Talk:Robert Q. Lewis

Ok ref needed

I blew through quite a bit of the ref needed tags on this. My sources are all available for online search. I am just doing this whil I am distracted. But if anyone wants to continue. Go right ahead. I hpe to go to u of michigan look up the frat and see if they mention robert Q by name or at least goldberg. I found no such info on the national frat site. I'll be back, but just thought I'd post some hints if someone wants ro help before I do.  :-)

K3vin (talk)

Sexuality undetermined until proven gay

No evidence he was gay so removed it. Especially bad was the article's citation of the New York Times obituary as "proof" of his sexual preference. Click on it and read it. It's still there for the other references. It says he left no immediate survivors, nothing else about his personal life. Lots of old people die without immediate survivors. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.183.42.25 (talk) 22:52, 25 February 2012 (UTC) Slight disagreement: Arlene says "boy" cricket not "male" cricket. my proof is in the actual YouTube footage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fKzmCHAWPcEd (talk) 17:38, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Arlene Francis was making a silly joke. Even if a person who knew her could testify that she was insinuating homosexuality, that would only prove Ms. Francis thought Mr. Lewis was gay. She and her husband were the parents of a small child at the time of that live broadcast, so you would be foolish to suggest that she invaded Mr. Lewis' home and caught him in the act with another man.

In October of 1955, the time frame that the Wikipedia editor is using to illustrate a man's entire long life, it was part of Arlene Francis' job to come up with a new silly introduction every week -- an introduction of the panelist seated next to her. Also, she tried to deliver a comeback line to the person who introduced her. That was how she earned a living to help support her son. When she decided to joke about a cricket, little did she know that editors of an encyclopedia were going to overthink it sixty years later.

The poor woman was under a lot of pressure to charm millions of people six days a week, not only with What's My Line, but with her five-day-a-week Home show on NBC (when you refer to October of 1955). She didn't have the fountain of creativity that Phyllis Diller had. You can find one What's My Line episode (dated September 12, 1965) where Ms. Francis actually becomes hostile. Remember, this game show had to deliver a new episode every week, even on Christmas Day 1955, and it was the one game show back then that depended heavily on spontaneous humor and charm. The game was minimal, unlike the brainy To Tell The Truth and it was all talk, unlike I've Got A Secret with its jugglers and acrobats. So What's My Line panelists occasionally became silly and/or incoherent. Please don't overthink this. A game show from 1955 is the wrong source for what happened off-camera.