Pat Carroll, Henry Morgan, Anita Gillette, Richard Dawson
To the degree that this series ever ended up with a “regular” panel, it would be this foursome. Still, this is the first time the four of them all appeared together. Before the action begins, Richard plugs Steve Allen’s new novel The Wake (Doubleday 1972) a fictionalized account of Steve’s childhood in the 1920s and 30s. Steve adapted the novel from an earlier stage play he had written.
Dorothy Elliott from Nevada, Iowa is an election official dealing with one precinct of 850 residents where no one cast a single vote: “The 850 inhabitants are all hogs”
Elliott is the Story County Auditor and County Commissioner
of Elections back in Nevada (pronounced ne-VAY-duh). In April, the Iowa Supreme Court drew up new
boundaries, theoretically to create legislative districts of equal size. However, the only residents of a newly formed
precinct in Story County are hogs being studied by the National Animal Disease
Laboratory located there. Story County is home to the city of Ames and Iowa
State University, where an itinerant student population no doubt added to the confusion.
Eight-year-old Joey Edwards from Arlington, Texas: “I’m the editor of a national newspaper for children”
The paper, founded in 1970, is called “The Hoot Owl.” It is a family affair. Mom and dad publish the twice-monthly periodical out of the family garage, and Joey’s one year old brother is billed as “consultant for non-readers.” Still, it appears as a supplement in many Texas newspapers, claims readership in all fifty states thanks to subscriptions, and boasts a staff of hundreds of kids. At its peak it claimed a circulation of nearly half a million readers. Attention to the effort peaked in 1972 with Joey, as the face of the project, making many personal appearances. However, the Edwards admitted in interviews that the project was a drain financially, and by mid-1973 they appear to have dropped it.
Special guest Cass Elliot demonstrates an experimental voice-controlled telephone developed by Bell Laboratories.
The device, which requires the user to shout numbers into the receiver as a rotating light on its face reaches those same numbers, is clunky and somewhat tedious, but a marvel of technology in an era when most of us were using rotary phones. Voice recognition is still in its infancy, and this device may not even recognize voices at all. It appears to simply responds to a noise when the light reaches the correct number. Separate from the secret is a delightful moment, especially in retrospect, as Elliot is joking about plans for her nightclub act. She tells Steve, “Well, I actually am going to do a musical version of the Aaron Burr-Alexander Hamilton duel on stage live." Lin-Manuel Miranda would be born eight years later.
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