What's My Wednesdays: Mystery Gamine

It's been far too long since we checked in on the gang over at What's My Line?, and here to do something about that are regulars Mr. Cerf, Mr. Daly, and Miss Kilgallen, joined by Mr. Linkletter and the enchanting Miss Betty White.  They do well against some stiff competition, not least from a Mystery Challenger who was, indeed, to me a total mystery.

It's a rare MC who isn't too some extent still, even after all these years, at least a bit of a name, but the enchanting creature seen here is pretty much as close to forgotten as one can get. Genevieve was the toast of television in 1961, a fixture of The Tonight Show and if her obituary in the Los Angeles Times (alas, in 2004) is to be believed, even bruited about as a kind of next-generation Piaf for her Gallic warbling. From the slimmish available evidence, she's good, if not quite that good (who is?), although she does lay on the jeune-fille-de-Montmartre shtick pretty thick. She's also terribly chic, charming in the sort of soignée Continental ensemble that Arlene might have gotten away with, but which was totally beyond the ken of poor Dorothy K. I like her a lot, and it's nice to know that she married well and lived happily ever after.

I'm working my way through 1960 on WML?, tromping away on the treadmill for the duration of at least one episode several times a week. It does make the time fly, and who knows? If I persist in this fitness craze, maybe I'll reach a point where for my retirement career I can consider becoming a roller-skate tester - that one certainly stumped the panel, no?

P.S.: Wouldn't you have loved to see Arlene in Old Acquaintance at the Palm Beach Playhouse? She must have liked the play, as she did it on and off for a number of years in stock and on tour. She may never have had a Broadway hit, but there's no question that that woman worked. And made it look so easy, too, which really is the secret of success in many fields of endeavor, I think...