Shari Lewis

Shari Lewis and her puppets Lamb Chop, Hush Puppy, and Charlie Horse, entertained and delighted several generations of children during the five decades that they appeared on television.  Unlike other kids’ show hosts who worked with puppets, Shari Lewis was a talented ventriloquist who manipulated and provided the voices for her puppets as she interacted with them on the air. 

Though many of us were first introduced to Shari and her puppets on the nationally telecast Shari Lewis Show, which ran on NBC from 1960-1963, Shari Lewis had previously hosted two local kids’ shows in New York in the 1950’s, The Kartoon Club and Shari and Her Friends.  On The Kartoon Club, Shari played the role of the Mayoress of the mythical kingdom of Kartoonia.  The show featured a live studio audience, whom Shari entertained with cartoons, games, songs, stories, arts and crafts, magic tricks, informational segments, and skits with puppet characters Taffy Twinkle, Randy Rocket, and Pip Squeak.

The national Shari Lewis Show debuted in 1960, when it replaced The Howdy Doody Show on NBC.  Starring the effervescent and multitalented Ms. Lewis with her flaming red hair, the show also featured a set of hand-puppets that Shari brought to hilarious life.  Lamb Chop was essentially a sock puppet whose character was that of a shy, soft-spoken, but mischievous and wise-cracking 6-year-old little lamb, who seemed to serve as a sassy alter-ego for Shari. Hush Puppy was a sweet 7-year-old country bumpkin, and Charlie Horse was a cocky, buck-toothed 10-year-old.  In addition to her skits with the puppets, Shari also exhibited her song and dance talents on the show, often teaching moral lessons through her performances. 

 

Some 15 years later, Shari starred in a new version of The Shari Lewis Show that aired on NBC and in syndication from 1975-1977.  This show focused on pro-social storylines and featured a cast of twenty-five animal puppets including Lamb Chop and a kangaroo named Captain Person, who worked for Bearly Broadcasting Studios (BBS).

In the 1990s, Shari Lewis hosted Lamb Chop’s Play-Along on PBS, a half-hour interactive show that encouraged children to participate by acting out stories, songs, stunts, games and activities. She also starred in another hit PBS series The Charlie Horse Music Pizza show, which was one of her last projects before her death in 1998.  

 

Though Shari Lewis modernized and adapted her shows to suit the pace and sophistication of each successive generation of young viewers, she never deviated from her essential philosophy and format of actively engaging and educating her audience as she entertained them.  With her vivacious personality and childlike excitement, she often seemed like a kid herself rather than a teacher or mother-figure.  Together with the wonderful hand-puppets she created, I think that’s what made her show so special.

 

You can watch Shari Lewis and her puppets on these DVD's:  A Shari Lewis Christmas (1960), Lambchop's Chanukah and Passover Surprise (1997), and The Shari Show - Featuring Shari Lewis and Lambchop.     

Watch Mr. Wizard

One of my favorite shows when I was growing up was Watch Mr. Wizard.  This was one of commercial television’s earliest educational efforts for grade-school and pre-teen children.  Conceived and hosted by the affable Don Herbert, it made science exciting and understandable for kids without any glitz or special effects and without dumbing the science down.   The 30-minute show premiered on the NBC station in Chicago in 1951 and moved to the NBC network in New York in 1955, where it ran for another decade, with a brief revival in 1971-1972. 

Herbert played the role of Mr. Wizard, a friendly scientist that the neighborhood kids loved to drop in on at his home, where he would have them assist him in carrying out simple but fascinating scientific experiments.  The style of the show was very low-key, with Mr. Wizard and his assistant seeming to ad-lib all their dialogue.

 

What I loved about this show was that Mr. Wizard treated his child assistant with respect and dignity, never talking down to him or her. And each assistant seemed to be smart and capable.   I also loved the fact that his assistant was often a girl, despite the fact that in those days, girls weren’t expected to be interested in or good at science.  The experiments demonstrated on the show were fascinating and magical, but not so complicated that you couldn’t recreate many of them at home on your own.

Watch Mr. Wizard was quite a TV sensation for a while and generated an interest in science for many children.  There were Mr. Wizard science clubs all across the country with a combined membership of over 100,000.  There were Mr. Wizard science kits for purchase, and Herbert also created a very successful business supplying science films and other educational materials to schools.

 

Sadly, the simple format and gentle pace of the show seemed outdated by the time NBC finally cancelled it in 1972.  In 1983, Herbert developed a faster-paced science show called Mr. Wizard’s World, which ran on Nickelodeon until 1990, with reruns broadcast until 2000. 

You can still "Watch Mr. Wizard" on these DVD's:  Kids' TV of the 50's, Watch Mr. Wizard, Watch Mr. Wizard - Electricity and More, and Watch Mr. Wizard - Everyday Illusions and More.  Several paperback books written by Don Herbert are still available, including Mr. Wizard's Experiments for Young Scientists, Mr. Wizard's Supermarket Science,  and Mr. Wizard's 400 Experiments in Science.

Bozo the Clown

There probably isn’t an adult in the US today who hasn’t watched some version of Bozo the Clown when they were growing up.  In one form or another, Bozo was one of the longest-running kids’ shows in TV history.  The earliest version of the Bozo show began airing in 1949 in Los Angeles, and the show continued to air around the country until 2001.  Like Romper Room before it, Bozo’s show was both syndicated and franchised, which means that many local TV stations produced their own version of the show.  Each show was hosted by an actor made up as Bozo the Clown, a circus clown with typical white-face make-up, red clown nose, and brightly-colored clown suit with a large frilly collar.  What made Bozo special was his hair – a huge bright red-orange mass that stuck out and up about a foot from the sides of his white bald head. 

Like many children’s shows in the early days of TV, the show at first had a fairly simple format in which the host just introduced and transitioned among a series of cartoon segments, including a cartoon that featured an animated Bozo.  Later, the Bozo the Clown show (sometimes called Bozo’s Circus or Bozo’s Big Top) took on more of a circus or vaudeville format, with many of the local shows seeming to take place inside a circus tent, with a live studio audience of children (sometimes mixed with parents), and offering a variety of circus acts, comedy routines, cartoons, and segments that featured other recurring characters and often local children engaging in games and contests.

The most successful and probably best-known local version of the Bozo franchise was the show produced in Chicago by WGN-TV, which featured Bob Bell as Bozo.  It evolved into Bozo’s Circus, a live hour-long show with a 13-piece orchestra, 200-member live studio audience, and multiple cast of characters, including Ringmaster Ned, Oliver O. Oliver, Sandy the Clown, Mr. Bob the Bandleader, and Cooky the Cook .  At one point, there was a ten-year wait for tickets to be part of the show’s studio audience.  The Chicago show was also syndicated to stations around the country which didn’t or couldn’t produce their own version of the show.

The Boston version of the Bozo the Clown show was also very popular locally and syndicated nationwide for several years.  Hosted by Bob Avruch as Bozo, the show at one time featured actor/puppeteer Caroll Spinney as “Mr. Lion” and “Kookie the Boxing Kangaroo.”  Spinney later went on to portray Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street. 

In New York, WPIX was the first station to produce a local version of the Bozo the Clown show in 1959, starring Bill Britten as Bozo.  In 1964, WOR created and produced its own Bozo Show, featuring singer/actor Gordon Ramsey as Bozo, together with a cast of characters that included Grandma Nelly, Professor Tweetiefoofer, Slimjim, Snappy Pappy, and the Circus Boss.  

Before he became the TODAY Show’s weatherman, Willard Scott starred as Bozo in the Washington D.C. version of the Bozo show.   Scott went on to portray the Bozo-inspired “Ronald McDonald” clown character in McDonald’s commercials.

Over the years, stories have circulated about children on the Bozo show who used profanity or said something nasty to Bozo on the air, or about Bozo himself saying something nasty back to one of the kids when he didn’t think the microphone was on.   Though it’s clear that Bozo was the inspiration for the curmudgeonly Krusty the Klown character on the Simpsons, I guess we’ll never know if any of these stories about bad behavior on the Bozo show are actually true.   

You can watch Bozo the Clown in several DVD collections:  Bozo: The World's Most Famous Clown, Vol. 1 and Vol.2, Volume 1 - Best of Bozo, Larry Harmon's Bozo: Shows 4-6, or Hiya Kids! A 50's Saturday Morning Box.   

Romper Room

During its five decades on the air, Romper Room gave millions of young children their first exposure to a preschool/kindergarten environment.  The show featured a hostess who would lead a group of 7-8 children in various educational and play activities.  The children were about 4-5 years old, and were rotated every couple of months.  Running from 1953-1994, Romper Room was originally filmed in Baltimore, later moved to Chicago, and then returned to Baltimore in 1981.  The show was franchised and syndicated, which means that local stations could opt to produce their own versions of the show instead of airing a national telecast.   So if you watched the show when you were little, chances are that you saw a different hostess and different kids on the set than viewers in other parts of the country did. 

Just like real schoolrooms in those days, each show would begin with the hostess leading the kids in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.  Then the hostess would read books to the kids, teach them the alphabet, and direct them in playing games, doing exercises, singing songs, and learning moral lessons and polite behavior, all accompanied by background music.   

Consistent with the show's schoolroom ethos, many of the Romper Room hostesses were former kindergarten teachers who knew how to deal with young children, and they were always addressed as “Miss” by the children on the show, as real teachers were addressed by their students in those days.   When Romper Room debuted in Baltimore, its first hostess was Nancy Claster (“Miss Nancy”), who helped produce the series together with her husband.  She was later replaced by her daughter, “Miss Sally.”  In New York City, Romper Room was hosted by “Miss Louise,” followed by “Miss Mary Ann” and then “Miss Nancy” (Nancy Terrell).

The show also featured Do-Bee, a recurring character in a bumblebee costume, whose role on the show was to teach the children manners and proper behavior.   He would always start his sentences with “Do Bee…” and then add a statement about how children should behave (e.g., “Do Bee polite to your parents!”).   

One of the show’s features that I remember well would come at the end of the show, when the hostess would hold a “magic mirror” up to her face (actually just an open hand mirror frame, minus the mirror) and look through it to see all the viewers out in “televisionland.”  She would then recite this rhyme:  “Romper, bomper, stomper, boo!  Tell me, tell me, tell me do.  Magic Mirror, tell me today, have all my friends had fun at play?”  Then she would start naming some of the children that she could “see” watching at home:  “I can see Scotty and Kimberly and Julie and Jimmy and Kelly and all of you boys and girls out there!”  Parents would mail in their kids’ names, so that they would be read out loud on the show.   Of course it was quite a thrill if you heard your name called out (and if you had a fairly common name, chances were good that you would hear it at some point)! 

Nancy Claster, the original hostess of Romper Room, wrote several books that are still available, including The Romper Room do bee book of manners and Romper Room Exercise Book: Physical Fitness for Boys and Girls . 

Captain Kangaroo

A lot of us can probably remember Captain Kangaroo, which was one of the longest running network children's shows of all time, airing continuously on CBS from 1955 until 1984 and then in re-runs on PBS from 1986 to 1993. The show starred Bob Keeshan as the Captain, named for the huge pouch-like pockets on his jacket.  Keeshan had previously played the clown Clarabell on the Howdy Doody Show. 

The show took place in the Captain’s Treasure House, where the Captain read stories, met guests, showed cartoons, and interacted with a regular cast of both humans and puppets, including the Captain’s sidekick Mr. Green Jeans, and puppet characters Mr. Moose and Bunny Rabbit.  Bunny Rabbit usually tricked the Captain into giving him carrots.  Mr. Moose would pepper the Captain with riddles and knock-knock jokes, which always culminated with hundreds of ping-pong balls raining down on the Captain’s head. 

Other regular characters included Mr. Baxter, who exuded a sense of calm when things got a little too silly, and Slim Goodbody, a character who wore a bodystocking painted with the body’s internal organs on it.  And there was also the Banana Man, a clown who would constantly pull a seemingly endless supply of bananas (and also watermelons) from within his coat.  The Banana Man didn’t speak but he hummed continuously in a high-pitched falsetto as he performed, and would occasionally exclaim “Wow!” in the same falsetto voice. 

Among the well-known personalities who appeared on the show over the years were Bill Cosby, who did educational segments, and puppeteer/performer Kevin Clash, who later became the puppeteer and voice of Elmo on Sesame Street.

There were several cartoon segments that were shown regularly.  Probably the best-known was Tom Terrific, which aired on the show in the 1950’s and 1960’s.  Tom Terrific consisted of 3-5 minute segments drawn in simple stick-figure-like black-and-white animation.   Tom was a little boy who could change into any shape he wanted, usually to save his not-too-bright sidekick, Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog, from the villain Crabby Appleton and other bad guys.

Other cartoon segments included Lariat Sam, Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings, Ludwig, The Most Important Person, The Toothbrush Family, Crystal Tipps, and The Wombles. 

The show often featured simple black light theater segments with cardboard cutouts that cavorted on the screen while a recording of a popular song, like Over the Rainbow, would play.  Sometimes, hand puppets would perform instead of the cardboard cutouts. 

Keeshan conceived of Captain Kangaroo as a warm, grandfatherly character, and the show had a gentle feeling and gentle pace.  It was a full 60-minutes long for most of the years that it aired, which allowed it to include a rich and diverse range of segments and characters without seeming frenetic or too busy.  As portrayed by Keeshan, the Captain became a beloved and iconic figure who still represents the best of what television can offer its youngest viewers. 

Keeshan wrote about his life as Captain Kangaroo in Good Morning Captain: 50 Wonderful Years with Bob Keeshan, TV's Captain Kangaroo and Growing Up Happy: Captain Kangaroo Tells Yesterday's Children How to Nuture Their Own .