page_title: Dorothy Kilgallen
section_title: What's My Line?
hierarchical_section_title: Dorothy Kilgallen / What's My Line?
caption_attribution_description: Photo of the original What's My Line? television set and panel of the show. From left: Dorothy Kilgallen, Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis, Hal Block and host John Daly.
context_page_description: Dorothy Mae Kilgallen was an American journalist and television game show panelist. After spending two semesters at the College of New Rochelle, she started her career shortly before her 18th birthday as a reporter for the Hearst Corporation's New York Evening Journal. In 1938, she began her newspaper column "The Voice of Broadway", which eventually was syndicated to more than 140 papers. In 1950, she became a regular panelist on the television game show What's My Line?, continuing in the role until her death.
  Kilgallen's columns featured mostly show business news and gossip, but ventured into other topics, such as politics and organized crime. She wrote front-page articles on the Sam Sheppard trial and later the John F. Kennedy assassination.
context_section_description: Kilgallen became a panelist on the American television game show What's My Line? during its first broadcast, which aired live on February 2, 1950.  The series was telecast from New York City on the CBS television network until 1967. She remained on the show for 15 years (until her death).
  Beginning in 1959, the series was not always telecast live. Goodson Todman Productions used videotape, a recent invention.  In 1961, producers were able to stockpile enough videotaped episodes so that Kilgallen, Arlene Francis, Bennett Cerf and John Charles Daly could take their first long summer vacation.  In 1965, they returned from another long summer vacation to do a live telecast on September 12. This was followed by eight consecutive Sunday nights when Kilgallen appeared live, the last of them being November 7, just before her death.
caption: The What's My Line? panel in 1952: Kilgallen, Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis and Hal Block, with John Daly as the host
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