Time to catch up on the late night reruns of What's My Line? on GSN…
The other night, they ran a 1958 episode in which one of the contestants was a man named named Henri LaMothe, whose occupation was given as "High Diver (Dives 40 feet into 2 feet of water)." He later got himself the Guinness Book of World Records for making what they called "The highest shallow dive," plunging 28 feet into twelve inches of water, a feat he set around 1979 and which was only recently bested.
What they didn't mention on the show and what I found especially interesting about the man was that, first of all, high-diving was a sideline occupation. His main line of work was as a doctor. In fact, he learned the high-diving trick — a special way of contorting your body when you hit the water — when he attended a medical school with a very shallow pool. Secondly, he was doing this dive well into senior citizenry. He was in his forties on the episode of What's My Line? He was in his seventies when he set the world's record…and we had him on a TV show I wrote in the early eighties where, sure enough, he dove from the top of our studio (around 30 feet) into about as much water as I drink in a day. How odd to see him on this old game show. I remember sitting with him in his dressing room thinking, "This man is old enough to be my grandfather and he's about to do something I wouldn't have attempted when I was sixteen."
The What's My Line? Mystery Guests aren't all that interesting in the coming week: Kathryn Grayson tonight, followed by Esther Williams, Van Cliburn, Althea Gibson, Steve & Eydie, and Dick Powell. In a month or so, we should get to a few weeks of very interesting shows to watch.