To Tell the Truth - Willie Mosconi, world's billiards champion; PANEL: Jackie Cooper (Aug 26, 1958)

PANEL: Polly Bergen, Jackie Cooper, Kitty Carlisle, Hy Gardner
CONTESTANT #1: Father Hugh Michael Beyan (Clergyman and disk jockey)
CONTESTANT #2: Willie Mosconi (World's pocket billiards champion)
CONTESTANT #3: Max Conrad (Overseas pilot)
Many thanks, as always, to epaddon for providing his copy of this episode.
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/ @totellthetruthcbs4220

[@jmslaforzadeldestino4943]

I knew Willie Mosconi right away - had a reduce-sized version of a pool table in our apartment growing up and my Dad bought a billiards book with him on the cover! I guess back in those days no one knew what ETA meant in general but I knew and I am sure most people today know too!

[@redsky8763]

I never saw this episode before today. It has to be the best TTTT show of all time.

[@MrCageinblood]

Every one gets free cigarettes l smoked Marlboro over thirty years now on on oxygen twenty four seven watching this show is like a blast from the past l wish l never smoked if you smoke please quit copd kills slowly

[@LoudCitizen]

I love how even Bud Collyer was not prepared for this!

[@alskndlaskndal]

Great episode! The producers were up to some tricks this time!

[@savethetpc6406]

+Reluctant Dragon One of the things I love about this show is the way they frequently mix things up with a variety of tricks to keep both the panel and the audience amused! This was one of the best tricks yet, imo!

[@weatherboi]

Even though we didn't see Willie Mosconi shoot some pool shots, it is still one of the best episodes.

[@mrpuniverse2]

Best episode ever

[@watchman1178]

23:43 "I don't smoke." That's the smartest thing #3 said all night. LOL!

[@waremblem3405]

THANK YOU! "Contestant #3" was Fred Reed, my father. I was six years old on the date the show was aired. Was the show aired live? Probably. Otherwise, I suspect that the opening scene of his impersonation of Max Conrad --- when he came running up, late, to the top of the stage --- would have been edited out. The summer camp where I'd been stashed (Mom: "Can you keep him until next spring? PLEASE?!") was where I watched the show, along with my fellow camp stashees. This was also the first day when I became aware that "celebrity" was something that would change people's opinions about YOU, inevitably in your favor if you so happened to be related to the celebrity. Whether or not you deserved such favorable consideration... At any rate, I have been looking for this video tape for DECADES. The last time I'd seen this was in 1982. I was working at NBC, & someone was kind enough to run the "kinescope" films (compliments of CBS in 1958) in a viewing. Even better, this kind technician transferred the contents of the film to a huge wheel of 3" video tape, since the brittle film by that time was on its last legs. Time passed. NBC went away. The machines playing 3" video tape vanished. And no one could be found who could transfer the 3" video tape to 1" tape. About ten years ago, that big plastic container was put out on the sidewalk, goodbye. *** My father apparently thought that this event would "launch" him into the orbit where he could break free from his now-loathed, "Willie Loman" life as an ad salesman (he was also a Chicago Daily News reporter in the 1930s. The paper folded in 1978). This might not have been an unreasonable assumption, for after the show, he got glowing write-ups in newspapers. Warm, sincere letters of appreciation were sent to the various people on & connected to & around the show. Maybe he could move out of the Bronx & back into Manhattan, where he had once had the time of his life as a young man. Nothing moved. Nothing. As it turned out, having been on a game show "did not constitute an introduction," as a chastened film actor once put it (after co-starring with Greta Garbo, who after the filming ended ignored him for the rest of her life). The panelists had had their fun & didn't respond. The columnists spend years dodging the "one-time-onlys" previously mentioned in their columns. "Here we go again" is the usual verdict, if they knock twice. Besides, it didn't matter if he was charming --- he worked on the "business," not the "creative" side of a newspaper. Know your place. And he was old, 55 years of age, which, even in the famously geriatric Eisenhower years, was definitely over the hill. Make room for Elvis! Silence twice. Not helpful: This was about the same time when the "rigged game show" scandals exploded, shows that were then swiftly repudiated by the public (the people producing "To Tell The Truth" & "What's My Line," apparently immune from temptation, survived). This was back when, if you were unlucky enough to swept up in it, bad publicity was actually bad for you (times have changed). So. What initially looked like a life being pointed in another, more rewarding direction was now back on the same rusty tracks as before, selling ad space for a Chicago newspaper printed a thousand miles away in a city that Fred Reed had left as a young man, a town too small for him, a place he'd never want to return to. He wasn't about to spend his life drinking in The Sewer with Robert J. Casey & the rest of the guys who were making a living off Al Capone. *** Nine years later, he passed away on December 26, 1967. It sure was cold on the day after Christmas as we listlessly, shocked, returned to the hospital. We had just visited him the night before. Nothing had warned me that this could happen. Maybe the adults knew & remained silent. He looked fine. He'd be out soon, I was certain. By then, his wife (his second; my mother) had abandoned him, back in the fall of 1966. Not long into 1968, she rashly decided to escape her past (what nonsense) by discarding his wonderful photographs of the times when she had met him in 1949 & he courted her & when for a decade they were madly in love with each other, when we went to ballgames & traveled to Cassopolis, Michigan to visit his parents (one year, we left a gas station in Ohio &, ten miles later, ran out of gas) & their one grand trip to Europe on the SS France. An irreplaceable record of our lives together, of a time once ideal, now poisoned. Destroyed. The point is that aside from one photograph taken in the 1930s, this above videotape is all that is left from the wreckage. You should have seen my face when I watched it, today, September 30, 2017. My wife also enjoyed watching the show, very much. From an Italian-American family (thank God for them!), she laughed when it occurred to me, & then said: "How impossible it would have been for a WASP in the 1950s to be able to impersonate WILLIE MOSCONI!" Again, thank you, very much, whomever you are, who posted this on You Tube.

[@totellthetruthcbs4220]

My name's Gary, and thank you for leaving such a detailed and interesting comment! On the rare occasions when former contestants or their relatives leave a comment, all they usually say is, "That's my mom!" or some such, nothing more. :) I'm not clear on when they began videotaping TTTT. I know that they didn't start videotaping any episodes of What's My Line until 1959, and kept it limited to a handful of shows per year. But by a certain point in TTTT's run, they went to purely pre-videotaped shows, never live. It was probably around 1958 or 59. I wish I had more info for you! I'm curious how on earth NBC had a copy of this to show you-- this was a CBS series, after all, and the surviving copies of all these shows come from Goodson-Todman's own archive, not the networks (the networks didn't see any future value to any of this material and never preserved any of it.)

[@waremblem3405]

Hi, Gary! Thank you, many times over, for this show finally making it into the You Tube treasury. I'm glad you appreciated the extensive story behind what had happened prior to, during & after the show was aired. This is a good example of a story having written itself long ago, then just waiting, patiently, for the chance to escape from the subconscious & into visible form. Tom Law, staring at a blank screen in August, 2017, responding to a question: “I have it written, I just have to write it.” *** The original show was recorded on film. After the show, CBS gave Fred Reed a copy of it as a gift. NBC did not have/never had a copy of the film. In 1982, I gave the film to the NBC technician, who was able to transfer the content of the film to 3" videotape. Given your chronology above, it is unlikely that this particular show had been videotaped. It's been 33 years since I had anything to do with the following subject, & my awkward initial attempts to write about it sure have revealed the rust. Nevertheless, here goes. Aside from the providential Goodson-Todman archive, here's how these GT shows, if recorded on film, could still exist in some form today: 1) It is very unlikely that the original game show film from 1958, if not perfectly preserved in ideal environmental conditions, would still be in playable condition. Original copies of "Citizen Kane," etc., are preserved in such an expensive fashion, but not game shows & other ephemera. 2) The films had been tossed only after videotape copies had been created. Then, after that, somehow, the video tapes also survived despite the blockhead CBS directives* to recycle them for future recordings. If so, their contents were eventually posted here. 3) CBS had provided contestants & other interested parties with copies of the original game show film, which the owners later preserved by arranging a film-to-tape transfer. After that, let's assume that these videotapes were carefully preserved & the contents can still be played. *Standard procedure at NBC at the time I worked there, as well, but by this time, only for the videotapes used to play (run) ads during the preceding shows. *** Well, that wraps it up. Thank you once again, Gary, for this wonderful, irreplaceable opportunity to go back in time.

[@sixtythreekraft2608]

Thank you for posting that comment. You should write a book. "The Story of a 'To Tell the Truth' Imposter." Begin with the show and then tell the rest (before and after). You have many wise insights that should be shared with the world.

[@waremblem3405]

Thank you! Ah, but if only I could. If only this were possible. For what is (I think) a good story in article length (above) would be impossible to stretch out to book length. Not enough material. I have very few things written by or about my father's life. One would suspect that he wrote well, but I haven't the faintest idea if this is true because he left almost nothing in writing behind (if these things did exist, the Scorpionic wrath of my mother after his death assuredly guaranteed their destruction). So attempting to understand and write about what his childhood and his life as a young man had been like , in what I think was America's most exciting peacetime decade, the 1920s, looms logically as a dead end. What a shame! I would have loved to read his impressions and notes on what Prohibition in New York City and Washington D.C. had been like. Given his later (fatal) drinking, I suspect he could have written an in-depth account of the speakeasies and their notable customers, famous or otherwise. Now, THAT would be the book to publish, a companion to Al Hirschfeld's colorful "The Speakeasies of 1932." VERY occasionally, I'll find something, such as a photograph in a history book where I think he's one of the reporters in Washington DC running down a government corridor and after a story in the chaos of the day that Pearl Harbor was attacked in December of 1941. I have a post-graduate Dartmouth yearbook from 1950 in which he carefully wrote down when his classmates had passed away, prematurely. Who were his friends? Who knows? All gone now. A sketch of his standing in front of a lobster shack in Maine, with his hands in his pockets, a dead giveaway to the German occupiers during World War II that you weren't French, but an American shot down over France and now trying to make it to safety in neutral Spain (don't blow that real-life impersonation of someone else, a decade before "To Tell The Truth" began). Two letters from a Dartmouth college president to his uncle, who was trying to get his nephew transferred from Notre Dame to New Hampshire. This apparently worked. The first letter pleads that the difficulties are almost insurmountable. The second is practically a thank-you note for a suspected, undisclosed-to-this-day favor done for Dartmouth. Suddenly, a transfer is, almost miraculously, possible. And yet, the only thing that I know about what it might have been like during his junior and senior years in New Hampshire is from the stories written by A.J. Liebling, and even that account is imperfect (Liebling having gone there almost a decade earlier) and truncated (Liebling having been tossed out of the school for some honorable, foolish reason). The letters he wrote in 1958 to the people connected with this game show, and their perfunctory, thank-you-go-away-please responses. The newspaper media columns with the story of how unique and successful the program had been. Cigarette smoke glory. Two short, cordial messages from Saint Adlai Stevenson, someone who I discovered only decades later had a fierce mean streak in him that somehow his campaign supporters in 1952, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, had never been subjected to. A framed photo in the bedroom of his sitting in the White House oppose the also-seated, chain-smoking Harry Hopkins, FDR's trusted confidant, presumably at a small, intimate press conference in December of 1934, eight-three years ago this month. That's about it. Very little or nothing else. Not nearly enough for a book, although the relatively few pages would be much preferable to the overwritten memoirs and histories that publishers plague us with (Richard Rovere hated verbosity & wrote compact books. My books shelves can prove that this admirable animosity did not survive his demise). * On my desk calendar for December 26 --- next Tuesday --- is something I wrote down months ago, not wanting to let the date slide by forgotten. I noticed it again four days ago, and have looked at it six or ten times since, astonished at the emotions unleashed by looking at the notation: "Dad 50 years ago today." I think I'll go into New York City and walk up the wide stone steps of and then enter the 7th Regiment Armory, once a site of his long-since vanished world, the armory's indoor tennis club, where simple cheese sandwiches and cups of ten-cent tea prepared for a young cadet in the Knickerbocker Greys were delicious. I doubt they'll let me past the interior gates, but it will be nice to just stand there in the lobby. The smell of the varnished, antique wooden floors and picture frames and the high ceilings and the double-staircases sweeping down from the audience seats overlooking what used to be the indoor tennis courts will be a nice place to spend 15 minutes once again, on the exact 50th anniversary of his passing away in a Yonkers hospital on a very cold day on the day after Christmas. (End)

[@tankjohnson5857]

SHUT UP YA SAP

[@joeambrose3260]

My father said he saw Mosconi give many televised exhibitions in the 50s and pool was popular. How could no one recognize him by this time ?

[@donreed]

The four panelists very likely lived in their own little world, hence not being familiar with non-show biz types like themselves.

[@standamann100]

Yes, this was a great episode. If you think about it, this is a very unique game show that educates its audience about how easy it is to lie and fool people. With all the con artists in the world, it should be required watching for all, and it really needs to be revived. Finally, the best panelist ever on any game show has to be the beautiful, witty and funny Polly Bergen.

[@sixtythreekraft2608]

I agree with you except for two things. Polly Bergen was pretty, but she was not a good panelist. She took forever to ask a question. She couldn't explain her votes. She was usually wrong. But she was entertaining. The show should not be revived. Like everything else, it would be killed by political correctness. The panelists would be Whoopi Goldberg, Alec Baldwin and some assorted LGBTers. The questions would be censored by political correctness. They all would be obsessed with attacking Donald Trump. And then we would find out that whoever is the host had sexually harassed the production staff. Who needs the aggravation?

[@davidn.5803]

I'm just guessing, but I'll bet you are a bundle of hilarious fun everywhere you go. 🤔​@sixtythreekraft2608

[@miriamfeigenbaum3611]

Two out of the three contestants were also on What's My Line?; The clergyman/disk jockey just a few months earlier on April 20, 1958 and Willie Mosconi on September 2, 1962.

[@kristabrewer9363]

I knew that that minister/disk jockey was on "What's My Line." I think I just watched him on it yesterday

[@63utuber]

seen this about other episodes, so were TTTT panelists obligated never to watch WML? (Polly Bergen and Jackie Cooper were mystery guests - Kitty Carlisle was a guest panelist)

[@edellis515]

I met Willie and got his autograph

[@pensiveowl7791]

Very entertaining and humorous episode!

[@laurataylor8179]

Fabulous show

[@WeFrost62]

The most funny episode ever-woo hoo Unitarians! :D

[@oldfart4751]

I've watched quite a few of this show, the first time I got them all right. I rarely go for the one who's very quick with his answers, Willie was the only one who knew what a bridge was, he put it across in a vague manner that's when I decided it was him.

[@davidcouch6514]

Reminds me I visited an AA meeting. A man there was dressed as a “Father”. He said it was a getup he wore to Bars before sobriety as someone would always buy him a drink.

[@Eddie_Schantz]

Polly Bergen could give a tylenol tablet and excedrin headache. Every game she uses the same stupid lines; Either " I think it is #1 but I voted for #2" or " I would like to change my vote" Wears me out.

[@donreed]

Imagine being married to her. Fifteen seconds, tops, before you'd run for your life.

[@wattsjetton3027]

Celebrity Guests: 1. Polly Bergen 2. Jackie Cooper 3. Kitty Carlisle 4. Hy Gardner Host: Bud Collyer

[@gnirolnamlerf593]

Funny. I don't remember the panelists introducing themselves in this manner, and I would have been old enough to watch at this point in the history of the program. I enjoyed Collyer on Beat the Clock but liked him even better on this show. I remember Hy usually sitting next to Kitty very well. That opening introduction of the panelists is a bit too clever. Polly Bergen almost always looks like she thinks the shtick is stupid. No one is trying to guess who the real Polly Bergen is. Anyway, I still love the show. The concept was really original and managing to get believable impostors day after day and year after year can't have been easy. Three cheers for the unsung contestant coordinators. I can't believe none of the panel knew what Willie Mosconi looked like. Clever twist that the panel really didn't expect. By the way, 65 years after Mosconi sank 526 balls in a row, the record was finally broken by John Schmidt, with an amazing 626. 41 racks of balls, 41 (!), sunk in a row. Unbelievable. The record is now owned by Jayson Shaw at 714!!! I'd like to see what tricky shots these players left themselves that they couldn't sink at the end.

[@MichaelSimmons.]

I recognized Willie Mosconi right away. But if I didn't know who he was, I would have voted for #3 also. His answers were much more precise than Willie's were.

[@waremblem3405]

See the above comment, mine. "#3" brought home the extensive research that he had memorized about all three men that he impersonated. Don't let his charm distract you from his dead seriousness about doing a perfect job of knowing a great deal about Mosconi, Conrad and the priest.

[@kristabrewer9363]

So even in the first game, you knew who he was?

[@leesher1845]

Funny episode!

[@63utuber]

It seems like none of the panelists were Catholic - how about asking a priest about his priestly duties?

[@kristabrewer9363]

I agree with whoever said that Polly was a useless character. I kinda like her (sort of), but she is EXTREMELY annoying!! I like Kitty, but even SHE has nothing on Arlene or Dorothy

[@donreed]

Kitty was so in love with herself, she gave Charles de Gaulle an inferiority complex.

[@donnawoodford6641]

What is wrong with Polly not making up her mind?

[@TheBatugan77]

It gets old after the 434th time.

[@donreed]

The question should be, instead, "What is wrong with Polly?! That woman on the panel must be her game-show stunt double --- She made up her mind!"

[@juanmonge8]

#3 should have finished the show in Bud’s chair.

[@willisknapick4405]

Willie opened a pool hall on Oregon Ave in south Philly back in the 70s. I skipped work to see him play an exhibition one afternoon. He was past his prime but he put on a good show. Missed one shot out of 10 racks.

[@dannydoc1969]

I recognized Mosconi right off.

[@kenyongray2615]

Fred being able to impersonate three people is quite difficult in all likelihood. He also had to be a quick-change artist as we saw when the curtain came up for game 3. He did a fine job. Polly was too much again. Thanks for the video.

[@donreed]

Polly was always "too much." As Keith Richards once said, "No sane man would go within 500 feet of her."

[@byrd56]

Pardon my spellcheck, but since that "WML?" episode with the aforementioned DJ/clergyman was brought up, I noticed that his last name was spelled "Beahan", so you can edit accordingly if you like.

[@oldwestguy]

Even I know that ERA stands for estimated time of arrival.

[@janeiwasduncan8463]

I thought ETA was estimated time of arrival!

[@stevej1154]

I presume they had a backup plan if it hadn’t worked out that way, other people waiting to step in, an alternate round 2. They were lucky it worked out as it did.

[@bme7491]

A clergyman at an all-girl's school.....talk about the fox guarding the henhouse.

[@geraldkatz7986]

I can feel your hatred. Let it flow through you.

[@bme7491]

@@geraldkatz7986 It's not hate, it's disgust. And i hope you aren't going to reply to all my comments with that same comment.

[@geraldkatz7986]

@@bme7491 If you can't take it don't dish it.

[@bme7491]

@@geraldkatz7986 Take what? I said it's not hate. Are you an idiot?

[@stevenj100]

Original codies of that TV guide can be bought on EBAY for under $30

[@Gravydog316]

seriously?? Polly has something wrong with her.

[@Gravydog316]

Jay Bee I used to watch her on Sopranos lol

[@davehansen9124]

She plays Pug Henry's (Robert Mitchum) wife Rhoda in the epic World War II miniseries "The Winds of War", which is available on KZbin.

[@waremblem3405]

Polly could go into nervous hysterics at the drop of a hat. This only grew worse as she got older and her end, despite her irrefutable professional success, was not pleasant.

[@kristabrewer9363]

I like Polly, but she DOES act like there's something wrong with her. She's like John Daly on "What's My Line." Her explanations are so long and exhausting (on most of these episodes anyway)

[@philbertshevitz3113]

Polly had quite the sense of humor, and was incredibly good looking

[@araymond1able]

Wait. I knew because I saw him playing against Minnesota Fats. Ha that was years later though. I think Howard Cosell did the match about 40 years ago.

[@63utuber]

Yup, I remember that - maybe it was ABC Wide World of Sports

[@44032]

Billiards is "indoor bowling? Than what is bowling?

[@totellthetruthcbs4220]

Hmmm. . . . good point. Bowling must be "outdoor billiards" by that logic.

[@waremblem3405]

Outdoor billiards.

[@44032]

Bud's comment that he had to learn three different sets of facts suggests that the impostors are given a crash course on the professions, or at least the lives they are to pretend to have.

[@donreed]

That they were. My father was #3, and he brought home the extensive research about the lives and careers of the three real men and memorized it as if it were a movie script. They were acting, after all.

[@44032]

@@donreed Was he a trustworthy guy?

[@allanshulstad1783]

Billiard means "a piece of wood"

[@marcpanighi2419]

Pas exactement. En français, c'est "billot" qui veut dire morceau de bois. Et le jeu s'écrit "billard" et non "billiard".

[@donreed]

12:57: I would have said to Polly, "I'd love to play with you, with both your feet off the floor."

[@TruckTaxiMoveIt]

Running up the stairs ...

[@arm_613]

Now that was a cute joke!

[@davids11131113]

Marlboro!

[@janeiwasduncan8463]

NO...NO...NO--Remember what happened to the Malboro man among others:(

[@skyedog24]

On average we were a much more intelligent sociable and happy .

[@ChrisHansonCanada]

Man #1 in Game #1 Man #2 in Game #2 Man #2 in Game #3

[@peternagy-im4be]

Please remove this moronic troll from the comments section

[@RonGerstein]

​@@peternagy-im4beREMOVE YOUR PRESENCE FROM ALL KZbin VIDEOS YOU HEATHEN TROLL AND YOUR HATEFUL WORDS

[@anthonyochocki6535]

😂and YET, Another 'Pain-in-the-Ass' moment with Polly----what a COW....