73     March 3, 1954
Bill, Jayne, Henry, Polly Bergen

Garry the Weatherman: “You are very kind.  I can tell by your mood that it must've stopped raining outside.  It has been a real crummy day in New York City.  It's been raining all day.  But I understand that you, my friends, out in the Midwest  have really had it tough with 14 inches of snow.”  

Colonel Albert S Townsend (Ret) from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: "I bought undies for the WACs during WWII"
From the beginning, producer Allan Sherman recognized the Secret potential for slightly naughty humor, especially with a titillating "secret" and panelists willing to ask preset questions that were designed to get a laugh.  For example, when Jayne asks, "Is this thing normally handled by enlisted men?" you can be sure she didn't come up with that on her own.  Even though the show played with almost exactly the same secret less than a year earlier ( E34 ), this time around a TV columnist in Memphis found the whole thing terribly offensive and briefly mounted a campaign against panel shows and their disgusting content.  He was particularly outraged by a "filthy joke" Henry made after the game had concluded.  Henry's terribly outrageous comment? "Well, the Army had a colonel to buy undies. Couldn't they have had a private to buy privates?"  Just scandalous.  As Exchange Officer for the Fort Belvoir Exchange in Virginia, Col Townsend was actually responsible for purchasing everything needed by soldiers male and female, including groceries, clothing, tires, even gasoline.  Those just aren't as funny as undies.

[Steven Morehouse] of New Britain , Pennsylvania: "I was baptized by Jayne Meadows' father"
Despite a one-time-only expedited game in which each panelist just gets one questioning period (a change that would go into effect permanently a year later), Jayne has no problem solving this one.  She mentions that her family has several friends named Morehouse.  The Rev Francis James Meadows Cotter and his wife Ida were Episcopal missionaries in China when Jayne was born in 1919.  (Jayne and sister Audrey took the family middle name as their professional stage names.)  Rev Cotter and his wife spent 13 years in China, eventually fleeing in 1927 amid growing warfare there.  In 1935, Rev Cotter became rector of Christ Church in Sharon, Connecticut, a position he would keep until his retirement in 1957.

Special guest Ralph Bellamy makes a bet with Garry: If the audience laughs at a panelist’s question, Garry secretly pumps ice water onto Bellamy’s back.  Bellamy does the same to Garry if a question doesn’t get a laugh.
This all comes out of a gentlemen's disagreement  about which show is more "dignified", Gary's Secret or Bellamy's private-eye drama Man Against Crime (1949-1954).  Bellamy was a solid character actor who typically played the second lead in movies, often cast as the rich but dull character who in the end loses the girl to the film's star.  He would gain acclaim, and a Tony Award, for his portrayal of FDR in the stage (1958) and film productions of Sunrise at  Campobello  (1960). Later generations saw his lighter side as one of the Duke Brothers in Trading Places (1983).  Off screen he was known as a fierce fighter for the rights of actors.  He was one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild and served four terms as the president of Actors Equity (representing live theater) from 1952 until 1964.  It was for that work as much as for his acting roles that he would receive an honorary Academy Award in 1987.