Kukla, Fran, and Ollie

   

I have only fuzzy memories of Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, a wonderful puppet show that was one of the first kids’ shows on TV.  I wish I could remember it more clearly, because from all accounts, it was one of the most creative, sophisticated, and entertaining kids’ shows in TV history.  Created by puppeteer Burr Tillstrom, who handled all the puppets on the program, the show debuted in 1947 on the NBC station in Chicago, the source of so many great children’s programs in the early days of television.  In 1949, it became an NBC network show and was broadcast nationwide until 1954, when it moved to ABC, where it ran until 1957.

Kukla, Fran, and Ollie quickly became enormously popular and was the first children’s show to attract a large adult audience.  The format consisted simply of host Fran Allison standing in front of a puppet stage and interacting with Kukla and Ollie, the two puppet stars of the show, along with a host of other puppet characters. The secret to the show’s success was that it combined a simple format and seemingly gentle, sweet atmosphere with adult-level wit and sly satire.  

Amazingly, each show was completely ad-libbed, a fact that most child viewers must have been oblivious to (I certainly was).  When you watch old videos of the show today, you can hear the crew laughing off-screen during some of the funnier moments.  They were apparently as surprised and entertained by the unscripted comedy as the viewers at home were.

The puppets on the show were designed in the traditional Punch and Judy style, but they didn’t engage in slapstick, and their personalities were much more nuanced.  Kukla was a sweet and gentle clown who served as the sensible though somewhat over-earnest leader of the group.  Ollie was short for Oliver J. Dragon, a mischievous snaggle-toothed dragon who often instigated the funnier interchanges on the show.  There were a host of other puppet characters collectively referred to as the Kuklapolitans, including Fletcher Rabbit, the town mailman and fussbudget, Madame Ophelia Oglepuss, a former opera diva, Beulah Witch, a liberated witch, stage manager Cecil Bill, who spoke a language that only the other puppets understood, Colonel R.H. Crackie, a courtly southern gentleman, Ollie’s mother Olivia Dragon, and Ollie’s cousin, Dolores Dragon, who started out as a toddler and grew into a teenager during the years that the show ran.  Host Fran Allison, the only human who appeared on air, served as straightman to the puppets but could also hold her own during the often-rapid improvised banter.

What made Kukla, Fran, and Ollie unique was how well-developed and three-dimensional the puppets’ characters became during the show’s run.  Through the ad-libbed banter that took place during each episode, viewers learned more and more about the distinct personalities and individual as well as family histories of each of the characters, so that the show created a varied and engrossing world populated by characters that the audience felt they really knew and quickly came to love.

After ABC cancelled Kukla, Fran, and Ollie in 1957, it returned to NBC in the form of 5-minute vignettes.  In 1967, the KFO cast began hosting the CBS Children’s Theater, but they only provided a brief introduction to each show and segues between commercials.  The Kukla, Fran, and Ollie show was revived on PBS from 1969-1971, and later appeared in occasional syndicated specials. 

The earliest Kukla, Fran, and Ollie show kinescopes have only recently become available in a wonderful DVD set, Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, the First Episodes: 1949-54.

You can also see Kukla, Fran, and Ollie in the DVD collection  Hiya Kids!  A 50's Saturday Morning Box.  

Wonderama

 

Wonderama was a very popular and long-running kids' show that aired from 1955 to 1978.  It originated from WNEW-TV in New York City and also appeared on the Metromedia-owned stations in Los Angeles, Washington DC, Cincinnati, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Kansas City. 

Wonderama was a variety show with a studio audience of enthusiastic kids and featured a range of segments that included games, contests, interviews, audience participation, musical performances, and cartoons.  The show ran three hours long on Sunday mornings, and there was also a one-hour weekday version for a time.   It had a series of hosts over the years, but the longest-running and best-known were Sonny Fox and Bob McAllister. 

The show reached its peak of popularity under McAllister, the former host of a children's show in Baltimore.  McAllister was a multi-talented performer who sang, played guitar, and clearly had a way with kids.  He presided as ringmaster over a fast-paced three hours of fun and games, including several regular features: 

• "Snake Cans" -- McAllister would choose a series of kids from the audience to open one of ten tin cans arrayed on a long table. Nine of the cans were filled with spring-loaded "snakes" that would fly out when the cans were opened. The tenth can held a bouquet of artificial flowers. All the kids received small prizes, but the child that picked the can with the flowers would win the grand prize, usually a fancy bicycle. All the children also had to answer trivia questions correctly before they received their prizes, but McAllister did his best to see to it that they got the answers right.
• "Does Anybody Here Have an Aardvark?" -- McAllister would pick kids from the audience to show off unusual objects they had brought in with them.
• "Wonderama-a-Go-Go" -- This was an American Bandstand-type dance contest, later renamed "Disco City," in which the kids competed to win a prize. The record that the children danced to was brought in by "The Disco Kid," a boy dressed in a Lone Ranger-like outfit.
• "Exercise, Exercise!" -- All the kids in the audience (and undoubtedly most of those watching at home) got up and worked out.
• "Good News" -- McAllister picked children from the audience to read happy news items from newspapers around the country, and then asked other audience members if they had any of their own good news that they wanted to share.
• "Whose is Whose is Whose?" -- Four children and four dads were introduced, and kids from the studio audience had to guess which dad was which child's father.
• "Guess Your Best" -- This was a game-show-type segment in which three kids competed to guess the results of audience polls and relay races.
• "Head of the House" -- This segment featured kids competing against each other in various quirky competitions, like gerbil races, balloon-breaking contests, and so on. The child who won the most competitions was named "Head of the House."

Because it originated from New York, Wonderama was able to feature some of the top stars of the day, including Abba, the Jackson Five, Jerry Lewis, the cast of Monty Python, and even boxers Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, who competed against each other in a game of marbles. 

The show would end with McAllister singing the show's theme song "Kids Are People, Too."  This became the program's title when it later aired briefly as a national network show on ABC. 

This song embodied McAllister's approach to the show, which he treated as a kids' version of The Tonight Show combined with The Today Show, with a little touch of circus thrown in.  He was never patronizing to his young audience and seemed genuinely to be having a good time interacting with his guests and the audience as he kept things moving along.  Wonderama and McAllister developed a loyal and devoted following who still remember the show fondly today. 

The Magic Garden

The Magic Garden was a locally-produced half-hour children's show that aired weekdays on WPIX in New York City from 1972 to 1984 and was also syndicated to other parts of the country.   The show starred co-hosts Carole Demas and Paula Janis, who sang and played guitar throughout the program, which took place on a studio set decorated like a "magic garden."  The Magic Garden set included a Magic Tree with two tree swings, as well as a barn, a stone path, and a giggling bed of flowers called the "The Chuckle Patch," that grew at the foot of the Magic Tree.   There were also two puppet characters on the show -- Sherlock, a mischievous pink squirrel, and Flap, a happy, colorful duck-like bird. 

Each half-hour episode of the show included songs, games, jokes, stories, and life lessons.  At some point in the show, one of the co-hosts would pluck a leaf from the Chuckle Patch and  ask the other co-host a simple joke question that was written on one side of the leaf.  When the other co-host couldn't answer the question, she would then turn the leaf over and read the punch-line answer written on the other side.  There was also a  "Story Box" that provided the hosts with costumes and props for acting out stories on each show. 

Every episode of The Magic Garden was infused with music, from the show's introduction to its close and during the transitions between each segment of the program, as Carole and Paula sang simple folk-music-like songs and played guitar.  With their guitars, long hair, and bell-bottom pants, Carole and Paula brought a distinctly folk/hippie 1970's look and sensibility to this children's show. Like the female hosts of such earlier children's shows as Ding Dong School and Romper Room, Carole and Paula had been school teachers, and they seemed to be natural performers with an ease in front of the camera and an ability to connect directly with their young viewers.   They also released several albums of their music and developed a live show that they took on tour throughout the country.   

Originating in the biggest television market in the country, The Magic Garden had a simplicity and sweetness that drew a large and enthusiastic audience of children, parents, and grandparents, many of whom still remember the show fondly.  The Magic Garden wasn't frenetic like some other children's shows at the time but instead presented its viewers with a gently-paced selection of lovely songs and child-friendly jokes that appealed to both kids and adults. 

For those of you who want to experience or re-experience the The Magic Garden for yourself, try Carole and Paula in the Magic Garden, a 2-DVD set that also includes a bonus CD with 6 of Carole and Paula's songs. 

The Mickey Mouse Club

 
Who's the leader of the club
That's made for you and me?
M-I-C-K-E-Y   M-O-U-S-E!

In the 1950's, every child in America (and probably every adult as well) instantly recognized this refrain as the beginning of the theme song for The Mickey Mouse Club, another iconic hit show from Walt Disney Productions, which had already launched the popular Disneyland series.  With its debut in 1955, The Mickey Mouse Club, named for the Disney studio's best-known cartoon character, quickly became one of the defining children's TV shows of its day.  It had a variety show format that featured singing, dancing, guest stars, classic Disney cartoons, and continuing serials like The Hardy Boys and Spin and Marty. 

The series aired five days a week, and each day had its own theme:

Monday - Fun With Music Day
Tuesday - Guest Star Day
Wednesday - Anything Can Happen Day
Thursday - Circus Day
Friday - Talent Round-Up Day

The show's most distinctive element was its cast -- a group of wholesome, talented teenagers called the Mouseketeers, who wore mouse-ear hats and sang and danced their way into the hearts of the viewing public.  There were also two adult regulars, "head Mouseketeer" Jimmie Dodd, who had also composed the show's theme song, and "Big Mooseketeer" Roy Williams, a rather rotund staff artist at Disney.   Every episode of the show would start with the Mouseketeer Roll Call, a musical number in which each of the Mouseketeers would announce themselves by name. 

Though many of the Mouseketeers gained name recognition and loyal fans, the most popular Mouseketeer was Annette Funicello, a beautiful and talented teen who was given her own serial on the show and later went on to a successful movie career.  Annette was TV's first real child star.  Her dark Italian features gave her an "ethnic" look that was unusual for TV in those days, which largely favored blond, blue-eyed actors.  In fact, all the Mouseketeers on the original show were white. 

The Mickey Mouse Club ran on ABC from 1955-1959, but was cancelled when ABC and Disney couldn't come to terms for renewal.  Audience demand brought it back in 1962 as a syndicated series in the form of edited half-hour reruns that ran in various markets until 1968.  Disney revived the show in 1977 as The New Mickey Mouse Club, with a disco re-recording of the theme song and a new cast that now featured some minority Mouseketeers.  The new version of the show spawned such stars as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Keri Russell, Kenan and Kel, and Melissa Joan Hart.   

Among the many Mickey Mouse Club DVD collections currently available, I would recommend:

• Walt Disney Treasures - Mickey Mouse Club, featuring the first five episodes of the show, color archival footage of the Mouseketeers' first appearance at the grand opening celebration of Disneyland, and a reunion of six of the original Mouseketeers on the soundstage where the show was produced 
• The Best of the Original Mickey Mouse Club
• Walt Disney Treasures: The Mickey Mouse Club Presents Annette - 1957-1958 Season, a boxed set that includes 20 episodes from Annette Funicello's Mickey Mouse Club serial, a documentary featuring an interview with the adult Annette from the 1990's, and commentary by film historian Leonard Maltin  

I would also recommend The Official Mickey Mouse Club Book (Paperback), which tells the story of the show from its beginning and traces the careers of some of the best-known Mouseketeers. 

Goodbye Art Clokey, Creator of Gumby

Art Clokey, the animator who created Gumby, the claymation star of one of my favorite kids' shows in the 1950's, passed away last Friday (see obituary in the New York Times on January 11, 2010).  As I noted in my previous post about the Gumby Show, the program was the first extended use of stop-motion animation on television.  As a child, I was enchanted by the primitive-looking animation on the show and the fact that Clokey didn't try to make his characters and sets look realistic but instead celebrated the fact that the characters looked like something a child might have made and the sets consisted of toys and miniature models. 

I learned some interesting facts about Clokey's life in the Times obituary that shed additional light on the Gumby Show.  When Clokey was 8, his parents divorced and he went to live with his father, who was killed in a car accident the following year.  Clokey then briefly rejoined his mother in California, but  his mother's new husband didn't want Clokey around, and he was placed in a children's home.  When Clokey was 11, his fortunes improved when he was adopted by Joseph Waddell Clokey, a well-known composer of sacred and secular music.  Joseph Clokey was apparently a loving father who introduced Art to a new world of books and culture. 

After graduating from Miami University in Ohio, Clokey attended Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, intending to become an Episcopal priest.  However, he left before graduating and returned to California, planning to make religious films.  He entered the University of Southern California, where he studied with the modernist filmmaker Slavko Vorkapich.  In 1953, he made a student film titled Gumbasia, in honor of the Disney animated feature Fantasia, in which he used the form of claymation that he was to apply to the Gumby Show two years later.

Clokey's religious interests and apparent lifelong search for enlightenment help to explain the subtle undercurrent of spirituality that runs through the Gumby Show.  Clokey also created the Davey and Goliath Show, which was explicitly spiritual and was sponsored by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  Davey and Goliath was designed to teach children values like charity and tolerance. 

The Gumby Show was popular through the 1950's and 60's but was pushed aside when slicker violent cartoons began to draw larger audiences in the 1970's.  However, Gumby got a new lease on life in the 1980's, when Eddie Murphy created a raunchy caricature of the character on Saturday Night Live.  According to Clokey's family, Clokey loved Eddie Murphy's performance. 

We are indebted to Art Clokey for creating a charming and whimsical icon that represents some of the best of what children's television has contributed to our culture. 

Diver Dan

 

Debuting in 1960, Diver Dan was a strange and distinctive kids' show that featured two live-action characters and a large cast of fish marionettes.   The show was a continuing serial that was produced as a series of 7-minute shorts that aired in syndication on local stations, mostly NBC affiliates, around the country.  Some stations combined several shorts into half-hour programs.   In New York City, Diver Dan shorts ran as part of Felix & Diver Dan, a 30-minute children's show airing from 1960 to 1962, which also included Felix the Cat. 

The show looked as if it was taking place underwater by having the camera shoot through an actual aquarium with real live goldfish, which seemed to be mingling with the live actors and fish marionettes.  It featured the adventures of a deep-sea diver in an old-fashioned diving suit with a large bell helmet, who interacted with the passing fish.  There was also a beautiful blonde mermaid, Miss Minerva, a live-action character who spoke to the fish the way that Miss Francis talked to her child audience on Ding Dong School about manners and morals.   Diver Dan and Miss Minerva had a thing for each other, but their relationship didn't progress beyond the stage of mutual attraction.

The puppet cast consisted of a veritable school of fish marionettes with funny pun-like names, including the villainous Baron Barracuda, his dumb henchman Trigger Fish, Finley Haddock, Doc Sturgeon, Georgie Porgy, Gabby the Clam, Gill Espy, Glow Fish, Goldie the Goldfish, Hermit Crab, Sam the Sawfish, Scout Fish, Sea Biscuit the Seahorse, and Skipper Kipper.

The fish marionettes had human voices (all done by Allen Swift, who did the voices on the Howdy Doody Show) and the personalities of stock TV or movie characters.   Baron Barracuda wore a monocle in one eye and spoke in a Transylvanian accent. Trigger Fish, the Baron's accomplice, always had an unlit cigarette jutting from the side of his mouth.  Scout Fish was an ethnic stereotype who carried a tomahawk and spoke in pidgin American-Indian dialect.  Gill-Espy was a bongo-playing beatnik. 

The plot lines generally consisted of Baron Barracuda and Trigger Fish hatching various schemes to take over the bottom of the sea, and being foiled by Diver Dan, Miss Minerva, and the other fish.

 

Diver Dan was a strange and enchanting show, but because it aired only in syndication, it never got the national exposure that other puppet-based shows like The Howdy Doody Show or Kukla, Fran, and Ollie received.   Nevertheless, the show still has an enthusiastic and dedicated, if small, fan base among former viewers.  Watching videos of the show today, one can't help but see it as a precursor to Sponge Bob Square Pants, right down to its sweetly goofy atmosphere.  

Episodes of the original Diver Dan series are available on DVD in Diver Dan Classic TV Series Collection: Vol. 1 and 2 and Kids TV of the 50's and 60's. 

Happy 40th Birthday, Sesame Street!

 
It seems hard to believe, but Sesame Street just celebrated its 40th year on the air.  I celebrated the show's birthday by attending a panel discussion on "40 Years of Life on the Street" at the Brooklyn Public Library on November 21.  The panel was moderated by Louise A. Gikow, a Sesame Street writer, former editorial director at Jim Henson Productions, and author of Sesame Street: A Celebration of 40 Years of Life on the Street, and featured Bob McGrath, one of the original cast members on the show, where he plays a music teacher who lives in an apartment over Hooper's Store; Fran Brill, the first female muppet performer on the show, who created the muppet characters Prairie Dawn and Zoe; Chris Cerf, the songwriter behind tunes like "Letter B" and "Put Down the Duckie"; Carol-Lynn Parente, the show's Executive Producer; and Rollie Krewson, one of the top puppet designers and builders at the Jim Henson Company, who designed and built Sesame Street muppet characters Zoe, Abby Cadabby, and Murray Monster.   

What can I say about Sesame Street that hasn't been said already?  Seen around the world for decades by millions of children, Sesame Street is still the preeminent show for preschoolers and the gold standard by which other kids' shows are inevitably judged.  As head of research for Sesame Street in the mid-90's, I know a lot about what makes Sesame Street so special, but the panel discussion at the Brooklyn Public Library helped to bring the show's unique features into focus.   

Sesame Street started out as an experiment in a new kind of educational television for preschool-age children.   From its inception, each episode of the show has been written and produced to achieve specific curriculum goals, and intensive research is conducted to help each show achieve those goals and to measure whether the goals are being met.  At the same time, each episode of the show is also written to grab and hold the young audience's attention by entertaining them with amazingly clever and sophisticated comedy, graphics, and music, multi-dimensional puppet and human characters, and engaging plots.   

As the panelists explained, Sesame Street writers were recruited from the Harvard Lampoon, comedy shows and clubs, and Broadway.  Traditional children's literature writers were not welcome.  Consequently, each show has multiple levels of humor and wit that delight adult viewers as much as the kids.  The three-year-old viewer may not know or care that "Letter B" is a hilarious riff on the Beatles' "Let it Be," but he or she can still enjoy the song on its own terms. 

Sesame Street was certainly influenced by earlier kids' shows, but it added a level of contemporary wit, edge, and intelligence, all in the service of predefined and explicit educational goals that resulted in a transformative new kind of kids show.   We can all be grateful that Sesame Street has continued to renew and reinvent itself for successive generations of children and parents around the globe. 

In honor of Sesame Street's 40th anniversary, there is a special DVD compilation available -- Sesame Street: 40 Years of Sunny Days, a commemorative collection with over 5 hours of iconic moments, favorite songs, celebrity segments and exclusive backstage footage.   There's also a wonderful new book about the show's history, Sesame Street: A Celebration of 40 Years of Life on the Street, which provides an insider's view of all of the Muppet and human characters, as well as the writers, directors, producers, and other creative people who have made learning fun for generations of kids.

Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney

Paul Winchell was a superb ventriloquist, comedian, singer, and all-around multi-talented performer who appeared with his featured dummy sidekick Jerry Mahoney on NBC in the 1950's.  Winchell and his wooden co-star were originally seen in primetime on the Spiedel Show and later moved to Saturday mornings, where they hosted the Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney Show.

 

Broadcast live, the show was set in Jerry Mahoney's Clubhouse and featured an audience of twenty children who competed for prizes and were entertained by the antics of Jerry Mahoney, the club president.  Other clubhouse members included Knucklehead Smiff, a country bumpkin who served as the club's vice-president, and Irving the Mouse, a scholarly rodent who lived in a piece of cheese at the clubhouse and helped Knucklehead Smiff with this homework. 

Jerry's personality was that of a sassy wise-cracking child/adolescent, and his interactions with Winchell usually consisted of Winchell becoming increasingly exasperated with Jerry's antics and insolence.   As you watch the hilarious clips below,  keep in the mind that this performance was broadcast on live TV.

 

As noted in comments to a previous post, there is often something unsettling and a little creepy about watching ventriloquists and their dummies, and the sketch in these videos certainly plays off that unease.   

After the Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney Show on NBC went off the air, Winchell and Jerry moved to ABC, where they hosted Circus Time and later the Paul Winchell Show on Sunday afternoons.

Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney can be seen on DVD in Rare Christmas TV Classics - Volume 1  and More Kids TV of the 50's and 60's!    

Gumby

   One of my absolute favorite shows as a kid was Gumby, a trippy, somewhat surreal series filmed using stop motion clay animation.  There were 233 episodes of the show produced over the course of its 40-year history on TV, all featuring the green clay robot-like little boy with the big feet and slanted head, and his sidekick Pokey, a talking pony. 

Created by animator Art Clokey, who developed the unique style of claymation later used in the series while he was a student at the University of Southern California, Gumby made its debut as a short segment on the Howdy Doody Show in 1956 and became a series on NBC the following year.   Production on this version of the show continued through the late 60’s.  In the 1980’s, the original Gumby episodes enjoyed a revival on TV and home video, which led to production of a new version of the series for syndication.

Besides Pokey, other characters regularly featured in the series were the Blockheads, a duo of red humanoid figures with block-shaped heads, who always created mischief and mayhem; Gumby’s parents Gumba and Gumbo, and later his sister, Minga; Prickle, a yellow dragon; Goo, a flying blue mermaid; Tilly, a chicken; and Denali, a mastadon. 

What made the series visually unique was that Clokey didn’t disguise the fact that his characters were made out of clay or try too hard to make the characters and settings look realistic.  Instead, each episode highlighted how the characters could melt into various shapes and then reconfigure back to their original forms.  The settings for the show were little toy houses and villages, and Gumby and the other characters were like toy figures brought to life.  Many of the episodes included a sequence in which Gumby and Pokey would physically slip into a book and then have an adventure in the world of the book’s story. 

There was something about the primitive look of the animation and the way that Gumby and the other characters seemed like clay figures made by a child and brought to life to play out a child’s imaginary stories that delighted and entranced me as a young viewer.  Gumby’s personality seemed very much like that of a real child, but he existed in a surreal, magical world where anything could happen.  I think there is something about that combination that made Gumby so fascinating to so many generations of kids and adults.

There are several good Gumby DVD collections, including Gumby Vol. 1, Gumby Essentials Vol. 1,  Gumby's Greatest Adventures, and Christmas with Gumby. 

Good-bye Soupy Sales

 
Sadly, Soupy Sales passed away yesterday at the age of 83 (obituary in the New York Times today).   As my previous post about him noted, Soupy became an icon of children's TV in the 1950's and 1960's.   Soupy was the master of pie-throwing (or should I say pie-receiving), and by his own count some 20,000 pies were thrown at Soupy's face or those of his guests on Soupy's shows (incuding Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, and Jerry Lewis).  But Soupy was much more than a slapstick artist.  He combined and transmogrified the standard elements of previous children's shows -- puppets, music, clowning, and vaudeville antics -- into a zany, largely unscripted new blend that appealed to children, teens, college students, and adults alike.   Lunch with Soupy Sales wasn't just a TV show but more like a hip club that made viewers feel as if they were insiders to something very cool and crazy.  In the words of one 13-year-old Soupy fan, as quoted in the New York Times, "He's great, he's a nut like us."