December 27, 1947: Howdy Doody premieres on NBC. It becomes the most famous children's TV show of all time, until Sesame Street debuts in 1969.
Born in 1917 in Buffalo, Robert Emil Schmidt anglicized his name to Bob Smith, and became a popular figure on Buffalo radio station WGR. This got the attention of parent company NBC, who hired him away to do a morning show on New York flagship station WNBC, which he continued to do into the 1950s, until his TV show began to take up so much of his time.
On his radio show, Smith had a character named Elmer, a country boy, that proved popular enough that Smith was offered a Saturday morning kids' TV show, on the condition that Elmer be a character. So Elmer became a marionette, Howdy Doody, named for the Western-style transformation of the greeting, "How do you do?" into "Howdy do?" or sometimes even just "Howdy."
Smith became "Buffalo Bob," named for his hometown, and wearing Western gear like Buffalo Bill Cody. Howdy was dressed like a cowboy, and famously had 48 freckles on his face, one for every State then in the Union.
A section of seats called the Peanut Gallery was set aside on stage for kids to watch the show. Bob would start every show by sitting down at a piano and asking, "Say, kids, what time is it?" And they would yell, "It's Howdy Doody Time!" And Bob would play the theme song, to the tune of "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay":
Despite his country-boy beginnings, and his similarity to ventriloquist "dummies," Howdy was no fool: Bob made him a stand-in for the kids, and made him pretty smart, to show the kids that he believed they could be smart, too.
The show had other characters, most famously Clarabell the Clown, who, like Harpo Marx, did not speak, except by honking a horn, which Bob and Howdy could translate. Not having a speaking role meant that NBC could pay him less: Networks being budget-conscious was even worse at the dawn of the TV era.
Clarabell He also used the old vaudeville stunt of squirting seltzer from the bottle. The original Clarabell was Bob Keeshan, who was fired in 1952 after hiring an agent to negotiate a better salary. NBC's loss was CBS' gain, as, in 1955, Keeshan began hosting Captain Kangaroo. And he long outlasted Bob and Howdy, as the show ran until 1984.
Robert Nicholson, the show's musical director, took over the role of Clarabell, and also played a farmer named J. Cornelius Cobb. In 1954, Lew Anderson took over the role of Clarabell, and played it for the remainder of the show's run, while Nicholson continued to direct the music and play "Corny" Cobb. For his own show, Keeshan may have based Hugh Brannum's character Mr. Green Jeans on Cobb.
This was not a good time for the portrayal of Native Americans in the American media. Bill Le Cornec played Chief Thunderthud, Chief of the Ooragnak tribe. Though it sounds like the Norse legend "Ragnarok," it's actually "kangaroo" spelled backwards. With no sensitivity whatsoever, him speak in broken English.
He also introduced an expression of excitement or happiness to the American lexicon: "Kowabunga!" This word would be adopted by Southern California surfers, and, in his comic strip Peanuts -- named by his national syndicator, against his will, in honor of Howdy Doody's peanut gallery -- the dog Snoopy would yell it when he went surfing. The word has also been adopted by Sesame Street's Cookie Monster, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Bart Simpson on The Simpsons.
In 1950, Chief Thunderthud got a girlfriend, Princess Summerfall Winterspring. She was played by Judy Tyler, only 18 at the time. She stayed on the show until in 1956, to film Jailhouse Rock with Elvis Presley. Coming back from Hollywood, intending to go to New York where she'd gotten an offer for a Broadway musical, she and her new husband, Gregory Lafayette, were killed in a car crash in Wyoming on July 3, 1957. The character was not recast.
The live characters lived in the Western town of Doodyville, which, in hindsight, was probably not a good choice of name. In addition to Howdy, the puppets included Heidi Doody, a girl who (how, was never explained) saved Buffalo Bob's life, and was adopted as Howdy's sister (not his girlfriend); Phineas T. Bluster, Mayor of Doodyville, a skinflint and the show's main antagonist; Dilly Dally, a friend of Howdy's who took on the dumb hick role of the former Elmer character; twin bears named Hyde and Zeke (like "hide and seek"); and Flub-a-Dub, who had a duck's bill, a cat's whiskers, a cocker spaniel's ears, a giraffe's neck, a dachshund's body, a seal's flippers, a pig's tail and an elephant's memory.
By August 1948, the show was enough of a hit that it was moved to Monday through Friday, at 5:30 PM Eastern Time. In September 1954, Smith suffered a heart attack, and his doctors ordered home recuperation. Allen Swift did Howdy's voice, and continued to do it for the rest of the show's run. Western movie star Gabby Hayes and then New York disc jockey Ted Brown, as Bison Bill, filled in for him, explaining that Buffalo Bob was "vacationing at Pioneer Village." The kids seemed to accept this.
The sponsors did not. They made a lot of money with Smith advertising their products, and wanted him back sooner than his doctors did. So NBC set up a studio in his house, making a room into "Pioneer Village," where he could do commercials. In September 1955, Smith was given the go-ahead to return, but, soon thereafter, partly to accommodate his health, the show was scaled back to Saturday mornings only. And they stopped doing it live, but this enabled them to record it on color videotape, not that many households yet had color TV.
All good things must come to an end, and, on September 24, 1960, the final episode of Howdy Doody aired. It was a retrospective of the show's history, and, at the end, Anderson revealed a big secret: Clarabell actually can talk. So Buffalo Bob asked everyone to be quiet, and listen. The camera closed in on Clarabell, close enough that the TV audience could see that Anderson was crying, and he whispered, just loud enough for the microphone to pick up, "Goodbye, kids."
The 1970s brought on a nostalgia wave for the 1950s, and the Baby Boomers had grown up. But Buffalo Bob still meant something to them. He visited troops in Vietnam, and battle-weary young men joyously sang along with him. He made an appearance on Happy Days, a show set in 1950s Milwaukee, in a storyline where Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard) wins a Howdy lookalike contest. Smith did a 40th Anniversary TV special in 1987, with Anderson, LeCornec and Nicholson in character, and Swift voicing Howdy. He proved popular doing appearances at shopping malls.
Nicholson died in 1993, LeCornec in 1997, Smith in 1998, Keeshan in 2004, Anderson in 2006, and Swift in 2010. Howdy Doody lives: He is still a point of reference, for people born long after the original show stopped, and the most-used puppet of him now rests in the television exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., alongside such pieces as Archie Bunker's chair from All in the Family and Fonzie's original leather jacket from Happy Days.
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December 27, 1947 was a Saturday. Baseball was out of season. The NFL Championship Game was played the next day: The Chicago Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Eagles. One college football game was played on this day: The University of Montana played the Hawaii All-Stars, 28-14 at Honolulu Stadium.
Three games were played in the Basketball Association of America, the league that would become the NBA for the 1949-50 season:
* The New York Knicks lost to the Chicago Stags, 79-70 at the old Madison Square Garden.
* The Boston Celtics beat the Providence Steam Rollers, 74-63 at the Rhode Island Arena in Providence.
* And the Washington Capitols beat the Philadelphia Warriors, 72-70 at the Uline Arena (now the Washington Coliseum).
Two games were played in the NHL. The Montreal Canadiens beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 3-1 at the Montreal Forum. And the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Boston Bruins, 2-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The New York Rangers and the Detroit Red Wings were not scheduled.
And in English soccer, Liverpool FC beat Arsenal, 2-1 at Highbury in North London.
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