Pat Carroll, Henry Morgan, Meredith MacRae, Richard Dawson
Chet Brooks from Woodland Hills, California kept a yo-yo in
motion for seventeen hours and four minutes.
Brooks demonstrates his secret (with the panels’ eyes
averted) instead of whispering it to Steve, so there is no on-screen graphic. His intent was simply to get his name in the Guinness
Book of World Records, and he would be successful in that pursuit. The Guinness book was originally
developed to settle bets about extremes in the natural world. The tallest this, the fastest that, the
longest other thing. Over time, it
became a repository for superlative and unusual human achievements, and people
would scour a volume to see what records they could better (or create new ones)
just for the thrill of seeing their own names in print in subsequent editions. Today, thanks to its name recognition, Guinness is a self-perpetuating industry in which people and groups pay a fee to have their records authenticated. As a time-filling visual, since there really
is nothing else to the Secret, the panel plays around with yo-yos of their own.
105-year-old Larry Lewis from San Francisco, California: “I
run six miles every morning”
The centenarian is not only active, he’s employed. He works as a waiter at the St Francis Hotel,
a job he first held on a part-time basis in 1904. In his early years, Lewis was an aerialist for
the Barnum and Bailey Circus before it merged with Ringling Brothers. He also worked as an assistant for magician
Harry Houdini for 33 years. Lewis would pass
away in February 1974 at age 106.
Special guest Joan Rivers appears on stage with two
paintings: “I painted one of these paintings.
The other was painted by an elephant."
Carol the Elephant from the San Diego Zoo is on hand to
demonstrate her technique, which consists of striking a canvas on the floor
with a regular four-inch paintbrush she holds in her trunk. With her is trainer Joan Embery of the San
Diego Zoo. Embery, only 22 years old
here and a pigtailed blonde in a miniskirt, would go on to have a career as a
public ambassador for the zoo, best remembered for nearly 100 appearances on The
Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
Joan Rivers, of course, would also have a long relationship with The
Tonight Show, one that would end badly in 1986 when she left her role as
Johnny’s regular guest host to lead a competing talk show on FOX. At this point in her career, Rivers is well known
from her frequent television appearances, but nowhere close to the star she
would become.
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