More What's My Line?

The 'Mystery Guest' segment of this edition of What's My Line? features Legendary opera singer Marian Anderson.  It’s very enjoyable, made all the more fun by panelist Arlene Francis’s reaction at the end.   You can tell how much she admires Ms. Anderson because in all segments of the show I’ve posted, the women panelists have always remained seated when the guest comes over the shake their hands goodbye -- and I think this is the first time I’ve seen a female panelist stand, as Arlene Francis does.

Also nice is that Abe Burrows is one of the panelists.  He's one of the great theater writers and directors, best known for writing (or co-writing) Guys & Dolls, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Can-Can, which he also directed -- and he's also the father of renowned TV director James Burrows (of Friends, Cheers, Frasier, Taxi and much more).  

If you want to jump directly to the 'Mystery Guest' segment, it starts around the 18:30 mark.

​To add some perspective, here’s a segment from an American Experience broadcast on PBS about perhaps Marian Anderson’s most famous performance.  She had been blocked from singing at a DAR concert at Constitution Hall because of her race, but thanks to NAACP president Walter White and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (who resigned her membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution) another concert got set up at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, 1939, with (among many others) President Franklin Roosevelt in attendance.  Three years later, the DAR did invited Anderson to perform.  But this is some of that Lincoln Memorial event –