FOR SOME STRANGE reason, this is one game show which has always seemed to just a cut above the others. Then (when we were kids) and now (Boomer Generation gray-beards) it held an unreasonably higher degree of fascination.
PERHAPS WE COULD rack it up to "dumb luck" on the part of the producers, Mark Goodson & Bill Todman. However the team had successfully given us WHAT'S MY LINE?, I'VE GOT A SECRET, PASSWORD, THE MATCG GAME and many others; so there must have been some careful crafting involved here.
STILL, WE MAINTAIN our position that this did stand out from the many other also-rans.
PERHAPS IT HAS something to do with the cast. In the MC's chair, we had the former Radio voice of Clark Kent & SUPERMAN, Mr. Bud Collyer. The roll call of panelists is both long and distinguished; but we best remember: Kitty Carlisle, Tom Poston, Orson Bean*, Peggy Cass, Chester Morris, Dina Merrill, Betsy Palmer and many others.
MORE THAN ANY other family oriented panel show, TO TELL THE TRUTH, invited and even demanded participation from the home viewer. As the panelists marked their cards as to which of the three contestants was the real person that he said he was, we were kept busy weighing their testimony and testing our own acumen as detectives.
WHY THAT'S IT, Schultz! That's the secret of the show's success!
PERHAPS WE COULD rack it up to "dumb luck" on the part of the producers, Mark Goodson & Bill Todman. However the team had successfully given us WHAT'S MY LINE?, I'VE GOT A SECRET, PASSWORD, THE MATCG GAME and many others; so there must have been some careful crafting involved here.
STILL, WE MAINTAIN our position that this did stand out from the many other also-rans.
PERHAPS IT HAS something to do with the cast. In the MC's chair, we had the former Radio voice of Clark Kent & SUPERMAN, Mr. Bud Collyer. The roll call of panelists is both long and distinguished; but we best remember: Kitty Carlisle, Tom Poston, Orson Bean*, Peggy Cass, Chester Morris, Dina Merrill, Betsy Palmer and many others.
MORE THAN ANY other family oriented panel show, TO TELL THE TRUTH, invited and even demanded participation from the home viewer. As the panelists marked their cards as to which of the three contestants was the real person that he said he was, we were kept busy weighing their testimony and testing our own acumen as detectives.
WHY THAT'S IT, Schultz! That's the secret of the show's success!