GSN Watch

Tomorrow night (Tuesday morning) on the late night What's My Line? rerun, the Mystery Guest is Lena Horne. But you might be more amused by the episode the following night. The show's from 3/9/58 and the Mystery Guest is Jack Paar. But before that, the panel has to guess the occupation of two young men named Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

Their job as described on the program is that they wrote songs for Elvis Presley, which is true. They wrote "Hound Dog" and "Jailhouse Rock" and they also wrote for other performers, "Charlie Brown," "Searchin'," "Ruby Baby," "I Keep Forgetting," "Love Potion No.9," "Neighborhood," "Poison Ivy," "Some Cats Know," "Framed," "Fools Fall In Love," "Love Me," "Riot In Cell Block No. 9," "I Who Have Nothing," "Spanish Harlem," "Stand By Me," "Kansas City," "Smokey Joe's Cafe," "That Is Rock n Roll," "Bossa Nova Baby," "Saved," "Trouble," "Pearl's A Singer," "Young Blood," "Don't," "I'm A Woman," "You Ain't Saying It," "Loving You," "Is That All There Is?," "Yakety Yak," "On Broadway," "Little Egypt" and many, many others.

I'm not sure if the parlay of Lennon and McCartney beat them…but at least among non-performers, Leiber and Stoller are the all-time champs at writing hit rock-'n'-roll songs. This accomplishment was lost on the panel of What's My Line? and on host John Daly. If you tune in, you'll hear him say something very dismissive to them like, "Well, maybe someday you'll do something serious."