Sunday Night Follies

It was another rollicking night at What's My Line Live on Stage at the Acme Theatre last night. In the first photograph you can see Host J. Keith van Straaten with Mystery Guest Budd Friedman, founder of The Improv, standing behind panelists Natasha Leggero, Graham Elwood, Kitty Felde, and J. P. Manoux. The fact that three of the panelist do stand-up (all except the lovely Kitty Felde, known for her radio work) contributed to them actually guessing the Mystery Guest on pretty short order.


The "Mr. X" guest turned out to be a huge hit with the audience and with the panel: major league baseball's "Sweet Lou" Johnson. Everyone wanted to be photographed with him, so he's in the second photograph with my husband Len Wein. Lou spoke of playing with the Kansas City Monarchs before making it to the big leagues and promoted the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City, which Len had visited on one of his recent appearances at a convention in that part of the country. Lou now works for the Los Angeles Dodgers organization (he played for them in the 1960s) and his line of work for the show was "Teaches Baseball."



I have clearly developed a soft spot for the animal guests on the show. The Weimeraner is a stunt dog named Chalcy, trained by Kyra Sundance. Her trick was "reading" the numbers on cloth blocks. I'm pretty sure I know how she did her trick, but that's o.k. She was very entertaining, and extremely photogenic (just check out any book by William Wegman who has made a great career out of photographing these extremely expressive dogs.) After the show, Chalcy waved good-bye to the camera for my benefit.

What's My Line has extended its run until the end of the month. Rumor has it that there will be a particularly cool Mystery Guest on July 15 and Len will be on the panel again on July 22. We'll be in San Diego for Comicon and will probably not be there for the show on July 29, so I'm hoping it extends through August. I'd hate to miss the last show.

Bonus Celebrity Guests

Sunday night's edition of What's My Line Live on Stage had a couple of unmasked celebrities as guests in addition to the appearance of Oscar nominee Robert Forster as Mystery Guest. The panelists this week were Teresa Ganzel, Jeopardy champ Bob Harris, Suzy Nakamura, and my darling husband, Len Wein, shown in the first photograph with host J. Keith van Straaten and Mr. Forster.

The other guests were Mallory Hood, aka Mallory Lewis, daughter of Shari Lewis; Dorian Harewood, not there as an actor, but there as a Blackjack expert; and a nice young woman named Rachael Newman, who washes birds which have been in oil-spills. They are all shown in the second photograph, along with Lamb Chop, Mr. Forster, J. Keith, and a duck.

After stumping the panel, Mallory performed with Lamb Chop, the puppet made famous by her mother. My childhood memories do not include Lamb Chop being a political commentator, but I understand Mallory does adult shows and children's shows with her now. We got a sample of the adult show. The third photograph is of Mallory and Lamb Chop singing a duet of "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better," from, I think, Annie Get Your Gun. Isn't Mallory wearing a great dress and a fabulous pair of red shoes?


Much to our delight, Bob Harris joined us for the after-show gathering and it was like meeting a life-long friend.

I've been a Jeopardy addict since the show began in the 1960s and watching it is a religious ritual in our house. I tried out for the show around 1972, when it was still in New York, and I tried out again about 10 years ago. Last year, I passed the first on-line screening they did and went in for the live retest. I missed out on an opportunity to actually be on the show because, when they called, a friend of mine was working on effects for Spider-Man, a Sony production, and Sony owns the company that produces Jeopardy. Sniff. Len's too much of a coward to actually try out. He's convinced the board will be things like "Left Handed Nuns' Shoe Sizes" and "The History of Lint" if he actually makes it to the show. We're both really good in the living room, but I've got to say that getting the timing on the signaling device is really tough.

I doubt we have missed a single episode of Jeopardy in the entire time we've been married. When we were dating, while I was in law school in Cleveland, I relayed an entire episode by telephone to Len, who was sitting at LAX waiting to go to London. I think he was paying for the call, but I don't remember for sure.

In any case, Bob Harris is definitely a kindred spirit and we look forward to including him in our circle of friends. We certainly enjoyed his appearances on Jeopardy and he has done commentaries on KNX, the radio station we usually listen to in the car. He's also been a writer on CSI and he's written a number of books. You can check out his website here.

It will be back to the show again on Sunday. For more information check out the website here.

What's New on What's My Line?

Over the past three years, a group of people we know have put on a stage version of the old television series "What's My Line?" at the Acme Theatre in Hollywood. The latest run is scheduled for five weeks and started on Sunday night, up against the last episode of both "The Sopranos" and "The Tudors," as well as the second game of the NBA finals (I'm rooting for the Cavs, in case anyone cares.)

My husband was a guest during the earliest run of shows. No one guessed him, but lots of people in the audience knew who he was. Afterwards, one of the audience members came up to tell him what a big fan he was and invited him (and me) out for drinks. That was Drew Carey (again, go Cleveland!) Len was then invited to be on the panel. And again, and again. He usually gets one slot a month when the show is in production and he's very good at it.

After we'd been in attendance for a while, the host and producer realized that I was taking extremely good photographs of the show and the post show groups (well, duh.) They finally asked me to be an official photographer, instead of just taking photos for fun. I wish it paid, but it doesn't. Fortunately pixels are cheaper per frame than film is to process, that is, once you pay for the camera, computer, software, and so forth. This year I've made a huge investment in a MacBookPro and Adobe software and now I've got to upgrade to CS3. I'm getting quite good at Lightroom.

Anyway, even though Len was out of town being a guest at the Superman festival in Metropolis, Illinois, I had to go to the show on Sunday night. This involved avoiding the lingering traffic from the Gay Pride festivities and skirting the traffic jam at the exit off the 101 for the Hollywood Bowl. It was easier than trying to get to the theatre on a Wednesday night, which is when the show used to run.

As always, the host was J. Keith Van Straaten. This week's panel was Beth Littleford (formerly of "The Daily Show"), Eric Mullegan of "Bones," Elaine Hendrix (the mean mom-to-be in the Lindsay Lohan version of "Parent Trap"), and Gary Anthony Williams of "Boston Legal" and "Boondocks." The mystery guest was Sharon Lawrence of "NYPD Blue" and Broadway fame. You can see them all in the photograph at the top of this entry.