You're In The Picture

Whether this series lasted for one or two episodes is a point for debate, but it only ran for one episode in it's intended format.

This ill-fated prime-time game-show was to showcase one of CBS superstars, Jackie Gleason. The show was a somewhat bizarre hybrid of Groucho's "You Bet Your Life" and the popular "What's my Line?" The game consisted of 4 celebrity panelist sticking their heads through the opening of a painted stage flat (somewhat like the silly things on Coney Island that people would get themselves photographed peering out of.) The panelists were to ask 'Yes' or 'No' questions of Jackie in an attempt to whittle down the possibilities and guess the scenario they were being depicted in.

While it all sounded good on paper, it was a hideously embarrassing, dismal disaster when it was played out before a studio audience on live television.

The show did air the following week, but the celebrity panel and the painted flats were gone. Instead, Jackie Gleason spent the 30 minutes sitting in a chair on the stage, sipping a beverage (probably scotch) from an elegant china coffee cup, smoking L&Ms (Liggett & Meyers was the sponsor of this debacle) and apologizing profusely for the "Horrible Bomb" that America had been subjected to the previous week. "That's show we did last week made a real H-Bomb look like a two fingered salute......" He derided nearly everyone involved, but directed the most scathing criticism towards himself for letting it go out over the air.

As it turned out, the reaction to the 'apology' program was tremendously positive as no one in network television had ever before gone on the air to say "Boy, did we really screw up.", much less for an entire 30 minute show.

For the next couple of weeks, the time slot became "The Jackie Gleason Show" and he did a simple one-on-one extemperanous interview with a popular show-biz personality while CBS mulled over recovery options. Mr. Paley was not amused.