Friday, January 23, 2004

Primary Information

If you really want to know what's going on in the Democratic primaries, the best coverage you can get is over at Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo. Marshall is one of the best political webloggers around and his readers chipped in to send him along the campaign trail. It's an interesting wrinkle in news reporting: A writer who is beholden to no one (no editor, no publisher, no advertiser) reporting directly to his readers without a middle-man. Take a look.

• Posted at 11:24 PM · LINK

Keeshan Legends

Here, just to tie together two recent topics on this page, is the cover of a Little Golden Record of Captain Kangaroo...with Mitch Miller and the Sandpipers. And I thought I'd answer a couple of messages I received asking about famous stories relating to Bob Keeshan. This one is from Mark Skertic...

Like just about everything on your website, I enjoyed your piece on Capt. Kangaroo. But given the history of the Keeshan's career that you outlined, does this mean the story often told about the last Howdy Doody show is not true? The story I've read several times is that on the very last show, Clarabelle ran around during the show with a sign promising a big surprise. Then, at the last minute, just before fade out, Clarabelle approached the camera and talked, for the first time, speaking the words, "Bye, kids?" So did that happen, and was that Clarabelle played by Keeshan?

Yes, Clarabelle did that on the last show in 1960 (He actually said, "Goodbye, kids.") but a gent named Lew Anderson was playing the role by then. Keeshan was long gone by then, having been fired in a purge just before Christmas of 1952.

In case you're interested in the chronology of Mr. Keeshan's shows: After being banned from Doodyville, he went off and took a job with his father-in-law but it didn't work out. He returned to television (local, in New York) in August of 1953 with a show called Time for Fun, in which the entire cast consisted of him as Corny the Clown, plus his dog. That was when he had to learn to speak on camera. Before '53 was out, he added a second show and a second character. On Tinker's Workshop, he played an old toymaker named Tinker. I've never seen any of these but Keeshan always told people that Captain Kangaroo was basically Tinker with more pockets in his coat.

Captain Kangaroo started on October 3, 1955. Most folks don't know it but that wasn't Keeshan's final characterization. During the 1964-1965 season, he turned up on CBS Saturday morning with a show called Mister Mayor. Mister Mayor looked and sounded exactly like Cap'n Kangaroo but he was a different guy in a different outfit and with a different set and supporting cast. (The set had a wonderful, elaborate toy train layout.) At the time, I wondered why Bob Keeshan was playing one guy Monday through Friday and a different but similar character on Saturday. When I finally met him, it was one of the first things I asked about and he told me the following story...

It seems that when Captain Kangaroo was launched, Keeshan had an unwanted partner. I think (but am not sure) he said it was related to the fact that the Captain had evolved out of the Tinker character so someone who had a business interest in that show wound up with a percentage of Captain Kangaroo. As he explained it, Keeshan was having trouble with this partner and finally decided he wanted to have total ownership and control of his character. He tried to buy out the partner's interest but when the guy declined, Keeshan threatened to give up Captain Kangaroo and to create a new character...one in which the partner would not share. The partner said, "You wouldn't dare," and Keeshan decided to go ahead with his bluff. When CBS decided they wanted to add a Saturday morning installment of Captain Kangaroo, Keeshan insisted he would do it as Mister Mayor.

And he did. It was essentially a way to convince the partner that he was serious about abandoning Captain Kangaroo. "I was prepared to do that and continue as Mister Mayor," he told me. "But what I really hoped was that it would convince him to sell out his interest in Kangaroo." That was how things played out. The partner sold out his share and the following season, the Saturday morning hour of Mister Mayor was replaced by an hour of Captain Kangaroo. I always thought this was a fascinating story...how close Captain Kangaroo came to disappearing due to a business dispute.

Getting back to the urban legends, there are a dozen different stories around about Lee Marvin and Bob Keeshan serving together in the Marines. In most, they served heroically in Iwo Jima and were awarded many medals. In truth, Keeshan did serve in the Marines but never saw combat and never saw Lee Marvin. There are also stories about Keeshan accidentally uttering a naughty word or doing the show with his fly open, but as far as I know, those things never happened.

• Posted at 9:20 PM · LINK

Pooh News

The Disney folks have lost another round in the big Winnie the Pooh battle. Here are the details. This thing will not end without some major changes in the Walt Disney Company.

• Posted at 10:42 AM · LINK

The Good Captain

As sick as I am of writing about the recently-deceased, I have to write about Bob Keeshan, aka Captain Kangaroo. I don't know if the formal obits will make it clear but Mr. Keeshan, with whom so many of us grew up, was an extraordinary individual. He had a capacity to talk to (not "down to") children and to host a very difficult live TV show...and this was a man who, when he first got into television, was by his own admission largely devoid of talent. As is well-known, his first role was as Clarabelle the Clown on the original Howdy Doody show. Less well-known is that he started there as a kind of go-fer/errand boy for the show's star, "Buffalo" Bob Smith. Among his duties was to herd the kids in and out of the show's Peanut Gallery and to get them to shut the hell up during the live broadcast.

In this capacity, he occasionally got on camera and when some NBC exec suggested it looked wrong to have a guy in a sport coat on the show, Keeshan was sent off to work up a clown costume. He started at the public library where he learned what he could about clowns, then he rummaged through the wardrobe and make-up departments and soon, Clarabelle was born.

Clarabelle did not speak, partly because clowns were traditionally mute but mainly because Keeshan couldn't. By his own admission, he was too untrained and untalented to utter an on-camera word. By trial and error though, he managed to develop a pantomimed personality for his clown that the kids loved. It was mean, petulant and often quite nasty but it was Clarabelle. The only one who didn't love him was "Buffalo" Bob, who lived for the musical segments of his show and who was frustrated that the clown couldn't play an instrument. They tried giving Keeshan lessons but he had a tin ear and no sense of rhythm: He couldn't even play a triangle on the beat. At one point, Smith fired Keeshan and put a trained musician in the Clarabelle make-up...but the trained musician failed to capture the popular Clarabelle personality and they had to hire Keeshan back. That happened at least once, maybe twice.

After many years of Smith getting very wealthy off Howdy Doody, several cast members, led by Keeshan, made a stand and demanded better pay. They were fired and it looked like Bob Keeshan's TV career was over. But after failing in some non-television jobs, he made an amazing comeback with two different local shows on which he actually spoke. He had to, since he was the entire cast and mime wouldn't have worked. Eventually, it all led to Captain Kangaroo, which he did on CBS for thirty years. For much of that time, the show was live and it had to be done twice each morning, back to back. Keeshan and his small stock company (often, just Lumpy "Mr. Green Jeans" Brannum plus one puppeteer) would do an entire hour telecast live and then, after he said good-bye, they'd have sixty seconds to reset everything and do the entire show again for a different time zone. Somehow, it worked.

I actually watched the first telecast of Captain Kangaroo in October of '55. I was three and a half years old but I still remember it. A few years back when I worked with Mr. Keeshan, I of course told him this. He was very polite about it but I had the feeling that lots of people around my age told him that and he tended to not believe it.

The project was a show called CBS Storybreak, which we taped over at Television City on Stage 33, the home of The Price is Right. Keeshan had retired Cap'n Kangaroo by then and he hosted our show as Bob Keeshan. The network wanted him because of his enormous credibility in the area of children's programming and the fact that his hosting would help endorse a show they wished to have viewed as enriching. Mr. Keeshan, having learned well from "Buffalo" Bob, charged CBS what they felt was an exorbitant fee...but they paid it. One of the Business Affairs guys grumbled that the last few years Captain Kangaroo was on the network, as they kept cutting back his show and moving it to worse and worse time slots, he held the network up for vast amounts of cash. He kept threatening (they claimed) to go public and tell America that CBS didn't care about programming for children, and they essentially paid him off to let them phase out his show without a huge protest.

I don't know to what extent that's true but if it's completely true, it only adds to my respect for the man. Holding CBS up for money is an admirable skill, and I wish I was as good at it as he apparently was. Beyond that, I found him to be a genuinely kind, soft-spoken man who was everything you'd want Bob "Captain Kangaroo" Keeshan to be. He answered all my silly questions about his various TV endeavors, but he also kept asking everyone on the show about our backgrounds, particularly what kinds of training and education had led us to our present stations in life. He talked at length with the make-up lady about her family problems and joked with her about how, all the years he did Captain Kangaroo, he "grew into" the part and required less and less make-up. Eventually, he said, he reached the stage where they had to try and make him look younger than he really was. "That was a frightening moment," he said.

He said that despite turning into the kindly old man he played, he never got recognized in public by the visual. People, he said, only recognized him from his voice. It was a wonderful voice...warm and instantly friendly, and so much a part of so many lives for so many years. It's amazing to think that for so long, that man couldn't even use that voice in front of a camera. And it's sad to think of all the kids who won't grow up hearing it.

• Posted at 10:34 AM · LINK

Julius Schwartz Address

Okay, it's set up. If you'd like to convey a Get Well message or a message of respect to Julius Schwartz, send it to schwartz@newsfromme.com. I will print 'em out and send them to the man himself. Tell your friends! Tell your neighbors! I just bought a whole case of paper from Office Depot and will gladly use up most of it for this worthy cause. (NOTE: If you sent a message to that address in the wee small hours of this morning, it might have bounced back to you. Send it again. It works now.)

• Posted at 9:18 AM · LINK

Julius Schwartz Report

The great comic book editor Julius Schwartz is back in the hospital again. He was in for pneumonia, then he went home, then he fell in his home and...well, let's just say he's not in great shape but he's still with us. Julie is 88 (here's Don Markstein's bio of him) and had been living alone since his wife Jean passed away some time ago. Apparently, his days of living alone are over and he's going to be moving in with family or some sort of senior residence.

People often write me and ask me to "pass along" their wishes so I've decided to expedite the process. Julie is not on the Internet so I'm going to set up a special e-mail address for messages to Julius Schwartz. Every few days between now and the Super Bowl, I'm going to print all the messages you send to that address and FedEx them to wherever Julie is recuperating. I'll delete any messages that are rude or uncommonly long (say, if someone tries to upload articles they've written) but otherwise, I'll just print it out and ship it to Schwartz. Spread the word that this would be a good time and way to tell one of the great men of our field what his work has meant to you. I'll post the address here tomorrow.

• Posted at 1:50 AM · LINK

The Great Billy May

Yesterday was a bad day for people who worked with Stan Freberg. Not only did we lose Ann Miller, who starred in his most famous commercial, but death also claimed Stan's long-time friend and musical arranger, The Great Billy May. That's what everyone called him. In fact, when Stan introduced me to him, he said, "Mark, I'd like you to meet The Great Billy May." And later at the party where that occurred, I heard other people saying to him, "I always wanted to meet The Great Billy May." There was not an ounce of sarcasm in that title...only honesty and love.

Billy was one of the great bandleaders and arrangers of American popular music. To please both Freberg and Sinatra, you had to be. He arranged most of Stan's records, including both volumes (thirty-some-odd years apart) of Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America. It represented only a small part of his credits, some of which are recounted in this obit. Many of his albums are still in print, and probably always will be. Listen to any of 'em and you'll know why they called him what they called him.

• Posted at 12:28 AM · LINK

January 24, 2004 • Current • January 22, 2004