Sid Caesar was starring in the Broadway Musical 'Little Me' in which he played seven roles with multiple stage accents. The production had opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on November 17, 1962, and would close the following month after 257 performances. Caesar was nominated for the 1963 Tony Award as 'Best Actor in a Musical'.
Joe W. Schmitt (1916-2017), the first contestant, was responsible for helping astronaut Gordon Cooper dress his spacesuit for the 'Mercury-Atlas 9' 34-hour mission, the last Mercury spaceflight on May 15, 1963. Schmitt worked for the Space Task Group, later transformed into the Manned Spacecraft Center (now the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center),