I don't want to rehash the plot of the episode here, but I would like to add some information about the singer Barbara Cook and the actor John Carlyle. If I had not seen the opening credits of the episode, I would never in a million years have known it was Barbara Cook, one of Broadway's most popular female musical ingenues of the 1950s and 1960s. She appeared in many musicals but probably was most famous for Candide, The Music Man, She Loves Me, and The Grass Harp. She was so thin and sexy here; I was amused to remember how on one of her many concert compact disc recordings she recalled looking back at photos of herself and realizing how pretty and shapely she had looked when younger once she became older. She poked fun at herself saying how foolish she had been to put herself down for thinking she was not as attractive as she was. I have had the good fortune to see Miss Cook at least four times in concert, and each performance was terrific, even the last one at Queens College about a year or two ago. At the age of 89, she recently retired from singing earlier this year (2017).
John Carlyle was an actor who never quite made it big. His biggest claim to fame was his connection to Judy Garland. He filmed scenes for Judy Garland's 1954 movie A Star is Born, but they were all deleted and left on the cutting room floor. He wrote a book called "Under the Rainbow: An Intimate Memoir of Judy Garland, Rock Hudson and My Life in Old Hollywood." It is an interesting look at his friendship which lasted until Judy's death in 1969, and it also focuses on his life as a gay actor in Hollywood when he was trying to become a star.