Sonny Fox shares his memories of the quiz show scandals of the 50’s, recalls experiences as WWII POW in Germany, and Wonderama host and JFK friendship.

I didn't know any of this. Not one bit of it. And it turned out to be unexpectedly interesting. The POW part is especially interesting. I never heard of Wonderama but should have. And I did know about the 64,000 Dollar Question scandal, but I did not know about Joyce Brothers memorizing boxing stats to prevail in that line of questioning.

He describes early t.v. as being rather goofy and a lot of fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants.

It is an interesting podcast hosted by Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast here. I realize you can take Gottfried only in small doses, and that's okay, here he is very good listener throughout and only laughs (maniacally) here and there. I have a feeling you might enjoy this even more than I did.

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Gilbert Gottfried, autism

Autism is a cause near to Gilbert Gottfried's heart. I don't know the whole story behind that. It might be so simple as his parrot role helping a boy. And his involvement might be more longstanding than that. I've seen this act before, Owen Suskind whispers into Gottfried's ear what he wants Gottfried to say but loud enough for Gottfried's microphone to pick up so everyone hears. The act as an act is not impressive. The thing is, Owen was lost. Completely. Owen was so turned inward his only access was by Disney. Originally the act was presented as "man overcomes stuttering though Aladdin parrot character" voiced by Gottfried. When I watched this video I went, "eh."

This video goes further in showing why the stage act is special. On Twitter I read some women say this made them cry. With Jon Stewart at the beginning hosting the show my impulse was okay fine then well just FORGET IT and flounce right along but resisted that impulse and went skip, Jonskip, Jonskip, Jonskip, no Jon, watch all the way through to near the end where it goes Jonoff.

My Jon dodge reactions are gamer sharp.

But you might not have that neurosis. When you know the whole story, how as a boy grown to a man Owen still cannot look anyone in the eyes and converse then this act can be seen as a feat.