Ted Lester from Keyport, New Jersey: “I was not playing the
clarinet just now” and Jean-Jacques Perrey from Paris, France: “I was”
The two men appear to have just
performed a bit of “Begin the Beguine”, but Mr. Lester was faking it. (Lester
is a musician in his own right, however.)
Perrey, who appeared to only be playing piano, was also playing an
electronic instrument called an Ondioline which was mimicking the sound of a
clarinet. Perrey proves its versatility
by imitating many other instruments. Perrey
toured Europe demonstrating this early synthesizer before settling in New York
to work on his experimental sounds. In
1965 he would meet Gershon Kingsley, and the two would partner to become
pioneers in electronic music. Over the
ensuing decades Perrey’s compositions would turn up in unusual places. One, The
Savers, was the theme to the 1970s game show The Jokers Wild. Another, Baroque Hoedown, was used for years in
the Disney theme parks for their Main Street Electrical Parade. Some of his work has even turned up on SpongeBob SquarePants. Perrey would return, this time with Kingsley,
in 1966 (
E665
).
14-year-old Ruth Tucker from Mattoon, Illinois: “I made the
dresses Betsy & Bess are wearing tonight…(They don’t know it)”
Garry
explains that the female panelists usually don’t wear their own clothes, but
since both Betsy and Bess typically pick out their designer dresses in advance,
both immediately knew something was amiss when they arrived at the dressing
room earlier in the evening. Garry
doesn’t mention that this Secret came about when the ninth-grader contacted the
show expressing her desire to costume the women. Ceil Chapman from the show’s wardrobe
department arranged for her dream to come true.
Special Guest Van Johnson places the
panelists’ footprints in cement. Garry
gets his done too. The show ends with
Garry making an appeal to mayors across the country who might want to start
their own TV panel show version of Grauman’s Chinese Theater (See
E400
and
E479
).
Johnson will be appearing in the musical Damn
Yankees in summer stock this season.
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