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.  

Fury

This is the range country where the pounding hooves of untamed horses still thunder in mountains, meadows and canyons. Every herd has its own leader, but there is only one Fury - Fury, King of the Wild Stallions. And here in the wild west of today, hard-riding men still battle the open range for a living - men like Jim Newton, owner of the Broken Wheel Ranch and Pete, his top hand, who says he cut his teeth on a branding iron...  FURY!..The story of a horse..and a boy who loves him.

So began each episode of Fury, a weekly dramatic TV series set in the then contemporary American West, which aired on NBC from 1955-1966 and later in syndication through the 1970's (retitled as Brave Stallion).  Fury starred Peter Graves as Jim Newton, the recently-widowed owner of the Broken Wheel Ranch in California, Bobby Diamond as Jim's adopted son Joey Clark Newton, and William Fawcett as ranch hand Pete Wilkey.    

As depicted in the first episode of the series, Jim Newton first meets orphan Joey Clark when he sees a group of young boys playing baseball in the streets of a small town, and the boys wrongly blame Joey for an errant baseball that breaks a nearby shop window.  Jim attends the court hearing where Joey is to be held responsible for breaking the window and tells the judge, who happens to be a friend of his, that Joey is innocent.  Jim offers to take the orphan Joey home to live with him at the ranch, and the judge lets Joey go free. 

Once at the ranch, Jim introduces Joey to Fury, a captured wild stallion that no one seems able to tame.  Fury seems drawn to Joey as a kindred spirit and allows Joey to ride him.  From then on, Joey and Fury become fast friends.  Subsequent episodes of the show usually revolved around a guest star who would find him or herself in danger, usually due to their own reckless behavior, and Fury and Joey would ride to their rescue.  Jim would also usually play a part in helping to resolve the situation and set things right, even if it meant taking part in a fist fight or two.   

Fury was one of a number of dramatic series in the 1950's, like Rin Tin Tin, Lassie, My Friend Flicka, and Sky King, that were set in the West and involved kids and horses or dogs (or airplanes) rescuing people.  The children in these series were usually orphans or only distantly related to the adults they lived with.  These shows were aimed at a family audience, and they combined action and adventure with clear moral lessons about right and wrong.  The starring adults were depicted as kind and nurturing but also strong and fearless, and always ready to right a wrong, rescue a hapless victim (even if they had gotten themselves into trouble through their own bad judgment), and capture a bad guy.  The kids served as the adults' assistants and apprentices, learning important values and moral lessons along the way.  The horses and dogs in these shows were depicted as proud, innocent, wise, and brave creatures who had a natural bond with children who, unlike some adults, were inherently good and innocent themselves.

Peter Graves, the actor who played ranch owner Jim Newton, later went on to star in other TV series, most notably Mission Impossible.  Sadly, he passed away on March 15, 2010. 

You can watch Fury on DVD in the Fury 2-Pack (Vol. 1 and 2), which includes ten episodes from the original series.   

 

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. 

The Wonderful World of Disney

From its debut on ABC in October 1954, through its final telecast on Christmas Eve 2008, the Walt Disney anthology television series commonly known as The Wonderful World of Disney (initiallycalled simply Disneyland) appeared on all three broadcast TV channels at various times under a variety of names, becoming the second-longest-running prime-time program on American television.   Watching the show with my family when I was growing up, I was of course oblivious to Disney's incredibly forward-thinking synergy strategy, with the TV show,  the Disney studio's theatrical films, and the new Disneyland theme park all designed to promote and market each other and strengthen the overall Disney brand.  All I knew was that the show was fun to watch and something that my mom and dad enjoyed watching with me. 

 
The format was a mixture of cartoons, live-action adventures, documentaries, and nature stories, all initially hosted by the affable Walt Disney himself.  Much of the material came from the Disney studio library, including one-hour edits or multi-part miniseries of recent Disney films.  Unlike the heads of the other major Hollywood movie studios at the time, Disney didn't worry that the new television medium would destroy his movie business.  On the contrary, he understood that he could use his TV show to promote and extend the life of his theatrical releases, and vice versa. 

A good example of this synergy was the huge success of the 3-part miniseries about the historical American frontiersman Davy Crockett that aired under the show's umbrella in 1955.  In the ensuing Davy Crockett craze, the show's theme song, "The Ballad of Davy Crockett," became a hit record, and Disney sold millions of dollars of Davy Crockett merchandise.  Every child I knew had a Davy Crockett lunch box, coonskin hat, fringed jacket or pants, or similar paraphernalia.  Then Disney edited the TV episodes into two theatrical films that were quickly released to benefit from and build upon the show's popularity. 

Walt Disney approached both NBC and CBS with his plans for producing a TV series, but he ultimately chose third-place network ABC for the debut of Disneyland, because ABC was willing to give him what he wanted in exchange -- a $500,000 investment in the amusement park he dreamed of opening in Anaheim, California.  ABC executives were desperate to obtain programming that would give them an edge against their two more established rivals, and they were also very interested in attracting the growing family market in those baby-boom years.  ABC's investment paid off quickly, as Disneyland became the network's first series to hit the top ten in ratings.

When the Disneyland theme park opened in July of 1955, ABC aired a live special honoring the new tourist mecca and its founder. Within a year, millions of Disneyland  viewers who had seen the park constantly promoted on the TV show poured into Disneyland.  In its first year, the theme park grossed $10 million.  Walt Disney and his company had shaped two new entertainment forms and interlinked them in a strategy that continued to generate millions of dollars in profits over the ensuing decades.

In this clip from the series' premiere episode, you can see how the show helped to promote both the Disney studio's movie line-up and the planned theme park:

In 1961, Disney moved the show to NBC to take advantage of the fact that it was the first network to broadcast in color.  In another prescient decision, Disney had filmed many of his earlier shows in color, even though they could only air in black and white at the time.  With the move to NBC, he could now repeat these shows in full color.  The series was renamed Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color and aired under that name until 1969. 

Walt Disney, an inveterate cigarette smoker, died of lung cancer on December 15, 1966.  The intros he had filmed before he died remained a part of the show for the rest of that season, but the host segment was then dropped.  The series was retitled The Wonderful World of Disney in 1969 and remained popular through the mid-70's.  At that point, however, the show's audiences began to decline, as popular tastes changed and the public began to see the Disney brand as square, uptight, and unhip, qualities that America's youth were turning away from.  

In 1979, in an attempt to revive the series' fortunes, it was retitled Disney's Wonderful World and given a new opening sequence with a computer-generated logo and disco-flavored theme song. 

But growing competition from CBS's new 60 Minutes newsmagazine show combined with frequent preemptions and cancellations by NBC, led to further ratings declines, and NBC cancelled the show in 1981. 

CBS then picked up the program and retitled it simply Walt Disney.  It ran for another two years, until the debut of the Disney Channel on cable TV.  The Disney company then decided that the broadcast show and the fledgling cable channel would cannibalize each other, and production of the program was ended.  However, after a change in management at the Disney company, the series was revived in 1986 under the title The Disney Sunday Movie, with new Disney CEO Michael Eisner as host.  This version of the show had a movie-of-the-week format, featuring family-oriented TV movies produced by the Disney studio, as well as occasional theatrical films.   

The series moved back to NBC in 1988 as The Magical World of Disney, with its original anthology format.  But it did not do well and was cancelled in 1990.  The Disney Channel continued to use The Magical World of Disney as the umbrella title for its Sunday night movies and specials until 1996.  In 1997, after Disney purchased ABC, the series was revived again as The Wonderful World of Disney, airing on Saturday or Sunday evenings until its finale on December 24, 2008, with a telecast of the feature film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. 

Walt Disney's endearing on-screen personality made him an icon of American popular culture.  His television series provided wholesome, high-quality, family-oriented entertainment for generations of viewers.  And his marketing acumen created a multi-media juggernaut that combined television, movies, theme parks, and licensed merchandise into one of the most successful and powerful brands in the world. 

Among the many books and DVD's about the Disney TV series, I suggest the following: 

Walt Disney Treasures - Disneyland USA (1955): A 2-disc DVD set of TV specials for the opening of the Disneyland amusement park, hosted by movie/TV historian Leonard Maltin

Walt Disney Treasures - Your Host, Walt Disney: A DVD compilation of several of the most memorable hours from the Disney TV show

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (Paperback):  An insightful biography of Walt Disney, by Neal Gabler

The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life (Paperback): Part biography and part cultural analysis, an anatomy of Disney's productions and their consumption, by Steven Watts.

 

The Collectionary is a great place to visit if you collect Disney objects. Link to the Collectionary here.

The Popeye Show

 
If you were a kid growing up in the Los Angeles area from the late 1950's through the early 1980's, chances are that you're familiar with The Popeye Show, which aired on KTLA Channel 5.  The Popeye Show grew out of an earlier show called The Pier 5 Club and was later rechristened as Popeye and Friends.   

The Popeye Show was one of the many wonderful children's shows that stations around the country produced for their local audiences in the 1950's, 60's, and 70's, before they were replaced by syndicated talk shows or local news programs.   These home-grown children's shows gave local broadcasters a way to strenghten relationships with the community by entertaining kids and the moms who usually stayed home with them.  The shows were initially broadcast live and usually featured a host who introduced cartoons or short filmed segments and often interacted with a live studio audience of local children. 

In the case of The Popeye Show, the host was actor/entertainer Tom Hatten and the cartoons were early black and white Popeye cartoons produced by Paramount Studios, which owned station KTLA.   What made Hatten and the show special were Hatten's skills as an artist and cartoonist, which Hatten used on the show by teaching viewers how to draw the characters in the Popeye cartoons.   He would also read viewer mail and draw cartoon characters that his viewers requested. 

One of the special features on the show was the "squiggle" contest, in which viewers would mail in a single-line doodle called a "squiggle," and Hatten would quickly turn it into a drawing of a cartoon character.   Sometimes he had guests on the show compete with each other to turn the "squiggles" into recognizable drawings. 

Thanks to one of my readers for telling me about The Popeye Show.  I haven't found any footage from the original show, but here is a video of host Tom Hatten's appearance on a local talk show where he discusses the early days of the show and how he came to host it. 

The reader who turned me on to The Popeye Show also had a question for those of you who grew up in LA.  She remembers a TV show she watched as a child, in which there was a man-sized wolf with a black cape or coat, who wore white gloves and sat behind a desk and talked. The show gave her nightmares, but she'd love to know what it was.  Does this ring a bell for anyone? 

You can read about The Popeye Show and other local children's shows in Hi There, Boys and Girls!  America's Local Children's TV Programs.

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.

The Lone Ranger

 
"A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty "Hi-yo, Silver!"

Who was that masked man?  Of course, it had to be The Lone Ranger, star of a TV series set in the Old West that aired in primetime on ABC from 1949 to 1957 and was hugely popular with both kids and adults.  The Lone Ranger, whose real name on the show was John Reid, was portrayed by actors Clayton Moore and, for a short time,  John Hart, while Jay Silverheels played Tonto, the Lone Ranger's loyal Native-American friend.   

Based on an earlier radio series, the show's premise, which was dramatized in the series' first few episodes, was that John Reid was the only one of six Texas Rangers to survive a canyon ambush  by a murderous gang of criminals.  Reid's childhood friend Tonto comes upon the massacre and discovers Reid is still alive, though just barely. Many years earlier, Reid had rescued Tonto after renegade Indians had murdered his mother and sister and left him for dead. At that time, Reid had given Tonto a horse, and Tonto had insisted that Reid accept a ring. Tonto recognizes Reid by this ring when he comes upon the scene of the ambush.

Tonto takes Reid to safety and nurses him back to health.  Reid vows to devote his life to bringing the killers and others like them to justice.  He decides this will be easier if his identity is hidden, so when Tonto buries the dead Rangers, Reid asks Tonto to dig a sixth grave so people will believe that he, too, died in the ambush.  Unfortunately, one of the gang members returns to the scene and tries to kill Reid and Tonto so he can take Tonto's horse, Scout.  But he falls to his death while trying to drop a rock on Reid, so now Tonto is the only person who knows that Reid is still alive.

Reid and Tonto come upon a magnificent white stallion that has been injured by a buffalo. They nurse the stallion back to health, and Reid adopts the stallion as his mount, calling him Silver. Whenever the Lone Ranger gets read to gallop away on Silver, he shouts, "Hi-yo, Silver! Away!"

Tonto makes Reid a mask out of material cut from the vest of Reid's brother, one of the murdered Texas Rangers, which allows him to create a new identity as the Lone Ranger. He decides to use only silver bullets in his gun, to constantly remind himself that life, like silver, is precious and valuable, and not to be wasted or thrown away.  From that day on, vowing to fight for justice and never to shoot to kill,  the Lone Ranger and Tonto wander the Old West helping people and fighting injustice. 

Like Superman and Batman, the premise of The Lone Ranger revolved around the main character's hidden identity, which meant that John Reid, like Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne, didn't seek and never got the thanks he deserved for helping people.  At the end of each episode, the Lone Ranger and Tonto would ride away as one of the characters they had helped would lament the fact that they never learned the hero's name ("Who was that masked man?"), only to be told, "Why, he's the Lone Ranger!"

The show's signature theme music was the finale of Rossini's William Tell Overture, which became inseparably associated with the series.  Even now, I can't hear the Overture without picturing the Lone Ranger seated on Silver as the magnificent horse rears up and paws the air with his front hooves. 

Like other cowboy shows, The Lone Ranger was a family-oriented series designed to teach lessons about morals and values to its viewers.  It was the Lone Ranger's strict moral code that enabled him to prevail over the bad guys who preyed upon the good people of the Old West.  Though Native-Americans were the stereotypical enemy in many other Westerns, The Lone Ranger's partnership with Tonto showed that respecting the rights and beliefs of others was an important part of his moral code and one of the lessons that the show tried to teach. 

Much of The Lone Ranger TV series is available on DVD.   Some good collections are:

• The Lone Ranger: 75th Anniversary, Seasons 1 and 2, a 13-disc collector's edition
• The Lone Ranger, a boxset with 19 of the later (1956/57) color episodes
• Lone Ranger Collection, a 2-DVD set with 17 early episodes