| Like an explosion in a spaghetti factory |
[Dec. 5th, 2008|12:00 pm] |
He only comes once a year! He's a beloved friend to all the boys and girls! And late at night on Christmas Eve, he'll come to your home and spread joy and happiness! Yep, it's time once again for BOZO to return to the airwaves here in the Chicago area!
Wait, who did you think I was talking about?
Yes, we're only about three weeks away from the annual "Bozo, Gar, and Ray" special to air on WGN, aka The CW. At 10pm on December 24, if you turn on your TV, you'll have the honor and privilege of inviting Bob Bell, Ray Rayner, Garfield Goose, Roy Brown, Marshall Brodien, Joey D'auria, Frazier Thomas, Cuddly Dudley, and many others back into your living room to bring hysterical laughter and joy to an otherwise corporate and stressful holiday. Get all your shopping done early, set your TiVo, and get ready for some laughs, because Bozo's Circus is back on the air!
Oh, how I miss this man.
So, what's so special about Bozo? Well, Bozo was, quite frankly, the last vestige of classic television that our generation ever saw. With as controlled and scripted as today's children's television is, Bozo was wild and loose. It was a show where it was okay if you forgot your lines, because the improv was always funnier. In fact, the players often took great delight in making each other laugh or screw up. It was like the Carol Burnett Show for children. (Most of the time, anyway.)
Oh, but there were adult jokes. Quite often, there were gags lobbed over the heads of children, landing squarely in the laps of adults. Jokes, such as the infamous Three Bears routine, in which the three stars, Bozo, Cooky, and Wizzo, performed perhaps the best/worst ever rendition of the classic children's tale.
Wizzo as Mama Bear: "Someone's been sleeping in my bed."
Bozo as Papa Bear: "Well don't look at me!"
Cooky as Baby Bear: "Is this really the way Eddie Fischer started?"
Of course, the special also includes several bits of classic television that are even before my time. Sadly, most of it was pretty well gone by the time I started getting up every morning to watch these goofs. Heck, I only barely remember Bob Bell and Frazier Thomas.
Frazier was basically the second (and last) ring master of the "circus" (which was really just a sound stage), after Ring Master Ned "sold" Bozo's Circus to Frazier's puppet goose friend, Garfield. (By the way, this character long predated Jim Davis' fat orange cat.) Of course, this actually coincided with the fact that Garfield's show had ended, and thus the goose became a temporary fixture on Bozo.
Frazier Thomas and his wacky puppet friends.
As for Garfield's actual show, of which I've seen only very few clips, the best comparison I could make to it would be the Kingdom of Make-Believe on Mister Roger's Neighborhood. The puppet characters, operated skillfully by Roy Brown, were confined to a very small balcony-like set, which Frazier would walk up to, peer in, and talk to the puppets. The goose itself didn't talk, but it would clack its bill and snip at Frazier. This was the work of puppeer Roy Brown.
Roy Brown himself was a masterful artist, and one of my most admired heroes. Of course, he was the hand inside of the puppets on Garfield Goose & Friends. And while his puppets were seldom as sophisticated, his raw talent and ability to bring life and humor to these creations was nothing short of extraordinary. And while I did not grow up with Garfield Goose, I certainly remember the years he spent operating the Cuddly Dudley puppet on the Bozo Show.
Like Garfield, Bozo had inherited Cuddly from another program, in this case The Ray Rayner Show. And just as he did with Garfield, Roy Brown often used Cuddly as a means for revenge against Bozo, to whom he had to be so nice when performing as Cooky. Roy's verbal jabs at Bozo were often subtle and well below the radar of the target audience. This was, of course, a delight to most parents watching, because, as I eluded to earlier, who doesn't love watching two grown men trying to make each other break up on camera?
Roy Brown as Cooky, Chicago's Favorite Second Banana
If I may be so bold, I would put Roy Brown on the same pedestal as Jim Henson. And I'll go even farther to say that he is, quite literally, one of the finest comedic performers to every grace television. The Bozo Show wouldn't have been as special for me as it is if not for Roy Brown playing the ever suffering Cooky.
Before Cooky, though, was Ray Rayner. I don't have many memories of the man, as he was before my time, but what I've seen of him is brilliant. The closest modern comparison I could draw to the man would have to be Blue's Clues, although he is also often compared to his contemporaries, Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers. In fact, Ray was often on at the same time as Captain Kangaroo, and would actually beat him in the ratings in Chicago. He would host cartoons, have fun activities for the kids (activities which he would often bungle), and be a ray of sunshine for the brief moment he was on TV every day. ...As Ray Rayner, that is.
Cuddly Dudley along with Ray Rayner
See, the beauty of these men is that they wouldn't just have one show per day. These men would literally end one show, scrape off all their make-up, put on different costume, eat a sandwich, and then go right back on television as someone else. Ray Rayner also played Sergeant Pettibone, host of The Dick Tracy Show. He would also go out on Bozo's Circus as Oliver O. Oliver, Bozo's original bumbling sidekick, prior to the introduction of Cooky.
Bob Bell was also a well-known station chameleon. He would go from being the station's staff announcer to being Bozo and then right into being Andy Starr. Andy Starr was the geriatric theater custodian and host of classic Three Stooges shorts.
As was often the case back then, classic cartoon and live action theatrical shorts were often rebranded and expanded upon when hosted in syndication. Stations rarely just put them on the air, as they do today, without filler material. Thus was the case of classic television showmanship. And the boys at WGN were masters at this.
Bob Bell as Andy Starr
You don't see this at all in today's television. And that's not to put down the work ethic of today's performers. Rather, I see this as a time when television was as fun for the performers as it was for the audience, and I think that's been lost in today's corporate world of uninspired television. The closest thing we get to any of this is probably Conan O'Brien or maybe even Saturday Night Live, although I can barely stand watching the latter.
And what's worse is that so little of this material actually remains. The Bozo Show literally had no archive. A few years ago, I was horrified at the revelation that the producers of the show would often record the program over the tapes of the previous season. What survives is a very small collection of dusty tapes in addition to whatever people at home may have captured on VHS or, if they were lucky, BETA. If I had known back in 1984 that Bob Bell's last year on the Bozo Show would become one of television's lost treasures, I would have pestered my parents to buy as many VHS tapes as they could.
What plays on an hour-long special every year at Christmas time is, as Dean Richards puts it, "the best of what remains". That's sad.
Even though I have my own recorded-from-TV copy of this show, I agonize every year that this isn't on DVD. It really should be, but the problem has always been Larry Harmon, the owner of the Bozo franchise. Not to make light of the man's death, but his recent passing may be a blessing of sorts. WGN really should look into acquiring the Bozo trademark so that they can actually market this show, as opposed to simply broadcasting it as a "news special" legal loophole.
And if they still have it, they need to also produce a DVD of the final broadcast of the Bozo show, as well as the final show with Cooky. These are so rare that, to best of my knowledge, they've never even appeared on YouTube. In fact, much to my annoyance, most of the Bozo material on YouTube consists of Bozos from other markets. The best I was able to find is a segment on Nude Hippo, in which Joey D'Auria, the second man to play Bozo in Chicago, explains how to properly throw a pie.
But that's not all! As per my yearly holiday tradition, I've hunted down all of the episodes of Dean Richard's radio show, in which he pays tribute to the characters on the Bozo Show. You'll need Real Player to play these.
One In A Million: A Three-Part Tribute to Bob Bell
A Tribute To Roy "Cooky The Clown" Brown
Bozopalooza (prior to Bozo's final airing)
A Tribute To Ray Rayner
Dean Chats With Joey D'Auria
And please, please remember to watch the special on Christmas Eve. Tell WGN that we need to see this program more often and that it needs to be on DVD. There are millions of grown children, like myself, who would be giddy with delight to have this program return. |
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