From Picture Week, December 20, 1955.

What We Want for Christmas… by 20 Celebrities

With the visit from the cherubic old gent at the left only two weeks away, Picture Week decided to pay a holiday call on 20 of the celebrities who have graced its pages during the past year. Each of the 20 was asked one question: “What would you like for Christmas?” The answers follow, with a prefatory note to anxious fan clubs: the suggested sources for these particular Christmas gifts are : local retail stores, hospitals, banks, and any diplomatic table in the world.

Steve Allen: 48 hours on uninterrupted sleep.

Milton Caniff: A Rube-Goldberg-like couch, with a cybernetic brain machine that does all the work needed to turn out Steve Canyon. When it is finished, you kick a pedal and the money rolls out.

Walter Slezak: I want a new boat. I lost my old one in a storm.

Al Capp: I’d like my little friend, the Bald Iggle (who makes people tell the truth), to be by my side and yours this Christmas and the year ahead. I expect we’ll be needing him.

Ed Sullivan: It’s not very original, but the only thing I’d like is world peace.

Margaret Truman: I’d like a gadget to wake me gently, open the Venetian blinds, close the window, and have a cup of steaming hot coffee at my bedside.

Bess Myerson: I’d like things to remain the same as they are for me and my family. And I hope for Peace on earth, good will toward men, because it was never needed more than today.

Nejla Ates: I don’t know what Christmas is; they don’t have it in Turkey. I can have anything I want? A million dollars and I’ll use it to buy the Majestic Theatre.

Hal March: . . . three and half acres of bamboo fields in Calcutta. But seriously, I’d like peace in this world; and for myself, I’d like my life to continue as it’s been for as long as it can.

Harry Belafonte: I would like to see a definite and appreciable gain in the lot not only of the Negro professional but the Negro laborer in this country as well.

Henry Morgan: I will not tell you in a hundred words what I want for Christmas, I will tell you in three words: Surcease from travail.

Raymond Loewy: A non-fattening turkey, ten pounds of dietetic marons glace, and the address of a nearby drugstore that would not send iced coffee and cream when I order tea and lemon.

Mr. Magoo: Mae West under the mistletoe.

Charles Atlas: My wish for Christmas is that every man in this country be healthy and strong. A strong America is a peaceful America.

Dave Garroway: I want most for Christmas a 1932 PII Rolls Royce, just because I like cars.

Robert Harrison: A good, Juicy scandal [Harrison was the publisher of Confidential].

G. David Schine: Customers at the Roney Plaza, the McAllister, the Gulf Stream, the Ambassador. I want plenty of customers for Christmas.

Ernie Kovaks: The gift I want most for Christmas I already have, and it comes gift-wrapped all year: The greatest wife and two daughters that Santa ever handed out.

Dick Shawn: My Christmas package arrived last Tuesday – a 7-lb baby girl. But I could use a spare 2,000 dispensable diapers. I’m getting dishpan hands.

Gwen Verdon: I’d like a miniphone – a little portable recorder that you can attach to the body. It would be invaluable for practicing accent, intonation, dialect and so forth.