Bennett Cerf on What's My Line: An Oral History (Part One)

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.

[@vilstef6988]

Bennett Cerf is fascinating to listen to, and he along with Dorothy Kilgallen, Arlene Francis and John Daley were such a great combination together. I don't think John Daley gets the credit he is due. Daley was such a good audience for all things said by the panel. Such a delightful show-it was such a different era!

[@AllenMQuinn]

Thank you for posting this fascinating interview!!!

[@ComposerInUK]

...and three years later there are still people enjoying this! Until I came across WML (I'm British) I had never heard of Bennet Cerf. He seems like a sweet, liberal guy, exactly right for the informal and urbane nature of the show. Thanks again for posting.

[@dzeigfinge]

And 12 years later we still are!

[@hifithepanda]

Thanks so much for the comments! I'm really glad people are enjoying this.

[@Patrick3183]

how articulateLY he spoke.

[@dlou3264]

What a good interview! It’s so much fun to learn how things come about. Thanks for posting!

[@LindaSetonCase]

This is fabulous. I look forward to the next part.

[@douglasthompson9482]

fantastic interview on a great man....absolutely brilliant.

[@ParkerAllen2]

I really enjoyed listening to this. Thanks so much for uploading it.

[@soulierinvestments]

Thank you for posting this interview. Fascinating information and fascinating to see how articulate Bennett Cerf spoke.

[@ajdukujac]

great panelist and intellectual!

[@ijustwanttosing]

Amazing! Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful interview with all of us WML-fans :-)

[@hifithepanda]

Thanks for that! I enjoyed putting all of that together. I'm trying to figure out how to include a couple of short video clips in the next segment I put up (part three).

[@romeman01]

Splendid. Keep going!

[@weatdamal]

Thank you!

[@mgushulak]

Allow me to join the chorus of thanks for this interview. I'm enjoying it as all get out. I'm looking forward to the rest of it. Bennett's reckoning of Dorothy as an outsider seems to be shared by at least one observer. Look at Al Hirschfeld's caricatures of Daly et al. at 0:04. Bennett and Arlene are fully facing the host, but Dorothy has her back to all of them. Makes her look sorta stand-offish, dontcha think?

[@dutchtea8354]

I’m also send thanks for posting this. John looks like he is smiling at Dorothy in the caricature.

[@bigred997]

this is fantastic. keep it coming!

[@BranMan10]

Indeed

[@thebestisyettocome4114]

Bennett, was truly a honest and honorable man. Missed. Benjamin Hahn Los Angeles

[@dutchtea8354]

Although I like Bennett, I can not call anyone who maligned colleagues as “honorable.” Even today, people take Bennett’s personal opinions as facts.

[@neilmidkiff]

Thanks for the interview and the illuminating pictures to go along with it! One tiny quibble with two of the illustrations in the last minute: when Bennett says "dress tie" he means a black bow tie, as worn with a dinner jacket (tuxedo), not the long tie as shown here.

[@RedHeadedStorm]

How is that easier to wear than a tux.

[@ericstuart7748]

He calls Block a clod. Well, at times Bennett could be a clod.

[@davidsanderson5918]

Eric Stuart No Cerf doesn't fit the description of a clod. He may have been a bit stiff, some people may have found him obsequious or he may ha e been a bit square. But he was not stupid. If anything he was incredibly bright and intelligent. Hal was a pleb.

[@merryx-mart9943]

@@davidsanderson5918 yes , Block didnt quite fit in with Bennett Cerf , Arlene or Dorothy. It was a shame as Block was hard working , he wrote for Bob Hope , Abbott & Costello and many others. Block tried needed the WML job so he tried too hard to be funny and it didn't work

[@hifithepanda]

Thanks for watching. I never got around to finishing my version of this interview, maybe I will one day. Somebody else posted the full audio of the interview and they sort of cleaned up the sound quality too. Check out the channel: WMLandPassword

[@pureredwhiteblu]

Bennett Cerf sounds alot like Arthur Q. Bryan ... aka The Original Elmer Fudd. Do a KZbin search.

[@gregmoorhead7203]

pureredwhiteblu ~ With a little bit of Truman Capote mixed in.

[@mslgizzle]

This was cool

[@44032]

Check out Bennett's 1957 interview with Mike Wallace on the "Mike Wallace Interview". It's linked on Wikipedia..

[@ComposerInUK]

I just wonder... is Part 2 still coming soon? I'd really love to hear more of Bennet's reminiscences about What's My Line?

[@FermatWiles]

Nobody speaks with this beautiful old New York accent anymore.

[@mgushulak]

How true! My Great-Uncle Enoch once wrote a scathing letter to the editor denouncing fluoridation, and he died mysteriously of the flu a mere thirty years later. Will these power-hungry bastards stop at nothing?

[@44032]

This is the same as the "Oral history of notable New Yorker's". It's very valuable to WML fans but it's not different from the other "oral hsitory" on U-Tube if you've already listened to it previously.

[@RRaquello]

It's interesting that you mention this. On an early episode of What's My Line, both Dorothy Kilgallen and Jack Paar appeared and they were friendly and lovey-dovey. Later on, they became dire enemies and Paar regularly attacked Kilgallen on his show. The reason was Paar, a lefty looney, became pals with Fidel Castro, and boosted Castro as a freedom fighter while Kilgallen, in her column, exposed the truth-Castro was a communist and enemy of this country. Who turned out to be right?

[@4seeableTV]

You're an idiot.

[@vestibulate]

RRaquello Fidel Castro was never an enemy of the United States. But the United States was the enemy of any country in Latin America pursuing an independent course.

[@dutchtea8354]

@@vestibulate I have several friends whose parents managed to escape communist Cuba and arrived here with cents in their pockets. They would not agree with you.

[@vestibulate]

@@dutchtea8354 I'm very comfortable with the opposition of your friends' parents.

[@xander7ful]

What ever happened to Robin Hawkins? When I first started using KZbin, there were some videos of a TV show she did for the BBC in the late 70s or early 80s on lifestyle. Very lighthearted. Then the user either closed or was terminated and the videos disappeared. How old was she here? Wasn't she a grad student or senior journalism student at Columbia?

[@3anneology]

no, she was a true reporter reporting facts.

[@davidsanderson5918]

3anneology She also had a penchant for juicy showbiz news though. Sinatra fell out with her after she went public with things he wasn't happy about.

[@SymphonyBrahms]

She wrote a gossip column the last few years of her life. She could be extremely cruel to people that she didn't like. She did that to Frank Sinatra. After he read her column about him he said, "If anybody is going to run over and see Dorothy Kilgallen, be sure to run over her".

[@brosue4]

Gosh Id love to know more about Dorothy Killgallan now, I always thought she was just a sweet, serious lady and then I hear Mr. Cerf call her column "disgusting". Is it true that it was a rather nasty gossip column?

[@davidsanderson5918]

brosue4 To be fair I heard him only refer to ONE disgusting column she wrote as opposed to suggesting it was disgusting every day. She reported upon what was going on in showbiz. Well, nuff said!! Ernest Hemingway has been quoted variedly as saying she was "the most powerful voice in America" and "the greatest female writer in the world." That should at least be taken as a positive point of view, I would say and doesn't suggest nastiness was a part of Kilgallen's house style. She fell out with Sinatra when she proceeded to reveal items that he didn't like. I know that. But who do you believe? Hemingway or Sinatra?

[@brosue4]

@@davidsanderson5918 Both, I suppose. Sinatra had the experience of being reviewed by her, Hemingway had the experience of being a fellow writer. She did have a sharp tongue, but she was an incredible journalist. Not enjoying Sinatra can't condemn her, being praised by Hemingway doesn't nullify any unintended consequences of her work

[@dutchtea8354]

If Bennett thought Dorothy’s column disgusting then, imagine what he would think of what passes as “news” now.

[@VickyRBenson]

@@dutchtea8354 At least he enjoyed her personally.

[@maddyhayes617]

@@VickyRBenson ?????????

[@ThePlankton5165]

He was born in the 1800s. Crazy, right?

[@jasonbeard4713]

Part Two, anyone?

[@Jantv81]

@3anneology - but you can also go to far... her gossip column caused some trouble, cause its not polite to gossip.

[@dutchtea8354]

Which, of course, is precisely what Bennett did in this interview.

[@Jantv81]

funny how everyone referred to WWII as "the war".

[@cjb8010]

Baby boomers still do.

[@SymphonyBrahms]

World War I was once referred to as "The Great War".

[@TryTheBLT]

I think you misunderstood my main point so I'll put it in different words: It is still popular today to call liberals/leftists "commies" or "socialists". This was a political tactic invented by J. Edgar Hoover and is still used to great effect today. It is equally as wrong to call a liberal a "commie" as it is to call a conservative a "fascist". Most of the people pulling the strings behind the scenes are conservative however, although the cabal contains both liberal and conservative.

[@kmakhlouf4387]

Wha... Whaaat? they ARE communists. Why not read the45 goals of communism as defined by Cleon Skousen at the 1963 Congressional hearing. And, a conservative and a fascist are much more removed from each other than a liberal and a communist

[@SymphonyBrahms]

@@kmakhlouf4387 Thank you for your ignorant and bigoted comment, Senator McCarthy.

[@joiefulton4015]

Is Bennett having lunch with Dorothy? Is Dorothy doing the interview?

[@davidjames666]

Hope not. By the time (1968) of this interview, Dorothy had been for dead (imo murdered) several years.

[@fever_spike]

Joie Fulton No. This was an interview conducted by journalist Robin Hawkins.

[@davidsanderson5918]

Joie Fulton In contrast to the other facetious reply, you're forgiven for asking....after all, that giggle is reminiscent of our Dot.

[@SymphonyBrahms]

@@davidjames666 There is absolutely no proof that she was murdered. I don't consider books written by money grubbing authors as proof.

[@maddyhayes617]

@@davidjames666 dorothy was an odd looking lady. What was her background, family, etc?

[@warrennotes3575]

Tales from the Crypt. She should have asked him about how he ripped off people with his mail-order writer's school.

[@christy4421]

So funny how he talks about odors lol

[@davidsanderson5918]

Christy Widener What he means is that advertisements were so awash with deodorants, dental hygiene products, odour eaters, cleaning oroducts that an outside to the US could be excused for thinking 'wow these people must really stink.'

[@garyweaver5398]

The eating while they're talking is incredibly annoying.

[@SueProv]

He read some of Dorothy's rather disgusting stories? What does that make him? At her death, the final words that he said was gentle nice and sweet. But here she's garbage. I liked Bennet but he's a back stabber.

[@dutchtea8354]

Louis Untermeyer was today’s Gina Carano.

[@beachchaos1863]

How so?