Mr. X (masked): “I married 49 couples
by mistake”
Lewis Heilbroner is a North Carolina
Justice of the Peace who, through a clerical error, wasn’t legally allowed to
perform the several dozen weddings he officiated between 1949 and 1953. He is masked because the show arranged to
surprise one such couple sitting in the studio audience. Everything’s fine though; the North Carolina
legislature had passed a law validating the marriages.
Special Guest Don Ameche: “I’m a bald-headed
garbage man who stands on his head while taking a shower”
Ameche’s ridiculous secret comes about
through a demonstration of the new home game manufactured by Lowell. In the home version, players draw from four
decks of cards to create thousands of incongruous and presumably hilarious phrase
combinations. Garry has been giving home
games away along with the Winstons as parting gifts for the last few
weeks. Ameche was a debonair leading man
in films of the 30s and 40s who transitioned to television in the 50s and 60s. After a fallow decade or so, he had a huge
late-in-life comeback in such 80s films as Trading
Places (1983) and Cocoon (1985),
winning an Oscar for the latter.
Professor Clyde Tombaugh from New Mexico: “I
discovered the planet Pluto” (Feb. 18, 1930)
Tombaugh made his amazing discovery
from the Lowell observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Tombaugh explains his findings using a huge
star chart on stage and engages Garry in a brief but wide-ranging astronomical discussion,
even touching on the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Generations grew up knowing Pluto as the
ninth planet in the solar system, until astronomers demoted it to “dwarf”
status in 2006.
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