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The Very Best Game Show in the Whole Wide World

8/21/2015

44 Comments

 
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I’ve spent the last few months absolutely gorging myself on something delightful and delicious. 

And to be perfectly blunt, it won’t be ending anytime soon.

Pretty much everyone who knows me is mindful of the fact that I’ll never refuse a luxe milk chocolate bar or a bag of original Ruffles potato chips, especially when the latter is adjacent to a carton of sour cream. 

However, this binging has nothing to do with anything edible.   

Thanks to the wonder of the Internet, specifically YouTube, I’ve been watching—sometimes for more than a couple of hours at a time—the original What’s My Line television show.  

Making its debut on the CBS Television Network from New York City, on February 16, 1950, WML (as its devotees like to call it) was, like so many of the best things still around, based on a simple premise.  

It went like this.

A contestant came out to the stage and signed his name on a large blackboard. Then, depending on what year the show aired, he would shake hands with each of the four panelists, or later, as the seasons progressed, skip that step and sit next to the host. So everyone watching could play along, the guest’s occupation was next revealed via closed caption to both the studio audience and viewers at home.

After that, the game would begin in earnest.

Each panelist would attempt to figure out what the challenger did for a living—i.e. his “line”--by asking that person basic yes-or-no questions.  Once the guest answered 10 questions in the negative, the game ended, and he won a whopping $50.   The show was an unhurried affair with lots of wiggle room for conversation, so usually there were just two or three challengers per show, not counting the last participant.  (Check out this terrific clip, only a few years before this guest was instantly recognizable around the world, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk4Eq8IcQMk.)

The best part of WML was that final contestant (although sometimes that person came in the middle of the show).    

Panelists were instructed to put on eye masks, and then, “our mystery guest,” pretty much always someone famous, came waltzing out, often to wild applause.  Here, panelists had to determine the person’s identity, so these special challengers also disguised their voices, perhaps whistling, honking a horn, or speaking in an unusual accent. 

In a time when top movie stars hardly ever made it a habit to enter a lowly television studio, WML booked some of the biggest personalities of the day. 

There was Kirk Douglas, John Wayne and Frank Sinatra, who was once even a guest panelist.  Audiences were also thrilled to see Claudette Colbert, Kim Novak and Jane Fonda, who had just finished her first movie. (Here she is, just 22 years old, a bit awed and surprised that anyone would even recognize her, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM4BEskQeeY) 

Oh, did I mention that What’s My Line went on to become the longest-running game show in prime-time network television history?   

In fact, the series ran for 17 seasons on Sunday nights, always on CBS.  The network finally pulled the plug in 1967, but less than a year later, WML was resurrected as a syndicated program, and stayed around until 1975.  Many of its die hard fans, and I’m in this camp, were not exactly thrilled with the reboot, since the new What’s My Line now boasted silly skits and a good dose of slapstick.  

Still, how could a little game this simple (and frankly, painfully low budget) have entertained millions of television viewers for more than two decades?

The answer, I think, lies in its remarkable panel.

Each of those four members, with a big boost from host John Charles Daly, worked to create a unique atmosphere and chemistry that couldn’t help but make the show anything but witty, intelligent and sophisticated.  Indeed, it felt as if once the cameras were turned off , all would regroup at a swank Manhattan penthouse, where they would discuss world events while sipping martinis and sampling exotic hors d’oeuvres.

As a matter of fact, the first broadcast featured a Park Avenue psychiatrist, a poet and a former governor as panel members.  The fourth panelist that night, and the only woman, was popular radio hostess and newspaper columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, who stayed until her sudden passing in 1965.  (Read more about what some believe is Kilgallen’s mysterious death, at http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/death4.htm)   

The second female to join the group was radio and stage actress Arlene Francis, introduced on the show’s second telecast. She nearly always wore a diamond heart pendant, a gift from her husband, and was the only member who stayed on until the very end of WML.  Francis also wore gorgeous, Oscar worthy evening gowns, which were accessorized with matching clutch purses.  Complementing these two women was the 1951 appearance of dapper Bennett Cerf, a founder of Random House Books, who was also known for his compilations of jokes and (mostly terrible) puns. 

This trio became the WML regulars for 15 years, with a smattering of terrific guest panelists along the way that included radio superstar Fred Allen, a young Woody Allen and even, in his dreamboat phase, William Shatner. 

Host John Charles Daly also brought an urbane elegance to the proceedings.

For one thing, Daly treated each contestant with the utmost respect, always addressing the challenger by his or her last name.  Daly was hardly a typical game show emcee: he was a working journalist, having been a CBS Radio Network reporter and in that capacity, the first national correspondent to deliver the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor. 

Indeed, Daly thought that What’s My Line would only be a postscript in his already distinguished career, having been told that the show couldn’t possibly last longer than six months.  But Daly ended up helming WML for the entire 17 years it was on CBS, and even became a vice president of what was then the fledgling ABC network during some of the same period.   

The 1950s has been called the Golden Age of Television, and for my money, WML falls squarely into that milieu.  I wasn’t even a gleam in my parents’ eyes when the show premiered, and I was barely out of nursery school when the decade that brought the Korean War, President Dwight Eisenhower and I Love Lucy ended. 

But I’m so happy that thanks to today’s technology, I can now watch The Very Best Game Show in the Whole Wide World pretty much whenever I want.  

For that, I am a most appreciative fan.

I’d love to hear about your favorite television shows, both past and present!  

p.s. The What’s My Line Facebook Group boasts nearly 2,500 members.  Check it out here, at www.facebook.com/groups/728471287199862/?fref=ts.  
44 Comments
Ron Jarvis
8/21/2015 03:35:05 pm

Every time Ringling Bros Circus hit NYC they would try to get our rigger to go on the show. His nickname was 'Cockroach' and before Ringling he painted the Brooklyn Bridge for a living. Finally they asked him why he always turned them down. Alimony. It turned out that his ex-wife had no idea where to find him, and he wanted to keep it that way.

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Hilary
8/21/2015 03:52:48 pm

Now THAT is funny! We had people on the little mud show I was on, Rudy Brothers, who also didn't want to be found. I remember one, a carnie who everyone called Chains. He was covered with tats and, of course, actually *wore* chains. Was always very kind to me, a scared First of May. :)

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Pam Thomas
8/21/2015 04:02:56 pm

The show was very adult and soigné. Formal and sophisticated. My favorite show was Candid Camera. The crew was sent to my Catholic school to prank the kids at recess. A man dressed as a giant crow appeared on the hill above where we played. I guess they thought we would run, screaming. I also guess they never heard of the Inquisition or the crusades. We all picked up rocks, and ran, in our little uniforms to stone the crow man, who fled for his life. We were all punished. No recess for the rest of the year.

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Hilary
8/22/2015 02:22:14 am

Now I would have LOVED to see film of that! Of course, Allen Funt started in the 1940s with Candid Microphone, and there are a few good ones you can listen to online. I've often said that he should have become a billionaire many times over because all sorts of versions of the show/his original idea, including ones where people are "punked," is really derived from the original. Having said that, he was not a nice man. He installed hidden cameras and microphones in employees' offices and those who spoke negatively about him were fired. This only came out a few years ago.

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George Marshall
8/21/2015 04:07:05 pm

There were two out of many that I was particularly fond of and that I mostly watched as reruns "I Love Lucy" never failed to make me laugh and it was never a harsh or mean humor. She really was a lovable clown.
The other was the first program of the Honeymooners. The fifteen minute, black and white, with the simple set of the New York working class apartment.
Ralph and Alice and their neighbors Norton and Trixie. That was the whole show but they created always something special in their skits which were so well written. The main thing however was their personalities.
That carried it. I have always, then and now preferred the kind of acting in comedy and drama which makes much with little.

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Hilary Grant
8/22/2015 02:34:44 am

I know there are HUGE legions of Honeymooner fans; I haven't checked, but I'm sure there's a Facebook Fan Site. And I agree: the simple, 15-minute sketches were the best. Fred Flintstone was based on Ralph Kramden, by the way. :)

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Laura Carter
8/21/2015 05:28:18 pm

I really enjoyed reading this! It brought back memories of watching the show on my family's tiny black and white TV screen. Interestingly, in the 1990's, when my son was in First Grade he was a contestant on a Nickelodeon game show for kids. The premise of "Figure It Out" was similar to "What's My Line?" A panel of 4 young performers from shows on the network had a certain number of guesses to learn what the young contestant's secret talent was. If the talent was not guessed, the contestant took home great prizes. My son won a family vacation to Taos, New Mexico, a skateboard, rollerblades, a 35mm camera, a large tent, Sketchers shoes, and other goodies. His secret talent? After stumping the panel, he demonstrated his ability to walk with six pennies between each of his toes!

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Hilary
8/22/2015 02:32:17 am

Ha! Mark Goodson and Bill Todman--the producers of WML-- should have collected royalties on that idea. And those are some damn good prizes for a kids' show! I think the WML panel would have been stumped, too. However, sometimes it would take just one answer to lead the panel almost immediately to the "line." :)

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W. Gary Wetstein link
8/21/2015 09:58:09 pm

Congrats on the new blog-- great to see a blog about WML! And thanks for plugging the Facebook group. Very kind of you. I look forward to future posts-- and please feel free to share new posts in the Facebook group. I'm not great at following blogs myself, so I'd personally be apt to miss a lot otherwise.

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Hilary
8/22/2015 02:28:08 am

I'm so happy you like it! I started the blog in February writing about all things that I feel like musing about--that's a pretty wide swath! If so desired, check out the archives, arranged by month, to the right for more topics. This WML one is the first I've done about television, though. :)

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Christine
8/22/2015 12:21:36 am

Perfect description of the show! I presume that you have seen the episode where Emmett Kelly is the mystery guest? http://www.tv.com/shows/whats-my-line/episode-301-95451/
Not viewable right now, but hopefully that will be rectified soon....

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Hilary
8/22/2015 02:36:18 am

Ooooooh, I have been planning to watch that one! Hopefully we'll be able to view it sooner than later. :)

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Melany Shapiro
8/22/2015 10:44:27 am

I have a vague recollection of the syndicated show when I was a kid, but I discovered the original back when GSN would run "Black and White Overnight." From the very first second, the elegant outfits and the upper crust way of speaking had me hooked!

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Hilary
8/22/2015 01:25:02 pm

I remember the syndicated show as well, but it absolutely didn't engage me the way the original show does. :)

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Bev Praver link
8/22/2015 03:24:27 pm

I old enough to have watched it in real time with my parents from the first show, although I can't say I recall the first one. I loved that show as well as "To Tell The Truth" The original "Jeopardy" and "Concentration". which was like the board game of Memory.The only one I still watch is Jeopardy and I actually had the pleasure of being a contestant on the show back in 1987.

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Hilary
8/22/2015 03:34:36 pm

It seems that there were some wonderfully imaginative game shows back then--with a lot of them lifted from radio. I have to ask: how did make out on Jeopardy? :)

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Bev Praver link
8/22/2015 03:33:23 pm

The first guest on the show with Jane Fonda was a census taker in 1960. I had that job too in the same year!

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Hilary
8/23/2015 04:43:00 am

That was a tough one to guess! The panelists couldn't just show up; they had to read newspapers and magazines and listen to radio shows to see what was going on... especially with the mystery guests.

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Rebecca
8/23/2015 03:20:48 am

A couple of years ago, Alan and I watched every single episode of the original Star Trek. These old shows are so entertaining and do stand the test of time. Thanks for your post!

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Hilary
8/23/2015 04:46:02 am

And, those original shows didn't have the budget for tons of special effects. Instead, the episodes were full of great writing and great characters. (I also had a HUGE crush on Bill Shatner) We have the George Takei documentary in our Netflix queue and I can't wait to see it. :)

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Bev Praver link
8/23/2015 07:42:14 am

In answer to your question of how I did on Jeopardy, I came in second because I didn't recognize "Last Train to Clarksville" by the Monkeys. It was a musical daily double in the category "Trains". I was leading going into that and since I know ( or thought I knew ) just about every train song in the world I bet a lot. That was in the days before everyone got cash prizes. So I won a daybed and a Brother word processor, neither of which I needed. They were delivered to me right after we moved to Cambria and I sold them.

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Hilary
8/23/2015 08:40:25 am

Those are terrible gifts! I have a friend who won more than $40,000 on Wheel of Fortune. She wasn't leading up until the very end. Pressure, for sure! :)

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leslie spoon
8/23/2015 09:01:41 am

I really liked the "Munsters" and the "Adams Family". The "Honeymooners was" good too.

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Hilary
8/23/2015 09:41:48 am

It's funny that you liked both of those first two shows... as The Munsters was a parody of The Addams Family. I've met John Astin (Gomez on The Addams Family) a few times, and he is a very nice, kind man. Like WML, The Honeymooners had, and still has, MANY fans! :)

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Larry Grant
8/23/2015 09:08:11 am

I think I was in 7th grade (1961) when, if homework was completed, I was allowed to stay up after The Ed Sullivan Show to watch WML.

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Hilary
8/23/2015 09:43:13 am

Yeah, I just looked up the times that WML aired-- 10:30 to 11 p.m. So CBS recognized that it was a very grownup show! xo

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Lorraine Dansky
8/23/2015 12:46:50 pm

I have many memories of 1950s tv shows. I have always loved the Honeymooners. My favorite children's shows were Howdy Doody, Winky Dink. I remember early versions of game shows, The Price is Right with host Bill Cullen. You Bet Your Life with host Groucho Marx, This is Your Life, Queen for a Day,I've Got a Secret, and your favorite, What's My Line. We recently got Buzzr, a tv station that shows a lot of old game shows including WML and I've Got a Secret. It is fun watching the old game shows I used to love watching with my mom!

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Hilary
8/23/2015 03:10:56 pm

Wow, what a memory! In Los Angeles, we had a lot of made-for-kids-to-watch, super cheap budget local shows. One of my favorites was Engineer Bill, because he played a game with a glass of milk. He'd instruct kids to get a glass, then proceeded to say GREEN LIGHT! to drink, and RED LIGHT! to stop. An ingenious way to get kids to drink their milk. I think you can watch Queen for a Day on YouTube as well, but that show always made me a little sad. Basically, the woman with the biggest sob story was the winner. In a weird way, Ellen DeGeneres has updated that concept. Anyway, here's a link to Engineer Bill! www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv7pYleLRNQ

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Gary
8/23/2015 04:20:30 pm

My absolute favorite show!!! It seemed the height of sophistication when I was growing up in the mid-west, and I always felt like I was on the show when I went to big events in NYC when I lived there as an adult.
I so wish GSN still aired it-alas- we don't get BUZZ in KY. A least I have youtube.
Thanks for this great article.

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Hilary
8/24/2015 01:09:44 am

I think BUZZ is a fairly new cable offering, so maybe it's being tested in larger markets first, and if it does well, will be offered in a lot more markets? Something to hope for, anyway! Re: the height of sophistication... it was! And, the fact that a fair number of mystery guests were also appearing in a current Broadway play, or there had been a mention of them in a NYC paper, made it even more so. :)

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Tammy Dalcin
8/24/2015 02:26:37 pm

I would have to say Gilligan's island was my all-time favorite TV show. I would come home from school, plop my butt on the floor, and turn the channel to watch my favorite characters In action. My sister and i had our eyes glued to that boob tube. My secret crush was on Gilligan and the professor. I always wanted Ginger and the professor to hook up, or Maryann and Gilligan. Sadly there never was any romantic relationship between them. Oh well, at Least the show kept us entertained long enough to stay out our mother's hair so she could finish cooking dinner!

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Hilary
8/25/2015 03:03:58 am

What's amazing is the Gilligan's Island was ONLY on for three seasons. I remember seeing some EARLY black and white shows, at night, as a small child. What you were watching, after school, were old shows in syndication. I believe that it is STILL the most viewed show in the world... even more so than I Love Lucy. Dawn Wells is very active (on Facebook, you can Friend her!) promoting the show. This is one of my favorite pretty recent clips of her... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1MIac-ytBY

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Jerry Lazar
8/27/2015 01:01:25 am

My parents forbid most TV when we were kids (and I haven't bought one in 20+ years -- before "cord-cutting" was even a thing), but I do have fond memories of "Lost in Space," undoubtedly because of my boyhood crushes on the Robinson daughters...

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Hilary
8/27/2015 06:13:58 am

Oh, yes, the Robinson daughters! I'm one of thousands who is a FB Friend of Angela Cartwright. And, she used to own a store in Toluca Lake called Rubber Boots and I would see her in there occasionally when I worked in the area. She writes a lot about her daughter gig with The Sound of Music, not too much about the Lost in Space years. :)

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Glenn
8/28/2015 06:39:34 am

In the 1960s, in the afternoons I would watch "Where The Action Is," which was teenage-themed show filmed in California (where else?). The dancers were great, and the women dancers wore the hip uniform of that era: mini-skirts and white go-go boots while dancing to the music of Paul Revere & The Raiders, The Grass Roots, The Spencer Davis Group (I always think of WTAI whenever I hear "Gimme Some Lovin'). It was really groovy.

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Hilary
8/28/2015 11:02:17 am

Wow! I had to look this one up on YouTube, and unbelievably, there are a fair number of videos. From the way the show was presented, I can see why so many teens thought that California was where it was "happening." Haha! I especially love the "Action Girls." www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SM7Mp195u4

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Susan Jordan
8/29/2015 12:29:12 pm

Even though I was born in late '64 and only about 10 or 11 when it went off the air, I remember this show fondly! I especially loved when celebrities came on, and the panelists had to put on those big blindfolds. A later show with a slightly similar format, "The Liars' Club", was also a favorite of mine. :)

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Hilary
8/30/2015 04:34:11 am

The WML premise is a great idea, which is why it has been copied (not as well, in my opinion) with other game show formats (see Laura Carter's comment). The blindfolds also changed over the years, and that's fun to see the progression. The very first show had a glamorous ingenue come out and pass them out. I' m sure that ended because it took up too much time!

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kerri
9/3/2015 05:03:02 pm

I admit I am thoroughly addicted to television. I think I mentioned in your last blog that it often keeps me from another one of my loves, which is reading. I cannot begin to mention all my favorite shows, because there are alot. TV is great these days! So much of it! Fargo, Bates Motel, Justified, Curb your Enthusiasm, Game of Thrones, Bill Maher/John Stewart (I will miss John AND the Colbert Show), Meet the Press/Sunday Morning, gosh I know I am forgetting some. Oh yeah, Family Guy, King of Queens, Modern Family is brilliant, but I am getting kind of tired of it, I enjoy zoning out to some really not so good stuff (although some would disagree with that statement) like Big Bang, Mom, Odd Couple, Broke Girls, and other formulaic sitcoms. Late show stuff (usually just the monologue), SNL, Girls, Orange is the new Black, Jeopardy, etc. etc. The tv is a huge time sucker for me, and I look forward to zoning out to it almost every night after a hard day at work.

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Hilary
9/3/2015 08:50:48 pm

Wow! I've watched maybe one-third of the shows you've mentioned. I watched all of Curb Your Enthusiasm on Netflix and enjoy the wonderful, leisurely pace of Sunday Morning. Yes, Modern Family is starting to wane, but is has a couple of good seasons left. READ Orange is the New Black... it' s wonderful! So much good TV, so little time! :)

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George Koury
9/4/2015 09:19:28 pm

I love "What's My Line". It was one of my favorite TV shows. My family was one of the first to have a television in my neighborhood. Friends and neighbors would come over to watch some of these great old shows. Live television from NYC was very exciting. It ran the gamut from dramas, comedies, variety and children's entertainment. There was a freedom and freshness to it all.

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Hilary
9/5/2015 10:58:39 am

Absolutely! It was a time when you could take chances because it was such a new medium. That's expressed so well in the film "My Favorite Year" -- :) I think it's another reason I'm so attracted to the silent movie era... same thing, but maybe even more so. If you wanted to work, and work hard, there was a job for you, and it was definitely the sink-or-swim school of training!

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Hilary
9/5/2015 12:47:00 pm

And here's a delightful WML parody from Uncle Milton Berle. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=358&v=MIzk88M9l8M

Hilary
9/13/2015 10:49:14 am

Hope everyone can copy and paste this one... great photo of WML from "above" :)
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=987009858023651&set=gm.916750471705275&type=1&theater


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    Hilary Roberts Grant

    Journalist, editor, filmmaker, foodie--and a clown! 
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