What’s My Line?: You say it’s comedy?
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?” .
