Word: clowns
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When everybody started wearing the Afros, it was hard on a lot of older men who were losing their hair. They would grow it long on the sides anyway and they would end up looking like that super-Tom on the Uncle Ben Rice box, or Bozo the Clown...
...open, the little bastards' parents wrote in, and Uncle Don's autogiro never again set down on the roof of Bamberger's department store. In a sense, that minuscule conflict has occurred ever since. Cynicism has animated most children's shows, from Howdy Doody to Magilla Gorilla. Bozo the Clown uttered fatuities between pitches in the '50s. The golden age of the '50s brought such entertainment as Kid Gloves (little boys boxing with gloves that "couldn't hurt") and Grand Chance Roundup, which gave the winner a one-week shot at the Pier groups in Atlantic City...
...season, the Captain (Bob Keeshan) has never set his sights above 3 ft. 5 in. Says he: "Most people are doing children's shows until something better comes along. I never had a desire to do programs for adults. Children are a very warm audience." Keeshan (formerly Clarabelle the Clown on Howdy Doody) uses the Walter Cronkite approach, addressing the camera directly. His Miltown mood indicates that if the sky were falling, it would be about as important as a broken crayon. The gentleness tends to reassure parents, but children are more often caught up in the lively puppet sequences...
...endearing and memorable vignettes. In some of them he was the Populist Prince, handing out miniature liquor bottles at an old folks' home ("Holy water! That's what it is! But don't sprinkle it around. Pour it down!"). In others he was the Court Clown mugging shamelessly in a sailor's hat or a baseball cap. On a cold November day in 1963 he was the nation's own Job, his prayer cracking with grief as he called on the angels to carry his "dear Jack" to Paradise...
...whom he has always been something of a sentimental favorite. Who could forget the A-frame eyes, the cockney nose, the corkscrew grin or the way he had-in a moment of percussive rapture-of smiling sideways like Lauren Bacall? There was also something about him of the sad clown who knew he was only a party to greatness, not its originator. "I do sometimes feel out of it," he once said, "sitting there on the drums, only playing what they tell me to play." Obviously. Ringo need no longer worry. But no one knows just what lies...