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.

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!    

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."

Winky Dink and You

   An interactive TV show in the 1950’s?!?  That’s right, Winky Dink and You, which aired Saturday mornings on CBS from 1953 to 1957, employed a simple but brilliant marketing gimmick that actually allowed kids to “interact” with the TV. The show featured host Jack Barry and his sidekick, the aptly-named Mr. Bungle, who showed clips of the animated adventures of a crudely-drawn star-headed, big-eyed little boy named Winky Dink and his dog Woofer.  

What made the show unique was the use of a “magic drawing screen” and set of special crayons that came in a kit that children could buy in order to interact with the cartoon.  The screen was actually a large TV-shaped piece of see-through vinyl that stuck to the TV screen by static electricity.  At a climactic point in every Winky Dink cartoon, Winky would encounter some obstacle or danger, along with a connect-the-dots picture included in the scene.  Winky Dink would then ask the children at home to help him out by connecting the dots on the screen with their crayons, and the resulting drawing would turn out to be a rope, ladder, bridge, or whatever Winky needed to solve his problem. 

The interactive screen was also used to send secret messages to the audience. A message would appear on the screen, but only the vertical lines of the letters in the message were visible.   Viewers at home would quickly trace these lines onto their magic screen. Then a second screen would appear showing only the horizontal lines, and when viewers also traced these onto their magic screens, the full message would appear.

Another way the magic screen was used was to have the viewers create the outline of a character with whom host Jack Barry would have a conversation. The scene appeared meaningless to viewers without the magic screen and the drawing.

Because of the ingenious magic screen, Winky Dink and You became a big hit in the 1950’s.  And the producers profited handsomely from sales of the screen and crayon kits, which every child had to have.  Of course, you can guess what happened in the homes of kids whose parents wouldn’t buy them the kits.  Some of them simply got out their own crayons and drew right on their TV screens, which couldn’t have been good for their parents’ expensive shiny new Philco or RCA set.   

Winky Dink and You was revived in syndication as a five-minute stand-alone cartoon from 1969-1973, but production was halted because of parents’ concerns about the possibility of radiation emanating from TV sets and about kids’ harming their eyesight by watching the TV screen from so close-up.  The continuing problem of kids drawing directly on the TV screen probably didn’t help matters either.

In an ironic footnote to the show’s history, host Jack Barry went on to fame and notoriety when he later became the host of Twenty-One, a popular prime-time quiz show that he also co-produced.  In 1958, it was revealed that Twenty-One’s top-prize winner Charles Van Doren had secretly been given the answers to some of the questions he correctly answered on the show.  Twenty-One was taken off the air, and Barry’s career was over. 

 

You can see the original version of Winky Dink and You on DVD in Kids' TV of the 50's or the later syndicated version ("magic screen" and special crayons included) in Winky Dink and You! Vol. 1-3.     

Soupy Sales

   

The Soupy Sales show was a unique kids’ show with lots of adult appeal that made us all feel like little hipsters.   Soupy, a multi- talented performer, hosted several local, national, and syndicated children’s shows from the 1950’s through the 1970’s, with broadcasts originating from Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York.   He reached the height of his popularity with the syndicated show produced in New York City beginning in 1964. 

Soupy’s show was a kind of ironic twist on the standard conventions of earlier kids’ TV shows, combining vaudeville antics (primarily in the form of frequent pies in the face, which became Soupy’s trademark), puppets, Laugh-In-style comedy sketches, musical numbers that made use of Soupy’s extensive jazz record collection, and guest appearances by major stars of the day, like Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and singing groups like the Shangri-Las and the Supremes.  Much of the show was ad-libbed, which gave it a loose and slightly dangerous feeling – you knew that anything could happen on the show, and it often did.

The puppets on the show were pretty strange.  White Fang, billed as “The Biggest and Meanest Dog in the USA,” appeared only as a giant white shaggy paw at the edge of the TV screen.  Fang spoke only in grunts and growls, which Soupy hilariously translated for the viewers.  Fang threw pies at Soupy when Soupy’s jokes bombed.   There was also Black Tooth, “The Biggest and Sweetest Dog in the USA,” who  appeared as a giant furry black paw and spoke with similarly unintelligible but somewhat more feminine doggy sounds, and would pull Soupy off-camera to give him loud wet kisses.

Pookie the Lion was a little hand-puppet who appeared on a puppet stage behind Soupy.  Despite his cuddly appearance, Pookie was a hipster who engaged in rapid-fire repartee with Soupy.  He often greeted Soupy with, “Hey bubby, want a kiss?”  Pookie would mouth the words to jazz, soul, or pop recordings while he and Soupy bopped around to the music. 

 

Soupy’s show also featured a number of live characters, including Peaches, Soupy’s girlfriend, played by Soupy in drag; Philo Kvetch, a private detective played by Soupy; The Mask, Philo’s evil nemesis, also played by Soupy and later revealed to be deposed USSR leader Nikita Khrushchev; and Onions Oregano, The Mask’s henchman, played by actor Frank Nastasi, who was always eating onions.  Every time he breathed in Philo’s direction, Philo would choke and make faces, spray air freshener around, and exclaim, “Get those onions out of here!”

 

There are a couple of notorious incidents that took place on the show that illustrate how unpredictable and edgy the live show could be.   One occurred on New Year’s Day in 1965, when Soupy was apparently annoyed about having to do the show on a holiday.  At the end of the broadcast, Soupy urged his young viewers to tiptoe into their still-sleeping parents’ bedrooms and remove the “funny green pieces of paper with pictures of US presidents” from their parents’ wallets.  Soupy told the kids to put the bills in an envelope and mail them to him, promising to send them back a postcard from Puerto Rico.  Then he got hit in the face by a pie. 

When Soupy began receiving envelopes with cash in the mail, he was forced to explain on his show that he had only been kidding and would donate the unreturnable money to charity.  But complaints by parents poured into WNEW, the New York City station that produced Soupy’s show, and the station’s management suspended Soupy’s show for two weeks to try to appease the public.  Of course, this only generated a backlash by Soupy’s outraged fans, and even led to children picketing the station’s offices.  When Soupy returned to the air, he was more popular than ever. 

Another time, Soupy’s studio crew played a joke on Soupy on his birthday.  The show supposedly took place in Soupy’s living room, and a continuing skit involved someone knocking on Soupy’s door and Soupy opening the door to find a guest celebrity or an off-screen character that the home audience couldn’t see, that Soupy would comically interact with.  On Soupy’s birthday, Soupy opened the door to encounter an off-screen stripper who proceeded to perform her act to the tune of “The Stripper,” a popular musical number at the time.  Though the home viewers only saw the beach ball that the “stripper” used strategically as part of her act, Soupy saw the entire number and thought that the home audience could see her, too.   Soupy and the crew cracked up, but Soupy seemed a little worried about audience complaints.  Sure enough, though nothing explicit was broadcast, controversy ensued, which only enhanced the delight that Soupy’s outlaw behavior generated among his young fans. 

You can see Soupy for yourself in several DVD collections, including Soupy Sales Collection (Volume 1),  Soupy Sales Collection (Volume 2),  Soupy Sales Collection: The Whole Gang is Here!, and Soupy Sales: In Living Black and White.   You can read more about Soupy in his autobiography Soupy Sez!: My Zany Life and Times (paperback) and in From Soupy to Nuts: A History of Detroit Television (paperback).  Soupy fans might also want to buy Stop Me if You Heard It!  Soupy Sales Favorite Jokes (paperback). 

Bozo the Clown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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