The show featured a panel of four celebrities who questioned the contestants. On the initial program of February 2, 1950, the panel comprised former New Jersey governor Harold Hoffman, columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, poet Louis Untermeyer, and psychiatrist Richard Hoffmann. The panel varied somewhat in the following weeks, but after the first few broadcasts, during the show's earliest period the panel generally consisted of Kilgallen, actress Arlene Francis, Untermeyer and comedy writer Hal Block. Publisher Bennett Cerf replaced Untermeyer as a regular panelist in 1951, and comedian Steve Allen replaced Block in 1953. Allen left in 1954 to launch "The Tonight Show," and he was replaced by comedian Fred Allen (no relation), who remained on the panel until his death in 1956.