I've Got a Secret is an American panel game show produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman for CBS television. Created by comedy writers Allan Sherman and Howard Merrill, it was a derivative of Goodson–Todman's own panel show, What's My Line? Instead of celebrity panelists trying to determine a contestant's occupation, as in What's My Line, the panel tried to determine a contestant's secret: something that is unusual, amazing, embarrassing, or humorous about that person.
The original version of I've Got a Secret premiered on CBS on June 19, 1952, and ran until April 3, 1967. The show began broadcasting in black and white and switched to color in 1966, when all commercial prime-time network programs in the US began to be produced in color.
The show was revived for the 1972–1973 season in once-a-week syndication and again from June 15 to July 6, 1976, as a summer replacement series on CBS. Oxygen launched a daily revival series in 2000, which ran until 2001. A second revival by GSN premiered on April 17, 2006, and aired new episodes daily until June 9, 2006.
Hosts and panelists The show was originally hosted by radio and television personality Garry Moore. After several months of an ever-changing panel, game show host Bill Cullen, acerbic comedian Henry Morgan, TV hostess Faye Emerson, and actress Jayne Meadows became the four regular panelists. In 1958, Emerson left the show to star in a play and was replaced by actress Betsy Palmer.
Later that year, Meadows relocated to the West Coast and was replaced by former Miss America Bess Myerson. At various times, guest hosts substituted for Moore, including panelists Cullen, Morgan and Palmer, among others. Other comedians and celebrities appeared as guests on the panel when others were away. The announcer for most of the 1952–67 run was John Cannon.
Moore left the show after the 1963–64 season. After his comedy program The Garry Moore Show was canceled, Moore chose to retire from television to travel the world with his wife.Moore, Garry. I've Got A Secret, September 5, 1966. Moore was replaced by Steve Allen, who had signed with CBS-TV in March 1964Broadcast Magazine, March 1964, Page 88 and left his own syndicated talk show to take over the game, on September 21, 1964. Allen also hosted the show during the 1972−73 revival. Former panelist Bill Cullen hosted the show for its brief 1976 CBS summer run. Frequent panelists on this revival were Richard Dawson, Henry Morgan, Pat Carroll, and Elaine Joyce.
The version seen on Oxygen was hosted by Stephanie Miller from January 2000 until August 2001. Regular panelists on this version included Jim J. Bullock, Jason Kravits, Amy Yasbeck, and Teri Garr.
The GSN version was hosted by Bil Dwyer and, unlike the earlier versions, featured a permanent panel that appeared on each episode, consisting of Billy Bean, Frank DeCaro, Jermaine Taylor, and Suzanne Westenhoefer.
Original series Gameplay Each typical episode featured two regular contestant rounds, followed by a celebrity guest round, occasionally followed by an additional regular round.
Standard rounds Each round was a guessing game in which the panel tried to determine a contestant's secret. The concept of a secret was fairly broad. Secrets were always intended to be unusual, amazing, embarrassing, or humorous. They commonly included something that happened to the contestant, something owned by the contestant, or a notable occupation, hobby, achievement, or skill.
Each show began with the entrance of one or more contestants. The host then introduced the contestant or asked his or her name and hometown. He then asked them to "whisper your secret to me, and we'll show it to the folks at home." The contestant then ostensibly whispered the secret, while the audience and viewers were shown the secret as a text overlay on the screen. Then the host gave the panel a clue – for example, "the secret concerns something that happened to [contestant's name]." The host then selected a panelist to begin questioning.
When the show debuted, each panelist had 15 seconds of questioning at a time, running through the panel twice, in order. Each segment of questioning which passed without the panelist guessing the secret won the contestant $10, for a top prize of $80. In mid-1954, the format changed to only once around the panel, with a $20 prize for each panelist stumped. The time limit was no longer fixed, and the buzzer which ended questioning was instead at the discretion of the production staff.
This was due, in part, to the program airing live, and sometimes requiring to lengthen or shorten the time allowed for questioning in order to keep the show running on time. Increasingly later in the run, the panelists were sometimes buzzed out when they were getting too close to the secret, were suspected to be about to get it, or simply at a point that would get a laugh. This was precipitated in part by the fact that, like What's My Line?, the top payoff never increased with inflation, and the money eventually became somewhat secondary to the gameplay, with the cash awards not even mentioned at all by the end of the series.
Similarly, the panelist chosen to question first eventually became a strategy by the producers. When a secret fell within an area that a panelist was knowledgeable on, most commonly Cullen with mechanical, scientific or sports secrets, they would often be chosen first, to give them no preceding clues during their questioning. On occasion when a secret referenced a panelist, the order was usually chosen to put them last.
Following the revelation of a guest's secret, either by guessing or by the host's revelation once the game was over, the host typically either interviewed the contestant about their secret, or, if applicable, the contestant did some kind of demonstration of their secret. These demonstrations sometimes included the host, and occasionally one or more of the panelists.
Beyond the standard celebrity guests, several notable people with secrets appeared, including Colonel Harland Sanders ("I started my restaurant with my first Social Security check"), drummer Pete Best ("I used to be one of The Beatles"), and a 95-year-old man, Samuel J. Seymour, who was the last surviving eyewitness to Abraham Lincoln's assassination. He was five years old at the time.
In 1958, an episode devoted to the theme of "teenage appreciation" was the show's answer to media reports of teenage delinquency, and featured nine teenagers of unusual accomplishment, including the then 15-year-old chess champion Bobby Fischer, 16-year-old pop star Paul Anka, and 19-year-old college basketball star Oscar Robertson. Sgt. Ira Jones, who served as Elvis Presley's First Sergeant in Germany, made an appearance. Scientist Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of electronic television, made his only televised appearance as a contestant on the show.
Guest rounds
On each typical episode, a celebrity guest came on the show with a secret. The celebrity usually opened the episode by coming out from the behind the curtain and saying "my name is [Name] and I've Got a Secret!", though sometimes they would say "and this is I've Got a Secret!".
Early in the show's run, the celebrities would have actual personal secrets similar to the other contestants. Producer Allan Sherman later admitted that these celebrity "secrets", such as Boris Karloff being afraid of mice, were frequently concocted by the show's staff, and the celebrities merely played along.
The celebrity "secret" was slowly phased out during the mid-1950s, as an increasingly common activity for the celebrity guest was to challenge the panel in some sort of alternate game. Eventually, this became the primary use of the guest segment, and the pretense of having the panel guess the guest's secret was dropped altogether. The guest would simply come out with a challenge for the panel, sometimes ostensibly related to the guest or their current project, but other times not related to the guest at all.
Several of these challenges predated future game shows which used the same concepts, such as a game in which Woody Allen challenged the panel to guess words based on definitions written by children, which became the basis for Child's Play, and a pair of segments with Peter Falk and Soupy Sales in which the panel had to identify celebrities based on a series of photos starting with infancy and progressing older. which featured in the format of the show Face the Music.
Often, secrets would involve Henry Morgan in some manner. Since Morgan had a "lovable sourpuss" personality, he attracted a certain "let's see how we can 'get' Henry this time" playfulness from the writers. Sometimes he would be sent on week-long trips, often starting as soon as the live broadcast ended, which would be filmed and highlights shown the following week.
Some of these trips included being sent to England to buy a proper English Christmas meal from a famous English restaurant, while dressed in a stereotypical English derby and morning coat; spending a week at Roy Rogers' dude ranch as a hired hand; accompanying a mathematician to a Las Vegas casino, to test a new, theoretical method of gambling; and going on an African safari with Ann Sheridan, which started immediately, as Morgan received inoculations and his passport photo on stage.
Henry was also recruited as a background spear holder at the Metropolitan Opera, a dead body in a murder-mystery Broadway play, a Santa Claus for disadvantaged kids, and a radio announcer who bravely read his script while the other panelists distracted him mercilessly. A Halloween episode had Arnold Stang taking the stage in a traditional "bedsheet" ghost costume with the secret "This costume was made from Henry Morgan's bedsheet." After the game Moore said "Don't worry, Henry, we promise to put these back where we found them," at which point the center stage curtain rose to reveal Morgan's own bed.
Notable guests on the show I've Got a Secret was host to many notable guests over the course of the show's run. +NameEpisode dateSecretBuster Keaton25 July 1952I threw a pie at Hedda Hopper.Harpo Marx21 April 1954I'm pretending to be Harpo Marx (I'm Chico).Boris Karloff13 October 1954I am afraid of mice.Cy Young13 April 1955Member of the Baseball Hall of Fame.Emmett Kelly19 April 1955Famous clown with acrobat on the eve of their wedding.Ronald Reagan15 October 1955None. Whenever a panelist flubs a line the game starts again from the beginning.Samuel J. Seymour8 February 1956I saw John Wilkes Booth shoot Abraham Lincoln.Clyde Tombaugh24 October 1956I discovered the planet Pluto.Philo Farnsworth3 July 1957I invented electronic television when I was 14 years old. (Farnsworth's only notable television appearance)Bobby Fischer26 March 1958At age 15 I became the United States chess champion.Ira Jones6 May 1959I was Elvis Presley's platoon sergeant.John Cage24 February 1960I consider music the production of sounds.Delia and Bertie Harris26 April 1961Our grandfather was a soldier in the American Revolutionary War.Viola and Stephen Armstrong17 September 1962Our son became an astronaut today.John Cale16 September 1963I performed in a concert that lasted 18 hours. (Cale later co-founded The Velvet Underground).Colonel Sanders6 April 1964I started KFC with my Social Security check of $105.00Pete Best30 March 1964I left my job two years ago—I was one of The Beatles.Cole Palen26 April 1965I flew here in a 1912 airplane.Denise Austin,Lynn Austin,Jacque Fitch18 October 1965Fitch's great-grandmother is at home watching them on TV; the great-grandmothers of the other two are backstage.William Pollock6 June 1966I'm driving the oldest automobile still operating in the United States; nothing on it has been replaced since it was built in 1891.Bob McGrath20 February 1967My recordings of Irish Songs are best sellers...but only in Japan.
History and style