What's My Line?
Lucille Ball
TV Flash files “Lucille Ball” as a desk essential hour — What's My Line? (1950–1967) on CBS, season 5, episode 25, aired 1954-02-21, 30 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S05E25: listed hour 195 of 901 in the What's My Line? guide, hour 25 of 52 in season 5. It aired 1954-02-21 (30 min). The listed hour before it is “Julius LaRosa” (S05E24). Next is “Helen Traubel” (S05E26). Broadcast log — titles and dates, not a plot bible.
Essential hour: “Lucille Ball”. Lucille Ball, solo heat — sitcom empress as the guest the living room already thought it owned.
Viewer FAQ
Where does Lucille Ball sit in the What's My Line? guide?
S05E25 is listed hour 195 of 901 — hour 25 of 52 in season 5, season 5 episode 25.
When did What's My Line? S05E25 air?
Lucille Ball aired 1954-02-21 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…