Roger Price, who stayed on until the final episode.
In January 1955, Rayburn and Myerson left the panel and were replaced by ''
The Jackie Gleason Show
''The Jackie Gleason Show'' is a series of American network television shows that starred Jackie Gleason, which ran from 1952 to 1970, in various forms.
''Cavalcade of Stars''
Gleason's first variety series, which aired on the DuMont Televisio ...
s
Audrey Meadows
Audrey Meadows (born Audrey Cotter; February 8, 1922 – February 3, 1996) was an American actress who portrayed the deadpan housewife Alice Kramden on the 1950s American television comedy ''The Honeymooners''. She was the younger sister of H ...
and ''
New York Herald Tribune
The ''New York Herald Tribune'' was a newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. It was created in 1924 when Ogden Mills Reid of the '' New York Tribune'' acquired the '' New York Herald''. It was regarded as a "writer's newspaper" and compet ...
'' columnist and future ''
To Tell the Truth
''To Tell the Truth'' is an American television panel show. Four celebrity panelists are presented with three contestants (the "team of challengers", each an individual or pair) and must identify which is the "central character" whose unusual ...
'' regular
Hy Gardner. Gardner was replaced by actor
Walter Slezak in March 1955, who in turn left in July due to a time slot switch.
Mike Wallace
Myron Leon Wallace (May 9, 1918 – April 7, 2012) was an American journalist, game show host, actor, and media personality. Known for his investigative journalism, he interviewed a wide range of prominent newsmakers during his seven-decade car ...
, then a fledgling journalist, took over as the last permanent panelist.
Many celebrities of the era were guest panelists:
Morey Amsterdam
Moritz Amsterdam (December 14, 1908 – October 28, 1996) was an American actor, comedian, writer and producer. Between 1948 and 1950, he hosted his own TV sitcom ''The Morey Amsterdam Show''. He played Buddy Sorrell on CBS's ''The Dick V ...
,
Garry Moore,
Hal Block,
Cliff Norton,
Jackie Cooper,
Peter Donald,
Dane Clark
Dane Clark (born Bernhardt Zanvilevitz; February 26, 1912September 11, 1998) was an American character actor who was known for playing, as he labeled himself, "Joe Average."
Early life
Clark was born Bernhardt Zanvilevitz (later Bernard Zanvill ...
,
Hans Conried
Hans Georg Conried Jr. (April 15, 1917 – January 5, 1982) was an American actor and comedian. He was known for providing the voices of George Darling and Captain Hook in Walt Disney's '' Peter Pan'' (1953), Snidely Whiplash in Jay Ward's ...
,
Russell Crouse,
John Henry Faulk
John Henry Faulk (August 21, 1913 – April 9, 1990) was an American storyteller and radio show host. His successful lawsuit against the entertainment industry helped to bring an end to the Hollywood blacklist.
Early life
John Henry Faulk wa ...
,
John Forsythe
John Lincoln Forsythe ( Freund; January 29, 1918 – April 1, 2010) was an American stage, film/television actor, producer, narrator, drama teacher and philanthropist whose career spanned six decades. He also appeared as a guest on several t ...
,
Laraine Day,
Marc Connelly
Marcus Cook Connelly (December 13, 1890 – December 21, 1980) was an American playwright, director, producer, performer, and lyricist. He was a key member of the Algonquin Round Table, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1930.
Biogra ...
,
Denise Lor, and
Hildy Parks.
Game play
Each standard round featured a contestant who had a "famous name": the contestant's full name was the same as either an actual person ("Jane Russell," "Abraham Lincoln," "Napoleon Bonaparte"), a place ("Virginia Beach," "Monte Carlo"), a thing ("A. Lap," "A. Table," "Ruby Lips," “A. Mattress”), or an action ("I. Draw", "Will Kiss").
It was always made clear that the names used on the show were authentic. The show's legal experts would check birth certificates, hospital records and other forms of verification to affirm the names' authenticity.
The contestant was introduced and referred to throughout the game as "Mr. X" (or "Mrs./Miss/Master X"). A small curtain was opened to the audience, showing a placard with the contestant's name, along with a drawing depicting the namesake, famous people were often
caricature
A caricature is a rendered image showing the features of its subject in a simplified or exaggerated way through sketching, pencil strokes, or other artistic drawings (compare to: cartoon). Caricatures can be either insulting or complimentary, ...
d.
The
panelists were allocated 10 questions each, with the number remaining denoted in running tally on the wall behind them. The questions had to be "yes or no" questions, and were posed to the contestant as if they ''were'' the person, place, or thing their name represented, with the contestant answering as their namesake.
The panel could pass to save some of their questions for later on in the game. Any member of the panel who failed to identify the contestant's name wrote the contestant a check for $25, meaning each contestant won either $50 if their name was guessed by a panelist, or $75 if it was not. When a fourth panelist was added in early 1954, the check amounts were decreased to $20 per panelist, making the prizes $60 for a correct guess and $80 if the panel was stumped.
Many of the contestants' names lent themselves to comedy. Robert Q. Lewis would always call on Carl Reiner first when the mystery name was a thing: Reiner's innocent questions always took on funny meanings, followed by Joan Alexander straying even farther away, to the delight of the studio audience. For "A. Harem," Reiner asked, "Is this thing used for recreational purposes?" and Alexander pursued this: "Do fat men use this to reduce their weight?" Lewis would enjoy these detours as much as the audience. It was then left to Bill Stern, a veteran reporter, to zero in on the actual name with serious, shrewd questioning.
Sometimes a contestant's celebrity namesake was brought out at the end of the round to surprise the contestant, other times, a celebrity was the guest without pretext. The celebrity then played a special round called "I'd Like To Be..." in which the panel tried to guess, in the same fashion as with civilians, who the celebrity would like to be if they could be anyone else. In late 1953, "I'd Like To Be..." was replaced with "Secret Wish," in which the panel attempted to guess something that the guest would secretly like to do or have happen (for example,
Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch; December 9, 1916 – February 5, 2020) was an American actor and filmmaker. After an impoverished childhood, he made his film debut in '' The Strange Love of Martha Ivers'' (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck. ...
wished to coach the
Vassar lacrosse
Lacrosse is a contact team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game w ...
team, and
Van Johnson wanted
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe ( ; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; June 1, 1926 August 4, 1962) was an American actress and model. Known for playing comic "Blonde stereotype#Blonde bombshell, blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex ...
to sit on his lap). The celebrity's winnings ($50/$75, later $60/$80) went to his or her favorite charity.
A few times near the end of the run, host Clifton Fadiman would welcome the panel, then reveal the episode's guest to the studio and home audience. The curtain would pull back with the guest standing behind it in place of the usual caricature.
A typical episode contained four rounds - two standard rounds, the celebrity round, and then a final standard round, some episodes would feature one less or one more standard round. At the end of each episode, each panelist would tell how much money they "lost" followed by a good-night.
Theme
For most of the shows run, the theme for ''The Name's the Same'' was a busy string arrangement called "Shooting Star" by
Sidney Torch. This was used until the program's last 11 episodes, when an instrumental version of "
Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis" by
Kerry Mills was used (
Ralston Purina
Ralston Purina Company was a St. Louis, Missouri,–based American conglomerate with substantial holdings in animal feed, food, pet food, consumer products, and entertainment. On December 12, 2001, it merged with Swiss food-giant Nestlé's ...
of
St. Louis
St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a populatio ...
was the show's sponsor).
Foreign versions
A
UK version was made for radio (
BBC Home Service
The BBC Home Service was a national and regional radio station that broadcast from 1939 until 1967, when it was replaced by BBC Radio 4.
History
1922–1939: Interwar period
Between the early 1920s and the outbreak of World War II, the BBC ...
) and TV (
BBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1 January 1927. It p ...
) with British namesakes of famous people, buildings and things. It ran on TV from 1954 to 1955 with
Bernard Braden as the original host, later replaced by
Peter Martyn.
A one-off revival edition was produced for
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002 in 2005 as part of a season of programs detailing the "lost decade."
Episode status
At least some episodes with all four regular hosts were saved as
kinescope
Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 1940s ...
films. Most recently, the show aired in reruns on
GSN at 3:30 a.m.
ET every morning following ''
What's My Line?
''What's My Line?'' is a Panel show, panel game show that originally ran in the United States, between 1950 and 1967, on CBS, originally in black and white and later in color, with subsequent American revivals. The game uses celebrity panelists ...
'' in GSN's "Black & White Overnight" block. The latest run began on July 14, 2008, with an episode from August 6, 1952, and ended on December 2, 2008 with the series finale. Episodes hosted by Lewis were added to the
Buzzr
Buzzr (stylized as BUZZR) is an American digital broadcast television network owned by Fremantle North America, a unit of the Fremantle subsidiary of RTL Group. The network serves as an outlet for the extensive library of classic game shows ow ...
schedule in January 2018, then removed from the schedule in January 2019.
Several episodes rerun by GSN are available in their original, uncut form (e.g., with commercials and uncrunched credits) in the collectors' trading circuit, as well as from "public-domain" dealers like Shokus Video. One of these is from April 25, 1955, in which famous clown
Emmett Kelly fulfills his "Secret Wish," painting co-host Ray Goulding's face like that of a clown.
References
External links
*
UKGameshows.com: ''The Name's the Same''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Name's The Same, The
1950s American game shows
1951 American television series debuts
1955 American television series endings
American Broadcasting Company game shows
Black-and-white American television shows
American panel games
Television series by Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions
1950s British game shows
1954 British television series debuts
1955 British television series endings
BBC Television Service (TV network) original programming
Black-and-white British television shows