More TV history on Game Show Network, where their Black-and-White Overnight series has been running old programs that, in most cases, have not been seen since their original airings. This AM, they ran the 6/11/58 episode of I've Got A Secret that got its producer, Allan Sherman, fired. This was before Sherman had much experience as a performer. He and a friend named Howard Merrill created the panel show and took it to the Goodson-Todman people who recognized it as a cheap knock-off of their hit, What's My Line? Fortunately, the game show moguls saw the wisdom of imitating themselves, bought the show and sold it to CBS. Sherman became Associate Producer and later, Producer…and then he began to produce other shows, as well. (That's him in the center of the photo above, chatting with I've Got a Secret panel members and host Garry Moore.)
A few nights ago, GSN ran an I've Got A Secret wherein celebrity guest Phil Silvers plugged his upcoming special and mentioned that it had been produced by Sherman. In fact, Sherman became so busy with other projects that — the story goes — he began neglecting Secret, and the Goodson-Todman hierarchy got fed up with him.
The last straw was the episode GSN aired this morn, with Tony Curtis as the guest and Henry Morgan filling in as host for the vacationing Moore. Sherman had come up with a spot that involved Curtis demonstrating games he'd supposedly played as a kid in the streets of New York. Goodson and others at the office told Sherman it was a lousy idea and that it would make for a lousy show. Sherman insisted it would be great and insisted on going ahead with it. He was wrong. The network, the sponsors and the folks at Goodson-Todman all hated the episode and, only hours after it was broadcast, Sherman was fired. (Over on the game show news group, maven Eric Paddon just noted one other item of trivia: "After ten minutes of seemingly pointless demonstration, Tony finally reveals he has a secret that the panel only gets one question to guess. The secret is that he's about to become a father again. That child grew up to be his beautiful and talented daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis.")
In the following years, Allan Sherman went through a series of producing jobs, primarily on game shows, getting fired from most of them. His most humiliating experience came when he was hired and quickly axed as the producer of a syndicated talk show that Steve Allen launched in 1961. Fortunately, a few months later, he recorded an album of song parodies called My Son, the Folk Singer. It quickly became the fastest-selling record in history and he was a performer for the rest of his life. (He passed away in 1973)