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Clark Kent investigates when a research scientist is found dead behind a locked room from poisoning.
Original Air Date: November 26, 1949
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I stand corrected.
All my life I thought Bud Collyer had polio.
Someone, my grandfather or some kid told me that while watching
“To Tell The Truth” on TV. “Yeah, the guy who played Superman
had polio. Ironic, isn’t it”.
This fit right in with the Superman Curse: the defenestration*
of George Reeves and the tragic tumble of Christopher Reeve.
This factoid nestles snugly in my brain, popping up every few
years when a particular stimulus fires off that particular neuron.
And *there’s* a picture of the young, vigorous Bud Collyer,
hiding the secret leg braces, the secret sorrow below (as
my grandmother’s TV-Radio Mirror magazines would say).
I should post this. But wait, maybe I should check it first.
Don’t need Snopes or Wikipedia, a simple Google should do.
COLLYER POLIO — there’s a few hits. Confirmed.
Then I follow the links. Hmmm…No mention of polio on Bud Collyer’s
Wikipedia page. Go back. That link. There’s COLLYER. Scroll down.
Find POLIO. Much further down.
Oh, it wasn’t Bud Collyer that had polio, it was BILL CULLEN!
Mentioned in a list of frequent panelists on To Tell The Truth, Peggy Cass,
Bill Cullen, Kitty Carlisle, Tom Poston, Robert Q Lewis.
Same initials, roughly the same facial features (except the glasses),
same smoky vocal timbre*, kind of a Clark Kent/Superman duality going on
between them, whip off the glasses and deepen the voice.
Yet, still, carrying around that error for all these years.
Heck, I even told my children that, in a dramatic rendering
of The Curse of Superman one Halloween.
So, to get epistemological* in our quest To Tell The Truth,
did I mishear my grandfather that day or did he remember
incorrectly, did *he* confuse the two?
That would require a dose of Sodium Pentathol
and a Ouija Board to rediscover *that* Truth.
*(dee-fenn-ess-TRAY-shun) — falling out of a window, with or without assistance
*(tamm-brrrr) — the distinctive sound of an instrument, like an oboe or Tom Waits’ voice
*(e-PISS-stem-o-logical) — the study of Knowledge itself — how do we know what we know
*(sell-LEAGUE-uh) — my name