John Charles Daly

John Charles Patrick Croghan Daly (February 20, 1914 – February 24, 1991) was an American journalist, host, radio and television personality, ABC News executive, TV anchor, and game show host, best known for his work on the CBS panel game show What's My Line?

Daly was the first national correspondent to report the attack on Pearl Harbor and the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

During World War II, Daly covered front-line news from Europe and North Africa.

After his father died of a tropical fever, Daly's mother moved the family to Boston, Massachusetts.

At that time, John was 11 years old, and attended the Tilton School, where he later served on its board of directors for many years, contributing to the construction or restoration of many buildings on campus.

He did his post-secondary education at a junior college and graduated from Boston College.

Daly worked for a time in a wool factory, and at a transit company in Washington, D.C., before becoming a reporter for NBC Radio, and later for CBS.

Daly began his broadcasting career as a reporter for NBC Radio and then WJSV, the local CBS Radio Network affiliate in Washington, D.C., as CBS' White House correspondent.

He appears on the famous "One Day in Radio" tapes of September 21, 1939, in which WJSV preserved its entire broadcast day for posterity.

In this presentation, Daly has a mid-morning show as a man-on-the-street reporter asking quiz questions of passersby.

While covering the Roosevelt White House, Daly became known to the national CBS audience as the network announcer for many of the President's speeches.

He also had several television and movie guest appearances from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, including an uncredited role in Bye Bye Birdie (as the reporter announcing the title character's induction into the Army) and as the narrator, in a mock documentary style, on the premiere episode of the rural comedy series Green Acres.

In late 1941, Daly transferred to New York City, where he became anchor of The World Today.

During World War II, he covered the news from London as well as the North African and Italian fronts.

He was the first national correspondent to deliver the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7, 1941, and he was also the first to relay the wire service report of the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, interrupting the program Wilderness Road to deliver the news.

Those bulletins have been preserved on historical record album retrospectives and radio and television documentaries.

Daly was a war correspondent in 1943 in Italy during Gen. George S. Patton's infamous "slapping incidents."

After the war, he was a lead reporter on CBS Radio's news/entertainment program CBS Is There (later revived for television as the Walter Cronkite-hosted series You Are There), which recreated the great events of history as if CBS correspondents were on the scene.

As a reporter for the CBS radio network, Daly was the voice of two historic announcements.

In 1949 he starred in the short-lived CBS Television newspaper drama The Front Page, where it was thought that his presence and journalistic experience would give the series more authenticity.

This led to a job in 1950 as the host and moderator on a new panel show produced by Goodson–Todman, What's My Line? The show lasted 17 years, with Daly hosting all but four episodes of the weekly series.

Each What's My Line? panelist introduced the next in line at the start of the show.

He was a vice president at ABC during the 1950s.

During the 1950s, Daly became the vice president in charge of news, special events, and public affairs, religious programs and sports for ABC and won three Peabody Awards.

The series spawned a brief radio version in 1952, also hosted by Daly.

From 1953 to 1960, he anchored ABC News broadcasts and was the face of the network's news division, even though What's My Line? was then on competing CBS.

On Fred Allen's death in 1956, Random House book publisher and humorist Bennett Cerf became the anchor panelist who would usually introduce Daly.

Cerf usually prefaced his introduction with a pun or joke that over time became a pun or joke at Daly's expense.

Daly would then often fire back his own retort.

Cerf and Daly enjoyed a friendly feud from across the stage for the remainder of the history of the program.

He did hosting duties on Who Said That?, It's News to Me, We Take Your Word, and Open Hearing. Daly was a narrator on The Voice of Firestone starting in 1958.

In July 1959, along with the Associated Press writer John Scali, Daly reported from Moscow on the infamous Kitchen Debate between First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and Vice President Richard M. Nixon.

Daly's first foray into television was as a panelist on the game show Celebrity Time.

Toward the end of the network run, in the mid-1960s, Fates broached the idea of expanding the usual format to include playful, on-stage demonstrations of the contestants' products or services, for the sake of variety, only to be met with Daly's "Look, kiddo. If you want to do stuff like this, do it on I've Got a Secret." The producers, Fates said, were unable to challenge Daly for fear of losing him as the show's moderator, and the format remained sedentary with Daly presiding from his desk.

The mystery guest on the final CBS program (aired September 3, 1967) was Daly himself.

Daly had received many letters over the years asking him to fill that role; until the finale he never could, because Daly served as the "emergency mystery guest" in case the scheduled celebrity failed to show on the live program.

According to producer Gil Fates, Daly was resistant to changes that would have diminished the show's dignity.

Daly insisted on a formal procedure; for example, he addressed the panelists as "Miss" or "Mister", and both Daly and the panelists always wore formal attire in keeping with the moderator's scholarly bearing.

Only after Daly's departure was Fates able to expand the format, when the retooled What's My Line? was revived for syndication in 1968.

The series also inspired a multitude of concurrent international versions and a syndicated U.S. revival in 1968 in which Daly did not participate.