Pat Carroll, Alan Alda, Betty White, Richard Dawson
Irene Knoke from Santa Monica, California brings along some caged primates that Steve says are from the Dobritch Circus: “One of those chimps is my husband”
The man inside the suit is Janos Prohaska, a Hungarian actor who made a monkey of himself for a career. He played apes, gorillas and chimpanzees in a variety of TV series, both silly (several episodes of Gilligan’s Island) and serious (Perry Mason in “The Case of the Grinning Gorilla”). He also designed exotic alien creatures that he would wear and operate in such science fiction series as The Outer Limits and Star Trek. He was the Horta in the Star Trek episode “The Devil in the Dark,” as just one example. In March 1974, only about eighteen months after this appearance, Prohaska and dozens of others would die in a plane crash on their way to location shooting for a television series. Prohaska also appeared on the original series ( E423 ). The Dobritch Circus is a real entity and may very well have been home to the two chimps in the cage with Prohaska, but the circus does not figure into the secret.
T.A. Preston from Amarillo, Texas: “I lost $190,000 playing poker”
Thomas Austin Preston Jr was much better known in the poker world by his nickname “Amarillo Slim.” The colorful cowboy is credited with introducing Las Vegas casinos to Texas Hold’em, now the most popular style of poker, and with bringing the game of poker to a mainstream audience through frequent television appearances like this one. Only a few weeks earlier, Preston, Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows were all guests on an episode of the Tonight show, guest hosted by Flip Wilson. He participated in the first World Series of Poker championship in 1970 and won the WSOP Main Event in 1972 when the top prize was $60,000. By comparison, the WSOP Main Event winner in 2022 took home ten million dollars.
Special guest Milton Berle is center stage with a large trunk that contains: “My early TV jokes”
The trunk is merely a prop, from which Steve pulls out a
small sampling of Berle gags for the panel to deliver. Later, they pull a frilly frock from the
trunk, a nod to Berle’s famed physical gag of wearing women’s clothing to get
laughs. Berle’s role in history as one of TV’s first superstars is undeniable,
but even by the early sixties his star had faded significantly. The rest of his career was a mixed bag. He would continue to work steadily on
television in guest roles, some well-received and others most definitely
not. He would earn praise and an Emmy
nomination for a dramatic turn in an episode of Beverly Hills 90210, of
all things. On the other hand, his 1979 stint hosting Saturday Night Live is a particularly legendary disaster.
Maurice Wooden from Santa Monica, California: “I run a canine dating service”
Wooden runs the Apollo Canine Dating Service which promises, among other claims, “Our dignified service includes computerized and personalized canine matching.” Beyond the marketing gimmick of calling it a “dating service” and the novelty of some of the work being done by computers, Wooden simply brings dog owners together for breeding purposes. At least that was the plan. After an initial flurry of publicity in the fall of 1972, Wooden’s business would tank quickly. By December, he had been evicted from his Santa Monica office for not paying rent, and his phone had been disconnected. According to one report, his “computer” turned out to be a file card cabinet. There don’t appear to have been any accusations of fraud, just a failed business model.
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