Breaking news, no links yet.
Captain Kangaroo has passed away at the age of 76.
I was just talking about the Cap’n this weekend.
Town Clown.
Tom Terrific and Manfred the Mighty Wonder Dog (no one seems to remember this but me).
Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose and ping pong balls and Dancing Bear and Mr. Green Jeans.
Bye, Captain. I’ll always remember.
Link:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1074878040309_70287240/?hub=World
He was a celebrity before my time, but I knew who he was, I love entertainment history. I never knew this though:
-
When I was a kid, I always thought how amazing it was when he put his keys on the peg, the music would stop! How did they do that???
-
Wasn’t there someone called The Bananaman that visited him?
I’m Tom Terrific, the greatest hero ever,
Terrific is the name for me, 'cause I’m so clever…
I can be what I want to be, and if you want to see,
Come on and follow meeeeee!!!
Or something like that.
Good night, Captain. 
Bummer, loved that guy growing up. This would qualify as the end of an era.
I always loved Mr. Moose, the ping pong balls, etc. I loved that show as a little boy.
Bless you, Cap’n 'Roo…You will be missed…
I guess my kids will someday mourn the loss of the Wiggles, too.
Awwww . . . I was too young for Howdy Doody and too old for Sesame Street, so I was a Captain Kangaroo kid.
I grew up watching Captain Kangaroo, but I can’t remember any details about what Mr. Moose’s Ping-Pong® jokes were about. Mr. Moose would trick the Captain into saying some key word or phrase, and the balls would fall, right? Silly fun, and I loved it every time.
(Yes, Ping-Pong® is a brand name.)
I was born in 1970, so naturally I never saw an episode of Howdy Doody. But I did know that a) Clarabelle was Bob Keeshan b) Clarabelle never spoke c) except for the last minute of the last show when he faced the camera and said “Goodbye, kids…”
A few years ago, I found that clip online. And instantly teared up. Two words in twelve years, but they carried an amazing amount of weight.
Although, strictly speaking, Clarabelle never spoke on camera, if this anecdote is to be believed*.
Jeff MacNelly, the late editorial cartoonist and author of Shoe, like most kids of his generation, loved the Howdy Doody show, and Clarabell was his hero. He was on the list to get into the Peanut Gallery, and when he finally got on the show, Buffalo Bob called him up from the audience to assist in a skit. Woohoo! So he was being led across the stage, under a snow-making machine…and he stopped, looked up into it, and on (I think) live TV, said, “Wow, that’s neat! How does it work?” An arm yanked him off camera, and a guttural voice said, “Shut up, kid.” The voice, of course, was Clarabell’s. So that was the defining incident that made him a cynic.
But since Clarabelle was never miked up, his silence would still have been preserved.
*I’m inclined to think that it is true, and not along the lines of the UL about the kid on the Bozo show saying “F— you, clown”. I only heard it from one source, and ULs are characterized by their speed of circulation.
I’m crying. I’m crying over a man I never met. As a child, he was just a cluster of lights in the shape of a man in a big red jacket - in a big box in my parents’ den. I was just a kid, but I loved that cluster of lights. When I went to the hospital, he was there - in the box on the wall. And when I came home and turned on the box in the den, he was smiling and fussing at a bunny hand puppet about eating too many carrots. Over and again, that cluster of lights in the shape of a man helped form my childhood, and made it better. I may have grown old, but I will always love the man in the red jacket. And carrots.
Captain Kangaroo was certainly one of the first TV shows I watched, along with Miss Frances’ Ding Dong School. I have fond memories of the Captain, Mr. Green Jeans, Dancing Bear, Mr. Moose and Bunny Rabbit (who was always tricking the Captain out of bunches of carrots!) and even BeBe, the Old English sheepdog who sometimes visited the Captain. Surely the Captain has been reunited with Mr. Green Jeans and together they are singing and dancing and entertaining children.
And oh yes, do I remember Tom Terrific–and Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog.
An illustration and a few paragraphs about Tom Terrific and Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog.
I’m pretty sure I watched Captain Kangaroo right from the very first show. I haven’t even tried to seek it out since, because those clumsy slow black & white shows would never match up with the wonderment of my child’s memories. Like everyone else here, I loved everything about it, Mr. Green Jeans, and Bunny Rabbit, and Tom Terrific and Manfred the Wonder Dog and the whole world that the Captain created.
And Bob Keeshan never exploited his image afterward nor polluted it with the frailties of Hollywood stardom.
O Captain, My Captain.
:eek: :smack:
There’s a link to a Tom Terrific clip around here somewhere but my internet connection is being temperamental right now.
Rilch, I’m only two years older than you and I did see a bit of Howdy Doody, along with some B&W Mickey Mouse Club shows. Those must have been some of the earliest shows in syndication.
What I remember of the show is how soft spoken and reassuring Cap’t Kangaroo was - sort of a big, avuncular, walrus.
And while I don’t remember Ding-Dong School, I do remember Romper Room (I was ALWAYS a do-bee, and never a don’t-bee). “Magic mirror…”
What I remember most about his show is the chorus from “The Unicorn” was always played after each episode. The Chicago broadcast was sponsored by the Brookfield Zoo.
Then there was the episode where he was having trouble with his clock. I think first it stopped, then started going backwards. I have no idea if that was intentional nor not.