I've Got a Secret is an American panel game show produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman for CBS television.

Created by comedy writers Allan Sherman and Howard Merrill, it was a derivative of Goodson–Todman's own panel show, What's My Line?.

The show was revived for the 1972–1973 season in once-a-week syndication and again from June 15 to July 6, 1976, as a summer replacement series on CBS.

After several months of an ever-changing panel, game show host Bill Cullen, acerbic comedian Henry Morgan, TV hostess Faye Emerson, and actress Jayne Meadows became the four regular panelists.

[3] At various times, guest hosts substituted for Moore, including panelists Cullen, Morgan and Palmer, among others.

[4] Moore was replaced by Steve Allen, who left his own syndicated talk show to take over the game, on September 21, 1964.

Frequent panelists on this revival were Richard Dawson, Henry Morgan, Pat Carroll, and Elaine Joyce.

Regular panelists on this version included Jim J. Bullock, Jason Kravits, Amy Yasbeck, and Teri Garr.

Increasingly later in the run, the panelists were sometimes buzzed out when they were getting too close to the secret, were suspected to be about to get it, or simply at a point that would get a laugh; this was precipitated in part by the fact that, like What's My Line?, the top payoff never increased with inflation, and the money eventually became somewhat secondary to the gameplay, with the cash awards not even mentioned at all by the end of the series.

Beyond the standard celebrity guests, several notable people with secrets appeared, including Colonel Harland Sanders ("I started my restaurant with my first Social Security check"), drummer Pete Best ("I used to be one of The Beatles"), and a 95-year-old man, Samuel J. Seymour, who was the last surviving eyewitness to Abraham Lincoln's assassination (he was five years old at the time).

Several of these challenges predated future game shows which used the same concepts, such as a game in which Woody Allen challenged the panel to guess words based on definitions written by children,[5] which became the basis for Child's Play, and a pair of segments with Peter Falk and Soupy Sales in which the panel had to identify celebrities based on a series of photos starting with infancy and progressing older.

Some of these trips: being sent to England to buy a proper English Christmas meal from a famous English restaurant, while dressed in a stereotypical English derby and morning coat; spending a week at Roy Rogers' dude ranch as a hired hand; accompanying a mathematician to a Las Vegas casino, to test a new, theoretical method of gambling; and going on an African safari with Ann Sheridan (which started immediately, as Morgan received inoculations and his passport photo on stage).

Henry was also recruited as a background spear holder at the Metropolitan Opera, a dead body in a murder-mystery Broadway play, a Santa Claus for disadvantaged kids, and a radio announcer who bravely read his script while the other panelists distracted him mercilessly.

After the game Moore said "Don't worry, Henry, we promise to put these back where we found them," at which point the center stage curtain rose to reveal Morgan's own bed.

Unlike on What's My Line?, the host often offered hints and suggestions when the panel was off in the wrong direction, or when an answer might be misleading.

The series began in black-and-white, and only in 1966 switched regularly to color, though like most programs of this era, existing recordings are in black and white.

In January 1960, as a result of Goodson-Todman's sale, the show became a production of Telecast Enterprises, Inc., which was co-owned by CBS and Moore.

In March 2023, it was announced that Embassy Row, Werner Entertainment and Game Show Enterprises Studios would be producing an hour-long pilot for a potential revival, with Katie Nolan as host.

The panelists for the pilot include Nikki Glaser, Colton Dunn, Cristela Alonzo and Matteo Lane.

[17][18][19] A home game of I've Got a Secret, featuring host Garry Moore on the cover of the box, was released in 1956 by the Lowell Toy Manufacturing Corporation of New York City.

The format of the 1970s revivals were essentially unchanged from the original series, though celebrity secrets, rather than challenges to the panel (whose members changed weekly), did return.

Another element in the revival was that all the panelists were openly gay, but this was generally only referenced in double entendres, such as when host Bil Dwyer was introduced as "the straight man to the panel".

From late 1952 until the 1967 cancellation, most episodes appear to exist as a digital transfer of the original black-and-white kinescope films.

In fact, the prize on the 1956 episode about Samuel J. Seymour, who witnessed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, included $80 (equivalent to $897 in 2023) and a carton of Winston cigarettes.

[citation needed] The over-the-air digital channel Buzzr, owned by Fremantle, has aired the program in a two-hour block, with To Tell the Truth and What's My Line?.

It was an upbeat, spritely march featuring piccolo and xylophone, composed by the show's musical director Norman Paris and played by a live studio combo.

[citation needed] In addition to being used as a tag for his entrance on CBS episodes he hosted, Steve Allen's composition "This Could Be the Start of Something" was used as the opening theme in 1972 arranged by Edd Kalehoff for Score Productions.

It was hosted by newsreader Don Seccombe; and, like its American inspiration, featured regular celebrity panelists including Ron Cadee, Babette Stevens and Joy Chambers (future wife of Australian game show impresario Reg Grundy).

[26] During its run, it featured regular panelists such as Olive Wykes, Shirley Cecil, John Frith, Freddie Bowler and Jack Dyer.