Those of you watching GSN's reruns of The Name's the Same have probably noticed that they went through their entire supply of episodes hosted by Bob & Ray and are now into ones hosted by Clifton Fadiman. Mr. Fadiman was a scholarly game show host, more suited to his previous stint on Information Please and somewhat out of place on this one. The most interesting thing about the episode they ran the other night was that one of the panelists was the great playwright, Marc Connelly. I always admired his work, especially his collaborations with George S. Kaufman, but I don't believe I'd ever seen him on camera before. That's one of the joys of these hoary game show reruns — the history you get to see.
GSN has about two weeks of The Name's the Same hosted by Fadiman, and then that brings us to the end of that series. They'll replace it beginning April 18 with a string of old, short-term game shows. One is What's Going On?, which was on briefly in 1954. This was kind of a cute idea. There were six celebrity panelists each week. Three were in the studio and three were in various remote locations, doing something like ice skating or flicking a chicken or whatever. The three in the studio had to guess where each of the other panelists was and what that panelist was doing. A gent named Lee Bowman was the host.
Another is Choose Up Sides, which was an awful program on which Gene Rayburn presided over competing teams of kids doing the kind of silly stunts by which adults were humiliating themselves on Beat the Clock. Fortunately, the show only lasted a little less than three months in 1956 so GSN can't have that many episodes, and something else will soon follow…maybe Two for the Money, which was hosted by Herb Shriner.
In the meantime, they're currently airing episodes of What's My Line? from late 1955 with Fred Allen on the panel. We have less than three weeks before we hit the 3/11/56 show, which was his last. Either tonight or tomorrow night, they should run the one from 11/20/55, on which one of the contestants was George Petty, the famed illustrator of beautiful women. Like I said, there's history there.