What's My Line?
Phil Rizzuto
TV Flash files “Phil Rizzuto” as the hour the catalog opens — What's My Line? (1950–1967) on CBS, season 1, episode 1, aired 1950-02-02, 30 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S01E01: listed hour 1 of 901 in the What's My Line? guide, first listed hour of season 1. It aired 1950-02-02 (30 min). No earlier hour is listed in this guide. Next is “Elliot Roosevelt” (S01E02). Broadcast log — titles and dates, not a plot bible.
A ballplayer and a new kind of rope: occupation first, celebrity as the afterparty.
Viewer FAQ
Where does Phil Rizzuto sit in the What's My Line? guide?
S01E01 is listed hour 1 of 901 — first listed hour of season 1, season 1 episode 1.
When did What's My Line? S01E01 air?
Phil Rizzuto aired 1950-02-02 and is listed at 30 minutes.
Where should I start?
Start with Phil Rizzuto in 1950 to see the format born, then jump to named mystery-guest nights — Dalí, Roosevelt, Ball, Taylor — rather than marching the episode numbers.
In the series
Why this series still plays
Sunday manners with teeth: occupations as class theater, mystery guests as a rope line the panel was allowed to interrogate. Watch the named nights — ballplayers, First Ladies, sitcom empresses — and the feuds that prove unscripted sparkle was never just polite.
Flash: the blindfolds go on, the mystery guest sits down, and a living room that still owned pearls tries to guess who just walked in without looking. What’s My Line? is not a game show in the screaming-LED sense. It is a rope line with manners. Occupations first — the plumber, the inventor, the woman whose job the panel cannot imagine a lady having — then the celebrity round, which is the afterparty. John Daly keeps the gavel. Arlene Francis sparkles like she has already heard the better story in the green room.…
Filed against
- John Charles Daly as Host
John Charles Daly moderated What’s My Line?, the blindfold-and-mystery-guest panel classic that proved unscripted sparkle could be appointment TV. Newsman gravitas met parlor-game glamour for seventeen Sunday nights of occupations as…
- Dorothy Kilgallen as Panelist
Dorothy Kilgallen sat the What's My Line? panel for years of Sunday-night guessing — occupations as class theater, mystery guests as a rope line she was allowed to interrogate. Reporter bite in pearls. TV Flash files her as unscripted…
- Arlene Francis as Panelist
Arlene Francis sparkled as a longtime panelist on What’s My Line? — blindfolds, witty celebrity mystery guests, and proto-reality glamour as Sunday-night sport. She made unscripted sparkle appointment TV without a single car chase. TV…
- Bennett Cerf as Panelist
Bennett Cerf brought publisher wit to What’s My Line? — blindfolds, celebrity mystery guests, and the original “who are they dating” panel discourse. Unscripted sparkle without a car chase. TV Flash files him as 1950s game-show…