What's My Line?, as social commentary

I mentioned, earlier, that I've recently enjoyed What's My Line, the 50's and 60's gameshow. And there's some interesting things to take away from the show.

Mostly recently, I was reminded of what's wrong with just about all "reality" shows, these days. This clip could have turned into the sort of self-absorbed, meandering soliloquies that characterize a lot of those shows, but every time the contestant appeared that he might wander off into one of those, he was cleverly and politely cut off by the moderator.

But what I really wanted to talk about was some of the mores and assumptions that are different from what we see, nowadays.

For instance, female guests are always asked whether it should be Mrs or Miss (now considered a faux pas), and the host always gets their chair for them.  You can tell, when a pretty lady is about to be a contestant, from the whistles as soon as the audience can see her; I guess that part hasn't changed.

One of them was how long the clips are. Some of them approach ten minutes long, which we'd never see, these days, without commercials. Of course, most of them have product placement, and there are occasional "words" from the sponsor. But there isn't the regular breakup, every five or six minutes (or whatever it is; since I watch almost non-sports TV, I don't keep track), to go to commercials. And some of these would certainly suffer from being broken up.

Another difference is that you will hear the occasional french, german, or spanish (generally no more than a few words at a time, but it does happen) on the show, which would probably not fly, nowadays (other than the spanish, I suppose). R's got rolled, as appropriate, is one change.

Another change is that any humor that tends towards the crude is just glossed over (probably with a laugh or three). There isn't much of that around, now.

You also get an interesting perspective on celebrities of the time, whether they're panelists or guests. It's a much more interesting perspective, I think, than just a straight interview.

Also, when government people show up as guests, they're praised for public service, not castigated. Granted, not everyone would be treating them as lepers, these days, but a sizeable percentage would be (the Tea Party "patriots", in particular). Yes, even the head of tax collection was greeted with applause.

What do I do?

I recently discovered, thanks to the wonder of YouTube, and old game show from the 50s and 60s, called What's My Line.  It has a moderator, who attempts to clarify (or cloud) the issue, and four panelists who try to guess the profession of the guest.  Essentially, the panelists ask yes/no questions of the guest, who must answer honestly (well, with one or two exceptions), with the questioning stopping with ten no answers, a correct identification, or occasionally on time (or when the moderator decided the questioning was going nowhere.

It's interesting on several different levels.  First, it's a hilarious show.  The moderator, John Daly, was very funny, and did a great job of keeping things going.  It also had guests with some very odd jobs (dice pip painter, broadway orchestra conductor, rockette, journalist, rocket scientist, crocodile hunter), some of which led to some really interesting lines of questioning.  And many of those odd jobs no longer exist, which makes for some interesting social commentary.  Also, it was very noticeably a New York City show; something which doesn't happen anymore.  Another striking thing about it was the jokes are generally quite erudite and sophisticated.  Low-brow humor appears only by implication.

And eventually, they started having celebrities (singly, or in groups) appear on the show, mostly with the panelists being blindfolded.  This provided some interesting insight into those celebrities.

Anyway, a very fun show.  I wish we had shows like that around today.