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Allen Funt was the creator, producer, and host of the long-running Candid Camera TV program, one of the earliest, and by far the most popular, hidden camera/practical joke series on television. Candid Camera aired continuously on network television, in one form or another, from 1948 to 1967 (and in a syndicated version in the 1970s), with its heyday occurring during the show's 1960-67 Sunday evening run on CBS. In February 1969, a few years after Candid Camera had ended its network run and Funt was engaged in completing his first feature film, the Candid Camera-like What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?, he was en route from Newark to Miami with his wife and two youngest children when the Eastern Airlines flight on which they were traveling was hijacked to Cuba. (This was a not uncommon occurrence at the time: in 1969 alone, nearly three dozen attempted or successful hijackings to Cuba took place on flights originating in the U.S.) Funt, whose face was familiar to millions of Americans through his role as host of, and participant in, many Candid Camera stunts over the years, was the most famous personage aboard that flight; and he recounted his experiences in an Associated Press article published the following day, noting that some of the other passengers recognized him and therefore believed his presence indicated the hijacking was merely a set-up being filmed for television: In the intervening decades, however, the tale of Allen Funt and the hijacked airliner appears to have been significantly embellished to the point that now it is commonly claimed that everybody on board believed the hijacking to be a stunt and gave the hijackers a standing ovation, and according to the version presented by Funt's daughter Juliet (who was only 2 years old when the event she describes took place), stewardesses started popping champagne in anticipation of appearing on television, other passengers were lining up to get autographs from Funt, and people were laughing and dancing in the plane's aisles in relief over the hijacking danger's being pretend rather than real. However, Allen Funt's own description of the hijacking written while the incident was still fresh in his mind made reference only to four people recognizing him on the plane and thinking the diversion was a television prank. And another passenger who was present on that flight had less sensational memories of the incident than those presented by Juliet Funt:
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