As I mentioned earlier, our Holiday Music Fest also includes a few little-seen TV specials from the past.  This one tonight wasn't a standalone special per se, but instead was the Christmas special episode for the weekly Julie Andrews Hour, and they went all out to make it stand out.  This is from December 20, 1972, and the cast includes Jimmy Stewart, Joel Grey, Mama Cass Elliot, Carl Reiner, Steve Lawrence, Sergio Franchi, Dan Dailey, Alice Ghostley and Rich Little. 

(Side note: For those who don't know his name, Dan Dailey had a successful movie career in the 1940s and 1950s, including many musicals, and even got an Oscar nomination as Best Actor for When My Baby Smiles at Me.  I saw him on stage at the Blackstone Theater in Chicago as 'Oscar' in a 1966 production of The Odd Couple, which also starred Richard Benjamin as 'Felix,' who so often played nervous, neurotic characters and was memorably picture-perfect for the role. And years later I got to tell him that when I met him and his wife Paula Prentis at a Northwestern alumni party which was held before the football team played in the Rose Bowl in 1995.  And yes, he was stunned.  And pleased.)

​On this week’s Naked Lunch podcast, hosts Phil Rosenthal and David Wild take a slight detour.  As they write, “Phil & David reveal their favorite movies ever with you and with each other. Who's still in love with Mary Poppins and hyperventilated when they actually met Julie Andrews? Who secretly dreams of Local Hero -- the ultimate movie about the romance of travel? Who was so profoundly scared of Jaws that he was afraid not just to go to the beach, but also go to the bathroom? How did The Graduate seduce both Phil & David? And who's a bigger believer in Pulp Fiction -- Phil or David? Find out all these answers and more right here --- and get ready for the inevitable sequel coming soon!”

This is fun, offbeat ‘Mystery Guest’ segment of What’s My Line? -- especially if you lived in the era or watch the Game Show Network. The contestants are Bud Collyer, Allen Ludden, Gene Rayburn and Ed McMahon, who were then all hosts of TV game shows produced by the Goodson-Todman company, which also produced What’s My Line?  But what makes it all the more fun is that one of the panelists is Mark Goodson.
 
If you want to jump to the “Mystery Guest” segment, it starts around the 17:15 mark.

This is an absolutely wonderful, even joyous segment from the TV show Penn & Teller:  Fool Us, where magicians try to fool Penn & Teller with a trick, and if they do, they get an appearance at a Penn & Teller show.  What makes this so special is that the surprise magician is Penn’s daughter, Moxie Jillette. And not only did he have no idea that she’d  be performing, but he thought she was in Scotland with her mother, and she’d been fooling him as she prepared for her appearance. 

But it’s even better than that because he’s clearly shocked by her being there and being fooled that she’s not in Scotland – and further, it’s so clear how proud he is of her and adores her – and she him.  And equally clear how nervous she is – in fact, at one point you can see her hands shaking, which is never a good thing for a magician.  And lovely too is how clear it is how close Teller is to the family and to her.  And everything all together here is just absolutely wonderful. 

Whether she actually fool them, well, of course that’s a separate matter – but secondary to the joy of the piece.  But it’s nonetheless important, since it’s the point of the show and handled well by everyone.

I should add that I found another, longer video of this, but it's now private, and I can't embed it.  But this below is still the bulk of the appearance and wonderful. (Though the other version was longer, that extra length was mostly before she appeared on stage, and viewers got a bit of background on her efforts to make sure her dad didn't know what she was up to.)

Two things to add -- the first is that a brief passage in this shorter version is edited out after the trick when Penn & Teller go back to their chairs, Moxie is interviewed on stage and mentions that, as part of her preparation to convince her dad that she was not in town, she lied to him about her video camera being broken -- at which point, he looks up from his consultation with Teller and shouts, "Wait, your camera isn't broken?!!"  And the second is that, near the end, in order to promote another video, the person posting this superimposed that promotion over the middle of the screen, so you annoyingly miss a lot of the final reaction between father and daughter.  But use  your imagination and know that you'll likely be right.

But all that aside, this is almost entirely the full appearance.  And it's a joy.

On this week’s Naked Lunch podcast, hosts Phil Rosenthal and David Wild write that “You good people tell us that you absolutely LOVE it when Phil & David Phone It In, so here's another of our free-for-all ‘Naked Lunch’ Call In episodes. This time around, Phil and David offered to provide any relationship advice -- much to the amusement of their loved ones -- but mostly you wanted to talk about the most important things in life -- food, music and ‘Somebody Feel Phil’.”