What's My Line mystery guests marathon. YouTube & Kindle Fire HD.

[UTUSN]

Most of the video links everybody posts here get stuck/stalled on my laptop. Have been seeing stuff for the first time in all these years. Had a long session last night with WML mystery guests. Lots of those spoiled celebs when they were in first bloom, with the hunger just over, glorying in being recognized, before their now long history of trainwrecks.

Lots of them, for living in the spotlight, looking tense and insecure and inarticulate. Largely, the singers and many of the acting people (reading other people's words) come off worse and more "precious." Natalie WOOD so brittle but then so were many of her screen performances. You can almost always predict which ones will be so full of themselves.

Liz and Debbie before the bulk of themselves, Liz while married to WILDING, Debbie about to marry FISHER and looking actually so confidently kittenish. Betty WHITE married to Allen LUDDEN and both of them so securely happy.

Comfortable with themselves, lots of the comedians. Eve ARDEN.

Lots of other clips separate from WML, Lucy in her maturity being SO in command, and Vivian VANCE, surprisingly bragging about being recognized in 52 countries all over the world. Lucy sort of lording over Joan RIVERS who was subbing for CARSON, then Lucy separately flirting with CARSON.

Whoa, and a mindblowing clip of Judy late in life, lashing out at the "lies" about her, how she loved her kids and whoever husband HERON was, and calling Sid LUFT "an animal, a breed," who told their kids they were worthless and never gave a dollar to their support. Wow, heartbreaking.

Who are full of themselves, who are in command?

[frogmarch]

1. Now you've got me watching

What's My Line on You Tube! I just finished watching the one in which Elizabeth Taylor was the mystery guest. I think I'll watch the one with Eleanor Roosevelt next.

Thanks! Fun! (I may have seen the originals of nearly every one of these shows on TV.)

[UTUSN]

2. Eleanor didn't take questions with her voice and sat hunched over, only talked at the end.

Check out Salvador DALI. Tough to answer questions about what he did, since his main gig of "artist" including published writing and performance (art). Funny when they asked whether he was an athlete and he insisted he was, with the DALY guy quibbling with him, the point being that like Europeans he participated in sports while not being his gig.

*You* saw most of these things when they first aired?!1

[frogmarch]

3. OK, he'll be next. The one with

Eleanor Roosevelt was certainly one I remember seeing on TV. I remember my mom gasping when Dorothy Kilgallen said, "Is it Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt?" My mom snapped, "She's not an 'it,' and that's not her name! Her name is Eleanor Roosevelt!"

Yes, I am quite old, so I have seen many TV shows that are now considered ancient. For example, I loved Jack Paar, and I never got over thinking of Johnny Carson as the new guy. Jay Leno doesn't even register for me.

[UTUSN]

4. Well, I'm probably almost as old as you but we didn't have a t.v. until c. 1963

just in time to watch the JFK funeral. We saw the OSWALD shooting live. My mother's initial shock and grief had turned into rage and she was rooting for OSWALD's death. By the time of the JFK funeral, with Jackie and Bobbie so intimate, she was into bitterness and said, "Those two are up to something!1" And 20-30 years later we found out they were.

Anyway, back to YouTube, wow, there's a whole genre of Carol BURNETT clips. KORMAN was always my best, never liked CONWAY. Then there's the real Gloria SWANSON guesting and being a sport with clips of Carol's Sunset Blvd. Recently I heard Alec BALDWIN say (to the TCM dude?) that SWANSON was "a total nutcase" or something really condemnatory. On WML, SWANSON had these (gem?) studs on her forehead, sides of eyes?!1 Freaky. She was, as we know, one of Joseph KENNEDY's mistresses.

There's another whole genre of NIXON and J. Edgar HOOVER vids, NIXON acting like he was so canny in playing HOOVER, then others detailing how HOOVER was part African American and held playdate orgies with Roy COHN, HOOVER decked out in black dresses, heels, make-up, wig, the works, him and TOLSON holding hands, kissing, and dancing quite in public at clubs, that Meyer LANSKY had him totally blackmailed with pictures of HOOVER delivering oral sex on TOLSON, which is why HOOVER denied there was such a thing as the Mafia throughout the '40s and beyond.

[frogmarch]

5. Jacki and Bobby were up to

something? I didn't know that. Color me out of the loop.

I'm going to make a point of watching all the YT videos you mentioned! I might have seen some on TV, but I probably didn't know any of the back stories.

I think we got TV in 1958. I too saw the Oswald shooting live. I was watching when Walter Cronkite cut into my favorite soap to say that JFK had been shot, and then that he'd died...and the rest of the saga, including the shooting of Oswald by Jack Ruby.

[UTUSN]

6. "up to something" - I think it's been established something = sex n/t