When I was a teenager, there was a story circuating about an overgrown (or misplaced older) kid on the Bozo show who missed his ping-pong ball shot into bucket #6. When Bozo tried to console the apparently inconsolable youth, the lil bastard retorted
“Up yours, Bozo” or, variously, “Fuck you, Boze.” Sometimes the kid flipped the bird, sometimes not. Everyone claimed it had actually happened, although I never met anyone who actually claimed to have witnessed the event. The ungodly (to a kid)amount of dough in the bucket was always mentioned as $65.00, the rationale being that the kid was poor, from the inner city, and was not interested in the jellybeans and cheap toys the lesser buckets garnered him.
So, all this has the earmarks of a great urban legend, one apparently made up by children, yet I’ve seen no mention of it on the UL pages I’ve visited. Maybe it really did happen? What say ye.
Oh, btw, the Bozo show is/was staged at WGN studios in Chicago and the wait for tickets used to run 3-4 years. People would apply as soon as the baby was born. Bob Bell RIP.
I think this UL might be a little hard to prove or disprove, because, IIRC, there was a different “Bozo Show” in every major TV broadcast market in the country. I think these shows were broadcast live, usually with no tape rolling, from local TV studios. These facts, actually weigh in favor of such an event, because it increases the opportunity by 20 fold. Who knows which Bozo it happened to?
I remember that some bad-language-on-a-kiddy-show legends surrounding the “Soupy Sales Show” turned out to be true.
The Bozo copyright was (is?)owned by Larry Harmon. It was Harmon who hired the late Howell Eurick to teach the “Bozo School” in El Paso.
I had a chance to interview Howell before his passing. He said the first Bozo story had the kid saying “Cram it, clown.”
The story seemed to get more dirty with the telling, and Howell denied it happened anyway.
FTR he said that at it’s peak there were 125 Bozo’s broadcasting at local TV stations across the nation. As the fad wore off every one of the clowns went on to become TV weathermen (no, that’s not a joke).
Ok, so there’s only the Chicago Bozo now - is it still aired nationally? The only station that I’ve ever seen Bozo on is WGN Chicago… Is the Chicago broadcast in other markets or is Bozo just, like gone elsewhere?
WGN, like WTBS, is one of the major TV stations in the country. Because of this, many cable TV providers carry it. For instance, I now live in Eastern Kentucky, and I have WGN on my cable. Bozo is on here every Sunday morning, just an hour later than it is in Chicago (time-zones).
Yeah, the snopes page had quoted Larry Harmon (the original Bozo) as having said it actually happened in Boston, but he offered no supporting evidence and did not say if it happened to him personally or was related to him by the Boston Bozo. Fooey.
The last time I saw the Bozo show, it was a pale shadow of even its pathetic former self. The “band” has been replaced by one doofus on a synthesizer that is so incredibly bad he made me physically ill.
I don’t know about all that, but here is a true Bozo story. When I was about 5 yrs old I was on the Bozo Show in Nashville. This would have been 1964. For some reason, I thought that a clown’s nose would “beep” if you squeezed it…I suppose because it resembled the bulb of a bicycle horn. I asked Bozo if I could “beep” his nose and he said “It doesn’t beep, it just runs.” I don’t think we were on the air at the time.
I used to watch Bozo on WGN back in the 70’s, and I remember hearing that story back then, but I don’t remember the Grand Prize being $64, I always thought bucket #6 was a new bike.
Now that I live in California, I think I have the only cable system in the world that doesn’t get WGN. We have 7 different Discovery Channels, and the Golf Channel for christ sakes, but no WGN, although I did catch the “modern” Bozo a few years ago. Aside from the fact that it was only on early morning once a week and the band was replaced by some geek on a Casio, it was a “fake” Bozo! And where is Cookie? Wiz? Oliver? The Ringmaster? (at least they got rid of that idiot Frasier Thomas). I guess it’s no wonder Bozo is in decline. I remember when it would be easier to get into a Beatles reunion than Bozo’s Circus. I am scarred for life.
This reminds me of a joke: Did you hear Bozo was killed in an explosion? The found his arms in the peanut gallery, his legs behind the band, and his balls in bucket #6!
Lol. That “idiot” Frasier Thomas died.
Ditto with Cookie and Oliver O. Oliver.
Geeze, talk about bad ratings.
One of the kids that was picked to play “The Grand Prize Game!” (Remember the hokey magic arrows they used and the stupid cameraman kept landing onna "we got a mommie!) always got to take a silver dollar down to bucket #6
and plop it in there with a satisfying clunk-rattle rattle if there was big bux, or a dull thud when some schlub had won the day before. Damn I hated that show, but there was nothing else on.
Ouch, stomach cramp from laffing too damn hard. Good ol’ Bozo. (is that an oxymory?)
Anyhoo, my bud from high school, well his dad was a doc, and he performed heart surgery on el Bozo when he was under the weather.
ALSO here’s a fun fact. A popular Croatian name is Bozidar, shortened to Bozo (pronounced Bozho). However, when the cop pulls you over speeding and reads your driver’s license and sees BOZO writte, well…you can imagine the possiblities.
*cookie was such a molester
There was always plenty of ad libbing on Bozo. One time Bozo responded to Ringmaster Ned (who always had a few extra pounds on him) with, “Okay, Lard Hips”. Another time Cookie went off-script when responding to Bozo’s setup line “I don’t know, Cookie, what do you get when you cross an 800 pound gorilla with a talking parrot?” Cookie replied “A sore parrot.” And I do recall hearing that a little kid once told Wizzo the Wizzard to “shut the f— up”.
May I ask why you resurrected a 14-year-old thread to make your post? I am especially intrigued because you are not a person to post lightly - you’ve made, like, nine in the three years since you joined.
Given that this thread is so old most of the poster IDs have been lost, I’m closing it. Those interested in the subject can open a new thread in Cafe Society.