Andy Taylor and Barney Fife were close friends in the fictional world of Mayberry. It turns out that the actors who portrayed them were close friends as well.

According to Don Knotts, “Andy was a good boss and one of the reasons the show had such good rapport. Andy was simply a good guy.”

Knotts attended the weekly script meetings at the insistence of Griffith.  Andy reserved a chair next to him for Don and would tell any would-be interloper, “You have to get up. That’s Don’s chair.” Even after he left the show Don’s chair was never used again.

Later, Griffith had the chair bronzed and sent to Knotts as a gift.  Don said of the gift, “It was so heavy you could hardly pick the thing up.”

The mutual respect and good rapport among the cast and crew established by Andy Griffith was often mentioned as the foundation that made it possible to maintain the quality of the show throughout its run.

The late Jack Dodson, who played Howard Sprague, tells a story of something interesting he found when he was first cast on The Andy Griffith Show.

He says that the first time he was on the back lot, which was known as the Forty Acres, he went wandering around. “I had nothing to do for a couple of hours,” he said, “and I turned a corner and thought, ‘God, that building looks familiar.’ So I went inside and I saw all these burlap packs with shovels and cooking pots made out of rubber, and I thought, ‘Wait a minute. This is the train station form Gone with the Wind. It had never been used since then because there were still props left inside. Shovels, rifles with rubber bayonets on the end, and even the dummies they used for the bodies.”

Fascinating!

Jack Benny’s mincing walk occasionally caused people to question his basic “fundamentals.” In a time when, even in Hollywood, anything that deviated from the accepted, supposedly normal, pattern was suspect.

Because of his walk, there were occasional questions about Jack’s virility.

The rumors about the possibility of Jack being gay–and they were just that, rumors–were initially prompted by his walk, and the rumors were spread widely by Jack himself, who always joked about his seemingly feminine gait.

There’s a story about Phil Harris, Benny’s band leader in radio, once saying “Put a dress on that guy and take him anywhere.”

There were many jokes done about Benny’s distinctive gait. It was a very simple bit and frequently done in many forms. One example was when Lucille Ball was supposed to show Jack something that was in another room. She was to start to exit and say, “Walk this way,” and as she walked away from him in a ladylike way, Jack was supposed to reply, “I always do.”

It wasn’t just the line that got a laugh. In fact, without Benny’s incredible timing the joke would not have worked nearly so well. A split second after she said her line the audience screamed and then went on screaming.

Jack waited, and waited, and waited. Finally he ad-libbed an apologetic shrug to the audience—as only he could do–and said, “I always do.” This resulted from an even bigger laugh from the audience.

Then, finally, he started to walk, perhaps “mincing” a bit more than usual. This final bit got the biggest laugh and a round of applause as he exited.

So what is “What’s My Line?” doing in the ranks of classic TV comedy, you may ask? Okay, it was a quiz show, but it certainly had many funny moments.

While panelists Arlene Francis, Dorothy Killgallen, and Bennett Cerf were not comedians, they were inadvertently responsible for many laughs coming out of the questioning of contestants. (I’ll give one example in a later article).

Thanks mostly to panelists such as Steve Allen, Fred Allen, Dick Cavett, Ernie Kovacs, and Victor Borge, though, there were many intentional funny moments. In fact that’s primarily why they were often brought back as guest panelists.

Consider some examples:

During the time on the show when the panelists were each allowed to take a wild guess about the occupation of a contestant when he was introduced.

Dorothy Killgallen said, “I think he raises goldfish.”

Steve Allen, whose turn came next, said, “I think he lowers goldfish.”

(Okay, maybe it’s not”classic”, but it is comedy, and the audience roared.)

Dick Cavett began appearing as a guest panelist when he was still relatively unknown as a performer. On an early appearance he remarked when it was his turn to question the mystery guest, “The mystery guest is probably sitting there wondering who I am.”

Victor Borge once put on a false beard when it was his turn to question the mystery guest, saying, “If I’m not going to know who he is, he’s not going to know who I am.”

Ernie Kovacs was questioning a mystery guest. Somehow, in earlier questioning it had been established that the guest’s last name was the same as a brand of automobile. The guest was Henry J. Kaiser (for those youngsters out there, Kaiser was once an automobile model).

Kovacs mentioned that fact again and said, “…now this is just a wild guess,but could you by any chance be Abraham Lincoln?”

The audience howled for thirty seconds or more and then, just as it is quiet, Kovacs pauses a beat and says, “I’m sorry, Sir, I didn’t hear your answer.” The laugh was even longer than before.

Comedy different than today. Not a series of gags but comedy of timing and opportunity.
Just one other thing I loved about “What’s My Line?” .

First the facts: After a halting start, the show began its run on Wednesday, February 2, 1950. It went on to run live–no repeats–52 weeks a year–for seventeen years on CBS.

I don’t remember the first show in 1950. I was around then, but probably wouldn’t have been aware of it.  I was also around in 1967 when its run ended but, being busy with college  I missed those latter years.

No, my memory of What’s My Line? mainly exists during a short period in the 50′s.  The picture in my mind takes place in our living room with the family gathered to watch the show–as well as others–on a huge RCA Victor console TV with a small black and white screen.  The show came on at 9:30pm on Sunday nights.

After spending the early evening at church being good Baptists I remember on more than one occasion having a late Sunday supper in front of the TV watching John Charles Daly, Arlene Francis, Bennett Cerf and the guest panelist of the week trying to determine the occupation of each contestant.

I came to understand in later years that Fred Allen had been a regular panelist who, upon his death, was never replaced permanently.  I must have seen him on some of these shows since he was alive at that time. However, my most persistent memories are of guest panelists such as Steve Allen, Martin Gabel, and the like.

The memory of munching hamburgers my parents bought 5 for $1.00 while seated on the floor in front of the TV remains vivid in my mind.  I sat on the floor not only because I was a kid but because the huge TV with the small screen would fit in our living room only in such a spot that it couldn’t be viewed well from our sofa or other chairs.  Adults would usually pull a chair around to have some place to sit.

At a young age I was captured by television and this elegant show. Gentlemen and Ladies, dressed in tuxedos and gowns, playing a game so pleasantly, and the opportunity to see celebrities I had seen in the movies and on other TV shows.  I was in love!

That’s the way every episode of the Burns and Allen show would end–or rather, it was the next-to-the last thing said. That line, spoken by George, was always followed by Gracie saying “Goodnight.”

Quite a while back I caught a trivia quiz on some show (I forget which). One question was about how the Burns and Allen show ended. The “correct” answer, which several participants and the host agreed upon as Gracie’s response was “Goodnight, Gracie.”

I was appalled (not really, but you know what I mean!). These people–none of whom as old as I (although close), as I remember. Got it wrong!

I suspected they were not actually all that familiar with the show but, instead, remembered the closing to “Laugh In”. As you may remember, Dan Rowan would always tell Dick Martin, “Say Goodnight, Dick” to which Dick would reply, “Goodnight, Dick.”

I never contacted the show about the error. Not that it was that important. And now I forget where the error occurred.

Gracie portrayed this demure but zany woman who lived in her own world with her own logic (much more on that in later articles). But she was not Dick Martin–or at least the character he portrayed. Gracie would have never responded like Dick.

When George indicated it was time to go, she was simply following his lead. It was completely in character with the woman she portrayed in the series. And I loved it.

Arguably one of the most famous routines Bud and Lou had was “Who’s on First?”. It seems, therefore, appropriate that it be the subject of this first article on them.

Performed and recorded many times, including the versions contained in the videos on this site, the “quality” and humor in the routine certainly varied–in my estimation. However, I also cannot deny that I find myself laughing at it in spite of myself.

Despite the improbability of the players’ names (“Who”, “What”, “I Don’t Know”, etc) the confusion caused by those names is the building block of the piece. If you suspend your judgment and accept the premise then you “buy” the bit and can’t help but laugh as both Bud and Lou’s frustration builds.

I suppose I enjoy this routine, which I’ve seen multiple times in movie and television formats–as well as having heard on tapes of radio shows–because it uses the English language as its basis. By that I mean that the various names, such as “Who”, are used with double meaning. Naturally (and I never have found out what position he plays), Bud’s use of the words as names makes sense to him while the words as parts of speech make sense to Lou.

Maybe this routine, or even the entire work of Abbott and Costello, are not your idea of classic humor.  However, since you’re reading this article I suspect they are.

My taste in comedy runs far and wide, as evidenced by the wide of comics and shows represented in this site.  And my admiration for the comedy of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, as shown in the many versions of this classic routine,  qualifies them as classic.