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fooling and this was the real him. And later he would have the audience (whom he addressed as boys and girls throughout) sing “The Cow Goes Moo” with him and demonstrate for them how to prepare an ice cream snack and again he would sing “It’s a Small World” with the Van Dyke conga players (whose name had become the B Street Conga Band) and he and Little Wendy would sing “Banana Boat” and Nathan Richards would perform “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” (which would be edited from the show) and Tony Clifton would summon from the audience Miss Jones, his former elementary school teacher, and confront her—“You useta tell me that I was never going to amount to anything! You always useta ridicule me in front of the class! Well, I kinda amounted to something, wouldn’t you say? Wouldn’t you say, huh?! How much money you makin’?” (And this, too, would be cut.) And, in the end, all participants would lock arms and sway and sing “This Friendly World.”

But the emotional zenith of the project was the appearance of special guest Howdy Doody, who was the real original Howdy Doody, although a second newer Doody called Photo Doody (because he photographed well) would be brought in also and it was Burt Dubrow from Grahm who made all of this happen. Andy knew Dubrow was pals with Buffalo Bob Smith, who of course was Howdy’s best pal. So Andy called Dubrow and said, “You gotta do me a favor. You gotta get me Howdy.” And Dubrow convinced Buffalo Bob to play along, which meant Buffalo Bob flew in to record Howdy’s voice, which kept dislodging itself into phlegmy coughing spasms during the sound recording session, which frightened Andy—especially when Buffalo Bob gagged at one point and blurted, “Could I have a drink of water? My fuckin’ throat is killin’ me!” “Andy was mortified,” Zmuda would recall. “And he wanted to get the hell out of there. This whole imaginary world he loved was being destroyed right before his eyes.” And there would be the story of another scare when Andy thought he was about to meet Howdy for the first time prior to rehearsals and was so excited that he couldn’t sleep the night before and then he kept asking crew people who had seen Howdy, “What’s he like? What’s he like?” and then he nervously approached the puppet which was not a puppet to him at all and he suddenly screamed, “That’s not Howdy! That’s a phony! That’s Photo Doody!” And he ran to his dressing room and locked the door through which people heard sobbing and objects crashing and … Well, Zmuda always liked telling that story. According to Dubrow, who heard it directly from original Howdy puppeteer Pady Blackwood, who was there to operate Howdy for the special, Andy announced to all present at the outset, “Please don’t show me Howdy. The first time I want to see Howdy is when we’re taping.” So he rehearsed with Photo Doody until the moment when cameras rolled, which was when he at last met his childhood hero, “the first star that I was ever aware of in my whole life,” and there they were together in tender union with Andy not simply talking to the puppet, but delicately relating with it and sharing the most elemental part of his soul in the process—“Howdy, I just want you to know I’ve looked forward to meeting you and being able to talk with you like this all my life. And I’m finally able to and I just want you to know that I, um, love you and I can’t get over what’s happening right now at this moment. I can’t believe it. I’ve wanted to do this my whole life and I wish we could talk for eight hours. I just have so much that I’d like to tell you. There’s just so much to say….” And his eyes seemed to mist over during much of their long, earnest exchange in which Howdy spoke of living in a box for seventeen years (“Wow,” said Andy, “isn’t it boring?”) and thanked Andy for his countless warm sentiments and explained that Buffalo Bob couldn’t be there tonight because he had some other show to do—which Andy privately believed was just as well. And at the very close of the special, Foreign Man, in his review of all that had transpired, noted, To have de Howdy Doody … oh! dat