Allan Sherman, Creator of I've Got A Secret

A surprising factoid from Mark Evanier on the singer who is best known for the 1960's novelty tune Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah:

For a long time, he seemed to be setting some sort of record for being hastily fired from each new position.  Then in 1950, he and a writer friend, Howard Merrill, sold a game show idea to Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, television's most successful producers of such programs.  Industry legend has it that when Sherman and Merrill pitched the idea, Goodson and Todman replied that it was a blatant copy of their hit show, What's My Line? and Sherman responded, "Well, you might as well imitate your own program because if you don't, someone else will."  Somehow, that logic appealed to the producers because a year later, the show — entitled I've Got a Secret — debuted on CBS.  1951 was also when he recorded his first (and for ten years, only) comedy record, singing two of the silly songs he liked to sing at parties.  The record did not succeed but, happily for the Sherman family, the game show did.  It became a long-running hit and he stayed with it, eventually moving up to the title of Producer.

Comments

[Therese Z]

Alan Sherman is an unjustly forgotten funny and gentle man. We listened to his record all the time when I was a kid (along with the JFK impersonator one that did "The First Family" which escapes me).

I should put the album onto a cassette so I can sing along to it in the car...

Thanks for the memory and the factoid.

[Tom McMahon]

Vaughn Meader did The First Family. Disregard my smart-aleck AARP comment; it doesn't apply to you!