"And now, let's meet our award-winning 'What's My Line' panel..."

The Gameshow Network used to have a block of programming they called Black and White Overnight. In that time period they would televise episodes of four game shows from the 1950's and early 1960's. These shows are a fascinating look at people and events from the past. I have seen, what the program likes to call, " stars of stage and screen" (today it was Sir Michael Redgrave) and politicians like "Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts" on What's My Line. It is amazing the number of times that someone who is now famous will walk out on the stage and the panel and audience will have no idea of just who they are.

The other shows are just as interesting. Who knew that the The Supremes had been on To Tell The Truth? Or that the "manufacturers suggested retail price" for products on The Price Is Right would turn out to be an amusing bit of information in this day and age.

On I've Got A Secret a 95-year-old-man's secret was that at age five he was inside the Ford Theater when President Abraham Lincoln was shot. All he remembered about that night was seeing John Wilkes Booth jumping from the balcony to the stage. In his five-year-old mind he thought Booth had fallen out of the balcony and was upset that the man may have been hurt.

The Gameshow Network stopped broadcasting all of these shows except for What's My Line? and every week night we record it so we can watch it the next day. My husband is fascinated with the everyday people who are on the show and always wonders if they are still alive and, if so, what they are now doing. Last week one contestant was a man named Harvey Ellswood Jr. from Denver, Colorado. His line was making and selling balloons.

After the show I pulled out our Denver phonebook to see if his company was still in business and found Ellswood Balloon & Party Favors Inc listed in the Yellow Pages under Balloons-Whsle & Mfrs along with this ad:



That line "Since 1946" convinced me that it was the same company. I showed the ad to my husband and the next day when I came home from walking the dogs he told me he had called Ellswood Balloon & Party Favors Inc and learned some interesting things from the woman who answered the phone.

Ellswood Balloon was Mr. Harvey Ellswood's company and Mr Ellswood was the man who had been on What's My Line? Unfortunately, Mr. Ellswood had died in 1998. Since Mr. Ellswood had been an only child and never married he had no family. He had passed the business on to his best friend of forty years. His best friend happened to be the husband of the woman who answered the phone. Mr. Ellswood's best friend and the woman's husband died in 2001. She now ran the company by herself.

The woman also told my husband she had an audio tape of the show that Mr. Ellswood had been on, but had never seen the episode herself. My husband told her he would make a copy of the show and mail it to her the next day. She was very pleased and then asked him where he was calling from and my husband gave her the name of our little town. He was then flabbergasted when she said she knew of it because it was the town where her parents had gotten married. It turns out she grew up in eastern Colorado in a town about 50 miles away from us. We are going to stop in to see her the next time we are in Denver.