Was Arlene Francis considered a character actress?

[Quote] There were some very good-looking character people as well

Tuesday Weld!

She was considered a ‘personality.’ Her acting was incidental.

She was considered very fecund.

Bitch killed Jack Kennedy.

My name is Bevery Boyer and I'm a pig.

And you, Arlene are my supporting (character)!

Correct quote: Hello, I'm Beverly Boyer and I'm a pig.

You're still supporting, Arlene. I don't care that you're having a baby and getting all orgasmic during the film's opening.

She was basically an older Phyllis Newman. Married to someone more famous and accomplished in show business. Stage experience, but not much. Did "panel" and quiz shows. Kitty Carlisle was much the same, except she'd done more in films.

I don't know if I'd call Martin Gabel more famous, but I believe that he did win a Tony.

Phyllis Newman was pretty accomplished -- her showstopper in "Subways Are For Sleeping" won the Tony over Barbra Streisand's big number in "I Can Get It For You Wholesale".

She Newman) didn't do much after that.

Wasn’t her husband gay?

You consider 26 Broadway shows "not much", r7?

R12: Most of them closed quickly. She was no Geraldine Page.

How would she react if she were Mystery Guest and someone asked her if she were a character actress? She was relatively ethnic looking for the time, despite her stage name.

It's still 26 times she got hired and appeared on Broadway, r13. She also had a 40 year radio career. You're really short-changing her accomplishments in the business.

Plus she co-starred with James Cagney in the hilarious "One, Two, Three" and also Beverly Boyer (Doris Day) in "The Thrill of It All" among others. In character roles (wife), but still...

I didn’t know she was in the original Broadway run of The Women … two years.

Arlene was multi-talented, including murder.

Give it up, R18. DL keeps trying to pin a murder rap on her when ten seconds of online research will show she didn't kill anyone. There was a tragic accident at her apartment while she and her family were away, and she was in a fatal car accident that was not her fault.

And, yes, she would have been proud to be called a character actress.

🤔 sounds like murder to me…

Who might Bennett Cerf and Dorothy Kilgallen guess if Arlene had been a mystery guest?

Lotte Lenya, R21.

A radio and TV host. Lots of Broadway gigs and a wonderful person. She possessed a unique quality that made you want to look at her. She lived a long time.

R23 Many years ago, an ex and I were visiting NYC, and while walking on the Upper East Side I saw an elderly, well-dressed and well-coiffed woman walking towards us slowly with the assistance of a younger woman. After we passed them, I realized the elderly woman was Arlene Francis. I looked back thinking about whether to go back to her and tell her how much I had enjoyed her TV work, but I saw how much trouble she was having walking and thought it best to not bother her. I still enjoy watching her on old What’s My Line shows. She was vivacious and had a lovely smile.

She's no Ann Baxter.

Or Ann Blythe

She's no Anne Miller.

Or Miss or Missus Miller.

R24, I think she suffered from Alzheimer’s for many years before her death, so you & your ex may have encountered her during this period of her life.

Ooo-la-la

Let’s not forget that, for all her formidable charm, she was also a serial killer.

Would she have been described as a handsome woman?

[Quote] According to TV Guide, Francis was the highest-earning game show panelist in the 1950s, making $1000 (equal to $10,757 today[citation needed]) per show on the prime time version of What's My Line?. By contrast, the second-highest paid panelists on TV, Dorothy Kilgallen and Faye Emerson, received $500 (equal to $5,378 today[citation needed]) per appearance.[10]

Interesting that the female panellists were paid for than the men.

Miss Francis was an accomplished actress on the legitimate stage performing in 25 Broadway plays through 1975.

She was also Armenian.

She wasn't a character actress.

She was The Lovely Star of Stage and Television, MIss Arlene Francis™.

R29 I think you’re correct. According to her NYT obituary, she started showing signs of Alzheimer’s around 1984 and left NYC in 1995 to be near her son in California. I would have seen her between 1990 and 1995, when she had been in a decline for a long time. It’s just as well I didn’t try to go up to her.

Wiki says she left New York for a home in San Francisco in 1993.

Are these F Me pumps?

Most of her Broadway work was in short runs or plays no one remembers. The Women, an ensemble, is really her only major credit and that was 29+ years before "What's My Line". Her film credits were "sporadic" as Wiki describes them. She was basically a proto-Phyllis Newman.

Charm

Her famous diamond heart-shaped necklace was stolen from her, and I don't think it's ever surfaced since.

The people who made the WACO mini series are developing a Dorothy Kilgallen - who should be played by Rooney Mara or Emily Blunt - biopic.

Who to play Arlene and the rest of the the panel?

Rebecca De Mornay

maybe Wendie Malick as Dorothy (though Wendie is always pretty likeable and Dorothy was mostly bitchy)

Arlene interviewed. Date unknown, but no earlier than 1987.

Dorothy should only be played by chinless wonder. Cast an unknown.

Goodson-Todman would not have dared pay Arlene twice as much Dorothy. Dorothy would of course have found out and that would be the end of WML as we knew it.

As to Arlene, she was far more famous and talented on television than her husband. He never would have been seen on the program if he hadn't been Mr. Francis.

[quote]She was basically a proto-Phyllis Newman.

They were both basically TV celebrities despite work on stage, but Phyllis was the ditzy ingénue type. All giggles.

Arlene was sophisticated and witty. A TV pioneer hosting her own show in the 1950s. Had radio shows. She had a lot more substance than Phyllis Newman.

Arlene was the first woman to host a game show when she subbed for Bill Cullen on The Price is Right.

During the interregnum between Jack Paar's departure & Johnny Carson's start date, she also was the first woman to host the Tonight Show.

Although different personalities, Arlene and Betty White shared a common denominator: they were just born for TV, live TV especially.

[quote]Arlene was the first woman to host a game show when she subbed for Bill Cullen on The Price is Right.

Actually Arlene was the host of the TV game show "Blind Date", years before the Price is Right.

She also hosted it when it was on the radio. Starting in 1943.

I'd consider Betty a pioneer, r52.

[quote]Although different personalities, Arlene and Betty White shared a common denominator: they were just born for TV, live TV especially.

That would describe Dinah Shore too. And with her own variety show starting in '51.

Chinless wonder?

You rang??

What about Bel Powley?

They will most likely cast a quince...

I was just about to post that Dinah Shore didn't have the perfect frame for '50s TV, she always seemed bigger than the screen. Then I just checked. She was 5'3". Yet I remember her as so tall and elegant.

Dinah was top heavy. Noted for her tits when she was starting out and getting show biz breaks from Eddie Cantor.

On TV her only rival in the 1950s and early '60s was Perry Como.

There's something else these three women all have: great voices. So warm, and with that intimacy that lets you somehow feel you really know them. And like them.

I assume this comes from their radio training, when the voice was all a performer had to offer.

That's a lost art today. Listen to Mayim. Her voice is OK, better than nearly all the contenders'. But it's pretty clear she's had no training. She speaks as host exactly the way she speaks on the phone. She'd be so much better as host if a voice trainer worked with her on developing that warm engaging tone that brought Dinah, Betty and Arlene such success.

R61 For tits?

Who was Milton Berle's rival?

Forrest Tucker

[quote]Who was Milton Berle's rival? For dick, obv.

Betty Furness

Betty Furness and Harriet Hilliard Nelson (of Ozzie and Harriet) each show up in different Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movies as the 2nd female lead way back in the 1930s.

I see that we've turned our attention away from Arlene to dick, but, R64, David Steinberg, who saw Uncle Miltie in all his glorious wonder, has recently written that Berle wasn't as well-endowed as he wanted people to believe he was.

WHET David Steinberg?

R69, apart from a Showtime series he helmed in the ‘10s where he interviewed other comedians, he’s been a top go-to director of TV sit coms - think Golden Girls, Mad About You, Friends & Curb - since the ‘80s.

Arlene was one of those people who couldn’t sit still. On WML she was always plugging her appearances in theatre, sometimes on Broadway but more often at local suburban theaters in places like Paramus or Mineola. This on top of her TV and radio jobs. She obviously didn’t need the money.

I read her memoir and she had not one but two anecdotes in there which had to do with her public hair. One about having it shaved into the shape of a heart and dyed red. I believe this was behind Martin giving her the trademark heart necklace. Another anecdote later in the book detailed that no matter what her hair color at any time she was always Armenian in hair color down below. I really wasn’t expecting to get that kind of candor in an old lady’s autobiography.

Martin was probably a cunning linguist.

Martin was the Liev Schreiber of his era as he was a leading voiceover artist.

Martin was brilliant in his small role in Lord Love A Duck. Both he and Arlene were reliable performers; you could count on them to come in prepared and do at least a solid job. Sometimes, when the role was right (as with Martin in LLAD, or Arlene in One Two Three) they was really great. And speaking of Arlene in OTT, she held her own against James Cagney, which is saying a helluva lot.

I think Arlene is really fine in "The Thrill of It All", too, especially the opening upon hearing of her pregnancy. "One, Two, Three", while now dated because of the fall of the Berlin Wall, is still a fast-moving and hilarious hoot.

I believe Arlene's casting in 123 originated with Billy Wilder telling his casting people he wanted an "Arlene Francis type'" for Cagney's wife.

I think Arlene had something of a Broadway hit in the mid-60s with a glamorous all-star revival of DINNER AT EIGHT in which she played the Marie Dressler role. The cast included Darren McGavin, Walter Pidgeon, June Havoc and Arlene's 123 co-star Pamela Tiffin.

Look how tiny Dinah's (granted cinched) waist is...

Did Dinah and Carol Channing ever do a medley of Negro Spirituals together?

WML? with the Dinner at Eight cast...

Francis seemed old playing Cagney's wife in One, Two, Three and had a relatively minor role.

Oh, yeah. It was Arlene who seemed OLD.

Miss Francis totally redefined the meaning of character actress in the legitimate theater.

I think she'd glare at you (then smile -- cameras are on) if the person sitting to her right on 'What's My Line" introduced her as "the dozen of New York's character actresses", though.

doyen, oy!

Doyenne!

Merci beaucoup.

More of a personality than performer

.,.,

As a reflection of just how much the memory of another Goodson-Todman game show doyenne has receded, today’s Newsday crossword puzzle - always exponentially tougher than the Times’s Saturday puzzle - has this clue: “Six-decade game show panelist in A Night at the Opera.”

R69, David Steinberg has written an autobiography "Inside Comedy", published this year.

She had a potty mouth!

I read Steinberg’s book, R90. My greatest takeaway was that he liked everyone he worked … with the exception of Bea Arthur. He related that Bea once asked him why people took such an instant dislike to her. He told her it just saves time. He also wrote about seeing Uncle Miltie in the nude. He said that Berle liked people to think he was more endowed than he really was.

Oh, I met someone who worked for the Friars club who told me Berle had a very big dick.

Did he mention the temperature in the room?

Gentleman, can we please move this dick discussion elsewhere, somewhere not in the presence of a lady like Miss Francis?

[quote]Gentleman, can we please move this dick discussion elsewhere, somewhere not in the presence of a lady like Miss Francis?

Stopette!

What was Arlene's favorite word for the male member?

I was getting confused then I realized this wasn't the Arlene Dahl thread.

Nah, r98, yer Miss Arlene Dahl thread is here...

R99, can you likewise direct me to the Arlene Golonka thread?

sigh...Fine, r100, but this is the last one. I need to get back to Mimeo.

[quote] What was Arlene's favorite word for the male member?

Stanley.

The Sal Mimeo thread, R101?

r7 - Phyllis Newman was a wonderful talent. She had a lot to offer as a singer and an actress.

The Sal Mimeo thread, r103, or the Sal Mimeo Mimeo thread?

I wouldn't mind a mimeo of Mineo in his pool scenes in "Who Killed Teddy Bear?"

I dispute that Dinah Shore was 5' 3." She was, by her own admission, closer to 5' 6." I have photos of her standing next to Andy Williams who was about 5' 7" and she is taller because of her heels. She is about the same height as Peggy Lee - who was 5' 6." I was a huge fan as a kid and I met her a few times.

Arlene looks like an Armenian American house frau in that commercial. Her husband just got a raise at his factory job.

She had...that certain something...

Like JP Morgan on the Gong Show- She was known for being a personality and being famous and didn’t have much of a career before that or ever.

At first this sounds crazy - Arlene and Helen Mirren have very similar facial features and mannerisms. They both have that “knowing” merry look in their eyes - but intelligent and classy at the same time.

Helen would be an ideal choice for an Arlene biopic.

Well, Helen featured a lot more nudity in her career.

Arlene would have done a topless scene, I'm sure. It's just that no one asked.

I could see Arlene playing Mrs. Kendall in "The Elephant Man" had she been the right age when it was done.

All they had to do, r114, is ask!

During her hey day on American television (1951-1967), Arlene surely got some great plastic surgery done but I've always wondered how and when as she seemed to be virtually on camera all the time. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think WML only took a brief month off during the summers and even then, Arlene was usually touring in stock.

For someone who had a child at a later age, she managed to stay well preserved. Bette Davis and Lucy both aged pretty quickly after having their first children in their late thirties…especially Bette.

[quote] Helen would be an ideal choice for an Arlene biopic.

Any such production would have to tackle her murderess tendencies.

Hey, R17!

[quote] Like JP Morgan on the Gong Show- She was known for being a personality and being famous and didn’t have much of a career before that or ever.

R110, you are completely full of shit. She had a big stage career both on Broadway (25 shows) and in stock. Big radio career,TV guest spots, and a sprinkling of films.

Arlene lifted weights. That says a lot about her attitude to maintaining her body.

[Quote] At first this sounds crazy - Arlene and Helen Mirren have very similar facial features

That doesn't sound crazy. Helen Mirren came to mind when I Image Searched photos of younger Arlene.

Dinner at Eight

[quote]Like JP Morgan on the Gong Show- She was known for being a personality and being famous and didn’t have much of a career before that or ever.

You don't know what you're talking about.

And BTW: Jaye P. Morgan had quite a career in the 1950s: top-10 hit records, plenty of TV appearances including her own TV show.

And Jaye P. is family to boot.

I loved watching the original WML as a little kid, it was very special getting to stay up late on those Sunday nights. I was obsessed with Dorothy Kilgallen but found Arlene kind of boring.

But when I rediscovered the show about 15 years ago on youtube and started watching all the episodes again (and by now I've seen them multiple times) I'm absolutely floored by how spontaneously clever and witty and gracious Arlene always was....it went over my head as a child, I guess. She's always so complimentary to the Mystery Guests when they're revealed, often the first to mention how wonderful they are in their latest project. I can't imagine she wasn't beloved by all of her colleagues. That kind of effervescent personality has sorely been missing from TV for a very long time now.

Used to confuse Jaye P Morgan and singer Jane Morgan, but the former was infinitely hip and the latter......well, she just wasn't.

[quote] Arlene lifted weights

It was one of those weights that killed one of her victims.

[quote]but found Arlene kind of boring.

Same for me when I was a kid. She really didn't register.

But now I'm so impressed everything she did on that show.

^But now I'm so impressed with everything she did on that show.

Jaye P. did a disco album in the 70s that is surprisingly good. Beautifully produced. Give it a listen.

I think it was produced by David Foster.

Arlene was not the one who used a weight to prop open the window. It was her maid. Arlene and Martin weren’t even there ar the time.

[quote] Arlene was not the one who used a weight to prop open the window. It was her maid. Arlene and Martin weren’t even there ar the time.

I never said otherwise. I just said that "[i]t was one of those weights that killed one of her victims." Unless it was the maid's weight.

HER victims. Don't pretend you didn't know what you were doing with that word.

If Arlene didn't kill him, how is he "one of her victims" R126/R134?

C'mon, R135/136, this is Datalounge, where bitchery is part of our constitution. And she WAS associated with the accidental deaths of two people.

What is your problem, r137? You sound like a real cunt. And you’re a bore, too, which is an even bigger sin on DL.

Am I a boor or a bore, R138? I'll take either.

Strange how another singer cut 4 of the same tracks as Jaye P. Morgans 1976 album the next year. "You're All I Need to Get By" is the only really famous song of the four.

R79 That episode perfectly sums up why I like WML, yes they could all be elitists, but they celebrated each other's triumphs like they were their own.

Did you know Bennett Cerf was related to Ginger Rogers?

She trills...

Dinner at Eight is one straight play, that I think could be turned into a fun musical.

[quote]Strange how another singer cut 4 of the same tracks as Jaye P. Morgans 1976 album the next year. "You're All I Need to Get By" is the only really famous song of the four.

Jaye P.'s performance on "You're All I Need to Get By" is very skillful.

Anyway, Arlene Francis never cut a disco album. So there's that.

[quote]Arlene was not the one who used a weight to prop open the window. It was her maid. Arlene and Martin weren’t even there ar the time.

I propped mine open with the fookin baby, and won a Grammy for it.

The production on Jaye's version is good. The vocal layering hides her somewhat thin voice. She sounds like late period Dusty Springfield at times.

This is basically the same arrangement as Jaye's. How odd. Foster is credited for arranging Jaisun's "Closet Man," so maybe he was behind both projects.

Jaye would have been 45 years old when she did that album.

When I was a kid I used to think Arlene Francis and Kitty Carlisle were the same person who just switched wigs from "What's My Line" to "To Tell the Truth".

They did look like sisters.

Arlene broke down in tears live on the radio when Bennett Cerf died.

Kate Micucci looks has a Dorothy Kilgallen.

Micucci is cringeworthy in everything she does. She lacks Kilgallen's cut throat menace. She and Cerf played to win on WML, but Bennett did it with a bit more finesse.

Ginger Rogers was first cousin to Bennett Cerf’s wife Phyllis. Ginger was a frequent house guest of the Cerfs. It was mentioned that she was residing with them when she made an appearance on WML in the early 60s, and that obituary posted at r152 says she was a guest in 1971 at the time of his death. Was Ginger broke or something that made her stay with them so often? Surely she wasn’t a house guest all that time.

Maybe the Cerfs loved her and she loved them, r155?

I've read Bennett Cerf's biography and while it's somewhat entertaining, he really could have written a ferocious tell-all about the hundreds of celebrities he hobnobbed with in all aspects of the arts from first wife Sylvia Sidney (who he divorced because he was jealous of her greater fame), Frank Sinatra (Bennett was an honorary member of The Rat Pack) to Marilyn Monroe (he wrote a fab profile of her for Esquire), to every important author and playwright of the 20th century (Bennett was, of course, the Random House lead publisher). As outspoken as he was, he was an old-fashioned gentleman and knew how to keep his mouth shut in print.

But there's a wonderful audio interview Bennett did near the end of his life where he loosens up and talks all about WML, his dislike of Dorothy Kilgallen and many other things. Check it online. Sorry not to provide a link.

[quote]But there's a wonderful audio interview Bennett did near the end of his life where he loosens up and talks all about WML, his dislike of Dorothy Kilgallen and many other things. Check it online. Sorry not to provide a link.

Dorothy's politics were a bit more right-wing than the rest of the regulars, but what frosted Bennett's biscuits was Dorothy's attitude that anything and everything was fodder for her newspaper column. He thought some things should stay among friends.

R157 While she might have leaned to the right, she was killed for trying to uncover the truth about the JFK assassination. People who knew her, and most biographers agree that because of her Catholicism she would never have killed herself and she wasn't the type of person to accidently kill herself either.

Utter bullshit.

Through the smoke, Bennett Cerf interviewed by Mike Wallace.

Bennett is now famously remembered (if at all) for his horribly old-fashioned attitudes towards women's liberation (he persisted on calling women "girls"), rock and roll (he insisted it was a passing fad), avant-garde theater (he thought Waiting for Godot was a lot of nonsense) and the sack dress ("a disturbing abomination!").

Well, he was right about the sack dress

He was right about "Waiting for Godot".

And as we now know, Rock&Roll was indeed a passing fad, though it took a while to pass from fashion.

As for calling women "girls": it's a lot more sensible than claiming men can be women.

[quote] he persisted on calling women "girls"

How dare he, a man born in the 19th Century?!

The T obsessive will always find a way to change the subject to his fave.

[quote] Her acting was incidental…

😂 I love it when jokes tell themselves.

Incidental as two lentils?

fish

Well aren’t we all chummy up here in Mount Kisco? …. Actually a few years ago I googled Bennett Cerf in Mt Kisco New York - it gave his address and I don’t remember if it had a real estate listing or not - but there were several beautiful photos of his house. I don’t think I looked up Arlene & Martin Gabel’s Mt Kisco house …

Around 1932, Cerf went to Paris, met James Joyce, signed him up as a Random House author, then returned to the U.S. and fought the court battle to overturn the U.S. Customs ban on Ulysses.

In my book, that if nothing else earns him his star in the Literary Hall of Fame.

Here’s Bennett’s house

Ted Geisel was far and away Cerf's most profitable author. Children's books like his never grow out of fashion. They just keep selling and selling.

Here's more pics of Bennett's house.

It really is such a comfortable looking house. I love the grounds.

As a little kid I fantasized about the WML mentions of Bennett's home on Mt. Kisco and thought of it as some kind of little kingdom. It helped that they sometimes referred to him as the Count of Mt. Kisco.

I've always had the sense that his wife Phyliss must have been quite a handful. After he died you can see her throwing down her pearls in disgust and declaring Mame-like that she is NOT going to be spending the rest of her life as the Widow Cerf.

And so she became Mrs. Robert Wagner, and lived another 35 years after Cerf's death.

Do you think she donned a sack dress in celebration of Bennett's death, r174?

I think Arlene's house was on an adjoining lot within walking distance. Looking at the satellite Google street view there are some lovely old houses on both sides of Orchard Road, but part of the land butting up to Cerf's house has a cul-de-sac of newer mcmansions, so that land was sold off by somebody for developers. No idea which old house might of been hers or if it was torn down. I do know it had a pool as Arlene mentions it in her memoir. Saw Mill Parkway runs behind Orchard, so the traffic noise must be considerable there (the highway opened in 1954, so it was build around the time they all lived there).

Anyway - why am I stalking these old, dead people?

[quote] Anyway - why am I stalking these old, dead people?

Because they had more class and elegance in their small toes than most current stars have in their entire bodies.

Idk about that, R177, as that outtake upthread shows, Arlene had a filthy mouth. The so-called class & elegance may be a reflection of the belief that the past was so much better.

R178 OMG she said shit, let me clutch my pearls and grab the smelling salts.

Oh please, r178. Loretta had a swear jar *and* an illegitimate kid.

Classy women don’t have a potty mouth. Just sayin’.

Yes, that's it indeed r177.

OK, so I found an old Facebook page where someone who grew up in Mt Kisco posted a 1960 local news article about some kids blowing up Arlene's mailbox with firecrackers and the address given was 4 Orchard Road. So, if that is correct then this is her house (as it was built in 1925).

Thank you for the links to the Mount Kisco homes! Aren’t they beauties? They spoke of Mount Kisco so frequently on the show - so neat to see them. ….. Bennett being a liberal Democrat must have had some tense moments with Ginger Rogers - I have a feeling if she was alive today she would be a Trumper.

She was married to Martin Gabel and they were a very social theatrical couple and knew everybody. Gabel played the part of “Strutt” in Hitchcock’s Marnie. I read Bennet Cerf’s memoir At Random and the couple figure largely as a part of their social group.

So according this this article, when the barbell fell from Arlene's window and killed a guy (1960) she and Martin were living at the Ritz Tower at the corner of Park Avenue and East 57th Street.

In 1967 and 1968 Bennett Cerf was interviewed extensively by journalist Robin Hawkins for an oral history project about notable New Yorkers. On January 23, 1968, he spoke for almost 40 minutes about his experiences on "What's My Line?". This is part one.

Part two.

Argh. My bad about the house I posted at r182. That house at 4 Orchard wasn't Arlene's. Apparently the street numbers on that street were reorganized at some point. The Gabels' place is described as up a 200 yard long driveway and it was built in 1957 so it clearly is a different houe. It may have been demolished, but some posters and one real estate site say the house ended up being the one now located at 9 Caren Court (the street where a new subdivision was built around it). Zillow says that house was built in 1965 (the house is clearly decades older than the rest on that street and it does have the pool). It hasn't been on the market in recent years so there aren't any pictures to be found.

My father drove a cab and once had Arlene as a passenger. He referred to her as a “pot marked bitch” whenever he saw her on tv or someone mentioned her name.

This had to be sometime in the early to mid 60s when I was a kid, so I don’t remember the particulars.

Martin would hit her in the head with a fondue pot, r189.

Ignore part two of the Cerf interview as it's just a repeat of part one.

A brief summary. He loved Arlene & John Daly, but Dorothy, who wrote a "disgusting column," was always the outsider. He & the others didn't like her politics & that she was always the reporter, with one such incident involving Mike Wallace causing John Daly's permanent dislike. He did say she was a "nice woman," with none of her "cattiness" from her column in person. He said he started out making $300 a week, eventually making a "scandalous" amount later on, which included profit-sharing.

Then there was the Famous Writers School scandal, in 1970. I often wondered whether it was a factor in Bennett's death at 73 in '71. It certainly was hugely embarrassing to a man who had spent his life developing his reputation.

Jessica Mitford was a master with the knife. Here's Bennett's reply when she asks how many graduates of the school have written for Random House:

"Oh, come on, you must be pulling my leg—no person of any sophistication, whose book we'd publish, would have to take a mail-order course to learn how to write."

Her exposé is still worth a read today to learn how a good writer does it.

I had never before seen the original WML in living color.

"In Living Color" was an NBC phrase. WML was on CBS. (Those things counted at that time.)

Is that What's My Line taped in color, or is it a colorized episode? I know CBS filmed one episode of Perry Mason in color to see how it looked

[quote] Because they had more class and elegance in their small toes than most current stars have in their entire bodies.

It only seems like it because they didn’t have social media back then. Look at all of those biographies about famous entertainers who were exposed as not being like their public persona.

But this was live unscripted TV year in and year out for around 17 years. Bennett and Arlene and John and Dorothy couldn't hide their real selves that long.

^^^ Not unless you consider them brilliant character actors. ;)

They were playing a game for an hour. It was hardly Celebrity Big Brother.

R199 You're obviously not even familiar with WML, just troll posting.

Daly and Cerf didn't like Kilgallen. Was that obvious watching the show? No, it wasn't.

R201 The tension between Dorothy and John was obvious from time to time. If you'd actually watched the shows.

Hindsight is 20/20, r202.

Here's Arlene cunting it up with Jackie Kennedy. She's oh so subtle, but Jackie knew what time it was.

Arlene's chef d'oeuvre, "The Thrill of It All," is on TCM today.

Martin Gabel was great as the Viennese shrink in Billy Wilder's remake of The Front Page. After being shot in the nuts by Austin Pendleton: "Fruitcake! Fruitcake!"

No one on the show really liked Dorothy. the tension was one of the things that made the show---once she was gone, something seemed to be missing. They should have gotten a new shrew, but I would imagine that most of them would have been more obvious than her.

[quote]No one on the show really liked Dorothy. the tension was one of the things that made the show---once she was gone, something seemed to be missing. They should have gotten a new shrew, but I would imagine that most of them would have been more obvious than her.

You could have written that, word-for-word, about "The Golden Girls."

Her younger brother, Pope, must have been so proud.

WTF did audiences make of Arlene having a baby in 1963's THE THRILL OF IT ALL at age 56??

I happened to watch the end of the movie which climaxes in that birth the other night on TCM and couldn't believe it. Yet there she is....

r210 I really didn't need to think about Arlene climaxing.

Actors don't always play their age, dear.

I love Arlene more than anyone but she looked every bit of her 56 years, darling r212.

[Quote] every bit of 56 years

So does Lindsay Lohan.

I wouldn't want to watch Lindsay Lohan have a baby with a shoestring and an unread newspaper in a limo either, r214.

Dumb question (maybe):

How was the borrowed shoelace employed in the birth of Arlene's post-menopausal baby, anyway?

Don't fuck with Armenia!

I presume to tie off the umbilical cord.

Does tying it break it off?

If not, why does it need to be tied?

To stop the blood flow.

Cerf also had a Manhattan townhouse at 132 East 62nd Street, between Park and Lexington.

A couple of aunts and an uncle used to talk about how they they would attend the live broadcast of The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights and after the show was done, they'd walk a half a block around the corner and line up to enter the studio that What's My Line used and then they'd watch the live telecast for it.

222 - wouldn’t that be an incredibly fun and interesting way to spend a Sunday night?!

[quote] A couple of aunts and an uncle used to talk about how they they would attend the live broadcast of The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights and after the show was done, they'd walk a half a block around the corner and line up to enter the studio that What's My Line used and then they'd watch the live telecast for it.

I always thought they were both in the same building.

And she did it before Lucille Ball did it in [italic]Yours, Mine and Ours[/italic]! Except Lucy was supposed to be thirty-two when she was actually fifty-seven…

[quote] I always thought they were both in the same building.

Ed Sullivan came from the theater named for him at 1697 Broadway (at 53 St). It was known as CBS Television Studio 50. WML used what is now the Roundabout Theater (formerly the infamous Studio 54) on West 54 Street. It was known as CBS Television Studio 52 as per the CBS numbering system for their studios regardless of the location on 54th Street. The rear stage doors of both buildings backed on to the same alley. I've seen the odd admission ticket for WML in vintage stores, and after some checking I was told for about a year the two shows did use the same theater There was a 90 minute span from the final credits of Sullivan's show until the opening of WML. Crews would have been pretty rushed, so that would explain why using the same location the same night wasn't practical and the norm.

Arlene paid her maid to take the barbell rap and then when Dorothy outed her in the car accident, she paid the victim's family off and hated Dorothy forever.

Arlene and Martin's child is really ugly. Like that girl who played Blossom ugly. If you look at him, it's like he got the worst parts from each of them.

[quote] Ed Sullivan came from the theater named for him at 1697 Broadway (at 53 St). It was known as CBS Television Studio 50. WML used what is now the Roundabout Theater (formerly the infamous Studio 54) on West 54 Street. It was known as CBS Television Studio 52 as per the CBS numbering system for their studios regardless of the location on 54th Street. The rear stage doors of both buildings backed on to the same alley. I've seen the odd admission ticket for WML in vintage stores, and after some checking I was told for about a year the two shows did use the same theater There was a 90 minute span from the final credits of Sullivan's show until the opening of WML. Crews would have been pretty rushed, so that would explain why using the same location the same night wasn't practical and the norm.

For a time I was friendly with an older woman who had been on WML a couple of weeks before the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan. I teased her that if she had just been on two weeks later - under the assumption that WML didn't run a pre-recorded version on 2/9/64 - she could've experienced Beatlemania firsthand.

[quote]under the assumption that WML didn't run a pre-recorded version on 2/9/64

R228 WML was broadcast live.

Not always. In the '60s there were nights when they would do two shows, one live, one taped to be shown the following week.

Some summer first-run shows were taped in the spring.

When did Arlene and Dorothy ever have time for facelifts and the weeks of recovery?

I'm amazed to hear the show was done at Studio 54. That theatre is so much larger and grander than the impression I get from watching the show. I always assumed there were just a few hundred people in the audience, like most game shows of the 50s and 60s.

I spray my love muffin with Arpege’.

R227, what is your purpose? You attempt to spread totally disproven conspiracy theories, and then trash the poor woman's son because you don't find him hot. There is a difference between pointless bitchery and trolling...

Arlene was pissed when her show was cancelled on radio. She started throwing things and one of them hit Martin right in the face.

Arlene, starting at 20:48, on a 1984 game show, hosted by Jon Bauman. From John Charles Daly to Bowzer from Sha Na Na.

[quote] Arlene and Martin's child is really ugly.

I disagree. When he was younger, he was intellectual nerd cute. And he has BDF, which is a bonus.

Young Peter Gabel

More young Peter.

I'd have done him.

He looks like Charles Grodin. Not a compliment.

[quote]She started throwing things and one of them hit Martin right in the face.

No big loss

Peter Gable got the worst parts from both his parents. Yech.

I watched too much TV in the 80s but I don’t have any recollection of the Hollywood Squares/Match Game mashup.

r243

No words. OMG! No words

[quote]I watched too much TV in the 80s but I don’t have any recollection of the Hollywood Squares/Match Game mashup.

It's shown regularly on Buzzr.