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Civil War and Lincoln buffs may find this interesting.
Coinstartled
Posts: 10,135 ✭✭✭✭✭
I sure did. (from 1956)
https://youtu.be/1RPoymt3Jx49
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That was very interesting!
Interesting. I wonder if I watched the show when it was originally broadcast in 1956?
The show prize for Mr. Seymour was sure cheap ... $80.
Just think what his theater ticket would bring on Ebay.
If it is still available.....it would go for huge money.
Actually, a "facsimile" ticket for "My American Cousin" at Ford's Theater, Washington D.C., on Friday, April 14th, 1865 might be a great selling item.
Seymour scored some pipe tobacco too..
""During the game, Seymour was first questioned by panelist Bill Cullen, who quickly surmised from Seymour's age that his secret was somehow connected with the American Civil War, then correctly guessed that it had political significance and involved a political figure. Jayne Meadows then guessed that the political figure was Lincoln, and finally that Seymour had witnessed Lincoln's assasination. Because Seymour smoked a pipe rather than cigarettes, the show's sponsor, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company gave him a can of Prince Albert pipe tobacco instead of the usual prize of a carton of Winston cigarettes.""
Very interesting!!!
My YouTube Channel
Thanks for posting. Interesting and seeing the show brings back pleasant memories.
That would have been at least two week’s wages for many of the people who worked in my father’s holly wreath plant.
In junk silver that is about $1000. $960 actually at 12x.
Back then, game show prizes (in person, not just TV) were not about greed; they were about the fun and challenge of playing. The $64,000 Question was considered garish and a little immoral when it first appeared. After the scandal over fixed answers, the genre went further down hill.
It is interesting to note that Mr. Seymour seemed to remember a lot more for the news article after the show than he indicated during the show. During the show he said that he only remembered seeing a man “fall from the box.” He was concerned that the man had injuried himself from the fall. In the news article, he went into greater detail, which would, in my opinion, be far more detail than a 5 year old might recall. It was the type of stuff you might deduce after you had read the history of the period.
Recalling my memories from an early age, I can remember crawling around on a blue carpet that my mother said she took up when I was two years old. I recall seeing a man hit by a car on the street when I was less than five. I could go on, but it’s just bits and snatches, like Mr. Seymour’s recollection of Booth landing on the stage.
It is fascinating that Mr. Seymour might have remembered seeing Lincoln smile at the crowd. These figures seem like little more than images in books, or in my case a series of faces on political items. A living picture of Lincoln is a source of fascination, at least for me.
Great observations, Bill. It took a remarkable stretch of good fortune for a kid just old enough to recollect the events to be in attendance, and the infancy of the new medium of television to record this last survivor. Wikipedia noted that Mr. Seymour died two months after this segment was recorded. I believe that the printed epilogue to the youtube video had been assembled sometime earlier.
Cool video
https://www.autismforums.com/media/albums/acrylic-colors-by-rocco.291/
When I was in the 4th grade we had an old guy come in who had seen Lincoln.
He gave each of us a 1949 Lincoln Cent with a punchmark in the O of ONE.
I kept mine until whenever I lost it. :'(
I can relate…
I started working as a tour guide for the National Park Service in 1973 at Fords Theatre. One day coming back from lunch I was stopped on a street corner and asked by a rather old man where Ford’s Theater was. We were caddy corner from it so it was easy to point it out to him and told him to follow me.
So as we are walking he tells me that he first visited the Theater as a child about 10 years old – he was now near 90. He then tells me he met Peanuts Borrows, a young stage hand who held Booths horse behind the theatre and who was struck down by Booth as he made his escape behind the theater. I darn near wet myself as it was a known fact that Peanut lived a long life and made money from tourist telling his story on the sidewalk in front of the theater for years.
So I talked to the guy – who talked to the guy who was there that night as well.
WS
Thanks for bringing up this thread. Cool to watch it again.
John Wilkes Booth timed the fatal shot with the funniest line from "My American Cousin" knowing that the laughter would drown out the gunshot.
That line was "You sockdologizing old man-trap"