Same here. Life was simpler than.

Heard her say it as I read your comment, LOL.

I, for one, totally agree. I'm a lifelong fan of Fred Allen for his writing and his radio work, but my favorite comic panelist on WML was, by far, Steve.

Me, too. Steve Allen was bright, played the game well, asked good questions, and was funny and witty. I love people who are funny because they are witty -- smart and funny is a great combination. Only Steve Allen could have come up with "Is it bigger than a breadbox?", which is both funny and alliterative. It became a cultural reference and still is to this day, at least among older folks like me. In fact, one reason to watch Steve Allen hosting a talk show or appearing as a guest on one was his ability to say funny and witty things, or even sing them while playing the piano.

+

I, on the other hand, found him less than entertaining. To each his own.

@@WhatsMyLine - How about when they had the zipper manufacturer on, and he asked, "Would a proficient secretary be adept at operating one of these?"

😊

Not really. They wanted to raise the amount of the prizes to match other game shows later on and he wouldn't allow it! Threatened to quit if they raised the amount. He didn't want the game to be polluted with the prize becoming the focus. No, he was not being a good guy at all. He liked the power of giving when he felt like i.

@@maryblushes7189 If that's what you need to believe.. then have at it. However, Someone must have liked the idea because long after Daly was gone and the show rebooted in color, in the 70's... The prize money remained exactly the same.

@@princeharming8963 you should watch bennet cerf remembering... you would learn a lot about what went on. It is still my favorite game, but these people did have some flaws.

Respectfully, total baloney

@@joeambrose3260 What about that makes you say baloney?

@@jasonfrancis6174 2 words- Ed Wynn

​@@joeambrose3260he's full of baloney😅

Yes, she was. But it took her forever to say the word "collar", she didn't even try a guess...what else would a dog wear?

I agree completely, and really identify with What's My Line. The way they speak and act towards each other, the clothing styles, even the way the contestants present themselves. They all have that healthy walk with the erect posture and proper arm swing. They are so much more attractive and well balanced than what you would see now.

What about me? LMAO 🤣😅🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I've always thought this was staged a little bit--not that Steve knew the answers, but I think he was given some clues as to what to ask for the humor of it. It happens all too often, not to be a bit suspicious along this line. It was forgivable, because it enhanced the entertainment without actually "cheating." A little of this seems to have occurred with Hal Block, too. The girls and Bennett never do this.

Please post proof pronto, pics preferred

@@joeambrose3260: I think that was a suggestion. I would suggest: "You'll have to dig." :)

+ToddSF 94109 There is nothing unusual about Ida Cantor being unknown to you because she wasn't a celebrity at all other than being Eddie Cantor's wife and the fact that Eddie used his wife and their five daughters as part of his shtick. (He usually referred to them as his five unmarriageable daughters, something which didn't always sit well with them.) Until I saw her name superimposed over her signature (one of the times you can see that they use what is known as an open-face letter board to create the graphics that are superimposed), I didn't know if Ida was sister, wife or daughter.

ToddSF 94109 Before I watch each new show, I love looking up each MG, whether I know of them or not. If they are known to me, I get to learn new things about the person or persons. And of course if they are unknown to me, I get the fun of "meeting" them for the first time!

@@loissimmons6558 No wonder a couldn't find who she was, no wikipedia of her.

@@ladya1953 Me too.

Most of the mystery guests are unknown to me. I find it interesting that older celebrities no longer are everyday names even only after a few years.

Lee, it appears that the only ones who thought this was a good idea were the one who came up with it. Ditto the silly guesses.

except for the Cuban missile crisis

I meant it wasn't a bad year to be born.

@@kathyodom5372 Cold war, fallout shelters everywhere including back yards, the red menace, duck and cover, segregation, lynchings, etc. But there were good things, too. It's always that way.

@@wholeNwon There was kick the can,and playing 20 questions where our 2nd routine question was. always... Is it bigger than a breadbox?

@@jennymode Steve Allen's famous question. We used it, too.

I was remembering that as well while watching this segment. You can see he's had quite enough of this starting at 15:17.

He should talk.

Yes, doing it to a degree is fine to make sure you in fact have the right product, but I almost felt like John was going to yell, "Just say a collar!" at the end.

@@sandrageorge3488 if he did it 5% as much as Dorothy that was a lot(fyi i've watched well over 100 episodes so maybe you should watch more)

Yes, she just wasted 2 minutes from 14:11 where she could have just asked obvious question whether it was a leash or collar.. Sometimes she can be so irritating. . I was shouting ask if it is a collar. So much for beating around the bush.

Eddie Cantor's wife

I love What's My Line? and so much about the time that it's from. But one thing that I prefer about the 2020s is how much more social freedom, legal freedom, workplace freedom, and familial freedom, people now have to wear what they want to wear. We haven't yet reached the ideal, and I love fashions from so many times besides our own; but things are better now than they were seventy years ago. I remember being about six or seven years old in the mid 1980s and seeing a young woman shopping in a supermarket wearing what looked like a black dog collar. It fascinated me. More than thirty years later, I still admire her for her boldness: she made her own contribution to enhancing freedom for all of us.

To give John's full name, though, Bennett should have put the Jr. on the end that he always left off. :)

John Charles Day named ALL his sons John, with different middle names.

If a namee can be mispronounced, Cerf will do it.

This is why the comment is no longer here, romeman01.

I like it because I was a film history major in college, and I love seeing the old-timey stars.

On the bright side, television in general has moved well past the overbearing censorship that made the shows of the Fifties and Sixties so bland.

I hate to be obvious but romeman01 writes “wholesome entertainment....lacking in the world today,” but that can’t be correct. Assuming NEW wholesome entertainment is unavailable, we can still enjoy these older, wholesome programs. In fact, going a step further, the availability of older wholesome programs at negligible cost, is a disincentive to produce new wholesome programs. Why compete with WML, if WML is freely available.

Arlene and Dorothy didn't usually stand for women unless they were particularly distinguished guests, like Eleanor Roosevelt. Perhaps Mrs. Cantor preferred the ladies not to stand as doing so might make her look or feel more like a "little old lady" than she wished.

Cantor and Benny were pretty comparably "big". Eddie did a lot more legitimate Broadway productions than Jack, who was primarily a vaudeville star and emcee. I don't know exactly when Jack's radio show started taking first place in the national ratings, but I believe by 1934 or 1935 he was already at the top of the heap and pretty much stayed there (with one low point around WWII). Cantor, on the other hand, faltered a number of times after his early radio success. There's a story which I'm hazy on that Jack was instrumental in helping Eddie get his show back on the air after one of his cancellations.

What's My Line? At the 1939 New York World's Fair, Cantor publicly denounced anti-Semitic radio personality Father Charles Coughlin and was dropped by his sponsor, Camel cigarettes. A year and a half later, Benny was able to get him back on the air. Cantor was less shy about his Jewishness than Jack Benny and George Burns, but I have only listened to a handful of his shows. He really seemed to always be a vaudeville act and never really matured the way Jack and George and many other stage stars did in radio. By the way, if you have ever seen the HBO series "Boardwalk Empire" about organized crime in Atlantic City, you'll see a fictionalized Cantor in a handful of the shows, which intimate that he was involved with gangsters.

Joe Postove Yup, that was the story I was trying to remember. Thanks, Joe. I haven't checked out "Boardwalk Empire" yet, but I plan to some time.

in an interview you can find here he says that quite in detail she loved hearing herself get obvious "yes" answers

Dont think times have changed so much, we just know about it now.

I can't help thinking of Dorothy Sayers' novel "Gaudy Night" in which the students and masters of a women's college at Oxford are being menaced by an attacker whose attempts include strangulation. Lord Peter Wimsey buys Harriet Vane a heavy leather dog collar to wear when out at night detecting, as a protection against the strangler.

Blocked in the UK also.

Would she?

Sing a woodchuck song of familiarity.

the entire stick? did you balance it on your hand? ie let's say the item was a bat it would be the same answer because you hold it by the "bat handle"

I am more inclined to think that she asked all those yes-question to have the most camera time.

They usually knew who the mystery guest was very quickly and had to prolong the suspense so as not to leave John with too much time to fill. Dorothy always wanted to be the one to name the guest and Bennett loved face time most.

wholeNwon So far I'm finding mostly John runs out of time and has to deny the last guest a proper game. I think if anything they inadvertently overrun rather than intentionally prolong the mystery guest.

She was an investigative journalist in one of her lines...probably a habit from her journalism career which was still going strong at this time.

In 2023, not every location in the United States had Daylight Saving Time, same like in 1953.

No, the radio series was not live. I doubt *all* of the discs survive, but I'm confident that there are a lot more surviving shows than just the one. The question is who has them and whether they'll turn up.

I only have the one copy of this episode from epaddon, so I don't know. I would presume since this is a film splice that this is the condition of the film and therefore the way it's always been aired.

Yes I agree but can't use it with just one hand.

They were inconsistent as to how they defined that. Sometimes they used it for anything that could be carried, and sometimes only for things that fit entirely in the hand. At least that's the impression I got. Could be wrong.

Joe Postove Gil Fates making such a list in his book? That would be a producers fall from the top.. There were too many cow washers, lady wrestlers, truant officers and tax collectors to make it funny, even as a Post Memorial to a show. No, Joey! We have to do the dirty job ourselves! You start, and when you have made a list from the first half of Gary's playlists, I'll it take over from there ;D

This page game.shows.angelfire.com/whats_my_line.html has a brief summary of most of the What's My Line? episodes of the John Daly era. It is particularly useful for the purposes that you mention: a brief resume of the content of each episode. Of course it only speaks of those episodes for which kinescopes survived and were in the hands of the author of the page, so it is not a complete summary of every episode.

romeman01 Thanks a lot! )

SuperWinterborn SW, romeman01 source (above) looks pretty promising. I hate to do extra work when someone can do it for me. But it looks like a project, huh?

romeman01 No comment.

I'll bet she got a good talking to! Dorothy demeaned herself a little bit by going through that contortionist routine when, as you say, Gary, she had the answer. Who does she think she is anyway, John Daly? Besides, if I was a viewer I would be flipping around by now...hey wait a minute. I AM a viewer!

Joe Postove I've often wondered if the reason Dorothy didn't do this as much as the series went on was specifically because she was talked to about it, either by the producers or Arlene or John, someone. She did it *all the time* in the '50s, when she was much more "together", so to speak, than she was in the '60s!

Joe Postove AND flipping around!

What's My Line? As I mentioned else where besides causing the other panelists frustration, it was bad TV. I'll bet they finally told her to just cut it out!

She is playing cat and mouse with a dog accessory manufacturer.

I am loving you!

Yes HA HA HA HA HA HA

@@LearnAboutFlow thanks for the clarification.

At present I'm not seeing any direct answer, so I'll note that Bennett was born and raised in New York City. There are a few "east coast" speech markers that are common to New York City and Boston, which may be what you are noticing, but there are at least as many differences in accent. Actually Arlene is the Bostonian on this panel, and John Daly's family was also from Boston, although he was born in South Africa while his father was working there as a geologist.

She was on an episode of "The Big Show" that Eddie guested on. That's the only appearance I'm aware of, but I'm no Eddie Cantor expert. I've heard other shows where Ida was a *character*, but played by an actress (there's at least one Burns and Allen radio show in this category).

This is the extent of Ida Cantor's on screen time, whether big screen or small, at least to the extent that IMDB is accurate: www.imdb.com/name/nm1553450/?ref_=nv_sr_1

"I'm no Eddie Cantor expert"...OMG!

Joe Postove Well, I'm not. :) I know about Eddie Cantor only by virtue of his being from the same era as the folks I do know about.

Ida appeared on at least one of Eddie's Colgate Comedy Hour episodes, maybe two. She also appeard on "This is You Life" when Eddie was the subject.

Sometimes John Daly says the most inane things.

That's why it is called Steve Allen's breadbox

Steven Allen originated this phrase.

Joe Postove Ida Lupino, Director (1918-1995) Ida B. Wells, Civil Rights Leader (1862-1931) Ida Tarbell, Journalist (1857-1944) Ida Goodson, Singer (1909-2000) Ida Husted Harper, Author (1851-1931) Ida Rosenthal, Entrepreneur (1886-!973) Ida Haendel, Violinist (85 years) Ida Kavafian, Violinist (61 years) and some more...

I had no Ida you knew so many idas!

Joe Postove I don't, Google does ;)

Joe Postove " I had no *Ida* you knew..." Too bad there's no emoticon for a shaking head ;) IDA is a very popular name in Scandinavia. Check the name and the meaning(s) of it here: wiki.name.com/en/Ida

Ida'nt know that. (SW's head is shaking so vigorously that she is being investigated for excessive moving)! Actually it is a beautiful name, I wish more girls in the west were named Ida. But it seems like Bethany and Agnes rule the name world.

It's always nice to have a trusting husband. Besides, she could have used the sick friend, or visit with Aunt Tillie and Grandmother Rivkah excuse.

From what I've read, he wasn't that trustworthy.

+Mic Mal The point wasn't whether she could trust him. It was that with her going out alone on a Sunday night to parts unknown, he could trust her.

I did in my teens in the early seventies. We got them at Head Shops. Man they were too cool the chicks liked them.

You just didn't know that it was worn

dogs , like collies, have a lot of fur around the neck. the collar breaks or flattens that fur. so, the collar is only used when outside.

We owned a very fluffy golden retriever many years ago and a color worn all the time indoors would matt his fur!

A Parker pen, not just a pen!

"Is it bigger than a breadbox," started in 1953, the same year as this episode, and the phrase will continue to be used forever, SO IT HAD NOT WORN OUT ITS WELCOME.

Even though she got a "no," there was nobody else playing yet, so ***** asked a second question on the thread where this idea first got started: "I reckon the job you do is not copy editing. Am I right?!" *Yes, you are correct.*

SuperWinterborn said: " +SaveThe TPC Hey! We haven't seen your hands, neither had a peak at the label in your jacket! But well...I guess it isn't any need for such nonsense... Do you work indoors?" You know, I debated telling you whether I was salaried or self-employed, deal in a product or a service, but I decided that since I started this on a 1953 episode I should go by the 1953 rules. But you're right that in that case, it's not fair that you don't get the embarrassing "walk down the panel." So if you really want me to answer the other questions without you having to ask them, just let me know, and I will. But for now.... *Yes, I work indoors.*

SaveThe TPC No apology necessary. But I will point out, this is the kind of thing that works much better on Facebook than it ever will here, honestly. We played a round of WML so folks could try to guess what the ???Mystery Show??? to be posted tomorrow is going to be. On YT, e.g., I have no idea where the original thread where this started is, and yet as channel owner, I have a *far* easier time than anyone else possibly can in keeping up with all the comments. There's no way for viewers to know about new threads/comments except ones directly replying to them, which is going to make this very difficult, I think. But give it a shot!

SaveThe TPC Have you ever studied dentistry?

What's My Line? *No* -- but I'm still laughing! That's 2 down and 8 to go.

with a name likes yours i'm sure you recognize goofy looks.......

"Flight Attendant," not "Stewardess."

@@RonGerstein The old term that I grew up hearing. I'm leaning new the new terms and words to implant and corrected speech.

That's the term they used on WML in those days. When I was in school in the 1960's and 1970's we had this as one of the jobs I always wanted to do. I worked for a company that prepared the meals, real meals, that went on the flights, so I wanted to be a 'stewardess,' as it was called then. I have to get updated on many new words. Thanks for letting me know this updated term. The language is evolving.

LOL Not really. They just wanted to see if they were blue collar or white collar to help them ascertain their job. Someone who worked in a mineshaft is obviously not going to have smooth hands and a manicure. And someone who works a desk job is not going to have rough dirty calloused hands with chipped fingernails.

YOU ARE RACIST !!!!