655     September 5, 1966 (Taped June 20)
Betsy, Bill, Bess, Henry

Despite being the first new show after ten weeks of summer reruns, and despite the presence of former host Garry Moore as a special guest, this episode is not considered to be the season premiere by CBS.  That would happen next week, with a move to a new time and a change to color broadcasting.   

The guests are three young people, each of whom are said to have spent their summer in unusual ways.  Since this episode was taped before summer really got started, we’ll have to take the show’s word for it.   


Jean Balukas from Brooklyn (6 ½): “I gave pocket billiard exhibitions and instructions”                 
Jean would become one of the dominant figures in the sport, running up an extraordinary string of championships before walking away from the game in the early nineties.  Today she is considered one of the top pool players in history.  She performs a demonstration here with her five-year-old sister.   


Steve Herlihy (17) from Gardena, California: “I worked as a professional bullfighter”                 
Herlihy claims to have fought in Mexico and South American under the name Esteban Oleji.  However, in his book Yankees in the Afternoon: An Illustrated History of American Bullfighters (McFarland 2002) author Lyn Sherwood says he later exposed Herlihy as a fraud on a Los Angeles television station.   

David Manning (8) from Brooklyn: “I performed in a Broadway musical”                 
David played Little Jake in Annie Get Your Gun in a limited 1966 run at the Lincoln Center.  He performs here with members of the show’s dance team.  In 1968 he would join the cast of the musical Mame (1966-70).
  

Special guest Garry Moore is given the star treatment previously reserved for Bette Davis ( E561 ), Lucille Ball ( E597 ) and Arthur Godfrey ( E618 ).  The studio audience wrote questions for Garry, but before he answers, the panel predicts what he’s going to say.  After a couple of years away from television, not entirely of his own volition, Garry is returning to CBS with a new variety show to air on Sunday nights beginning September 11.  This new edition would not make a dent in the dominant ratings of NBC’s Bonanza and would leave the air in January 1967.

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