Two years ago, my wife and I got hooked on watching re-runs of “What’s My Line.” It was a prime time game show that was on during our pre-teen years, the “early” days of television. GSN, the Game Show Network, carried it late at night, so I recorded it to watch in the evenings.
There were two reasons I enjoyed it. It was pure nostalgia, and it had Steve Allen on it, one of my personal heroes.
The show had a panel of minor celebrities, known more for their credibility than for star power, whose task it was to guess a person’s line of work by asking yes or no questions.
The contestant could win a whopping fifty dollars for stumping the panel.
The thing that really hooked us, was that on each show, they would bring out a “Mystery Guest” that would likely be a truly famous person. Usually a leading lady or man, my jaw dropped to see a young Charlton Heston, just finished with “The Ten Commandments”, but, frequently, someone that had become a household name for other reasons, a politician perhaps. For these contestants, the panel would wear blindfolds and the contestant would disguise their voice. Imagine Ronald Reagan speaking like a cartoon character.
One night, the mystery guest was Ava Gardner. Below is a clip of that segment.
If you watch the clip closely, you can see a look that Ava gave John Daly just as she sat down beside him. Fortunately, for John, he didn’t see her looking at him. It was a look that would reduce most men to gibbering fools. It certainly would have had that effect on me.
The “Big A” was before my time, in that I was too young to see the type of movies she made. That’s too bad. I would have loved to watch The Night of the Iguana or The Barefoot Contessa in the theater.
Through out her appearance, I kept thinking, “I never knew she was so beautiful!”
There is a recent, well done biography of her by Lee Server, Ava Gardner, “Love is Nothing”. I’ve just finished reading it. She was literally, born and raised on Tobacco Road, and became the biggest femme fatale of the 50’s and 60’s. Married to Mickey Rooney, Arti Shaw, and Frank Sinatra, pursued by Howard Hughes, she had men tripping over themselves to be near her.
For a while she lived just four miles away from my home near Madrid, Spain, but a decade before I got there.
If you are stuck for something to read, I recommend it. If you are out of ideas for videos, put some of her movies in your Netflix cue.
Sadly, GSN no longer carries What's My Line.
