. My guess is that she would have been terrified at appearing as herself on an unscripted live television show.
@Jeepman89 - A word like "ejaculations" would only be used in the sexual physical sense by doctors. The general public had other words. Ejaculations was a high-class way of saying vocal outbursts. Nowadays the word is used by all in the sexual sense, and thus has overtaken the vocal outbursts meaning.
The First 11 videos in this playlist don't play due to copyright reasons. Im sure you know this already, but this mean its a matter of time before the other videos are taken off as well?
There's a snobbish view of education which is apparent in this episode and many others - it concerns the word 'training'. John Daly defines that as gaining a college or university degree whereas many people, including the house detective on this show, learn their skill without going to college. Sadly, that snobbish view is still alive today when apprenticeships and on-the-job training have much less prestige and investment than study at university (which involves huge debt for graduates plus degrees of dubious value). I love these shows but sometimes the panel and John Daly seem to belong to a clique of wealthy, up-themselves, New York sophisticates who need a kick up the trousers or evening dress.
FWIW The proportion of dubious college degrees has increased since the 1950s unless there actually is demand for gender and ethnic studies experts and art history majors.
I agree with your 'training' comments, but about the "clique of wealthy..... sophisticates" etc, They are that, BUT, they are charming, intelligent, and reasonably enlightened sophisticates whom most educated Americans might aspire to. I've met my share of sophisticates who are NOT charming, intelligent and reasonably enlightened, so I will judge these panelists for those qualities that would make them stand out in any class or crowd.
It’s always a pleasure to see and hear how polite, articulate and witty Miss Francis is and how elegant is her approach with the contestants and of course the mistery guests. On the contrary, Miss Kilgallen albeit intelligent in her remarks, often reveals a snooty snobbish personality.
@@shirleyrombough8173 I agree. As I watch these episodes, I get the definite impression that Dorothy is a very insecure person. It might have played into her insecurity that the Bennett and Arlene were next-door neighbors and both were good friends with John, but there is no mention in the series (that I can recall) suggesting that she was part of that social group.
@@shirleyrombough8173 and gabrioxxx, Re Dorothy, I also think that her often "scratchy" personality was a style preferred by the producers, as it offered a distinct variety among panelists.
gabrioxx- I read that Dorothy Kilgallen defended someone who was actually accused of being a communist by Senator McCarthy. She was someone who had a good heart despite her wrongful reputation of snobbishness.
Dorothy and Fred ask the same question to the house detective right after each other. 6:50 and 7:19. John doesn’t pick up in it. Usually he would say that was already asked especially since Dorothy just asked it 30 seconds before.
On the Thursday before this episode aired, which also happened to be St. Patrick's Day, the Dodgers traded pitcher Erv Palica to the Orioles for first baseman Frank Kellert and an undisclosed amount of cash. Although the trade was listed independently of any others, many felt that the trade was engineered to compensate the Orioles when Preacher Roe retired rather than become part of the Orioles when he and third baseman Billy Cox were traded to Baltimore the previous December. Palica was considered to be a promising pitcher with fine stuff, and he was good enough to lead Dodger pitchers in strikeouts in 1950. But he never lived up to that promise, whether it was a plethora of injuries and ailments to hindered him or, as Manager Charley Dressen and others felt, that he was a hypochondriac who lacked the guts of a competitor. After Dressen berated Palica in public in July 1951, rather than prove Dressen wrong, his performance suffered for the rest of his career. Kellert was a journeyman first baseman who appeared in all or part of four major league seasons from 1953-56. He is probably most famous as the player batting when Jackie Robinson stole home in the first game of the 1955 World Series. The only successful year of his career was for the Dodgers in 1955. Seeing limited action since Gil Hodges started most of the games at first base for the Dodgers, as a part-time first baseman/pinch hitter, Kellert batted .325 with 4 home runs and 19 RBI's in only 80 at bats. He also singled as a pinch hitter after Robinson stole home, and finished 1 for 3 as a pinch hitter in the World Series. In all, he started 17 games at first base that year, 3 when Hodges was given the day off and 14 when Hodges started in either left or right field. 1956 was the last season in the majors for both Palica and Kellert, Palica a second season with the Orioles and Kellert with the Cubs. After that Palica was in the minors for 7 seasons and Kellert (who was four years older) 3 seasons, both retiring at age 35. But both were able to do what relatively few had done: play major league baseball. And each of them had a moment in the sun with the Dodgers.
"Do you touch them externally?" I actually laughed out loud at that and I don't usually do that. Having not been very familiar with Fred Allen I was sort of pessimistic about him replacing Steve Allen at first but after watching these episodes in order I find his sense humor timeless and prefer him to Steve.
I do still like Steve better as a game player, but I'm warming to Fred as a panelist. (Despite being a Benny partisan, I've not had much of a chance at listening to Fred's radio work. Must needs visit OTR at some point when not doing five million other things.) Also, I know of Moore via the Hefner connection, but I've mostly not run into her otherwise. She's fairly fun here. (And was termed 'hollywood's sexy tomboy' at one point, which works better for publicity than 'looks like a Seven Sisters graduate, only somewhat sexier.')
A good place to start, since you're already into Jack Benny's work, might be the many guest appearances he made on Jack's show and vice versa. My first introduction to Fred when I was a kid getting into OTR was via hearing him on a couple of Benny shows, and I became a lifelong fanatic soon after.
+What's My Line? I love the Benny/Allan feud even though they were good friends. Did you ever hear the story how Fred Allan got that name? And as Jack always said, "with those bags under eyes Allan you look like a convertable with the top half way down!" I love it. Thanks again for your great work keeping these classics on the "air".
I think Fred Allen was actually quite a nice guy and did his best to be entertainingly funny on the panel. Not the most effective panelist when it came to playing the game, though. But he was amiable enough and his comedy wasn't really of the disruptive sort. I laughed hilariously when Groucho Marx was a guest panelist, but his antics dominated that episode, complete disrupted the game and really were unfair to the other three panelists, not to mention the contestants and mystery guests. Ernie Kovacs was all about Ernie and Ernie's style of avant garde humor, and he wasn't much of a panelist when it came to playing the game and helping to arrive at the occupation of a contestant or the identity of a mystery guest -- I find his egotism to be annoying, in fact. A comedian I've really liked over the years was Victor Borge, but as a guest panelist, he was all about getting laughs via his style of humor, to the point of ruining the game, like Groucho in that way. I was surprised to find that out about Victor Borge, who was actually quite intelligent, but simply too committed to provoking laughter to play the game in any balanced way. Getting back to Fred Allen, yes, it was hard not to like him as a person and I think his fellow panelists liked him very much, too, even if he didn't often seem to contribute very effectively to the process of narrowing things down.
@@ToddSF OMG, can't stand VB. He's not funny at all to me and the few times I have watched a few seconds of him he had the laugh track on steroids. He's as bad as Wally Cox.
Terry was actually married to the eccentric billionaire, Howard Hughes - she would later testify (during a divorce hearing) that their marriage had never been "consummated." Given what we would later learn about Mr. Hughes that seemed like a lucky break.
Grow up! You have to realize that many words back then didn't suffer the narrow-minded connotation they do now. An ejaculation was a sudden verbal outburst. Another example is intercourse, which is interchangeable with the word discussion.
@@TheCometHunter I didn't even know there was a sexual connotation for either ejaculation or intercourse until I was 30 years old! (I was born in 1934.)
I picked up on that, too. They seemed to be somewhat aggravated by her different accents, especially when she sounded like Marilyn Monroe. I actually thought her various accents were quite impressive.
Aphra, MM was the most beautiful creature to ever walk the earth. She was far ahead of her time in her relaxed attitude about sex. Something a lot of uptight 50s and 60s people couldn't stand.
At the very end when they are saying goodnights, .Arlene mention to Benett to enjoy himself at Reminton Rand. And John said "Don't have to much of a grudge. I watched those Bennitt Cerf interviews and he talked about the time they almost had Harry Truman.Well Remington Rand was owned byGeneral Douglas McArthur.and that Gen McAuthor said "NO!" Since John told Bennettt not to have any regrets. Did that incident just happened?
No, that was a year away, the episode done in Chicago. Perle Mesta was a last minute substitute guest, which explains Perle Mesta: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-7HWKhQEK320.html
Just to clarify, Remington Rand was not "owned" by any individual -- it was a corporation owned by a large number of stockholders. Douglas MacArthur was Chairman of the Board of Directors for Remington, so he did wield quite a bit of power in the operations of the company. In 1955, Remington Rand was acquired by Sperry Corporation to form Sperry Rand -- which new corporation owned and operated Remington Rand as a subsidiary for many years.
+mh K What John was referring to at the end of the program was Bennett's remark when he introduced John at the beginning of the program. Bennett indicated that he was still upset over John allowing a yes answer to fireworks being made of something animal. John wanted to know if Bennett was over that by the end of the show and then basically said to move on.
The way the actors act so virtuous. Knowing all the disgusting things they've either done or been through. It's amazes me that they can even look people in the eyes. I guess that's acting eh? For instance, Natalie Wood was passed around sexually from the time she was 15. Starting with Frank Sinatra then a half dozen other guys until she Married Robert Wagner for the first time.
I remember reading The Hardy Boys books when I was a boy in the early 1960s. Frank and Joe were always enthusiastically ejaculating and exclaiming. I thought nothing of it, nor did my parents and teachers. The world was far less sleazy back then, both in mind and body.
+Mark Giardina Well ... Let's put it this way: shortly after his death, she claimed she was his secret wife from October 1949 to his death on April 5, 1976 and she won a settlement from his estate after 7 years of legal wrangling. Whether that was an admission that the marriage actually existed or it was a shut up and go away payment is unclear. What is clear is that she was married to three other men during the time she claims to have been married to Hughes: football star Glenn Davis from 1951-52, Eugene McGrath (1956-59) and Stuart Warren Cramer III (1959-70). All three of those marriages ended in divorce. She has been married twice more since Hughes' death, one ending in divorce and the other when her husband/manager, Jerry Rivers (some 20 years her junior) passed away in 2001 at age 52. All of her husbands after Davis were business people in one way or another, not on screen personalities. Were they married at sea by the captain of a yacht and that later Hughes tore up the ship's log as she claims or were they common-law lovers on and off for many years? Miss Moore has her story, and most likely she will take it to her grave. As to the truth, in such matters it can be quite elusive and those not involved would just be guessing anyway.
Not quite. She could never definitively PROVE her marriage to Hughes. Her court settlement was based in her publicly acknowledged affair and "living arrangement" with Hughes.
It depends on which side you're rooting for. Hughes destroyed the wedding certificate, so Moore couldn't prove ( in court ) the marriage actually ever existed.
