Pat Carroll, Gene Rayburn, Nanette Fabray, Richard Dawson
21-year-old college student Hubert Kuehl helped build a calliope: “It’s made of tin cans.”
Kuehl and three buddies built the instrument at tiny
Macalester College in St Paul. Minnesota.
Their original version used 1,473 brightly colored red Coke cans. They called their instrument a Cokenfloete,
Dutch for “Coke flute.” The instrument was first demonstrated publicly at a
‘pop concert’ (get it?) in Macalester back in April, where patrons received
free Coke. None of this is explained on
the show, where Steve is content to just have the sight gag of the unusual
instrument sell the brief segment. On
stage here, the Coke logos have been painstakingly turned away from the camera,
other brands of soft drink cans have been strategically added, and everybody
goes to great lengths to not mention brand names. Steve plays a little of “This Could Be the
Start of Something” on the instrument, because of course he does.
Practically every male member of the studio audience shares a secret: “Every man standing is named James Smith”
There’s nothing much more to the segment, which is guessed quickly. All the various Misters Smith were located from Los Angeles area phone books by the staff and invited to the show. One pregnant Mrs. Smith says that if she has a boy, she’ll name it James.
Special guest Charles Nelson Reilly paints on the body of a bikini-clad model while the panel asks their questions blindfolded.
The model is Janice Pennington, recently introduced to viewers as one of the models on The New Price is Right (1972-present). Pennington would become the show’s longest-running model, staying with the program from its debut in 1972 until 2000. The two are also joined by Art Trugman from the NBC art department, identified as Charles’ teacher. He was responsible for the body art seen on many of the female performers on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, from which this segment is clearly inspired. Reilly has nothing to plug, though it’s worth noting that, perhaps for the first time, this show has brought Rayburn, Dawson and Reilly together. The three of them would soon star on the popular Match Game revival (1973-1982).
20-year-old [James Love] brings out a push-button telephone: “I’m going to play music on it”
Push button phones were introduced to the public in 1963 and slowly began to replace the rotary dial phones in homes, though by 1972 they were still not widely used. Using a system called dual-tone multi-frequency (“Touch Tone” was originally a Bell Telephone brand name for the service), each of the twelve buttons on a phone made a unique sound and could be held for as long as you kept your finger down. The keys on your smartphone recreate those same tones digitally today. Musically inclined users would learn to play somewhat limited melodies on this 12-key instrument and there was even The Pushbutton Telephone Songbook (Price Stern Sloan 1971). Here, Love taps out a bit of “This Could Be the Start of Something,” earning Steve yet another royalty check for this episode.
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