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Post by carpetcrawler on May 11, 2014 21:28:16 GMT -5
Was just wondering what everyone's favorite panel show is!! Mine is To Tell the Truth, far and away. I really don't have any G-T panel shows that I don't like (though What's Going On? is admittedly pretty mediocre despite its pretty revolutionary ideals in the booming world of television) though. What about you?
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Post by thekid965 on May 11, 2014 21:58:17 GMT -5
Overall, my favorite would be To Tell the Truth.
In terms of specific versions, I have three favorites: Garry Moore's I've Got a Secret, Garry's Truth, and Larry Blyden's What's My Line?, in approximately that order.
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Post by carpetcrawler on May 11, 2014 22:08:08 GMT -5
Overall, my favorite would be To Tell the Truth. In terms of specific versions, I have three favorites: Garry Moore's I've Got a Secret, Garry's Truth, and Larry Blyden's What's My Line?, in approximately that order. That's almost terrifyingly accurate to my favorite eras of all three, except Garry's TTTT goes before Garry's IGAS for me. But man, you cannot beat the incredibly fun, lax atmosphere of Larry Blyden's WML if you're comparing each version. Wally Bruner did a great job but Blyden took it above and beyond to me. Interesting considering Blyden never saw himself as a game show host, more that he was an entertainer and the show was another way for him to entertain audiences.
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Post by wildjackmonroe on May 11, 2014 23:57:33 GMT -5
I love all of what's considered to be "The Big Three" in terms of these shows (IGaS, WML, TTTT), but in the end I voted for TTTT.
I love syndicated WML. I know it gets flack from some, but I found stuff like the demonstrations at the end of each segment with the regular contestants really added to the show. It added to the program just as much as the guest celebrities demonstrating their secrets on classic IGaS.
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Post by thekid965 on May 12, 2014 10:09:04 GMT -5
I don't get the flak that the syndie Line always seems to draw from a certain sector of fandom. I mean, sure, I get that some people think the show went lowbrow in comparison to the John Daly era -- but I always argue, and Gil Fates would back me up in his book, that the show needed it by that point. By the time of its CBS demise in 1967, Line was nothing more than a museum piece, a relic of how TV had been done in the Golden Age but which now seemed rather quaint and staid in comparison to the colorful offerings elsewhere on the dial even at CBS. What in fact seems rather higbrow and cultured today was really just the way these things were done in the early '50s when you could count the total number of TV channels in a market on one hand and even getting TV outside of a major city was an adventurous undertaking.
The point I always cite, and for which I never seem to get a refutation, is this: What's My Line? was an unequivocal dinosaur when CBS axed it. Very few people thought it would, or even could ever return, and if it ever did, it was such a badly-dated artifact of a bygone era in television that it would never last. When Line actually did return in syndication, it managed to get another seven years out of effectively the same game as the iconic Sunday-night show -- in a five-a-week format no less -- simply by becoming slightly more casual and "populist" in nature. Out went the rigid dictates of the Daly Regime and the strict adherence to whatever the panel-show equivalent was to Robert's Rules of Order; in came the unique "jobs," the hobbies, the panel-participation stunts, the variations on the basic theme that did, admittedly, steer the show more towards the realm of I've Got a Secret sometimes than Line.
And it worked. The show, which many even at G-T had written off for dead, seemed all at once re-energized and refocused... and the truth of the matter is, much like the situation today with The Price is Right, when you look at the situation objectively they really didn't change all that much to get there. Just a few turns of a screw here and there, nothing major, and suddenly it seems like an entirely new Line.
I can understand why some people bemoaned the loss of the "upper-crust coffee klatsch" feel of the CBS Line, and can also appreciate the criticism that the actual game had become secondary to the contestant chatting about and/or demonstrating her "job." But from where I'm sitting, the show simply would not have survived without the willingness to experiment that G-T demonstrated with the syndie. Line-as-it-had-been would have died within a year -- if it was lucky -- had it simply been lifted verbatim from CBS. There's a lesson in that, I think...
And I totally concur with carpetcrawler; Wally Bruner was good, really good in fact -- but Larry Blyden was almost pitch-perfect for the kind of show this was. Such a tragedy his life was cut so short. Had he lived, I truly believe he would've evolved into one of the all-time greats, and we'd be talking about him in the same breath as the likes of Tom Kennedy, Gene Rayburn, and Geoff Edwards.
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Post by Chameleonwhammy on May 12, 2014 10:48:39 GMT -5
IGAS - Garry Moore was amazing. Of course Steve did very well succeeding Garry. I especially liked the 1972-1973 version.
WML is a close 2nd. No matter what that show was just amazing.
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Post by thekid965 on May 12, 2014 11:02:31 GMT -5
My biggest issue with Steve Allen's version of Secret was that he really did try to make it all about himself, frequently at the expense of the panel and even the contestants at times -- the latter being a serious no-no in this genre. It's okay, he can get away with that because he's Steve Allen and thus cannot help but be no worse than thoroughly entertaining, but strictly as a game show emcee I have to dock him a few points for it. It's just a pet peeve I have with his run, and you don't have to share my opinion, it's just how I feel. (And for the record, I do feel the 1972-73 series is rather underrated, even if it did rely a bit too much on recycling celebrity spots from the classic era. But hey, it was all fifteen or so years ago by then, and it wasn't like there were reruns of old CBS Secret kines going around, so the attitudes about such things were far different back then.)
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Post by Deleted on May 12, 2014 19:35:52 GMT -5
I am actually surprised that this wasn't on the poll, and it is my all-time favorite G-T show with a panel: Match Game.
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Post by thekid965 on May 12, 2014 19:38:14 GMT -5
▲ It may be a game show with a panel, but Match Game doesn't really qualify as a "panel show." There's a significant difference involved in that on a "true" panel show, the panel is playing against the civilian contestants, not with them as on Match Game or similar.
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Post by wildjackmonroe on May 12, 2014 21:31:51 GMT -5
I agree, plus, I'd rather spend a few minutes seeing someone demonstrate their skill or product (and on occasion we'd get some fun moments out of the panelists as a result) than have them try to squeeze a player on at the very end of an episode and end up in most cases having to cut the round after the first two or three questions because they ended up running out of time.
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Post by Kaos on May 13, 2014 23:14:53 GMT -5
Here's a related trivia question. Two hosts from the game shows mentioned in this topic have previously hosted professional wrestling shows. For the points, name them BOTH.
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Post by carpetcrawler on May 14, 2014 22:58:39 GMT -5
Here's a related trivia question. Two hosts from the game shows mentioned in this topic have previously hosted professional wrestling shows. For the points, name them BOTH. That would be Dennis James and Joe Garagiola. I agree with everyone else in that a part of the charm of the syndicated WML? is that they were able to demonstrate their occupations. I think most of the dislike for the syndicated version comes from people who are fans of the original Daly version that aren't even really fans of game/panel shows; they're a fan of the timeframe that the Daly version is from. The Daly version of the show is like a microcosm of the society, celebrity, showbiz, and lifestyle of the 1950s and 60s. I have friends who enjoy old television and radio programs from the 50s and 60s that wouldn't even call themselves fans of most games, but they love What's My Line? It's the way the show was presented, right down to the production and how the game took itself. This is also the reason why the show was so unpopular later in its life for the Daly version I believe: it simply refused to keep with the times. I own a TV Guide from 1963 where in an editorial the author has no idea why the show is still on the air, and it was still running until 1967 no less. The show was a relic of its time I think, and by the time it hit the mid-60s it was a show that was still stuck in 1955. And this definitely hindered more than helped. Especially since it was Daly himself who vetoed the idea of showing off occupations (Daly also vetoed wanted to make the show lighter-hearted in the first place, one of the reasons why he refused to take part in the syndicated version at all. It was everything he didn't want it to be) and hated an un-buttoned attitude towards how the show was ran. Like with Concentration a few years later, WML? not keeping up with the times is what brought its undoing. And then once they were able to do the show like they had wanted to all along, it got itself a healthy life in the rough world of syndication. I freely admit that I am a little surprised that To Tell the Truth won the poll. It's my favorite panel show but the general consensus amongst game show fans is that WML? is the one that most people prefer. I may have change my thoughts on my favorite era of each show, now that people have brought it up. The 1972-73 syndicated version of I've Got a Secret is far and away my favorite, I cannot believe I completely forgot about that series!! Just the great panel chemistry and the whole "holy shit we're in freakin' CALIFORNIA" feel of the show and the fantastic guests makes it a total keeper. I wish GSN would have ran the series in a weekend timeslot in more recent years. It's extremely hard to find episodes that aired on GSN before 2003.
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Post by thekid965 on May 14, 2014 23:52:30 GMT -5
Honestly, I cannot recommend Gil Fates's 1975 book on What's My Line? anywhere near enough. If it just wasn't such a rare (and expensive!) find in the wild I would have to classify it as "required reading" for everyone curious about how to do a successful game show, and for incredible insight into what went on behind the scenes at Goodson-Todman during what many consider to be their "golden age."
"Fates's Law" still prevails, even in 2014. ;^)
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Post by Kaos on May 15, 2014 19:04:03 GMT -5
Here's a related trivia question. Two hosts from the game shows mentioned in this topic have previously hosted professional wrestling shows. For the points, name them BOTH. That would be Dennis James and Joe Garagiola. Hmm, I'll have to check with the Smith Brothers on this one... (after about a minute...) (DING!) Yes, indeed you get the points! Turns out although Dennis James wasn't one of the answers on the card, he was indeed a wrestling commentator, as well as host of "The Name's the Same". As was Joe Garagiola who was one of the two I had. He hosted TTTT after Garry Moore retired, by the way. For the bonus, can you name the other wrestling host I originally had listed?
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Post by thekid965 on May 17, 2014 10:31:26 GMT -5
▲ The name you were actually looking for would have been Steve Allen, who called wrestling matches for the DuMont network during the Golden Age (of both television and kayfabe).
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