What's My Line? - Shelley Berman; Martin Gabel [panel] (Jul 10, 1960)

MYSTERY GUEST: Shelley Berman
PANEL: Arlene Francis, Martin Gabel, Dorothy Kilgallen, Bennett Cerf

[@Yngvolkayno]

Pauline was my great grandmother. It's so amazing to be able to see this after hearing about it growing up. Thanks so much for posting this!!

[@lilybean835]

I simply love the hair on Miss Arlene this evening! She really pulls this off, and it's gorgeous on her.

[@jvcomedy]

During the segment with the lady that made horse tails, Arlene rattles off several things that can be put on a horse without actually asking a question of the contestant. She says them as though she's thinking out loud, but she's hoping to get a reaction from the studio audience to tip her off as to what it might be. She was a master at doing this.

[@jenniferyorgan4215]

Quasi cheating. Reminds me of a few episodes ago, when Martin told her to "be honorable", she responded "be honorable, in television?" She was intelligent without having to resort, repeatedly, to this tactic.

[@MWood-ry8uu]

I have a different theory... she did that because she was insecure about her intelligence so she wanted to show off her knowledge. She and Martin were actually in the horse business.

[@shirleyrombough8173]

- But the horse's tail lady hardly smiled, despite the laughter her occupation brought.

[@bluecamus5162]

She's been doing that for years. Back around the '56 or '57 season she was doing it so often, I think the producers must've told her to knock it off and she mostly stopped doing it.

[@loissimmons6558]

Darn that Martin Gabel! I was all set to mention Roy Harris being from Cut and Shoot, Texas. And with one remark, there went an opportunity to dazzle the +What's My Line? channel with my brilliant encyclopedic memory. And then +Joe Postove goes and destroys my other opportunity by asking the question about the First Lady of the United States who was named "Lou". As John Daly would often say, I'm going to throw in the towel.

[@mikejschin]

The convention to which John was headed ended up nominating a young man from Massachusetts named John F. Kennedy.

[@terryniblett9329]

There are times when Daly makes things more difficult than they should be!!!

[@jenniferyorgan4215]

That's his job 😁 He's on the side of the contestant.

[@gailsirois7175]

Many times

[@gailsirois7175]

@@jenniferyorgan4215 yes but he makes it difficult for the contestant..OFTEN losing them tge game..should have shut up more

[@arbyfatbuckle1733]

I remember my parents getting Berman's 1st album when I was very young. he did his phone routine on it. very funny.

[@ladya1953]

I am within 20 miles of both Conroe and Cut and Shoot, Texas! In the intervening years, Conroe has changed very much; Cut and Shoot has remained very much the same.

[@yawlltube]

'We're down to a narrow and very uncomfortable area.' Oh dear.

[@crabbyoldman8209]

Berman mentioned the Bucks County Playhouse. Storied history; exquisite little town built around the mills which used to be along the Delaware river.

[@savethetpc6406]

I have never seen a poodle (or even a Great Dane) that was anywhere near the size of a full-sized horse! (re: John's answer to Dorothy's question, beginning around 11:43 -- And lions are not as big as horses either, for that matter. :D )

[@kennethbutler1343]

I think the context was her product although I also was thinking of a horse. The panel immediately got to a horse after all.

[@taraxacum]

Dorothy's question was definitely about the animal at that point rather than the product. Her provious questions indicate that.

[@dannydoc1969]

There are many breeds of small, FULL GROWN, horses, known as ponies, as well as miniature horses where Great Danes would be larger.

[@shirleyrombough8173]

Yes, it sort of bothered me that John gave Dorothy a "no" for her question about poodles.

[@brittanywelty566]

Arlene is absolutely beautiful in this episode.

[@ToddSF]

Brittany Welty -- I can't say I agree. I think her hair-do in this episode is awful and that surprises me. She almost always had a decent hairstyle, but in this episode, I thought of the WML sponsor Sunbeam and their famous Mixmaster.

[@jess4metoo]

+ToddSF 94109 Agreed Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane comes to mind.

[@MrWindermere123]

Oh dear, I was thinking how cheap she looked with fake eyelashes and scraggy short hair. Her lipstick is daubed on her face. Did she get dressed in the dark? This sounds very rude but in fact I'm pointing out how elegant and tasteful she looked in every other appearance. Her stylist needs to be fired after this show!

[@ChrisHansonCanada]

I disagree. Her eyes had either gobs of mascara or fake eyelashes. She looked like a cheap streetwalker.

[@winterlandboy]

Wow..That's the guy who played Larry David's Father in Curb Your Enthusiasm ...as a young man .I had no idea who he was in an earlier younger life until now.

[@jess4metoo]

He seemed a little down he'd never been in a movie. Glad that success happened for him.

[@geniusmchaggis]

shelley berman WAS in a movie pre-1960 called dementia..he played a stoned beatnik...uncredited. imdb...

[@fanboy2015]

I liked it when Mr. Daly said "Visible Exertion".

[@loissimmons6558]

The spelling is slightly different, but as a New Yorker, I am very familiar with a dessert of NYC origin: the Nesselrode pie. The filling is a mixture of pureed chestnuts, meringue and gelatin, garnished with alcohol (often rum) soaked cherries or mixed fruit and dark chocolate shavings.

[@shirleyrombough8173]

I've heard of that stuff. It sounds good but maybe a little weird.

[@MrJoeybabe25]

Shelly Berman RIP

[@tomgraves6463]

Horses may not wear Jockey Shorts, though they are able to accommodate Short Jockeys between their waist and neck. . . Sorry for the *Bad* humor, I was only horseing around.... Sorry for the *Dad* humor, but I really wanted to just lead up to an Earthquake *Joke* so that I could tell Bennett that it is all my *fault.* 😉

[@Noone58319]

You are Bennett reincarnated.

[@jacquelinebell6201]

I liked it! Lol.

[@joycejean-baptiste4355]

Miss Lou Puckett should have been on Green Acres. She kinda looks like she could be the lady plumbers's sister.

[@keetrandling4530]

Bennett! "Paper metier"! oh, a triple-groaner!

[@VahanNisanian]

This episode was taped on 7/3/60, prior to the taping of the Twins' night edition.

[@loissimmons6558]

Does anyone know if the audience on those occasions was treated to both shows? I know that when I saw Wheel of Fortune live, I saw two tapings, and I was told that sometimes an audience would see three. By 1981, game show hosts would joke at how much better the audience was than the one for the previous day and we would all laugh because we were the same audience as the previous day's show.

[@neilmidkiff]

You can see a bit of videotape artifact at 2:08 when the vertical white lines on Daly's desk look jagged for an instant. The shows that were kinescoped live never have this effect, so this must have been filmed off the studio monitors as the video was being played for broadcast on July 10.

[@galileocan]

The plumber looks very awkward when walking off stage . I actually thought something was physically wrong with her

[@jvcomedy]

Something tells me she rarely (if ever) wears high heels like she had on for this show.

[@gailsirois7175]

@@jvcomedy yes, she's a country girl and walks and behaves that way...I LOVE it...

[@JDAbelRN]

Maybe rides a horse, plus being a plumber is a very physically demanding job.

[@IEMac6]

Well she was a lesbian and was really trying to display her butchness lol

[@egilide]

1:10 Arlene was probably laughing because that would be the only context the word "sincere" could be used to describe Dorothy

[@lilybean835]

Does anyone remember the very first episode, where a young woman would come out and blindfold the panelists or hand them a blindfold? The panelists were so dry then, except for Hal Block who was simply dreadful and an embarassment to the show. They've come so far, and they've honed so much with the wonderful panels they created. Much better!

[@WhatsMyLine]

You're misremembering on the blindfolds-- the panelists always put on their own blindfolds and there was never anyone handing them out, since the first episode. :)

[@robbob1234]

@@WhatsMyLine She was just feeling sentimental and wanted to take another shot at Hal Block.

[@siggylloyd3566]

@@robbob1234 who wouldn't want to take a shot at that slimeball?

[@maryblushes7189]

I liked Hal Block and feel he was very poorly treated because he was in a class lower than the others. It really showed their "classism".

[@ChrisHansonCanada]

The Mandela Effect. Look it up.

[@juliansinger]

Though I'm not 100% positive, I believe Lou Puckett died in 1994, age 60. (So she'd have been 27 here.) Brother William (who had a plumbing business, hence my fairly solid assumptions about Lou) died in 2014. She's referred to as Lou in her obit, but Edna Lou in her brother's obit. Which I spin theories about in my head.

[@MrJoeybabe25]

Trivia: What First Lady Of The United States was also named Lou?

[@neilmidkiff]

Joe Postove: Lou Henry Hoover.

[@RobertPerrigoOkiechopper]

I was 6 years and 9 months old when this aired.

[@galileocan]

I was 1 week old when this aired!

[@ChrisHansonCanada]

My Grandma's cocker spaniel was two years and 23 days old. Amazing, eh?

[@MrWindermere123]

Two rare happenings in this episode: John Daly flips a card wrongly and has to unflip it and Dorothy asks 'Do you concertise?' Concertise is a verb I've never heard before and even John Daly looks doubtful about its meaning.

[@neilmidkiff]

It's a common enough word in my experience as a musician...a verb that means "to give concerts." In the field of comedy, it means doing a show on an auditorium or theater stage to an audience in theater-style seating, as opposed to nightclub or supper-club work where the audience would be seated at tables, eating and drinking.

[@planetthunderstorm]

Arlene is HOT in this episode !!!! 😍😍😘😘😘

[@ChrisHansonCanada]

PLUMBER MAKES FALSE TAILS FOR HORSES

[@peternagy-im4be]

Please remove this complete and utter troll from the comments section. Unfortunately today's awful society is full of pathetic losers intent on ruining other people's enjoyment of social media. Idiot.

[@nickey66]

Jimmy Kimmel reminds a lot of Shelley Berman. The movements, the eyes, the kind of square face, and facial expressions remind me of Jimmy Kimmel so much.

[@peternagy-im4be]

John Daly very rarely mentions that he attended Tilton school. He needs to say it more often.

[@JDAbelRN]

Mr.Daly often mentions this school, not all the time, but I have watched over 250 episodes!

[@drewsmusical]

can someone tell me what Shelly Berman really did how did he get on tv and what exactly was funny?

[@bluecamus5162]

They dowdy up the female contestants for their only appearance on TV and some of them look very uncomfortable with new dresses and hairdos they would never wear at home. Not to mention being in a room of more people than a church service and they're all looking at you. Lou the Plumber looks rather unnerved here, poor girl, but she made a good showing. .

[@chevysforlife100]

Lou is my late aunt. That was probably the first time she ever wore earrings

[@stephaniemccoy9602]

I wonder why Bennett never learned to stop making horrible puns, lol.

[@SuperWinterborn]

Stephanie McCoy I have a friend. A very decent, well educated scholar, and a true Gentleman, in every means of the word. But despite protests, and very seldom laughs, he still performs his puns, in exactly same way as Bennett. I guess the reason why, is that none of them did really have any rebellion teenage-years, and with few exceptions, did what they were expected to do.

[@WhatsMyLine]

SuperWinterborn I think punning is like a disease that gets worse and worse the more a person engages in it. I will grant that puns are often clever, and that the really clever ones require a very agile mind to invent on the spot, but unless you've got the sickness, they're pretty much never funny to anyone else.

[@SuperWinterborn]

What's My Line? Well, Tourettes appears in many forms...

[@savethetpc6406]

SuperWinterborn & What's My Line? There are several incorrigible punsters among my family and friends, and although we often groan at their attempts at humor, quite often we do actually laugh as well. :)

[@SuperWinterborn]

SaveThe TPC Well..After a hard day, sitting with friends or family, when I instead should have been in bed long ago, I could burst out in laughter after hearing a silly pun myself... ;) (But not very often!)

[@jacquelinebell6201]

How was a horse not bigger than the biggest poodle? D should have got a yes! John was wrong.

[@tumarbongrox6074]

I'll bet that Ms. Puckett the plumber "𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒕 𝒔𝒄𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝑺𝑯•𝑻" 🙂

[@Fush1234]

The old lady seems a miserable person

[@kulturekritik9665]

Pretty sure that if that awesome plumber were alive today, she'd be a lesbian.

[@gailsirois7175]

Yes !!! Very very cool !! Love her

[@DLAN-jb3hb]

Oh absolutely.

[@kentetalman9008]

You know, there were lesbians back in 1960.

[@ChrisHansonCanada]

Or if she was a school girl with an interest in plumbing, her teacher would try to convince her that she was "trans" and off to the gender clinic she'd go! That's the 2023 mentality.

[@oksills]

Shelly Bergman gave the best performance of his life tonight!! His routine was not quite as funny as a severe ear ache! Those falsely so called “comics” confused loud and obnoxious with comedy!!

[@robbob1234]

I liked his records very much. I wouldn't say loud and obnoxious was his style at all. Are you actually familiar with his routines? Or perhaps this "Shelly Bergman" you mentioned was someone else, unrelated to the Mystery Guest!

[@siggylloyd3566]

@@robbob1234 again, I think you read very poorly. I believe the original commenter meant "so called comics" OTHER than Mr. Berman who thought "loud and obnoxious" was funny. Jerry Lewis comes to mind.

[@tumarbongrox6074]

It would be nice if someone would 𝒅𝒊𝒈𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚 color these 'WHATS MY LINE' ᴇᴘɪsᴏᴅᴇs