157     October 12, 1955
Bill, Jayne, Henry, Fran Allison

Allison is a television personality best known (especially in 1955) as the human element of the puppet series “Kukla, Fran and Ollie.”  Puppeteer Burr Tillstrom and his Kuklapolitan Players are the guests on tonight’s program, which features children as contestants.   

Kelly Dobbs: “I bit the milkman” 
Charyl Schnobrich: “I cut the bottom off the toothpaste tube and replaced the toothpaste with shaving cream” 
Johnny Justus: “I knocked the lenses out of Daddy’s eyeglasses with a hammer” 
All three of the little brats won awards in various newspaper contests tied to comic strips featuring mischievous children.  Dobbs (5) won a 1954 Dennis the Menace contest and Schnobrich (8) won a 1955 Little Iodine contest, both sponsored by the Minnesota Star Tribune.  Justus, only 4, won a Dennis the Menace contest sponsored by the Washington Post.  Though Little Iodine is less well known today than Dennis, the two are similar, and her strip debuted first (1943 vs 1951).   

The Kuklapolitan Players impersonate the panelists.  
Kukla plays Bill, Madame Oglepuss plays Jayne, Ollie plays Henry and Beulah Witch plays Fran Allison.  Notes aren’t clear, but the Players (all performed by Burr Tillstrom) may have actually played one or both of the next two Secrets.   

Beverly Yakus from Chicago: “I am the bubblegum blowing champ of the US”                 
12-year-old Beverly won an event at a Chicago fair, and in typical Secret fashion, the producers exaggerated her accomplishment for the sake of the game. Beverly also got an appearance on Steve Allen’s Tonight show out of her achievement.  She would take second place at the same fair event the following year. [See E36 ]   

Bobby Mohr from Fogelsville, Pa: “I climbed Mt Whitney, highest peak in the US”             
Bobby was only four years old when he accomplished his climb last year, alongside his father and 11-year-old brother.  It was a three-day, 13.5-mile hike and climb to the 14,496 foot summit.  Mount Whitney in California was the tallest mountain in the US until 1959, when Alaska would join the union and its Mount McKinley would become the highest American peak.  In 2016, the National Parks Service officially reverted the name of the mountain back to Denali, the name by which it was known to the native population for centuries.   

Tillstrom comes out to be recognized at the end of the program.  It’s his birthday tomorrow, as well as the eighth anniversary of his TV show.  Fran Allison has a birthday cake for him.