This is an episode of the game show I've Got a Secret that aired the night of October 9, 1957. Why am I embedding this one? Because it was a disaster and that's always fun to watch from afar. The program was broadcast live so all of America got to see it like this.
The show's usual host Garry Moore was out sick so Henry Morgan, who was usually a panelist, filled in for him and Carl Reiner took Henry's place on the panel. At the beginning, they tried to phone Garry at home but it was apparently a last minute idea and the technical aspects of the call had not been tested. That got things off to a bad start but it was at the end when the proceedings got really awkward.
Thanks to good guessing by Jayne Meadows, all three rounds were concluded in record time. This left Morgan with every emcee's worst nightmare. He had no more games to play…and seven minutes of network airtime to fill.
The producer of the show that night was Allan Sherman, several years before he recorded an album of song parodies and became the hottest comedian in the business. You can hear him shouting frantic suggestions from off-camera to Henry Morgan on what to do. In his later autobiography, Sherman wrote of this episode…
Henry Morgan had replaced Garry Moore, who was off on his sailboat for a week (and therefore unreachable by telephone or letter). It was a terrible show. Awful. We ran out of program with seven minutes left. Seven minutes of empty airtime is seven lifetimes of catastrophe, and Henry chose this night to forget that he is one of the best ad-libbers in the world, and instead devoted the seven minutes to hollering at me in public on the air for leaving him with seven minutes.
As you'll see if you watch this, Sherman misremembered. Garry Moore was not on his boat. He was home sick. And Morgan did not spend the seven minutes hollering at Sherman. The hollering probably occurred after they off the air. In any case, the next day, Allan Sherman was fired as the producer of I've Got a Secret. This was not the first episode where things went wrong. Fortunately, he went on to bigger and better things. He may even have been grateful that the show was a disaster that night, thereby getting him out of that job and on to other activities.
The show should be viewable in the embed below. It's in three parts which should play one after the other. If you just want to see when the real vamping and filling occurs, start a couple of minutes into Part Two…
