This doesn’t seem to happen any more, but when I was a kid, local television stations often had early morning shows hosted by clowns or magicians or some other kind of wacky character. They’d have skits and visitors, and would announce birthdays and play cartoons like Bugs Bunny and George of the Jungle.
Where I grew up the TV clown was J.P. Patches… he was the Mayor of the City Dump. I have a strong suspicion that he was the inspiration for Krusty the Clown. Unfortunately his web site seems to be down at the moment, but you can find it here.
There is more about him on this site.
Was there a similar TV character in your neck of the woods?
Is anybody still doing this kind of schtick?
I can remember living in Dallas when I was just a little sprout and watching Mr. Peppermint – who happened to be the brother of my pediatrician.
Later on when I was growing up in St. louis, I think ALL the stations had their local kid show hosts at one time or another, although the only true clowns were Corky and Mr. Patches.
If the whole thing didn’t officially collapse when WGN cancelled Bozo a couple of years ago, perhaps it should have.
By the way, vl, how’d your TV station get cartoons like George of the Jungle when mine was showing stuff like Davey and Goliath?
JP Patches was just that cool.
There was plenty of Davey and Goliath on on Sundays (JP Patches was only broadcast on school days)… at least Sundays had Rocket Robin Hood
WSBK-38 in Boston had Willie Whistle back when I was growing up. He/she (never could tell which) kept some noisemaker hidden in his mouth that made everything he said come out as a high-pitched whistle. Kinda like Peter Frampton on helium. Man, I couldn’t stand that clown.
Davey and Goliath were on every Saturday and Sunday at 6am, before the good cartoons started. I didn’t even realize until later they were supposed to be religious.
“He doesn’t think you’ve got the guts to pull the trigger, Da-vey.”
My SO grew up here in Washington State, so, J.P.Patches was a big thing for him…
In Las Vegas, we had Bozo the clown, and I actually got to go on the show, and won a neato nifty Koolade dispenser!!!
We had a “Captain Clown” out of Channel 30 in New Britain, CT. He was later promoted to “Colonel Clown”; I suspect this meant there was a Captain Clown somewhere else who complained.
Most of the NYC stations avoided clown (other than Bozo, who was everywhere) in favor of people like Sonny Fox, Bob McAllister, Sandy Becker, and Chuck McCann.
here in ** KELO-land ** we had Captain 11. he had a time converter and a lot of lights and stuff. i still recall the opening sequence “One man in each galaxy is given the power to control time, the man chosen to receive these powers is carefully selected, he must strong, he must be fair, heeee must be braaaave. We of the outer galaxies designate to you the wisdom of Solomon and the strength of ATTTLAS!!! YOU are cappppttaaaain eeeeeleven”. His uniform looked like a pilot, with the goofy head phones.
he had cartoons like popeye, george of the jungle, top cat, huckleberry hound and the like. mostly hanna barbera i think.
funny thing was he looked an awful lot like the 6:00 weatherman.
even scarier thing is, years later i was in an elevator going to my dr’s office. the elevator opened and all i could think when i looked up was “oh, Captain 11” (blush blush) i said it outloud. then i had to ride up the rest of the way in the elevator embarressed.
In Hawaii we had “Checkers & Pogo”. My aunt got to go on the show when she was little.
I also remember they had a video game where lucky kids called in and got to play. A little space ship flew back and forth across the bottom of the screen while alien crafts drifted downwards. Every time the kid would say POW clearly the spaceship would shoot upwards. I thought that was so cool. And I scoffed at the kids who got so excited they just yellow out “PO-PO-PO-PO” so fast that no bullets came out. You had to speak clearly.
Apparantly before C&P there was a “Captain Honolulu”.
I think my uncle was Checkers??? I have faint memories – never saw his show, and he later went on to do top 40 radio (“the Moose”) and then became a columnist for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin – Dave Donnelly’s Hawaii – but I think he did Checkers before all of that?
I grew up in San Diego, but most of the kids’ shows were broadcast out of L.A. We had a Bozo the Clown franchise, of course, but the one I remember as the “local” clown was Hobo Kelly.
