![]() ![]() Things get even weirder when you realize that A) the wife is played by Bennett Cerf’s cousin by marriage, Ginger Rogers B) the husband is played by future WML panelist Fred Allen and C) Allen didn’t just act the part, he wrote it! His work is not acknowledged in the credits, but the segment is recycled (word-for-word in some places) from a sketch which Allen and Tallulah Bankhead used to do on each other’s radio shows. They act sickeningly wholesome on the air, chatting with their cute kids and pet canary (both of which were fixtures of Dorothy and Dick, too) but secretly hate each other (which appears to have also been the case with Dorothy and her husband, both of whom had a lot of affairs). So what’s the WML connection? Well, one of the five couples is a scathing parody of Dorothy Kilgallen and Richard Kollmar! The characters are the hosts of a celebrity-name-dropping, product-placement-filled radio show called “Breakfast with the Glad Gladwyns,” suspiciously similar to Kilgallen and Kollmar’s Breakfast with Dorothy and Dick. Bracken is paired with Mitzi Gaynor, Monroe with David Wayne, Paul Douglas with Eve Arden, and Louis Calhern with Zsa Zsa Gabor. In this case, five couples who’ve been married for a few years learn that a clerical error has caused their marriage license to be invalid, and hijinks ensue. It’s an anthology film along the lines of If I Had a Million and Tales of Manhattan, basically a collection of short movies linked together by one idea. We’re Not Married! is even more obscure than Too Many Girls probably only the most die-hard fans of Marilyn Monroe (who has an early-career supporting part) will be familiar with it. The WML links get even weirder when we learn what movie Bracken is there to promote. And this wasn’t the first outbreak of romance in the cast, as Richard Kollmar, the male star of the Broadway version, had already quit the show to marry Dorothy Kilgallen! Every person mentioned in this paragraph would become famous enough to appear on What’s My Line-almost entirely because of their decision to appear or not appear in a movie that’s almost unknown today. The studio inserted an established star in the main female role: Lucille Ball, who immediately fell in love and eloped with Arnaz, setting the groundwork for I Love Lucy a decade later. However, neither the leading man nor the leading lady made the trek to L.A. Three of the ones who stuck around were Eddie Bracken, Desi Arnaz, and Van Johnson, all of whom were making their film debuts and all of whom went on to long careers in Hollywood. As with many musicals, some cast members of the theatre production returned for the movie version while others were replaced. The Rodgers/Hart musical and stage-to-screen adaptation turn out to be the same project: Too Many Girls, which premiered on Broadway in 1939 and was filmed just a year later. This mystery guest segment is full of interesting connections to WML and TV in general. They finally settle on Bracken, but things have already gotten pretty embarrassing by then. The mystery guest was in a Broadway play that was adapted into a movie…but he’s not Ray Bolger, who had just come out with a film version of his Tony Award-winning performance in Where’s Charley? He appeared in a Rodgers and Hart musical…but he’s not Allan Jones, star of the film adaptation of The Boys from Syracuse. The panelists go around a few more times. But since the co-star in question was Francis the Talking Mule, it’s easy to understand why she would want to forget it.) (Arlene should have remembered that O’Connor’s co-star had already appeared on WML to promote the movie she’s thinking of. Arlene Francis establishes that he’s currently starring in a “smash” picture, draws it out for a few more questions…and then asks if he’s Donald O’Connor. Like Jean Hersholt last week, Eddie Bracken is not exactly the biggest star in the world (his main claims to fame, the two movies he did with Preston Sturges, are now eight years in the past), and they have a terrible time trying to figure out who he is. The panel is on a bit of a cold streak regarding the mystery guests. Meanwhile, Hal Block has just come off of an all-night telethon which raised $188,000 for cerebral palsy treatment, and he thanks his coworkers from that event in an unusually humble and subdued moment from WML’s most loudmouthed panelist. This is the first of several times when she’ll appear on What’s My Line sporting an eyepatch (Bennett Cerf introduces her as “Miss Hathaway Shirt of 1952”) due to various injuries and eyestrains this one was apparently the result of an accidental poke from her son. Arlene Francis certainly seems to have been accident-prone. ![]()
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