The Mobuis strip today takes us from the first woman to conduct a Broadway show full-time, 'Liza Redfield, Who Broke a Broadway Barrier, Is Dead at 94' to the Quiz show 'What's My Line' to the host John Daly to Winston Churchill, to English grammar. That's a lot of tangents to accrue from one obituary, but here you have it.
The beauty of an online obit, or any story online these days, is that you can embed a link to something that is germane to the story. In the obit for Ms. Redfield you can click onto a 9 minute segment of when she was the a mystery guest on the quiz show 'What's My Line.'
'What's My Line' was a hugely popular quiz show in the 50s and 60s that aired on Sundays at 10:30 p.m. Watching any YouTube clip from the show can either remind you of the wit and formality that TV had in those days, or serve as an example of what a wholly other era was like.
The men were in tuxedos, the women panelists, generally the Journal-American columnist Dorothy Kilgallen and the actress Arlene France, were neatly coiffed and in evening dress. There is no comparison to a 'What's MyLine' set to say, 'America's Got Talent.' Different planets.
In that era my friend's father worked as a producer for CBS. Opening night for a Broadway show saw his father going to the theater in a tux. Many other male theatergoers were in tuxes as well.
Bennett Cerf held the third permanent spot, always on the end on the right. Mr. Cerf was the august president of Random House, then a stand-along, unmerged publishing house. The show was live. Mr Cerf was always witty and if born any earlier would have easily been in a chair at the Algonquin's Round Table with Dorothy Parker, Alexander Wolcott, Robert Benchley, and assorted other kibitzers. Think of them as a literary version of 'The View.'
Cerf became so well known for his quips that he produced a book of them. The rotating fourth spot generally went to a comedian who helped keep the yuks coming. The moderator was John Daly, another tuxedoed gentleman who had a deep background as a reporter. He and Bennett Cerf would riposte back and forth. Two verbal war horses.
The premise of the show was to have the mystery guest sign in, have their occupation flash on the screen for the television viewers and the studio audience, and challenge the four panelists to guess their occupation, or source of their notoriety through a series of questions that would be answered only with a 'yes' or 'no' answer. A 'no' answer ended that panelist's questioning and the interrogation moved on to the next panelist.
Each wrong, or 'no' answer required the moderator, John Daly to flip over the rolodex of cards staged in $5 increments. When the revealed deck reached $50, the questioning round was over and the panel was stumped. Mr. Daly acted a bit as a referee who clarified questions and whispered answer advice to the mystery guest. There was hardly any laser show or even electronic flipping of the $5 increment cards. The show was very manual, like changing a tire.
Aside from the narrative of Ms. Redfield's life in the obituary the nine minute segment of her appearance as a guest on 'What's My Line' lifts the obituary into a window of bygone time.
At one point in the show, John Daly grammatically corrects a sentence from Mr. Bishop, the comedian in the rotating spot, admonishing him a bit for ending his question in a proposition. I remember grammar rules from the 50s and 60s that considered it a solecism to end any sentence in a preposition. Rules of that era would not accept the spelling of judgment as judgement as correct either. No first e. Dangling participles were also verboten. (I think I still have trouble with that one.)
Given that Ms. Redfield's appearance (at the outset she's questioned if she is Miss. or Mrs; Miss is given as the answer) was in 1960 you have to realize Winston Churchill is still alive, and very much alive in his writing.
John Daly reels back a bit at the preposition wordplay and Mobius strip-like segues into telling all the story of Winston Churchill, who when presented with an editor's marginal correction that his sentence shouldn't end in a proposition, writes his reply to the grammar police that, "this type of errant pedantry up with which I will not put." Sir Winston saw nothing wrong with ending a sentence with a proposition. And frankly my dear, neither do I. (I think these days you can.)
The Broadway show Ms. Redfield made history with was 'The Music Man' and it was in that capacity as the show's conductor that her occupation stumped the panel. They got close. They established a Broadway show, but crashed and burned when Dorothy Kilgallen thought she had it when she asked if Ms. Redfield was one of the strippers in Gypsy. Oh, how things have changed.
'What's My Line' as the John Daly version ran for 17 years. It is hard to imagine anyone today on television that would offer up a Winston Churchill quote on how to correctly compose a sentence.
And try to imagine someone running a game show like John Daly whose second wife was the daughter of the Chief justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren.
No wonder they wore tuxedos.
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