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What's My Line?: The Rest of the Fifties (Part 3)  Once the show found its stride and a time slot that would become an American television tradition (Sundays at 10:30), viewers began to find Line. Yet, the jump into the Nielsen top 20 required three years and a couple of minefields on the panel. Louis Untermeyer would not be the only battle Mark Goodson would have with blacklisting. Satirist John Henry Faulk was one of Goodson's panelists on his Monday night panel show It's News to Me (which John Daly and, later, Walter Cronkite hosted). Faulk was a favorite regular and sometimes substitute host on CBS's ill-fated morning show which, to this day, is one of the network's hopeless challengers. Facing both sponsor and network pressure, Goodson was forced to drop Faulk when his name appeared in Red Channels, a publication edited by former FBI investigator Vincent Hartnett. The volume, loaded with innuendo, lumped actors, writers, producers and literary figures who were acknowledged liberals with Communist causes. Virtually none of the allegations were true but in the wake of the outset of the Cold War and the post-World War II Red Scare, movie ticketbuyers and television and radio consumers believed them. Even Lucille Ball, who was not named in Red Channels, did not escape a brush with the scourge. Columnist Walter Winchell hinted the House Un-American Activities Committee was investigating Lucy in 1953 for her registration with the Communist Party in the late 1930s. Ball said she did so to please an uncle who was a labor activist but had never voted Communist. Only the intervention of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and Rep. Donald Jackson cleared Lucy before her entire comedy empire crumbled. While Lucy survived, Faulk did not. He lost every network program he had, radio and television. Ultimately, he sued Hartnett and others affiliated with Red Channels. More than a decade later, after multiple appeals, Faulk won. In the process, he lost his marriage and went bankrupt pursuing the case. Not until Hee Haw offered him a regular spot in 1976 did Faulk return to television. His exposure was short-lived. The Nashville series attempted to captialize on the CBS movie "Fear on Trial," which depicted Faulk's long legal battle. However, the movie drew low ratings and Faulk's homespun humor appeared old hat and less appealing than the barnyard gang. Also included on the Red Channels list: Louis Untermeyer. The New York native edited popular volumes of American and British poetry in the early 1920s. When What's My Line? began, Untermeyer was already 65 but television was far less resistant to older faces in its infancy. Goodson was an admirer of Untermeyer's intellectual works and his dry wit. That admiration could not match the heat CBS began to feel when Untermeyer was linked with Socialist causes. Dr. Jules Monteneier, inventor of Line sponsor Stopette, became the target of hate mail and organized threats to boycott the squeeze bottle deodorant. Goodson and CBS had no choice: either Untermeyer had to go or Line faced the loss of its sponsorship and its existence. He saved CBS the trouble. After his signature was aligned in a New York newspaper ad advocating a far left-wing cause, Untermeyer resigned from What's My Line?, admitting his public stance was ill-timed. The genuine likelihood is that Untermeyer would probably have been bounced from What's My Line? even without the Communist allegations. He contributed the least to the chemistry of the panel. CBS, endeavoring to build a bigger audience for the show, wanted more mainstream entertainers on the panel. Untermeyer was not a household name to most of America, only to the intellectual elites. His ultimate misfortune became Bennett Cerf's opportunity. The Random House publisher took Untermeyer's permanent slot on the panel and rode the crest for the next 16 years. Two years later, comedian Hal Block became the next to go. An examination of the early Line episodes now airing on GSN which feature Block provide a clue as to why. Block was funny in spurts but he was also bombastic and an overpowering personality to the gentler chemistry of the panel. In his book on Line, executive producer Gil Fates suggested Block's colleagues found most of his humor tasteless. According to Fates, Block once told a Dominican Sister, "You're the prettiest nun I ever saw." Fates dubbed Block "a strange man." Elsewhere in Fates' book, he details an incident in which an unnamed panelist identified two lines in record time. After the show, he and his producer Bob Bach discovered the celebrity had a plant in the audience delivering coded hand signals to aid in his sudden genius. In a later interview, director Franklin Heller suggested the panelist Fates did not name was indeed Block (though some examination of the specific episode Heller named did not appear to be one with a quick occupation reveal). Regardless, in February 1953, Fates was given the chore by Goodson and Bill Todman to fire Block. Whether the alleged cheating incident was a last straw is speculation that went with all of the principals to their graves. Fates wrote that he took Block to a restaurant near the theatre and worked hard to cushion the blow. Block's response, as Fates told the story: he stood, uttered an expletive, took his drink glass, smashed it to the floor and left. Steve Allen was a rare combination of gamesmanship and quick-witted humor often based on opposites. If Arlene Francis guessed, "I think he cuts trees down," of a a man's occupation, Allen would counter with: "I think he cuts trees up." If Dorothy Kilgallen offered, "I think he makes people well," Steve would chime in with: "I think he makes people sick." Moreover, Allen had a softer, lighter on air persona than Block. The young humorist was a communicator while Block often had the charm of a schoolyard bully. He was quickly signed as the permanent panelist to sit between Kilgallen and Francis while Cerf moved to the end of the table and became the perpetual pundit of puns in his introductions of Daly. What's My Line? finally cracked the Nielsen elite shortly after Block was canned. The show rose as high as 12th in the biweekly national ratings and finished for the 1952-53 season in a tie for 20th with the nighttime version of CBS's daily exploitation of the underprivileged, Strike It Rich. Interestingly, Line's lead-in was a live mystery drama, The Web, one of only a handful of scripted series produced by Goodson and Todman. The addition of Allen provided a juxtaposition of riches. As Fates revealed, if Allen detected a snicker from the audience that provided a clue he was on the wrong track, he savored it. He would instinctively follow a misdirected line of questioning designed to milk multiple laughs. Five years later, that trail may have lumped Line in unfairly with the issues that plagued the big-money quiz shows. Make no mistake, Allen never cheated. While he often played the game for laughs, his deeply intellectual mind also revealed a distinctive ability to unravel the lines of the challengers on his own. A supreme example of what Allen brought to the table came in a 1953 episode in which actress Deborah Kerr sat in for Cerf. The game's middle contestant's line was: SELLS MATERNITY CLOTHES. Kilgallen was several months pregnant at the time. Allen pursued a line of interrogation that drew howls from the audience. He intensified it with a droll facial expression only Steve could offer. Unfortunately for Line, Allen was on a meteoric rise in television. Concurrent with his permanent appointment to the panel, he was signed by WNBT in New York to do a 40-minute late-night show called Tonight. A year later, The Tonight Show more than doubled its length and went on the entire NBC network. Steve could no longer handle the responsibilities of a weekly stint on Line. Veteran radio comedian Fred Allen, who had failed to make a dent in television, came aboard for alternate weeks. Line enjoyed another year (1953-54) in the Nielsen top 30 (28th place) but lost 20 percent of its audience from the previous season, in no small part because of the freefall of The Web before it. In fact, throughout the '50s, the ratings were like a rollercoaster, often predicated on the lead-in. In 1954-55, CBS inexplicably scheduled rookie family comedy Father Knows Best in the Sunday at 10 slot. After 26 weeks, CBS canceled Robert Young and Jane Wyatt. In one of the rare instances of viewer letters saving a show, Scott Paper Company picked up Father and moved it to NBC. Its explicably weak ratings on CBS in a late evening slot served to plunge Line's ratings to 43rd place. Still, What's My Line? had arguably the cheapest economics of any prime time show on television. The set was permanent and simple: two desks---one with a sponsor logo, a small chalkboard and namecards for the panelists, host and mystery guest. In November 1958, a TV Guide article on television salaries detailed the What's My Line? payroll. "A star who drops in on What's My Line? for some mystery guessing gruns coyly for $500," according to the report. The same story indicated Arlene Francis, Bennett Cerf and Dorothy Kilgallen collected "more than $1,000 each." Ernie Kovacs, who became a semiregular for a short time, commanded $750. Interestingly, TV Guide revealed Jayne Meadows' weekly salary at $750 for I've Got a Secret and Henry Morgan's (after a contract he had just signed) at $850-a-week for two years and $1,000-a-week for years three and four of his deal. Interestingly, in 1966, after Kilgallen's death and the furor which erupted over her potential replacement, TV Guide reported on the search for a newcomer to take over "the $1,000-a-week job." The demands of Tonight forced Steve Allen to give up his regular panelist role in the mid-1950s, particularly when NBC added a live Sunday night variety hour to his responsibilities. When Fred Allen dropped dead on a New York City street March 17, 1956, his widow insisted on What's My Line? to go on as planned. After an emotional opening by Daly, the game was played with the kind of aura as would occur nearly a decade later after Kilgallen's sudden and mysterious death. At the end, Steve Allen acknowledged how people frequently asked him if he was Fred Allen's son. "I'm not, but I would have been honored to be," Steve said. With Steve off to permanently focus on Tonight and his Sunday night hour, comedian Ernie Kovacs brought his unconventional wit to the panel for 10 out of 13 weeks. Producer Fates was ready to sign him to a contract guaranteeing 39 appearances a year. Kovacs decided a weekly game show panel slot was not what he wanted to do. While he went on to host his own comedy game, Take a Good Look, for nearly three years for ABC, Kovacs' innovative and visual humor---both ahead of their time---never brought him major success in television. He also hosted a vintage movie series, Silents Please, for ABC which ran a year. Reportedly in the throes of major gambling debts and deeply in debt to the IRS for refusing to pay taxes, Kovacs lost control of his car in Beverly Hills the evening of Jan. 13, 1962. He died from injuries in the wreck just short of his 43rd birthday. The second male seat on the panel was never permanently replaced. Mark Goodson felt the show gained a lot of mileage with rotating males. Joey Bishop was a frequent visitor. Jack Lemmon made more than one appearance before his movie career skyrocketed. Buddy Hackett made multiple stops, though his brand of humor leaned more toward Block's overbearing style. The king of guest panelists was Francis' husband, actor/producer Martin Gabel. He showed up 112 times to quiz the jobholders. In the summer of 1956, What's My Line? aired its only telecast from Television City in Hollywood. Daly was in Los Angeles to anchor ABC's political convention coverage. CBS decided to piggyback with the only colorcast until the network's entire prime time lineup coverted to color during the game's final season in 1966-67. Bringing the Line regulars to L.A. was too expensive for the cheap budget so the panelists were Laraine Day, Jack Lemmon, Esther Williams and Mickey Rooney. Probably fewer than 10,000 homes had access to the color episode. Color sets were primarily bought by NBC viewers and a number of CBS affiliates did not have the technology available to trasmit color, even if provided by the network. At the time, only Arthur Godfrey's Wednesday night hour and Red Skelton aired in color on CBS, along with an occasional special---such as Jack Benny's Shower of Stars monthly variety hour. In 1960, I've Got a Secret aired in color during one of Garry Moore's few visits to Hollywood to do his Tuesday night variety show. The episode was not archived in color. The show aired only a few months before the networks adopted video tape as a new technology. While color kinescopes were available, they were estimated to cost eight times that of black-and-white films. The ever-frugal Goodson and Todman were not about to spend the $2,400 for a color print. So, on the rare occasion the episode turns up in the GSN overnight rotation, viewers have to settle for the traditional monochrome (don't hold your breath on GSN ever colorizing the episode, though it would garner extensive publicity for the network). Line's ratings fluctuated up and down the Nielsen board during the '50s until virtually the entire country came on board by 1959. After the failure of Father Knows Best, CBS stuck Line with a lame half-hour anthology, Appointment with Adventure, as a lead-in. Not until the highly-touted spinoff The $64,000 Challenge bowed in at 10 in the spring of 1956 did Line have a genuine first-rate hit in the earlier half-hour. For the 1956-57 season, What's My Line? jumped to a 28.9 rating and tied Climax for 26th for the year. That all changed as mounting suspicions clouded the public's view of the big-money quiz shows. The $64,000 Challenge fell out of the top 40 and was canceled by CBS. NBC picked up the show for Thursdays at 10:30 beginning in September 1958. It never aired after condemning accusations linked Challenge producer Shirley Bernstein to open behind-the-scenes cheating. For 1957-58, Line actually outdrew Challenge in the ratings but could only muster a 39th place finish. In an attempt to make room for the new Garry Moore Show on Tuesday nights, CBS engaged in a desperation move by switching the father of the megabucks quizzes, The $64,000 Question, into the Sunday at 10 slot after a summer off in 1958. The domino effect from shocking revelations of quiz show riggings could not be stopped. Hal March, in 1955 the biggest star on television, was sinking in quicksand. Question fell to a 12 rating and was canceled in mid-November 1958. Its replacement, comedy game Keep Talking, fared even worse. The dismal performance clogged Line's numbers as well. Daly and company fell to 47th place for 1958-59. In an ultimate irony, CBS nearly faced a head-on challenge for Line from its biggest daytime hit but the scandals derailed NBC's plans. After a strong showing in its first five weeks, a nighttime version of Dotto----which Colgate-Palmolive placed on NBC, rather than CBS (which carried the top-rated daytime version)----was strongly considered by NBC to go in Sundays at 10:30, where the Peacock Network had never fielded a show, in the fall of 1958. Allegations of Dotto's backdoor fixes on the CBS version led to an abrupt cancellation of both daytime and nighttime editions in August. NBC continued to stay dark for two more years at 10:30. What's My Line? was one of the fortunate survivors of the quiz scandal era. While its $50 top prize and simple logic and guessing game was above reproach, some members of Congress were repulsed at the scandals with the big-money shows. At least two members of the House Telecommunications Subcomittee proposed banning quiz and game shows completely from television, even before hearings moved from a federal grand jury to Congress. Some biographies suggested CBS President Dr. Frank Stanton was in sympathy with that proposal and considered removing everything remotely resembling a contest from the network. He had one major obstacle in achieving his goal. What's My Line? was a major favorite of CBS Chairman and founder Bill Paley. Indeed, Paley was grateful for the huge profits Mark Goodson and Bill Todman made CBS with their four long-running games of the 1950s. The Goodson-Todman shows, if anything, were under a cloud simply because of association with the genre, not because of any suspicion of wrongdoing. Paley put the brakes on any suggestion of dispensing of the Goodson-Todman properties. Indeed, What's My Line? itself was so profitable, Paley wanted to buy the show outright from the game show partners. By 1959, he would, for an estimated $3 million at a time the figure was considered stratospheric. Goodson and Todman would continue as the hired help to supervise What's My Line? for eight more years. Another major reason Paley favored Line was its ability to attract the major names in show business as mystery guests during the 1950s. From his own network came Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Eve Arden, Gertrude Berg, Red Buttons, Spring Byington, Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, Walter Cronkite, Douglas Edwards, Edward R. Murrow, Joseph Cotten, Dennis Day, Ann Sothern, Dizzy Dean, George Gobel, Alfred Hitchcock, Frankie Laine, Julius LaRosa, Art Linkletter, Hal March, Garry Moore, Ray Milland, Dick Powell, Jack Benny, Eddie (Rochester) Anderson, Danny Thomas, Red Skelton, Phil Silvers, Gale Storm, Ed Sullivan, Anne Jeffreys and Robert Sterling, Fred Waring, Robert Young and Jane Wyatt. From the big screen came Bob Hope, Deborah Kerr, Gene Tierney, Debbie Reynolds, Robert Wagner, Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor, Sam Goldwyn, Ann Sheridan, Rosalind Russell, Edward G. Robinson, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Jane Powell, Ronald Reagan, Paul Newman, David Niven, Robert Mitchum, Jayne Mansfield, Peter Lorre, Gene Kelly, Boris Karloff, Fred MacMurray, Betty Hutton, Kathryn Grayson, Greer Garson, Jane Froman, Rhonda Fleming, Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford, Gene Autry, Ray Bolger, Ethel Barrymore and June Allyson. Add in a steady diet of figures from the world of music, sports, the stage and politics and you have a showcase of the world's most noted personalities over a decade on Sunday nights at 10:30. Armed with a better lead-in, the rotating George Gobel and Jack Benny comedy half-hours at 10 for the 1959-60 season, Line's ratings would rebound to 27th place. In the summer, the last 11 episodes of I Love Lucy, under the title Lucy in Connecticut, drew strong numbers and propelled Line into the top 15 for most of July and August. What's My Line? emerged from the decade unscathed while its high dollar brethren crumbled more than a fresh graham cracker. As a new decade approached, Line would inherit a new Sunday night partner which would become its most enduring running mate. Part 2: What's My Line? Takes Off Part 4: The Ads, the Stars & the Early '60s  For legal reasons, TVgameshows.net and its webmaster cannot examine or listen to any personal proposals or portfolios for new game shows of any kind. Creators or developers are encouraged to seek out entertainment agents in New York, Los Angeles or Nashville to consider their ideas. Producers or distributors will not look at proposals without agency representation. Unsolicited pitches will usually be returned unopened, for legal reasons. 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