'What's My Line' Dies Again

No sooner do I get used to a daily ritual of watching the previous night's rerun of What My Line from 3 AM than the Game Show Network pulls the plug and starts running Card Sharks instead. As you saw in my previous post, GSN began running WML and I've Got a Secret in the middle of the night just a few weeks ago. Then they aburuptly stopped. It may be they were contractually obligated to show all their episodes before the end of 2010 or they'd have to pay extra. In any event, I don't understand the creative or financial reasons for stopping the WML and IGAS repeats. Nobody is watching at that hour anyway so they may as well show someting that might interest nostalgia buffs like me instead of Card Sharks which was a rather uninteresting game show during the 1980s. Seriously, is anyone DVRing Card Sharks?

GSN used to have a whole lineup of panel shows from the 1950s and 60s on Sunday nights when the network first started, including incredibly obscure titles like The Name's the Same, a What's My Line rip-off featuring panelist Joan Alexander who did the voice of Lois Lane in the Superman radio series and the 1960s cartoon version. The object was the guess the name of the contestant which was the same as a famous person or thing. One young lady challenger was named A. Fish. (Get it?)

When I announced the WML tragedy on Facebook, my cousin Debbie commented that she remembered I used to love WML and IGAS when I was very little, like five years old, and would do imitations of the regular panelists. I don't recall ever imitating Arlene Francis or Dorothy Kilgallen, but I do remember being so obsessed with To Tell the Truth, I transcribed the "affadavits" of the contestants and recorded who was the real person and who were the impostors, keeping all that info in a notebook which I still have (My favorite contestant was Frank Zane, a Mr. Universe, for obvious reasons). We would watch Dark Shadows, have dinner and then TTTT. I also remember the panelists on To Tell the Truth included Kitty Carlisle and hearing a story that Carlisle wore a different dress every day and kept all of them. Her neighbors lost all their possession in a fire and she refused to lend them any clothes. (Well, that was the story anyway.)

The obsession with To Tell the Truth came when the show was in syndication and was on every night at 7PM, followed by What's My Line at 7:30PM. Coincidentally, the moderator of To Tell the Turth during its network run was Bud Collyer who provided the voice of Superman on the radio and the 1960s cartoon series, playing opposite Joan Alexander as Lois. I knew Gary Moore as the host of TTTT during its syndication. WML was hosted by Tony winning actor Larry Blyden who died as a result of a car accident while in Morocco right after the show ended its run. This was all during the 1970s. I guess I wanted to be a regular panelist on one of those shows when I was kid. I couldn't think of a more fun job, playing games and hobnobbing with celebrities.