599     March 22, 1965 (Taped March 15)
Carol Channing, Bill, Bess, Henry

Betsy is missing because she is starring in a production of The King and I in Phoenix.  Channing has a new album out entitled Carol Channing Entertains (Command 1965).   

Shura Dvorine from New York City: “I’m a piano player…My piano is in this brief case.”                 
Dvorine was a child prodigy who could read music at the age of two.  He was profiled in a 1928 newspaper article when he was four. He refers to himself here as a “supper club performer” but is an accomplished classical pianist and composer.  For fun, he learns to play music on a simple toy piano he purchased in a store.  Here he performs the Eastern Mediterranean folk song “Misirlou” with members of the Norman Paris band.  “Misirlou” had gained worldwide popularity through a surf rock version performed by Dick Dale (1962).  Dale’s version would later be memorably featured in the film Pulp Fiction (1994).   


John Cannata from Melrose Park, Illinois: “I baked the best cherry pie in a contest against 4000 girls”                 
Cannata is an accomplished high school senior who won a $1000 college scholarship in the contest sponsored by the Northern Illinois Gas Company.  He is the first male contestant in the program’s eight-year history.   

Special guest Vivian Vance: “There’s a man backstage recording every word we say – in shorthand…He can write faster than we can talk (over 300 words a minute)”                 
To put that feat to the test, Vance has everyone talk as rapidly as possible.  Morris Kligman is the man taking dictation, by hand.  Kligman is considered one of the country’s leading court reporters. He is the author of the appropriately titled volume How to Write 240 wpm in Pitman Shorthand (Pitman 1963).  Vance is starring in the sitcom The Lucy Show (1962-1968) but would leave the series at the end of the current season due to disagreements and misunderstandings between her and star Lucille Ball.  She would return for occasional guest appearances in the show’s final two seasons.

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