It's the opening of an episode of Puppet Playhouse, the show that came to be better known as Howdy Doody. I don't know the date but this is an early clip so that's probably Bob Keeshan in the clown costume.
The obits for Lew Anderson, who died last week, said that he was the third and final actor to play Clarabell the Clown on the original Howdy Doody program. I believe there were at least four. Bob Keeshan, as we all know, was the first and the character was largely an accident. Keeshan, who then worked as an assistant and go-fer for host "Buffalo" Bob Smith, was assigned to herd around the kids who sat in the show's famous Peanut Gallery and to get them to shut up while Smith told stories, sang and fraternized with the show's puppet players. He kept getting on camera and someone suggested that the drab-looking guy in the sport coat didn't fit in with the program's circus theme. "Put that guy in a clown suit," they said...and that's how Clarabell was born. Keeshan researched clown makeups and devised one for himself — a pretty good one, as it turned out. Clarabell never spoke, in part because the show didn't want to pay Keeshan extra and in part because he really couldn't.
Years later — to make a living in children's television — Bob Keeshan learned how to talk on camera, and this made possible his legendary character, Captain Kangaroo. But back in his Howdy Doody days, he couldn't deliver lines and couldn't do much of anything. To the ongoing frustration of "Buffalo" Bob, who liked music on the show, Clarabell couldn't play an instrument...couldn't even master the triangle, despite repeated attempts to teach him. At least once, they let Keeshan go and put the clown suit on a professional musician who didn't work out. The replacement could accompany Smith but he flopped at replicating the Clarabell personality and when viewers (and more critically, licensors) complained, Bob Keeshan was hired back and Clarabell went back to being non-musical. Later, when Keeshan was fired for the last time, he was replaced by Bob Nicholson and then Anderson, both of whom were musicians.
The one time I met and talked with Bob Keeshan, he told me that his successors had pleased Smith and had also "nicened" the clown a touch, which he did not think was a bad thing. At times, Clarabell was a pretty nasty clown, less interested in making anyone laugh than in just spraying seltzer on other cast members out of sheer meanness. Keeshan mused that his first creation probably appealed to the worst in children, whereas his greatest (Cap'n Kangaroo) probably brought out their best.
I never met Lew Anderson but he was the Clarabell I knew as a viewer. I was never a very steady one because Howdy Doody was on the downslope by the time I was old enough to know what I was watching on TV. Much of the show's appeal was lost on me, at least when the clown was not on screen. When I watched at all, I watched for him...and I do remember viewing live that sad day when they aired the final episode and Clarabell broke his silence and said, "Goodbye." Goodbye, Lew Anderson. I hope someone at the funeral had the guts to get up and talk about "A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down my pants..."
The Motor City Comic Convention got underway yesterday in Novi, Michigan, which is just outside of Detroit. I haven't seen any online news reports yet but two attendees have e-mailed me that the convention was "swarming" (both used that word) with police. No, they weren't looking for Jimmy Hoffa. My correspondents say the authorities were arresting (even handcuffing) dealers who were selling bootleg videotapes. There have been busts like this at other cons but if the accounts e-mailed to me are accurate, this one was scary in its scope and seriousness — enough to perhaps finally end the selling of pirated videos at conventions.
For those of you who don't get to cons: There's a thriving industry out there in video piracy...people who mass-produce videotapes and DVDs of copyrighted material in which they do not hold any copyright. Sometimes, it's a matter of just replicating commercial video releases and selling them cheaper...or selling copies of tapes and DVDs that are now out of print. There are also those who have pirated copies of new movies not yet available on video but more often lately, the bootleggers are producing videos of old TV shows or movies taped off the air or transferred from 16mm prints. While they sometimes find and offer very rare material, the fact remains that the material is still stolen.
I've had a few conversations at cons with folks who traffic in this area and have been amazed at the rationales for theft. Sometimes, the defense is just that they're not making a lot of money off these videos...which may be true but, you know, stealing small is still stealing. Sometimes, one hears the notion that it's not ignoble to rip off Time-Warner or Disney because, let's face it, those companies make skillions and perhaps are not always 100% honest in their pursuit of profits. Above and beyond the obvious flaw in that argument is the fact that the video pirates rarely spare the small producer or filmmaker...and that even a Disney bootleg cheats "little guys" like writers and voice actors who don't receive their contracted residuals.
The most frequent alibi is that the sellers aren't really doing it for the money...or at least, doing it just for the money. They're doing it as a public service since the folks who own the material in question are selfishly or thoughtlessly withholding it from the public. This is another way of saying the rights holders haven't gotten around yet to issuing the show or movie on home video but still, it almost sounds like a valid point. Doesn't change the fact that we're talking here about copyright violations but it sounds good.
I'll tell you how low some video buccaneers have sunk: They're even bootlegging stuff I wrote. The three DVD covers above are from complete collections of shows I worked on. People have taped these shows off Cartoon Network and The Disney Channel, and edited DVDs of them which they sell quite openly. I got all three cover images off eBay. (An authorized, legal collection of the Dungeons and Dragons animated series will be issued later this year, by the way. I'm guessing the others will follow within a year or two.)
I guess in a very small way, I feel sorry for some of the guys who got busted yesterday. They all seem to think they're creating product, not filching someone else's — or if they're stealing, they're stealing from someone else's bootlegs. Some of them have even put a lot of work into their editing and art direction and take great pride in their handiwork. But I don't feel sorry enough to not think they should have known this was going to happen...and that it's about time it was stopped.
May 21, 2006
