Pat Carroll, Henry Morgan, Anita Gillette, Richard Dawson
Dan Goodman from Mill Valley: “My car is covered with grass”
Goodman’s car is part of a publicity stunt to promote Ortho
Dichondra Weed and Feed. Dichondra is a
small green plant that was popular in Southern California for many years as a
grass substitute, but let’s not get picky.
The ad agency that came up with the idea enlisted folks who usually work
on the Rose Parade floats to help them pull this off. Held together by chicken wire, the grass adds
an additional 3000 pounds to the weight of the car, and it takes two men to
lift the hood. As a final flourish, the hood ornament is a pink flamingo nicked
from a past float. Nicknamed the “Green Queen,” the car is a 1951 Mercury,
selected by the ad agency because it has the least difficult contours. Goodman,
a real estate man by trade, tooled around Southern California as “George
Green,” a character also featured in radio ads for the product. The car was to be auctioned off for charity
once the campaign came to an end.
Robert Moon from Crestline: “My nephew walked on the moon”
Moon’s nephew is Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, who appears after the game for a chat. Aldrin was the second man to set foot on the moon, moments behind Neil Armstrong as part of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. Unlike the publicity averse Armstrong, Aldrin relished the attention he received from being a moonwalker. After leaving NASA in 1972, he appeared frequently on talk and game shows, and as himself in many films and TV series.
Special guest John Davidson: “I brought baby pictures of the panel”
There are also baby pictures of then-president Richard Nixon
and of Davidson himself. Davidson
started making a name for himself as an actor and singer in the mid-sixties. By the 70s he was a ubiquitous presence on
television as a performer, personality, and host. Arguably his best-known television work would
be as one of the hosts of the reality series That’s Incredible! (1980-1984)
and a three-season stint hosting one of the many revivals of Hollywood
Squares (1986-1989). He also
frequently traveled the country as a concert performer as well as an actor in
touring musicals.
George Oslin from Delray Beach, Florida: “I invented the singing telegram”
Oslin came up with his idea as public relations director for
Western Union in 1933. He was looking
for a way to make telegrams fun to send, since the tool was being used so often
to send bad news, especially during the Great Depression. The first singing telegram was a birthday
wish to crooner Rudy Vallee from a fan, and the singer of that telegram appeared
on the original series in 1957 (
E245).
Western Union stopped providing the service in the 1970s and stopped
sending telegrams of any type in 2006.
Even though that mode of communication is essentially obsolete, the idea
of a “singing telegram” is still a familiar one, and a handful of local
businesses, mostly in larger cities around the country, continue to provide the
service today.
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