What's My Line? capped its prize at $50 so nobody could suspect cheating
For 17 years on CBS, four celebrities tried to guess ordinary people's jobs with nothing but yes-or-no questions. Each no added $5, and ten of them earned the maximum $50. Host John Charles Daly later said the tiny purse was deliberate: a game played for fun could never look rigged.
Mark Goodson and Bill Todman first called their show Occupation Unknown. It debuted live on Thursday, February 2, 1950, and by October that year had found its Sunday 10:30 p.m. slot, where it stayed until September 3, 1967. Pat Finch, who checked hats at the Stork Club, was the opening contestant, and the first blindfolded mystery guest was the Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto. It won Emmys in 1952, 1953 and 1958 and a Golden Globe in 1962.
The panel settled around the columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, the actress Arlene Francis and the Random House publisher Bennett Cerf, plus a rotating fourth seat. Steve Allen held it from 1953 until he left in 1954 to start The Tonight Show, and Fred Allen, no relation, sat there until his death in 1956. Francis's husband Martin Gabel filled in 112 times, more than any other guest panelist.
Play rewarded logic. Panelists opened with broad sorting questions, such as whether a company made a profit or whether a product was eaten or worn, and phrased queries in the negative to coax a yes. Steve Allen coined the enduring line about whether something was bigger than a breadbox in January 1953. Once the guest actually made breadboxes; Kilgallen asked the question, Daly burst out laughing, and Allen worked out the answer.
Celebrities disguised their voices, but Cerf admitted the panel often knew who was in town or promoting a new film, and they would let questioning go round once so the audience could enjoy it. Much of the run survives because producers kept kinescopes from July 1952 onward; over 700 episodes exist. A syndicated daily version followed until 1975, and TV Guide ranked the show ninth among the greatest game shows in 2013.
Source: What's My Line?
