This is a photograph I've always liked; it is from February of 1969. I happened upon it recently (along with other photographs I had not seen in years), while going through some boxes stored in a closet of my apartment. The picture was taken from the audience of the Merv Griffin Show, which at the time was syndicated by Westinghouse Broadcasting, also known as Group W.
I don't think I took the picture, but believe it was taken by my brother, who was fifteen. My mother, my brother and I were in New York City for a trip (I was thirteen), and, while there, we went to see a taping of Merv Griffin's program. (I am not at all certain of this, but would not be surprised if we went to the program at my request. The program aired in Boston in the late afternoons, and was a show I enjoyed watching, during this time. It is also very possible--because of my interest in television, as a child--that I asked my brother to take the picture.)
The show was taped at The Little Theater, on West 44th Street in Manhattan. Before it became a television facility--first used by ABC, from the latter part of the 1950s into the early 1960s, and then, in the 1960s, by Westinghouse--it had been a legitimate theatre. In the 1970s it again became a theatrical venue, and in the early 1980s was renamed The Helen Hayes Theater; it is now known, simply, as The Hayes Theater. With just under 600 seats, it is the smallest theatre on Broadway. (In 1912, when it opened, it had only 299 seats--thus, its original "Little Theater" designation.)
In the photo--which I like, in part, because of the presence, in the image, of the television camera--the comedian Pat Cooper is seated next to Merv Griffin, at Mr. Griffin's desk. To the left of Griffin is the singer Jane Morgan. According to IMDB, the episode aired on February 28, 1969--and so we were probably at the taping a week or so prior.
One of the things that sticks out in my mind about the taping is that it included an appearance by the singer Ronnie Dyson. To the best of my memory, he sang "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me," which at the time was a hit song, recorded jointly by The Supremes and The Temptations.
Mr. Dyson had become famous for appearing in the Broadway musical Hair--and for his lead vocal, in the show, of the signature song "Aquarius." The show opened on Broadway at the end of April, 1968; Dyson turned 18 in June of that year.
The recording of "Aquarius," at the link below, is from the 1968 Hair cast album. Mr. Dyson's solos, in "Aquarius," are actually not that long--much of the song also features the choral singing of the play's cast--yet his performance in the song is, I think, stunning; his singing is assured, and it has, about it, a strikingly pure quality. (Please note that the first twenty seconds or so of the song--before he begins singing--are made up of quiet, miscellaneous sounds, some discordant--including chimes, what sounds like gongs, and perhaps, as well, some electronic sounds.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V2q07GOe28
Later, in 1970, Mr. Dyson had a hit song with his recording of "(If You Let Me Make Love to You Then) Why Can't I Touch You?"
He died in 1990, in Philadelphia, at age forty. His death, IMDB notes, was due to heart failure.
