4     July 17, 1952
Bill, Jayne, Melville Cooper, Laura Hobson

Edward Jacobson of Kansas City, MO: “I was Truman’s haberdashery partner.”
The media and public took great amusement in the president’s history as an operator of a men’s clothing store, even though the enterprise took place for only a short time decades earlier and was a financial failure.  Truman & Jacobson operated in downtown Kansas City from 1919 until 1922.  The two men remained lifelong friends.  So much so that Jacobson had free access to the Oval Office during Truman’s presidency.  In fact, Jacobson’s influence is credited in part with the US becoming the first nation to grant diplomatic recognition to the new state of Israel in 1948.   

[Tom Hanrahan] of Stamford, CT: “I spent a night in a harem.”   

Special Guest Buster Keaton: “I threw a pie at Hedda Hopper.”           
Keaton’s frequent appearances on 1950s television, following a career drought and a long battle with alcoholism, are credited with reviving public interest in his silent films of the 1920s. Keaton remained in the public eye with TV and film appearances, often performing his own stunts well into his sixties.  Today, he is considered one of the greatest actor-directors in film history. Hedda Hopper was a well-known and somewhat notorious gossip columnist whose work appeared in print from 1935 until her death in 1966.  Before that fame, however, she was a budding actress who appeared in one of Keaton’s films where she took that pie to the face.  Though not mentioned on the show, the movie is Speak Easily (1932).   

Dorothy Warren of Sacramento, CA: “My father is in the audience.”   
As Garry establishes before the game begins, Dorothy’s father is Earl Warren, at the time the governor of California who had recently campaigned to be the Republican nominee for president.  A little more than a year after this episode airs, President Eisenhower, who had defeated Warren in the Republican primaries, would appoint him Chief Justice of the United States.   Governor Warren comes out and shakes hands with the panel and Garry at the end of the abbreviated game. 

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