My thoughts for this article go back a year ago when I first found YouTube on my computer and watched “Britain’s Got Talent.”
Deciding to watch some of those contestants led to finding two brothers from Wales who sang as a duet, one tenor and the other a baritone. Check them out at “Richard and Adam,” because their voices are great! That lead to watching more of BGT for the next several weeks. When I noticed the small pictures that were along the right side of the screen, I chose a couple of other topics to see. One was about “Long Lost Families” and had very interesting stories. I began to think that my computer could read my mind, because it kept showing me other pictures of other topics I was interested in. How could that be? After all, there are hundreds of topics I am not interested in, and none of them were shown!
When I saw they had just one picture of the old “What’s My Line?” show, I jumped at the chance to get to see it. After watching just that one, the next time I turned on the computer and found YouTube, I found several more of the “What’s My Line?” programs. I got to see a lot of very young famous people from my past, such as Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. And, the next time I turned on my computer, you may have guessed it, almost every picture down the right side of the screen was from “What’s My Line?” So, now I am hooked on it. Everyone should enjoy these shows today, especially if you don’t mind seeing them in black and white. Since there isn’t much I care to see on regular TV, You Tube has opened a whole new world of entertainment, plus the fact that there are basically no commercials! Mostly the persons who would enjoy the “What’s My Line” shows would be the older crowd who watched TV in the 50s and 60s, when these programs were aired live. I enjoyed these shows back when they were first broadcast from 1950 until 1967. We stayed up late every Sunday evening from 10:30 until 11 p.m. to see them. I was getting to see Dorothy Kilgallen, a young journalist, Arlene Francis, an actress, and Bennett Cerf, a book publisher, as well as the moderator, John Charles Daly. And, they usually picked different comedians as a fourth panelist, to keep things extra entertaining.
Just as I was about to turn off my computer one evening, a flash came across the screen that Dorothy Kilgallen had been murdered!! Well, that stopped me in my tracks! Why would that soft-spoken intelligent panelist have been murdered? Along with that flash was a book title: “The Reporter Who Knew Too Much” by Mark Shaw. I knew then and there that I had to find that old book to read. When I asked at the Delaware Library, they said it was in!! Really, after all these 50 some years later, they still had that book? I was wrong in assuming that it was written at the same time as Ms. Kilgallen’s death. It was recently written in 2016! What could have interested someone about a murder, 50 years ago, to be writing about it now in the 21st century? Come to find out, it had to do with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy! And, that she, Dorothy Kilgallen, was the reporter who knew too much!! Wow! She was murdered because she knew too much about the investigation of the assassination of JFK! There is even a quote by Dorothy Kilgallen, herself, that is on the back cover of the book: “…if the wrong people know what I know, it could cost me my life.” I have not yet finished reading said book, as I am writing this article. It would be impossible for me to even begin to write about the reasons given of why the writer, Mark Shaw, believes that Ms. Kilgallen’s death was a homicide. So, I will stop here. If you are interested in finding out why that well-known journalist was murdered, get the book and be ready to relive the events around 11-22-1963 when our president, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated!
Who knew that when I first ran onto YouTube, it would lead me to wanting to find out more about that young journalist that I had enjoyed watching back in my high school days, who seemed to always be on the panel of “What’s My Line?”
