Another thread about Captain Kangaroo got me thinking about the local kid show hosts when I was a kid. The big 3 network stations in the Seattle-Tacoma area all had there own kid show host.
Channel 4 gave us Captain Puget. The least popular of the 3. The Captain hosted his show from a sailboat.
Channel 5 had Stan Boreson. He played an accordian and had a bassett hound named No Mo Shun. He was from Ballard (an area of Seattle once known for all the folks of Scandanavien descent). He was a teller of bad Svedish jokes and corny songs.
Channel 7’s host was by far the most popular. He was J.P. Patches and he lived in a shack at the city dump. He dressed up like a clown. His sidekick was Gertrude, a guy in a dress and mop wig. The end of each show featured J.P. sitting in front of his TV (a box with a hole in the front) and tuning in to find out who was having a birthday that day. J.P. Patches hasn’t been on the air in over 25 years but J.P. is still popular today.
Anyone still remember the local kiddy show hosts of your youth?
I remember Ramblin’ Rod, who passed away recently. He hosted a daily morning show that featured a lot of cartoons, and he had a live audience of kids from the local area in the studio.
He was famous for his enormous collection of buttons, which he wore on a vest. I swear it looked bulletproof.
The one I watched was Captain Ernie, who hosted from a “showboat” that was evidently a few stage props. Some cartoons, and a prize giveaway where he picked winners’ name/address cards from his “treasure chest”. It was a real paradigm shift for me when he showed up subbing on the local newscast.
In Chicago, we had Ray Rayner on WGN. He showed Warner Brothers cartoons, did crafts projects (not usually very competently) and lip-synced broadway songs. He also brought out a duck named Chelveston from the Anti-Cruelty Society and tried to feed it lettuce without getting his shins pecked to pieces. Sometimes he would put on a drum major’s hat and march around to Sousa music. There was a dog puppet named Cuddly Dudley, and if I’m not mistaken, traffic reports for the parents (the show was on early in the morning). I didn’t think any of this was weird at the time.
We also had a show called “Cartoon Town with B.J. and Dirty Dragon” which was a human guy with puppets and a character named Blob which was basically just a big pile of grey modelling clay. The puppets acted out serial stories like “Frankenwierd” and “The Lemon Joke Kid”. I can’t believe I remember all of this.
Then there was Garfield Goose, the King of America. Another “Kukla, Fran and Ollie” type puppet show with a human host. “Diver Dan”, reading mail from kid viewers, and “Hardrock, Coco and Joe” at Christmas time.
Before cable, I used to watch Captain Clown (before he was promoted to Colonel Clown, probably due to trademark infringement) out of channel 30 in New Britain, CT.
They also showed Pinky Lee. This was long after he had lost his network show; the fact he was in a Connecticut UHF station (in the days before UHF was required on all TV sets), showed he was considered washed up.
Once we got cable, it was the New York hosts: Sonny Fox and Wonderama, Sandy Becker, and, the great Chuck McCann. Officer Joe Bolton showed 3 Stooges films every afternoon, and, of course, there was “Lunch with Soupy Sales.”
I used to watch “Mike Fury” on channel 13 in Baltimore sometime in the 60s. Somewhere amongst my junque, I have my official Mike Fury “I’m a goody” button. I have vague memories of cheesy shots of the caped hero “flying” around the city. All I cared about were the cartoons.
Here’s one for the Okies: anyone remember Ho-Ho the Clown and his sock-puppet (no, not one of the incarnations of he-whose-name-shall-not-be-typed), Pokey. Also, there was Uncle Zeb’s Cartoon Camp. Check out http://tulsatvmemories.com/ for more fun.
In the Baltimore area, in the 70s, we had Captain Chesapeake. They showed cheesy cartoons, and told bad jokes. However, it was on weekday afternoons, and we couldn’t afford to be picky:)
In central Iowa we had Duane Ellott and Floppy on WHO, Channel 13 in Des Moines. Floppy was a dog puppet with two shows a day. At 12:15, after the noon news update there was a 15 minute Floppy that usually had two Warner Bros. Cartoons and sometimes a quick interview with somebody involved in an upcoming event. This was then followed by the noon movie, which also included, for several years, Dialing For Dollars. I don’t remember the name of the host of that show, but he sat behind a giant phone and called random numbers from the Des Moines phone book. If the people answered and could answer a question they’d win some undoubtedly small amount of money.
Floppy also had a 3:00 show that was at times a half hour and at times a full hour. There would be an audience of kids for that one and between cartoons the kids would beep Floppy’s nose and tell jokes. Usually knock knock or "Why did the man put his car in the oven? (Because he wanted a hot rod) style jokes.
One time, when I was in college (Floppy was a retro-cool character you see) I was watching with some of my friends and a young boy walked up and asked Floppy “Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?” Punchline: “Because he was dead.”
The San Francisco Bay Area had Captain Cosmic every afternoon at 5 pm on Channel 2. He played such classics as “Ultraman” and “Johnny Socko and His Flying Robot.” He wore a weird helmet and a red cape and all of the shows were in the sci-fi realm. I don’t remember the guy’s name but he also hosted Creature Feature at night which my parents watched.
I shouldn’t have forgotten about Brakeman Bill. His show was done in Tacoma (born and raised there) and I attended at least 20 shows. My Cub Scout den mother’s husband worked for Channel 11 and we got to go about once a month.
Wanda Wanda scared me. There is something wrong with nice witches. Samantha Stevens could get real nasty when she got pissed off.
Does anyone know if the show “Jabberwocky” was a local Boston program, or produced somewhere else? I saw it the last time I was in Boston at 5am on a Saturday morning.
Holy crap, that show was great! Some old guy was doing a science demonstration on things expanding and contracting with temperature change, and was casually having 6-year-olds handling stuff that could maim or kill them. “Here, Johnny, hold this for a minute,” then he blindly passed the kid a lit blowtorch. The program ended with a guest talking about properties of gases, particularly in connection with scuba equipment. He seemed a bit awkward, but about half of his little fun facts ended with “… and then you’d die.”
Beautiful. I want videos of it to traumatize my kids with!
Ah, the memories of The Happy Rain Show, in which a very white woman dressed up as some sort of native American and told stories and stuff. I was even on the show once, and when asked who I would like to say hello to - I said “my cousin, Tiffany” - who, as it turned out, was sitting right next to me on the stage.
Oops.
That was Charleston, SC for those in the know - and in Montgomery, Alabama where I grew up we had - errr- I believe it was callled Young World.
I liked Mr Roger’s neighborhood, 3-2-1 Contact was cool… oh and Reading Rainbow was the bomb, especially the star trek episode (thats how I got into star trek oddly enough, RR was my gateway show)
