Tonight's guest opens the show by saying, "My name is Monty Woolley. I've got a secret. Pause...smile." That's right, he reads the stage directions aloud! An embarrassed Garry has to explain to his audience that the show has cue cards for their guests to read. As it turns out, that wouldn't end up being the most embarrassing thing revealed on this episode.
Garry introduces, "a
newcomer to our show but certainly not to your screens at home. The
famous radio and television star, Miss Faye Emerson." At this point, Faye appears to be just the latest in a string of bright young actresses holding down the final chair, but she would become the fourth regular.
Air Force Second Lieutenant Thomas J Fannon of
Alexandria, Virginia: “I am seeking to marry the General’s daughter”
Wacky impending matrimony. Lieutenant Fannon and his fiancé Susan (who appears after the game) had gotten their marriage license earlier today and would wed a few days later on January 28. Susan's father, not identified by name on the show, is Major General Frederick J Dau, a decorated military figure who would retire from the Air Force in 1959.
Bob Stanton of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: “I was a Communist for the
FBI”
"Bob Stanton" is the pseudonym used by Matt Cvetic, who worked as a spy and informant for the government in the early years of the Red Scare during and after World War II. He first told his story in 1950 in a series of articles appearing in the
Saturday Evening Post
. Those articles led to highly fictionalized versions of Cvetic's tale in film (1951) and on radio (1952-54), all called
I Was a Communist for the FBI
. While the fictional versions portrayed Cvetic as an heroic crusader infiltrating the upper echelons of the Communist Party, the truth is messier and much more mundane. Cvetic provided useful information to the FBI, but his erratic and unreliable behavior threatened his standing both with the FBI and within the very Communist Party meetings he was infiltrating. He never moved up very far in either organization. A tarnished reputation and an easing of Red Scare tensions would make it difficult for Cvetic to remain relevant in later life, though he did publish a book about his story in 1959 called The Big Decision.
Special Guest Monty Woolley: “I sleep with my
beard under the covers”
Woolley taught drama at Yale in the
1920s, directed Broadway shows in the 1930s, and received late-in-life success
when at age 50 he played Sheridan
Whiteside in the 1939 stage play and 1942 film version of The Man Who Came to Dinner.
Following the gam
e, Garry asks his guest,
“Given the choice, why do you sleep with it under
the covers as opposed to over the covers?” Woolley responded, “Well,
in the first place, I don’t. That was their arrangement…uh, to give
me that as a secret.” This was followed by rambling musings from Woolley about the "over/under the covers" issue that manage at one point to invoke Ramesses the Great. There is apparently a difference between playing an engaging wit on the screen and actually being one in real life.
In these early episodes, producer
Allan Sherman and his small team struggled with creating
interesting Secrets for the celebrity guests, who were simply there for their
star power, and not because they had done anything specifically Secret worthy. Often, as in this example,
the production team just made something up, hoping to get a fun game out of
it. No one expected Woolley's bluntness. After Woolley's departure, Garry, clearly troubled by the revelation, tells his audience, "The
show and Mr. Woolley got together and discussed this thing and decided upon it
mutually. That's the way I understood it.” The show would suffer no real damage from that
embarrassment, but Sherman became determined to do something to shake up the
celebrity segment. The eventual answer
would be for celebrities to not bother with secrets at all, but that was still
far away.
Louis L. Carrol of Belton, TX: “I gave Vice President
Nixon his puppy ‘Checkers’”
In September of 1952, weeks before the presidential election, Republican VP nominee Nixon came under fire for a special fund, financed by his supporters, used to reimburse him personally for political expenses. The suggestions of impropriety threatened his place on the ticket. Nixon responded with a thirty-minute television address on September 23 where he defended the fund, attacked his opponents and attempted to humanize his dilemma. Part of that was him saying that whatever happened, he was not giving up a cocker spaniel puppy named Checkers, a gift to his young daughters. This became known as the Checkers Speech. It successfully kept Nixon on the Eisenhower ticket, and the campaign sailed to an easy victory in November. For his part, Carrol didn't even know Nixon personally. A traveling salesman by trade and a fan of the candidate, he had seen a newspaper article saying that Pat Nixon wanted a puppy for their daughters, and his purebred had just given birth to a litter. He contacted Nixon's office in DC, and in a few weeks, Checkers was bound for Washington.
This episode HAS been reviewed at the Library of Congress, but is not generally available among collectors.
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