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 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.

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. 

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.

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 Roy Rogers Show

 
Happy Trails to you, until we meet again...

If you watched The Roy Rogers Show as a child, you probably have the rest of the show's theme song running through your head now.  The Roy Rogers Show debuted on NBC on December 30, 1951, and ran there until 1957.  After that, it appeared in reruns on CBS for another four years.  Like Sky King, the show was a contemporary cowboy series set in the present day.  It starred Roy Rogers and country singer Dale Evans, who lived in the fictional town of Mineral City in Paradise Valley.

Rogers, dubbed the "King of the Cowboys," was a popular B-movie Western film star of the 1940's when he made the move to TV.   On the TV show, which Rogers produced, he played the owner of the Double R Bar Ranch, who continued the fight for law and order in the contemporary West that he had begun on the silver screen.  Rogers was assisted by his real-life wife Dale Evans, who played the owner of the Eureka Cafe in town and Rogers' love interest, and Pat Brady, Roy's comic sidekick who drove around in his cantankerous jeep, named Nellybelle.   

The show also featured several animal performers.  There was Trigger, Roy's faithful golden palomino stallion, who had made more than 80 movies with him, and who could be seen galloping along at breakneck speed in the show's opening.   Dale's horse was a beautiful buckskin named Buttermilk.  Last but not least came Bullet The Wonder Dog, Roy's German Shepherd, who was actually a Rogers family pet in real life.   

The plot lines of The Roy Rogers Show were simple and familiar: Roy or Dale would find out about someone who was in trouble and needed help, and they would help them. Roy's character was that of an easy-going singing cowboy who wasn't afraid to use his fists when necessary.  There were always bad guys to catch, lots of chase scenes with horses, and a good fist-fight or two.  Roy and Dale both packed six-shooters on their hips in order to be ready to shoot a gun out of a bad guy's hand (but never to kill or seriously wound anyone). 

Though Roy and Dale played sweethearts on the show, there was no mushy stuff between them.  Their relationship was one of mutual friendship, respect, and trust in one another.  They both played nice, smart, competent people who worked together to uphold the law and the moral order.  Each episode of the show closed with Roy and Dale singing the chorus to the couple's signature theme song, "Happy Trails," which was written by Dale.

In the 1950's, almost every kid in the country wanted to be like Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy or Davy Crockett, which fueled a marketing bonanza of lunch boxes, toys, games, and other licensed products.   I still have fond memories of the Dale Evans cowgirl outfit I wore one Halloween, with its fringed buckskin vest, felt circle skirt, white cowboy hat, white cowboy boots, and holster with toy six-shooter.   

Roy Rogers fans might consider buying The Roy Rogers Collection - Classic TV Shows, a set of 16 DVD's containing 64 episodes of the show, or Roy Rogers: King of the Cowboys, Collector's Edition, a 2-disc set packaged in an embossed tin, featuring five of Rogers' movies and ten episodes of his TV show. Episodes of the TV show can also be seen on Roy Rogers with Dale Evans, Volumes 1-6 and Volumes 7-12. 

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.