Today's Video Link

timeforbeany01

The legendary Time for Beany puppet show went on the air in 1949 and ended in 1955. My mother told me she watched it when she was pregnant with me — I was born in '52 — which led me to a strange theory. You know those stories of how an expectant mother will listen to great music hoping it will somehow seep into her womb and inspire the fetus to become the next Mozart? Well, if there's anything to that theory, I figure that listening to that show — which on and before my birthday starred Daws Butler and Stan Freberg — put me on the course of my silly career.

My mother says I watched the show every day after I was born but I have no memories of it. So maybe I didn't watch it. Maybe it was just on and I was in the room where it was on.

I do however have a very vivid memory of being taken to a fast food restaurant themed around the show. There were several and the one we went to was not the one in the film embedded below. We went to one on Washington Boulevard in Culver City next to a large automotive dealership where my father was pricing used cars. He priced and then he, my mother and I went over to Beany's and dined. That, I remember.

When I met Bob Clampett, who'd produced the TV show, I asked him about the restaurants. He couldn't place for me the precise year the last one closed but he recalled that a couple of them outlived the series by a year or two. He told me they were a rotten deal from his end. He'd gotten involved with some people he wished he'd turned down…and though he said the places were gorgeous and had pretty decent chow, they never made money, at least for him.

This is an eight-minute home movie taken at one that was located in Long Beach, California. From the video, we can see it was next door to the Circle Drive-In Movie and further research tells us the Circle was located at 1633 Ximeno. If you click this link, Google Maps will gladly show you what's there today. The drive-in opened in April of 1951 and closed in January of 1985. The marquee in the video tells us it was showing Assignment: Paris (which opened in September of '52) and Golden Hawk (released in October).

I don't think anyone in this film is anyone famous but the architecture is great and you might enjoy just looking at the cars — and at the 1952 price of a burger, fries and a shake…