The Biggest Game Show Question of Them All - November 7, 2008

 

Television in the 1950s was different from today. There were four networks and not much else, programs were broadcast live, and game shows ruled the airwaves. The longest-running of all such shows was What's My Line?, which ran on Sunday nights at the ungodly hour of 10:30. Being a simple game (celebrities guessed what people did for a living), it was untouched by the quiz-show scandals of the late '50s. One of What's My Line?'s most popular panelists was Dorothy Kilgallen. Kilgallen was primarily a gossip columnist for the New York Journal-American, and she sparked bitter feuds with stars like Frank Sinatra. Kilgallen had ambitions beyond mere gossip, though; her reporting on the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and her investigation of the Sam Sheppard murder trial was crucial in freeing Sheppard from prison. What she hoped would be her biggest scoop, though, was revealing the "truth" about John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Kilgallen had interviewed Jack Ruby while Ruby was on trial for killing Lee Harvey Oswald, and had somehow obtained a copy of his sealed testimony to the Warren Commission (sparking an FBI investigation). She promised that she had information that would “blow the lid” off of the case.  On the morning of November 8, 1965, however, Kilgallen, who was apparently healthy only hours before, was found sitting in bed in her apartment. She was dead of either a "drug overdose" or a "heart attack." She was in the wrong bedroom, fully made-up and dressed, with a book she had finished weeks earlier by her side, and her reading glasses nowhere nearby. Her husband claimed she had come home at midnight, but eyewitnesses had seen her out on the town as late as 2:00 a.m. All her research on the assassination had mysteriously vanished. While Kilgallen was hardly the only person involved in the JFK case to die under suspicious circumstances, she was the most famous. What’s My Line? ran for two years after Kilgallen’s death, but never really recovered. She can still be seen on GSN’s reruns of the show, and her wit and intelligence make us wonder just what she did know. Suggested Sites... Wikipedia: Dorothy Kilgallen - overview of her life and career. Who Killed Dorothy Kilgallen? - who, indeed? The Reporter Who Knew Too Much - author Mark Shaw's book examining the mysterious circumstances behind Kilgallen's death. What Did Doorthy Know? - Rita Mae Brown review Lee Israel's biography of Kilgallen. Wikipedia: What's My Line? - history of the longtime Sunday night institution.