Seven-year-old Joey: “I’m going to conduct
Toscanini’s orchestra in Carnegie Hall”
Joey Alfidi will conduct the ensemble
known as the Symphony of the Air on November 18. Toscanini led the NBC Symphony Orchestra for
decades. When he retired in 1954 and the
network disbanded its orchestra, most of the members founded this new group,
which to the public was still thought of as Toscanini’s orchestra. After the game, Joey goes down to the
orchestra pit and demonstrates his skill on four musical instruments (piano,
trombone, bass and vibraphone). Known as
Joseph in his adult life, Alfidi would go on to have a celebrated career as a
piano virtuoso.
[Freddy Renucci]: “I gave Elvis Presley a
haircut”
Renucci works as a barber at the
Warwick Hotel in NYC. In July, Elvis sat
down for a haircut with an aide known as “The Weasel” (mobster Jimmy Fratianno)
standing guard over Renucci, making sure he didn’t touch the sideburns. This is one of many Secrets the show would use
featuring Elvis, though The King himself never appeared on the program.
Special Guest Robert Young will throw Faye a
farewell party on stage, using furnishings from Faye’s own dining room.
Faye is leaving the show for an
unspecified amount of time to star in the Broadway play Protective Custody. After a
few weeks of out-of-town tryouts, the play would flop on Broadway, with only
three performances over two days in late December. Faye would be back on the panel in
January. Young had a long career as an
actor in B movies before finding enormous success as the patriarch of Father Knows Best, first on radio and
then for six seasons on television. In
the 70s, he had a second successful TV run as the star of Marcus Welby, MD.
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