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What's My Line?: After Dorothy.... Sinking Slowly in the Nielsens  CBS and RCA battled over an industry standard for color telecasting in the 1950s. While objective engineers evaluated CBS's color wheel system superior to the conventional three-gun color prototype of RCA's, the FCC eventually declared the RCA model as the standard. The CBS color format was incapable of broadcasting a color show in simultaneous compatible black-and-white. RCA's could. NBC, the key subsidiary of RCA, had a clear advantage for a dozen years in color. The era of the 90-minute spectacular in color grew from NBC's desire to sell color sets in the 1950s. CBS only offered a scattered few shows in color, predominantly Arthur Godfrey's Wednesday night variety hour and Red Skelton's weekly half-hour. ABC ultimately lost Walt Disney to NBC because of its refusal, mostly for financial reasons, to air Disneyland in color. By the early '60s, ABC was airing The Flintstones, The Jetsons and Jonny Quest in color and, in 1963-64, Desilu's The Greatest Show on Earth, but little else. ABC pondered a seventh season of Leave It to Beaver in color but declared the idea too expensive. The NBC decision to go virtually all color in 1965 forced the hands of CBS and ABC. Neither could afford to continue as a black-and-white, out-of-date network. The financial challenge was enormous for ABC. A proposed merger with International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) which would have provided a much-needed cash infusion for ABC was shot down by the Justice Department. ABC could not afford color; yet, it could not afford to be left behind. CBS made an announcement at its fall presentation that half its lineup would be in color in 1965-66. On the initial schedule, only Lassie and My Favorite Martian were announced for color on Sunday nights. Ed Sullivan was livid. Sullivan went public in his New York newspaper column. He wrote of an assurance he had from CBS and Bill Paley that when the day came for the network to fully convert to color, his show would be the first on the schedule. Sullivan eventually won his point. Raymond Burr was frustrated when the venerable Perry Mason was left off the color list. Even Al Lewis of the year-old The Munsters was already giving interviews about the excitement of filming in color, based on what he had been told by CBS West Coast executives. The Munsters stayed as a black-and-white show, as did its ABC counterpart The Addams Family. Ironically, both expired at season's end. Also staying back as black-and-white entities: What's My Line? and Candid Camera. CBS's new Black Rock headquarters in New York was not yet ready for color. The network refused to pay for Allen Funt to shoot color film on Candid Camera until the studio segments could make the same conversion. What's My Line?, despite being CBS's second oldest show, was not considered an essential for color. Mark Goodson was assured Line would be essential in 1966-67. The competition for CBS's 10-to-11 duo was one of NBC's new The Wackiest Ship in the Army (based on a 1960 movie), and the second hour of ABC's Sunday Night Movie. Wackiest Ship, which starred Jack Warden and Gary Collins, was not considered any more of a threat than NBC's former time slot occupant The Rogues. ABC's movies, on the other hand, were another story. Somehow, ABC came up with the financing to license $63 million worth of first-rate Hollywood films over five years. The average title cost the network $400,000, then a whopping figure. Inside the package was the blockbuster "The Bridge over the River Kwai," Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments," several Elvis films and "Cleopatra" (which would not be available until 1971). About half of ABC's films were in color. While a few duds such as "The Young Doctors" and "Sands of the Kalahari" were in the mix, some substantive pictures began to serve as an attractive alternative to Bonanza. For the first time, in 1965-66, audience research indicated a marked decline in the switchovers from NBC at the end of the weekly visit to the Ponderosa to Allen Funt and John Daly. In Fates' 1978 book on the series, he wrote of receiving a wire from an actress only hours after Kilgallen's death became public, offering her services to take over on the panel. A few months later, Fates said another unnamed female performer, whom he described as a name "very large in this business," excoriated him for not giving her Kilgallen's job permanently. While a few online sites have offered identities for both women, one allegedly provided by director Frank Heller, neither has ever personally acknowledged the link to Fates' stories. At least five women were considered prime contenders, according to media speculation at the time, and three received more shots than any others: Phyllis Newman: The popular Broadway performer did not have a big resume as a television actress but for its first three years, she was the only permanent female panelist on CBS's daytime version of To Tell the Truth. She had the appeal and gamesmanship to make a big run at the job.What exacerbated the situation was Muriel Davidson's story in TV Guide, "The Great Woman Hunt." In the piece, the theme focused on why Line was having a difficult time settling on a single replacement for "the $1,000-a-week job." Daly was quoted in the piece saying, "We have to be sure her foot fits the glass slipper....if she doesn't fit into our family, we'll just freeze her out." Fates said the week Davidson's story appeared, literally thousands of applications arrived in the New York offices, including many from non-show business women. Sheila MacRae, Anita Gillette, Joanna Barnes, daytime To Tell the Truth semiregular Joan Fontaine, Ginger Rogers, Pia Lindstrom (in her pre-New York news days), younger actresses Barbara Feldon, Pamela Tiffin, Lee Remick and Michelle Lee and even the wife of New York Mayor John Lindsay were given one or more shots. None of them rang the bell strongly enough to convince CBS, now owner of the show, to earn the job. Goodson made the decision he did when Fred Allen passed away in 1956. He left the slot open. Throughout the 1950s, What's My Line? had a series of spikes and ebbs in its ratings. By the two-week Christmas/New Year reporting period in 1965, its lead-in Candid Camera had fallen to 37th place in the Nielsens. Line was 49th. CBS's plan to rebuild the two shows' lead-in hour with an aggressive move was failing. In the 1959-62 years, CBS owned the anchor hour on Saturday night with Perry Mason and Raymond Burr and friends detonated NBC's Bonanza head-to-head in the 7:30-8:30 slot. Some published reports indicated NBC would probably have canceled Bonanza after its first season had it not been the network's most spectacular filmed series in color and helped spike sales in RCA color television sets. After three years as a solid workhorse for CBS on Thursday nights, Perry was moved to Sundays at 9 in the fall of 1965 for a planned rematch against the Cartwright clan. Raymond Burr even signed two one-year contracts to continue as star, even though he admitted as early as 1963----when he was hospitalized for much of the middle portion of the season----to sleeping in his dressing room and wearying of the demands of the role. This time, the dynamics were different. After NBC moved Bonanza to Sundays at 9 in 1961, the family western soared into television's top five and virtually destroyed CBS's competitive balance in the 9-10 hour for more than five years. Among the casualties left in its wake: G.E. Theatre, The Real McCoys, The Judy Garland Show, two weak game shows, sitcoms starring Joey Bishop and Bob Cummings and an hour-long courtroom drama with Bill Shatner. While Perry was the most formidable and experienced opponent CBS had served up against The Ponderosa, Bonanza had ascended to blockbuster status since their first matchup. The men of Virginia City were in color from their outset in 1959. Perry would still be a black-and-white offering. Despite heavy promotion, not only did Bonanza carve up the weekly courtroom confessions, some of ABC's movies succeeded in sinking Mason to third in the time slot. Not even a midseason attempt to do the only Perry Mason colorcast in the show's nine-year history helped. The one Nielsen spike came the night of the last first-run Perry, the clever "The Case of the Final Fadeout," in which Dick Clark confessed at the end to murdering both Jim Stacy and Denver Pyle. The episode was centered around the turmoil on the set of a dramatic television series in which the arrogant star (Stacy) irritated enough people to lead to his own demise. During the hour, actual crew members were interrogated by Lt. Steve Drumm (Richard Anderson). A true insider's moment came during a scene at the studio commissary. An extra was heard saying, "Oh, it doesn't have a chance.........they're putting it up against Bonanza." Perry Mason was out of gas and this time, the Candid/Line duo could not generate their own momentum as they had between 1961-65. While CBS did not consider cancellation for either of its 10-11 Sunday night shows, the warning signs were out. First, the proportion of over-50s in the audience was at its highest ever. Second, CBS could no longer pitch Line to a single sponsor or two alternating companies. Most weeks, products such as Geritol, Glo-Coat, or Western Union received billboards. Increasingly, writers referred to the game as "the aging What's My Line?." One cosmetic change to What's My Line? in 1965 was a new animated opening title and the most significant reworking of its opening theme music in eight years. In 1957, Line switched from its old violin-driven, travelogue-style introductory theme to a catchier jazz tune. After a variation to the music in 1963, Line's 1965 theme featured a more oboe-driven composition to follow the tempo of the changing pictures of a series of animated jobholders. Over Johnny Olsen's description of the evening's sponsor, a flute-dominated trilling of the old theme surfaced. The new animation, however, created an unexpected controversy. The final figure, a female with a pegleg, fired a gun into the air, signaling director Frank Heller to dissolve to the set for the panel entrances. With the nation and some broadcasters still sensitive two years after the assassination of President Kennedy, the idea of a pistol going off, even with a non-human character, was over the edge. CBS encountered at least token behind-the-scenes pressure to soften the new Line open but let it stand through the final episode in 1967. When the game went into syndication, the animation ended before the shot was fired. With Perry Mason canceled after nine years, its lead-outs Candid Camera fell to 38th place and Line to 49th for the end of 1965-66 season. The NBC opposition, The Wackiest Ship in the Army, was canceled as another valiant but failed attempt at hour-long situation comedy (not until ABC's Eight Is Enough in the '70s did a full-hour sitcom finally strike gold). The big winner was ABC's movies. While not finishing in the top 30, the films ended the year 31st and cracked the top 20 at least a dozen times. The changing winds for prime time game shows were evident when CBS announced its fall lineup for 1966. For the first time in six years, Goodson-Todman favorite To Tell the Truth was off the Monday night schedule and consigned to the odd slot of Sundays at 5. I've Got a Secret, a stalwart frequently in the top 15 at 8:00 Mondays since 1962, was sent back to the 10:30-11 slot where it did not thrive in 1961-62. Both ABC and NBC were out of the evening game show business. CBS was showing signs of wanting to head in that direction. With the graveyard of failed shows against Bonanza in the hour before Candid Camera and What's My Line?, CBS pondered several choices. The network toyed with the idea of a new high concept espionage drama from Desilu, Mission: Impossible, which skewed younger than NBC's western with test audiences. Mission ended up on Saturdays. CBS was offered the color version of The Saint from England, starring Roger Moore, but the network was stung by the failure of British import Secret Agent to click the season before. The Saint ended up at NBC the following spring. Variety shows starring Pearl Bailey, Robert Goulet and Tennessee Ernie Ford were all considered. The ultimate choice for 9 to 10 came from a most unlikely relic from the past---Garry Moore. Surprising because of how Moore was treated when his six-year-old, Emmy-winning variety hour was canceled in 1964. Garry went to the acerbic "Smiling Cobra," CBS network president Jim Aubrey, with an idea for a radically revamped show. Before Moore could even get to the key point of his proposal, the colorless Aubrey told Garry, "Not a chance." After the unceremonious treatment by Aubrey, Moore decided to retire from broadcasting altogether. His I've Got a Secret was still doing well and by 1964, Garry and CBS owned Secret jointly under the banner of Telecast Enterprises. He still had a popular 10-minute daily show on CBS Radio. Yet, at 48 and fixed for life financially, Moore felt he owed his wife some time which was compromised by three decades in show business. So, he decided to take her on an extended trip around the world, passed Secret on to Steve Allen as host and declared he was through with television and radio. By the winter of 1966, Garry began to itch again for the studio. With Aubrey abruptly canned midway through the 1964-65 season, CBS was now in the hands of a man who came up the ranks in sales and was a Moore fan, Jack Schneider. In early March, CBS announced The New Garry Moore Show would go in the Sunday at 9 slot as the lead-in to Candid Camera and What's My Line?. Garry sought out some of the most popular young comedians in television and nightclubs as part of his new cast. John Byner made his network debut as a regular with Moore. Jackie Vernon, fresh from a series of Ed Sullivan Show appearances, Pete Barbutti and Chuck McCann all came aboard. As a coat of icing, Durward Kirby----with a significant financial offer----opted to leave Candid Camera to rejoin Moore as sidekick. CBS gave the show a big promotional campaign and, for the quintessential push, Garry returned as the celebrity guest on I've Got a Secret for its last black-and-white telecast, Sept. 5, 1966. Answering a series of questions from the audience, Moore reaffirmed to Steve Allen he had not intention of reclaiming the chair as Secret host. Asked about the massive competition from Bonanza, Moore said: "We take nothing away from them. They've done a fantastic job. Bonanza is a great show. But we think there's room for both of us. And it'll be great to be on the same night with Candid Camera, that used to be a part of our old show, and What's My Line?. Within four weeks, Garry and CBS knew the show was in trouble. Bonanza not only continued to dominate but ABC briefly knocked The Ponderosa out of the number one slot with a blockbuster telecast of "The Bridge over the River Kwai." Secret panelist Bess Myerson took over for Kirby on Candid Camera but Moore's variety hour was in 70th place after the fourth show. Candid fell to the upper 50s and low 60s in the Nielsens. Even though NBC's The Andy Williams Show, never a major hit, did not go through the roof from 10 to 11, What's My Line? plummeted to its lowest ratings in the series' history. A small ray of hope permeated the Goodson-Todman offices and even the Line staff that converting to color would stave off the declining ratings. The first show in color would air Sept. 11, 1966. A decision was also made to tape approximately one-fourth of the scheduled 48 shows for the new season to give the panel some occasional breaks in the weekly live schedule. However, not all of CBS's live studios were equipped with video tape units in New York. So, the taped episodes originated from a different studio than the live editions. CBS programming vice president Mike Dann turned over supervision of the four remaining Goodson-Todman game shows on the prime time lineup to his daytime programmer, a young Fred Silverman. In a major proposal to rebuild Line, Silverman made two major pushes: he wanted at least half the shows to have two mystery guests, believing more celebrity appearances would beef up ratings. The other: a massive refurbishing of the set with more vibrant colors and a use of film clips or live onstage extensions of the occupations which could involve the panel and Daly in tasting a guest's food product, or attempting a physical demonstration of a contestant's occupation. Mark Goodson made a concession on the former but Daly firmly rejected the latter. At one point when Daly perceived the panel participation idea may gain traction, he told Goodson he was firmly ready to take a hike after nearly 17 years at the helm. The set was painted a conservative powder blue and the game remained the same. The entire Goodson-Todman empire was teetering in the fall of 1966. To Tell the Truth nighttime was shipped off to Sundays at 5. In mid-October and all of November, Truth was pre-empted seven consecutive weeks either for NFL doubleheader games or late-starting single contest. I've Got a Secret, consigned to a death slot Mondays at 10:30, quickly fell to the bottom 10 of the Nielsens. Secret's 8:00 slot was given over to one of the worst sitcoms in CBS history, Run, Buddy, Run---a sitcom spoof on organized crime that left extremely few laughing. Buddy, which crashed in 83rd place, was canceled at midseason. Goodson lobbied Dann to return Secret to early evenings but was rejected. The midyear replacement at 8, Mr. Terrific, one of two Monday night prime time spoofs of comic book superheroes, fizzled after 13 shows. CBS tried to give Secret, imperiled with a fall lead-in of a terrible sitcom with B-movie actress Jean Arthur, help by bringing back To Tell the Truth at 10 in December. The move was far too late. CBS's daytime Password was on the verge of losing its ratings battle with ABC's The Newlywed Game and only Goodson-Todman's The Match Game on NBC late afternoons was thriving. CBS's new bouncing eye color animation was the new prelude to the granddaddy of TV panel shows. Daly's waistline was a little larger for the 18th season of Line as his weight gain was apparent. A number of new mystery guests attempted to stump the panel during the season: from films came young actors Michael Caine, George Segal, Pamela Tiffin and Steve McQueen (a former CBS star); politics brought Sen. Abraham Ribicoff and Sen. Everett Dirksen, Broadway was represented by singer/actresses Angela Lansbury and Leslie Uggams and composers Betty Comden and Adolph Green (whose wife was frequent panelist Phyllis Newman); Metropolitan Opera soloist Leontyne Price took a turn; actor/writer and former game show host Carl Reiner showed up and one of the biggest roars ever from the audience came when the incomparable Lawrence Welk signed in at the chalkboard. In a move that should have signaled trouble ahead, What's My Line? was pre-empted October 9 for a Carol Burnett special originally scheduled for mid-November. The first five shows of the season were in such ratings trouble, CBS opted to advance the air date of Carol and Company to take on a guest-loaded edition of NBC's The Andy Williams Show and ABC's movie "The Young Lions," scheduled in two parts on consecutive weeks. Thanksgiving weekend, Frank Sinatra took his only turn as a game show panelist. Mark Goodson emerged as the male guest panelist to begin the evening. Sinatra stunned the crowd as the first game mystery guest. After the game, Goodson announced Sinatra had agreed to join the panel for the remainder of the evening. To no one's surprise, his then wife Mia Farrow was the night's second celebrity challenger. However, with the mystery guest element preventing CBS from promoting the stunt, the ratings did not move. That episode and the December 4 outing averaged a 74th place finish for Nielsen's two-week report. CBS began encouraging the use of Steve Allen more on the panel on weeks when he commuted to New York for I've Got a Secret. While he was now far more of a television icon than the fresh young comic who injected wry humor into the early years of Line, Allen was a guarantee of good gamesmanship as well as laughs. Yet, the clear indication was the audience which had gradually drifted away from Line over the previous two years was not coming back. The New Garry Moore Show was canceled Jan. 8, 1967, and supplanted after four weeks of specials by what most industry analysts considered to be a throwaway show. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was given little hope to challenge Bonanza or ABC's movies. The brothers had just failed miserably in a half-hour sitcom during the 1965-66 season. The farcical comedy which borrowed heavily from Topper squandered 60 percent of the audience of its lead-in, the megapopular Gomer Pyle, USMC. If Candid Camera and What's My Line? were to get any last desperation help from a lead-in, it was not expected to come from the Smotherses. In a rare transition to prove format can be everything for a performer, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was the surprise of the second half of the season. With opening night guests Jim Nabors and Jill St. John and Carol Burnett showing up for the second week, Smothers knocked Bonanza out of the number one slot in the Nielsens (with Dean Martin temporarily taking over at the top). For the season, the new hour finished 16th and retained virtually all of Ed Sullivan's audience from the hour before and some weeks topped Sullivan. Unfortunately, the younger demographic watching Tommy and Dickie was not compatible with Candid Camera and What's My Line? and a significant number either turned the channel or went to bed at 10 o'clock. Six weeks after the Smothers premiere, CBS would announce its fall lineup. The Line staff and panel was still holding onto hope of one more shot. Bennett Cerf was in an airport on March 21 when he was paged to the phone. A media reporter told him, "CBS has just released its fall lineup. What's My Line? is not on it. Do you have any comment?" Stunned at discovering the fatal news from a reporter and not from CBS itself, Cerf offered a perfunctory response and immediately called Goodson and Daly, neither of whom had been told. At the same hour, Arlene Francis was learning the news of the cancellation from a reporter for United Press International. Her son, Dr. Peter Gabel, told TVgameshows.net in an interview last summer: "I don't recall my mother being angry or bitter. You have a lot of stories of performers finding out about their shows ending from reporters first, I suppose, because the network executives can't get to all of their stars before the media has the information." While the news was disappointing, Gabel said he also thinks the axing brought on a measure of relief. "None of the panelists, not my mother, Bennett, not John Daly ever had any illusions when they started all of this back in 1950 that they'd still be doing it almost 20 years later. I remember my mother saying, 'I suppose I now have my weekends back after all these years.'" In one fell swoop, the entire Goodson-Todman stable of veterans which had brought CBS years of profits was gone. To Tell the Truth and I've Got a Secret were both canceled and CBS delivered the ignominious act of not even allowing Secret to finish the season. Steve Allen and his panel were given a three-week cancellation notice and were gone by mid-April. In a virtual crumb, CBS brought nighttime Password back from Sundays at 5 as Secret's replacement Mondays at 10:30. It fared no better. By early June, Truth and Password were both gone from the evening lineup, replaced for the summer by 13 episodes of a high-concept dramatic series CBS ultimately rejected for its lineup. Coronet Blue, with young actor Frank Converse playing an amnesiac, actually rose to the top 20 in the summer Nielsens but CBS had no option to resuscitate the show. Converse was already signed to do a pilot for a cop series on ABC that became N.Y.P.D.. TV Guide offered a spring story on the era-changing cancellations. "End of the Line" recapped the long skid all three of the Goodson-Todman panel shows had from the CBS schedule. The week they were canceled, Line was 79th, Truth 89th and Secret 95th out of 102 shows in the Nielsens. Included in the piece was a consensus of hope from the Line people that CBS would either change its mind or hold out the possibility of returning at midseason in 1967-68. Their reasoning: the venerable Gunsmoke had also been canceled but CBS chairman Bill Paley called from his yacht and gave a subtle hint to his programmers to find a place for Jim Arness and friends. They did. Gilligan's Island, scheduled for a fourth season, and a lightly-regarded comedy, Doc, were jettisoned and Gunsmoke inserted Mondays at 7:30. Line had always been one of Paley's personal favorites and was known to be so for three Presidents. In fact, one published report indicated President Johnson called Paley personally to lobby for Line to be reinstated. Paley's intervention did not come a second time. What happened to Line and its Sunday night counterpart Candid Camera was a precursor of things to come in a more prolific fashion four years later. Despite the cheap economics for Line, the aging of its audience compromised the network's ability to sell the show. Mission: Impossible offered a more compatible demographic profile to The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Time slots were too valuable for networks to stand with a sentimental favorite. What's My Line? was the lone member of the Goodson-Todman classics to survive through the summer of 1967. With the its ultimate fate sealed, executive producer Gil Fates and his team decided to make the final weeks as entertaining as possible. Part 2: What's My Line? Takes Off Part 3: The Rest of the Fifties Part 4: Candid Camera and What's My Line? Part 5: Daly & Dorothy: Stalwart and Tragedy  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. TVgameshows.net cannot be responsible for providing information or recommendations on specific agents or agencies for legal and journalistic reasons, based on the professional advice of an entertainment attorney. You must do such research on your own. TVgameshows.net is a non-incorporated news website. The material used is the creation of the webmaster, unless otherwise noted. Use of stillframes from broadcasts is part of fair use news arrangements. 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