Interesting idea. The timing for a hoax would be perfect IF it were the case that the St. Paul copies were the last that were accessible to the public. (Probably not, though.)
(It makes me sad to think of libraries “disposing of” any material. I realize they have space limitations, but…it’s still sad. :()
Yes; this thread points up both how difficult it is to identify a person from one photo, and how quickly people can dig in and decide that the ID they made MUST be right—logic of the situation be damned. (As with the certainty that an obscure (though no doubt talented) bit-part actor would have been sitting with all those big-for-their-day stars.) We are all prone to confirmation bias and other distortions of thought, and this thread really highlights that fact.
I agree. Cococ173’s efforts to contact someone at The Hollywood Reporter, for example, is more likely to pay off with an answer than will our perusals of Google Images (not that we should stop doing that, of course. ^_~)
So, who has been contacted? Did someone say they’d posted to the Twitter or Facebook pages of…Karen Valentine? Carol Burnett? Marlo?
These people may not have appeared together on the Tonight show. The set may have been used just to take this photo. Some or all of them may have appeared together on the Tonight show also. As mentioned the listings won’t be good, especially with a large number of people. I worked at TV Guide for a short time in the 70s. There was a research department that would find info like this, but sometimes they just shrugged and said nobody knows. They are still in business, I’ll send an email, maybe they could come up with an answer. I did see every addition of TV Guide published up to mid 1976, including about half the regional issues around that time, but there’s no reason I would have taken notice of that picture.
That’s great (the underlined bit)! I’m sure all of us thank you for that effort.
I agree that the photo may represent something that happened on the Burbank set other than an actual broadcast of The Tonight Show. (The absence of either Carson or a guest host adds to that likelihood.) It would be interesting to know when, in the target years around 1970, the show WAS broadcast from Burbank as opposed to being broadcast from New York. All I’ve been able to find is that before the permanent move in May 1972, the show would spend a couple of weeks in Burbank “occasionally.”
What I’m wondering is if the regular show, being filmed in New York, might cut to a brief tape that had been filmed at the Burbank set (without Johnny, since he was in New York). Perhaps Johnny would say ‘the Photoplay Awards were given out recently and here are some of the winners.’* Then the tape–which could have been made days earlier–would be shown, with a few remarks by the stars and a bit of joking around and whatnot.
IF this is true, then Mystery Man could well have been the moderator for this little tape that would have been shown on the New York-based show. He’s sitting where he is because it would be confusing to viewers to have someone sitting at Johnny’s Burbank desk, given that Johnny would have been sitting at his own New York desk (while introducing this tape). So Mystery Man sits there in the chair, and addresses the audience.
If true, this would make it more likely that Mystery Man is a usually-behind-the-scenes person (such as a producer or television-director).
For those who remember the Carson years: would that be the sort of thing that ever happened on the show? That is, did Johnny ever show short tapes of show-biz doings?
*It’s still maddening that we can find NO archived information about the alleged 50th Anniversary Photoplay awards–where was it held? Who was the host? Why aren’t the nominees and winners listed *somewhere, *given that many show-biz buffs would be quite interested in uploading the information? Why didn’t the publicists for any of the stars involved make sure the information was well-disseminated? (After all, it was an Award Won by their client.)
Wouldn’t this information, whether placed by publicists or by the award-giving institution, have appeared in not only the Hollywood Reporter, but Variety, the Los Angeles Times, and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner–at a minimum?
I’m going to throw Noel Harrison out there. He apparently at least won a Photoplay award the year before and had some popularity around the time of the picture due to “The Windmills of Your Mind”. I think he looks close to the guy in the picture. Close but, I think, not quite.
[ol]
[li]Whitechapel, 3 April 1888: identify Jack the Ripper[/li][li]Fall River, 4 August 1892: who really did give Lizzie Borden’s mother forty whacks?[/li][li]Brentwood, 13 June 1994: what happened in front of Nicole Brown Simpson’s condo?[/li][li]Burbank, 11 November 1970: determine WHO IS THE MYSTERY MAN?[/li][li]Northwest Orient Flight 305, 24 November 1971: maybe follow Cooper down?[/li][li]Grassy Knoll, Dallas, 22 November 1963: anybody there? If so, stop them; if not;[/li][li]School Book Depository, Dallas, 22 November 1963: Citizen’s arrest of LHO[/li][li]Ford’s Theater, 14 April 1865: grab John Wilkes Booth; be a hero![/li][li]Wolf’s Lair, 20 July 1944: put von Stauffenberg’s briefcase back closer to Hitler[/li][li]Jerusalem, 6 April 30A.D.: what happened to that chalice?[/li][/ol]
The Photoplay Awards might have been mentioned in Photoplay Magazine. But that would be a longshot.
I understand that when Photoplay disbanded, much of the staff went to Us Magazine. I don’t know if any of the assets of Photoplay went there. Does anyone have any contacts at Us?
Definitely incomplete. From “Carson’s Comedy Classics”, I know Danielle Aubry gave Johnny some self-defense and exercise pointers but her appearance isn’t mentioned anywhere.
Not in that photo, but in the one with Bill Cosby, it’s kinda close. And in the photo where he’s holding the Emmy, he looks like Sid Caesar and Hans Conreid, which are both good guesses.
On the other hand, there’s no reason for him to be on the set with those other people. He worked on Mary Tyler Moore and Cosby, but not on the shows that won awards in 1970.
I don’t have an ebay account. Maybe someone who does can use the “ask a question” feature to see if the magazine has an article about the awards.
I’d guess no. Magazines used to have a lot of lead time, so the November issue probably wouldn’t have an article about an event that occurred in November. It’d be more likely in the December issue.
