Talk:What's My Line?

Mystery Guest List

I think if there is going to be a full listing of WML mystery guests, it should be on its own page. googuse 19:22, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

Jimmy Carter

Does anyone remember when then-Governor Jimmy Carter was on as the Mystery Celebrity Guest? I had thought it was early in the 1976 campaign -- but that can't be right if the show went off the air in 1967.... --Michael K. Smith 16:16, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Maybe it was a syndicated version? Did they have those? Mike H 16:18, Jul 27, 2004 (UTC)

Good question. I wonder if it ran in syndication, say, until 1975 or so. Somebody should check that Wikipedia site... maybe they have an article that says... Chowbok 16:35, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

There is no need to be a smartass. Mike H 16:38, Jul 27, 2004 (UTC)

According to this site, the Jimmy Carter episode aired on 12/13/73. - 16:49, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

Thanks ever so much. I'll leave a note on the man's talk page. Mike H 19:16, Jul 27, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. My error -- I read as far as "last show" and missed the note on later syndication. I used to be a fan of the show and wanted to add the relevant item to the Jimmy Carter article. (And I'm impressed by how quickly my question was replied to.) --Michael K. Smith 19:13, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Guest Panelists

Originally, the list of guest panelists in this article was for 'notable guest panelists'. In my reading, that should probably be reserved for those that did paneling duties several times and were regulars or known for it like Bishop, Randall, Carson, Gabel, etc.

If it's just going to be a list of everyone who ever guest-paneled, it should probably have it's own article, don't you think? (tv.com has pretty good records for WML including episode guides that usually include who's on the panel and includes descriptions of all the guests). But the list in the article is getting unwieldy. If the preface says 'notable guests include', the list should only be a few (perhaps 5 or so) notables as an example, such as the most common/popuplar guest panelists. An encyclopedia wouldn't list an incomplete 'example' list this long unless it was the complete list, which this isn't.

I wouldn't do this on my own volition, but I'd like to hear what other people think about it TheHYPO 13:36, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree unequivocally. Lambertman 14:04, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I would like to suggest that a semi-reversion go on to your edit about the 70's logo. My implication wasn't that there were different logos, but that over the period of the series, the actual main logo on the wall there was recolored and remade, so this was just one of the main logos on the set. TheHYPO 07:36, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I see what you're saying - something like "one of the onstage representations of the logo" - and while I think that may be more detail than what is necessary, I won't revert it if you want to put it in. Lambertman 12:16, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I used a less wordy explaination as I could think of, but I'm not too worried about it simply because of the image float, and the menu float - the table of contents menu leaves plenty of space for the image and its caption that isn't being used (at least on the default wiki skin... I don't know if other skins alter this look). That's why I put the image below the intro paragraph, instead of at the top. I thought it would save space. Anyway, maybe some time later, I'll embark on a cutting down of the panelist list. Not today though. Thanks for your input TheHYPO 02:51, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Guest Panel-list

I've pulled this from the main article. Therea re just far too many panelists that appeared on the show, and listing them all in the article would be counter-productive. If someone wants to start a guest panelist article, I believe 95% or more of the episodes that have guest panelists have the panelists noted in the episode summaries and trivia on tv.com for WML. Here is the contents of that paragraph when I excised it:

Notable guest panelists included, in alphabetical order: Nick Adams, Woody Allen, Shelley Berman, Joey Bishop, Richard Boone, Victor Borge, Johnny Carson, Chuck Connors, Jane Fonda, Rita Gam, Dave Garroway, Merv Griffin, Hugh Hefner, Danny Kaye, Alan King, Ernie Kovacs, Steve Lawrence, Robert Q. Lewis, Art Linkletter, Groucho Marx, Dina Merrill, Barry Nelson, Phyllis Newman, Hugh O'Brian, Suzy Parker, Anthony Perkins, Jane Powell, Tony Randall, Debbie Reynolds, Cyril Ritchard, Dennis Weaver, Betty White, and Paul Winchell.

I've left in three of the most frequent and popular guests, (Tony Randall, Buddy Hackett, and Joey Bishop). Perhaps this just invites people to keep adding again, but I will leave it until it becomes I problem I suppose? Hopefully someone will put up a listing article like they did for the mystery guests. TheHYPO 20:17, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, I went and gave the guests their own article. I admit that so far it's not complete in the least, but hopefully now people will add names to THAT instead of the main article here. I wasn't sure of the best way to reference that list in the article (I thought it should be referenced in the article though instead of only at the very end in related articles), but the 'main' tag to say the 'main article on guest panelists' didn't seem appropriate since it's a list not a main article. Feel free to do what you will with it.TheHYPO 06:39, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

The 'additional articles' CBS list appears to have disappeared; not sure what happened to it, but if there's no complaint, and no explaination to come, I plan to move the two existing list article links back to the sections they represent in the main article. TheHYPO 07:02, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Question mark

For what it's worth, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows gives the title as What's My Line, without the question mark. The 1970s sydication logo shown is obviously different from this. I know it's a quibble, but wasn't the network title absent the question mark? (In case you are wondering, Who's the Boss? and What About Joan? are entered under those titles, with question marks, so it's not a question of that work's format. Additionally, the deriviative, short-lived NBC show which premiered six weeks later, What Happened, is likewise entered without the question mark. Does anyone know with more certainty? Rlquall 22:57, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

There was never an episode produced that didn't include the question mark. Lambertman 23:09, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Mystery Guest Rounds?

I don't know when all this got added, but I think it needs to be clarified. The section talks about celebrities and their families getting mad about trademarks, but it never says anywhere who was impersonating them. I've never seen an episode of WML in which a mystery guest disguised their voice by recognizably (at least to me) using another celebrities' voice. Is there a period in which this occurred? The section also goes on to talk (uncitedly) about how this led to the show being cancelled... so was this something that only happened near the end of the series? Was that the original network TV cancellation at the end of the 60s? It mentions radio - is this something that happened only on the original short-lived radio version? Either way - I suggest that the section be limited only to description of mystery guest play. If and why any version of the series was cancelled should be put in some completely different section about the show's production history. Opinions? TheHYPO 09:52, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Almost all images going to be deleted

If anyone wants to see images saved, almost all images on this page, and the pages for the Panelists and hosts are tagged for deletion. If anyone wants to help save them, They need a fair use rationale added to their pages. I don't have time to tag them all, so if anyone wants to help, you can check all the images in the articles, or check User talk:TheHYPO/Game Images for the warning tags. Please help the wiki game show (and WML specifically) community and fair use the images as appropriate. TheHYPO 03:56, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Good article?

Does anyone think this could be a good article candidate? FamicomJL 07:55, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

I do. Debbiesvoucher (talk) 06:02, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I can tell you that it would never pass. Four sources barely even qualifies an article of this length as acceptable, let alone good. TheHYPO (talk) 06:06, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

New Years Day revisions

In my revisions I added the important chapter "Episode status." Wiki articles on several other classic TV shows from that era, including I've Got A Secret, include that. With What's My Line you have to explain how the staff's creation of that 1975 nostalgic retrospective for ABC caused them to destroy many old episodes without malice. They had to edit spools of film, which were not yet transferred to videocassettes. My summary of the destroyed material that featured Candice Bergen, F. Lee Bailey and Betty Grable is just that: a summary. I omitted the destruction of episodes that featured Dinah Shore (1956) and Jackie Gleason (1954). I chose to highlight Bergen, Bailey and Grable because they were all from the show's last of seventeen years, 1967, but they are gone forever.

I fixed a few details under the "U.S. radio" chapter. I said it's relatively easy for anyone to hear the radio episodes if they visit The Paley Center for Media, which used to be called the Museum of Radio and TV Broadcasting. Accessing stuff at the Library of Congress is much harder, even for What's My Line? fans who want to hear the audiotapes that are there.

Revised some of "Show trivia" stuff. Clarified paragraph about the studio audiences from the 1950s and 1960s. Yes, many were well-dressed, but that was more for nightclubs than Broadway theater. Anyone can tell you that most Broadway shows were dark on Sunday nights in the 1950s / 1960s. Line was always on Sunday night. Nightclubs remained popular for older folks who had visited them in the 1940s before television skyrocketed. Nightclubs, such as Latin Quarter where many Line mystery guests played, had an early show on Sunday evening that let you out in time to reach the TV studio for a 10:30 live broadcast. Then I relocated this "studio audience paragraph" to earlier in the "Show trivia" section so that the stuff about syndicated show appears after it.

That syndicated trivia now includes stuff I added about Gerald Ford becoming the first U.S. president who had ever appeared on What's My Line?. I put it at the end of the Lyndon Johnson paragraph to transition the reader from CBS to syndication. I added stuff about possibly offensive movies that Jimmy Carter promoted on the air to his paragraph.

Then I had to fix a lot of Wiki links, including one for the non - existent word "fraudster" in the last trivia item, which someone familiar with the U.K. version of Line added. I clarified it to show that the dishonest frogman appeared on the air first, then a viewer telephoned the police.

Does anyone find the whole thing too long now ? I say it's barely within normal limits for Wikipedia. Whatever you think, please say here what you plan to do before you do it. Thank you. I worked for four hours today, New Years Day, on this whole thing. Debbiesvoucher (talk) 06:01, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

With respect, four sources (cited only 9 places) in an article this large is not significant enough. There are still piles of uncited facts.

I already pared down the episode status section significantly to the relevant facts, and Now you have reupped it. I have a problem with that. First of all it's written with a fair POV. I tried to remove that. A randomly selected example of what was destroyed (candice bergan) is overly trivial, as is your mention of SNL which has nothign to do with this article at all. Other randomness includes your random mentioning of fred silverman, and your random example marian anderson. It is quite irrelevant to mention one person being a longtime fan. Many celebrities mentioned being longtime fans of the show during their appearances.

I've read tv.com's episode guides and while I don't think they are fairly citable since they are not edited proper sources, I beleive them when they say that many episodes were edited to lose the world "live" from the opening, for example, when they were re-aired at some point. Things like this are relevant to the episode status.

Secondly, There is a clear disparity between the annv. special and the episode status sections. I think they ought to be separated. I'm going to go through again and try to improve your edits.

Finally, every cite from the Fates book is the same page. Are all facts from that page, or have you simply noth bothered to change the page for each citation? If not, that needs to be done. TheHYPO (talk) 06:16, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem is, you do not explain the episode status. There was no conclusion on how much of the series was damages, how much of it exists, and what condition they are in

I can't possibly cite every episode that was damaged, either partially or totally. Many were. I made it clear that episodes from July 1952 or prior were lost at the hands of CBS officials who recovered the silver nitrate content of the kinescope film in order to resell it at profit. From July 1952 onward, Goodson Todman paid for every kinescope, and CBS gave it them. No one at the network or any other company can be blamed for damage to anything from 1952 to 1967. Stuff from those fifteen years got lost or messed up as late as 1975, when four Goodson Todman employees worked with reels of film to compile that retrospective at an expensive facility. They worked on deadline for ABC executives and for the owner of the facility. When their time was up, they had no choice but to leave a lot of unraveled film all over the floor, and the people who owned the facility chucked it all. That's New York for you. Of course, I never would put down New Yorkers in an actual Wikipedia article.

I will accept your deletion of Candice Bergen's youth and hot box office appeal in 1975, the same year Goodson Todman ruined her eight-year-old film without even putting it in the anniversary special. But the fact that her 1967 episode got trashed must go in there. It illustrates how the passing of time piled up hundreds of half - hour episodes in that editing facility, all of them on 16 millimeter film, and the more recent stuff met the same fate as the obviously old stuff from 25 years ago. That affects GSN viewers today, many of whom watch the chronological progression of the show, and they are stunned that they must skip weeks from as late as 1967.

Sorry about the static page number in the Gil Fates book. No, the footnotes don't all belong to that page. I can fix them by the end of Monday, January 7, 2008 when I will have a library copy of the book in front of me. Until then please have some trust in me that I made up absolutely nothing. Thanks Debbiesvoucher (talk) 06:52, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I have no belief that you made anything up. However, in my current mass updating of this article to meet wikipedia standards, I will also remove the page numbers from those cites, since obviously they can't all be from page 254 (and I have no idea which one actually is). I will use a general reference "name" marker for the book, and when you have page numbers, please replace the name marker with a specific page-numbered one (you can copy the general I will make with a proper citation template) - I'm using {{cite book}}, so if you're not familiar with the template, you can click this link for the instructions on what format they want for the fields of the template and all that, so if you get a copy of the book, try to fill in the rest of the fields that you can, and delete the ones that don't apply (eg: I'm not sure there we no co-authors, so I left that field, and not sure the book has an ISBN, so if it does, the ID field can go, or else the isbn field can go).

In addition, I just want to clarify, this is an encyclopedia entry, and not a newspaper article or replacement for the Fates book. As such, it is not really required or appopriate to give examples such as listing appearances that were destroyed (such as the Moss Hart, Earl Warren, Carment Miranda trilogy of examples for the 50-52 destructions. This would be interesting filler for a newspaper article, but in an encyclopedia it would appear as though the article is singling them out as more notable than any other guests. Many many notable and historical people's appearances were destroyed. The fact that most of 2 years of shows are gone should be sufficient for any reader to understand the implications.

I'm also still not sure what relevance it is to the encyclopedic facts where G-T's offices were in 1968, or that they were doing 5 episodes a day, or that they were busy producing the syndicated WML until christmas; while these might be interesting facts or even applicable elsewhere in the article, they have little or no bearing on the episode status, or the 25th anniversary special. As such, I'm taking that out. The only facts from that entire 5-sentence section that are relevant to the episode status are (arguably - this is only even barely relevant) what lead to the 25th annv. special - which was that syndication didn't come through and the show was cancelled. That's what I've left in.

Editorial comments like "expensive editing facility" were also taken out - there is no relevance to the cost of the facility, nor is there any way to measure what "expensive" means in this context. Other wordings like this have been taken out. Please do not revert them to the old way. If you would like clarification on why something was edited out, I would appreciate discussing it on the talk page so that consensus can be reached on the proper course of action.

If the Bergen episode is the ONLY one that was destroyed entirely, it can be mentioned in a context such as "One episode from April 1967, featuring Candice Bergen was lost entirely." I'm not clear because your wording doesn't explain whether most episodes were just damaged, with parts missing (for example) or were lost in entirety. A complete description of the episode with a listing of the other guests (completely trivial) and a praising of Bergen as a box office draw and guessing what could have been asked of her is highly inappropriate for wikipedia. Since the incident destroying the film occured in 1975, it is abundantly clear that GSN viewers would not see it, since GSN wasn't founded until 20 years later. There is no need to state this TheHYPO (talk) 09:08, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Alright, I removed speculation about what Candice Bergen might have discussed on-air, but I restored the "criminal defense attorney" to the brief reference to her episode. He/she could have been just as important, if not more important, than Bergen to many people in 1967, yet his/her name has been lost to history. The article specifies that this episode aired in April 1967 so the reader will know that F. Lee Bailey, who appeared in June 1967, was a different attorney. The article says elsewhere that no one, regardless of fame, could appear on What's My Line? more than once in a year. That is sourced in Gil Fates' book. I kept your reference to the June 1967 Grable / Bailey episode intact. All I did was make it a separate sentence.

In an earlier paragraph, I added the word "legally" to describe what CBS officials did to the silver nitrate kinescopes. It was a legal means by which TV network officials made extra money for the company in the very early days of television. Mark Goodson and Bill Todman needed two years to catch on to it. Producers of other shows, including Captain Video, never got it, so 90 percent of their stuff was destroyed, although of course that cannot be in the Line article. Debbiesvoucher (talk) 16:45, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

The relevance of Goodson-Todman's busy schedule of 1968 to early 1975 to the destruction of kinescopes is that during the seven years they didn't have time to transfer the kinescope films to videocassette even though the cassette format (then called U-matic) was commonplace in the TV industry by 1975. Those four employees found themselves swamped with old film at the last minute before their deadline for the retrospective. This was a short time after they had disbanded their technical crew for the syndicated series, which was all on videotape. Debbiesvoucher (talk) 16:49, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the silver content was resold by network employees doing it independently. Relatively few people worked for the networks in 1950, so a small greedy group could get away with the practice. Debbiesvoucher (talk) 17:08, 2 January 2008 (UTC)