TFTP Game Shows: "What's My Line?" debut episode (Feb. 2, 1950)

As TFTP's inaugural post, here is the debut episode of the venerable and legendary CBS panel game show "What's My Line?" Airing on Sunday, February 2, 1950, this was the first of what would be 17 years of live episodes that anchored the last half-hour of CBS's Sunday-night prime-time schedule through all of the 1950s and most of the 1960s ("WML" would go on to air for another 8 years, until 1975, in syndication).

"What's My Line?", for those unfamiliar with it, was one of the earliest "panel" game shows, a sub genre that dominated TV game shows through the 1950s and much of the 1960s. Four celebrity panelists asked yes or no questions designed to give them clues for guessing a contestant's occupation (or "line"). The final contestant was the "mystery guest", a celebrity that the panelists would likely recognize on sight thus requiring them to wear blindfolds (and the mystery guests to use often humorous fake voices).

We see in this episode host John Charles Daly (who would host for "WML"'s entire 17-year run) and longtime panelist Dorothy Kilgallen (who stopped appearing only upon her death in 1965). Yet to appear at this point were the other longtime panelists Bennett Cerf and Arlene Francis, although both would soon join Daly and Kilgallen in guessing the lines of hundreds of contestants for the better part of two decades.