Your yowping reporter pre-dates that. I go further back, back to a time when you got more than cartoons on pre- and after-school shows on TV. You got live hosts, introducing cartoons and kibitzing with others in front of the camera. Their routines could be silly and funny and, if I may editorialise, more entertaining than the cartoons (A sign of a successful show was hearing cameramen break up in the background).
These shows were all over the United States, and they were the ones that Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had in mind when they developed the Lippy the Lion, Touché Turtle and Wally Gator cartoons. The five-minute comedies could be dropped into kids shows, or even run on their own if a station was too cheap to hire live talent.
This is a bit of a long-winded way to get into this picture I snagged off the internet.
This is from The Pappy Show on WICU-TV in Erie, Pennsylvania.
There were people dressed up as Yogi Bear who toured North America in the late ’50s and early ‘60s, putting on shows at fairs and department stores. This version of Yogi isn’t one of them. He's a little emaciated. I don’t have the background behind the photo, so I don’t know if this Yogi appeared with Pappy regularly.
(Pappy was a chap named Skip Letcher. He had been a disc jockey CHVC in Niagara Falls, Ontario. On-camera cohort Bernard Abbey died in 1964 at the age of 39).
Since I mentioned Lippy, etc., I will use this as an excuse to post this newspaper supplement cover. The characters are on model, so this must have been studio artwork, though I’m not certain why Touché is floating in mid-air. The Lippy, etc. cartoons were viewed in our home, using a special antenna, from KTNT-TV in Tacoma on the Brakeman Bill Show. The best part of the show was a hand puppet named Crazy Donkey. Even my dad would stop and watch Crazy Donkey do or say something ridiculous.
It’s a shame the live host period ended. You can blame those people who watered down cartoons to “protect” children. Hosts on some stations plugged things, and there was a lot of concern about advertising aimed at kids. The hosts vanished. (So did a droll series called Linus the Lionhearted, starring Post cereal spokes-cartoons).
We didn’t need a “Cartoon Network” back then. There was, at least where I grew up, plenty of animated fun after school. I could watch a live kids show that included cartoons, then switch to a half hour of The Flintstones in reruns, then switch to another channel with Warners and Fleischer Popeyes, then switch to another channel that aired Quick Draw McGraw or Huckleberry Hound. That took up a good couple of hours and you could get your cartoon fill for the day.
I’m pretty sure there are readers here who fondly remember the live, ad-lib kid shows on their TV set. The hosts were just as popular as the cartoons they showed. Bravo to them.
Some of the kiddie lures had impressive pedigrees. In San Diego there was Johnny Downs (he was just himself, not an assumed character like Uncle Nutsy or Cap'n Skipwreck), who had been a B-movie juvenile in the 1930s and '40s. Then there were the varying versions (and hosts, perhaps the most memorable being Bob McAllister) of "Wonderama" between the '50s and the '80s, but I forget if they showed cartoons.
ReplyDeleteThe best part of these Boomer-era hosts and hostesses was they talked to kids rather than down to them. And if nothing else, they inspired Pee-Wee Herman, who when he achieved his Saturday morning show was accused of having become what he was originally satirizing.
Hi...Wonderama was nationally syndicated..and,yes,Wonderama did show cartoons..:)
DeleteIn St. Louis, Mo., we had the Wrangler's Cartoon Club with Texas Bruce (Harry Gibbs), which showed the Guild package of Looney Tunes, Betty Boop cartoons and many others, including the early Soyuzmultfilm and other Eastern European cartoons, and the Cookie and the Captain show with Popeye the Sailor Fleischer cartoons, and Captain Eleven (Harry Fender) and his sidekick JoJo, with Three Stooges comedies and Felix the Cat cartoons. They were all fun show hosts, Harry Gibbs was the gentlest and most appealing with his cowboy hat and painted chuckwagon with a shelf on it which he leaned against. Cookie and the Captain were a comedy team, doing mostly ship-board comedy, since the whole program took place on a boat, and Captain Eleven (Harry Fender) was the silliest and used the most physical comedy, since he was playing the Stooges two-reelers. Captain Eleven piloted a steamboat, which was very appropriate to the St. Louis riverfront. All these shows are sadly missed, and precious little kinescope recordings exist of their programs.
ReplyDeleteHere in Waco,Tx. we had hosts on 2 different channels every weekday afternoon. The one i remember most fondly had Zeebo the clown. The main host would have kids come down off the bleachers and scribble on à large pad on an easel. Zèebo would then turn the scribbles into a picture. Hè was a good artist as I recall
ReplyDeletezones 60 or so years later.
You covered everything that I was watching on TV. Bullwinkle too.
ReplyDeleteI remember dad taking us to see Bozo the Clown and Oscar Meyer Weiner mobile in Panorama City when just a supermarket was there. Maybe a few more stores, like May Company. It was rural. Then we’d go home and see them either as adds on tv or on a show. Cartoons made everyone happy.
MG