Bozo the Clown
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Bozo the Clown is the name of a clown whose widespread franchising in early television made him the best-known clown character in the United States. Partly as a result, the word "bozo" has become synonymous with a foolish person. It also was a common name given to hobo or tramp clowns.
Bozo was created in 1946 by Alan W. Livingston, who wrote and produced a children's storytelling record-album and illustrative read-along book set, the first of its kind, titled Bozo at the Circus for Capitol Records. Pinto Colvig portrayed the character on this and subsequent Bozo read-along records.
They were extremely popular and by 1949, Capitol and Livingston began setting up royalty arrangements with manufacturers and television stations for use of the Bozo character. KTTV-TV in Los Angeles began broadcasting the first show featuring Colvig as Bozo with his blue-and-red costume, oversized red hair and classic "whiteface" clown makeup, on Fridays at 7:30 p.m.
Bozo became even more famous after Larry Harmon purchased the licensing rights to the character in 1956, and franchised it to local television stations in 1959 as a daily half-hour show with a live Bozo the Clown — a different man in each city in front of a studio audience of children — along with five-minute Bozo cartoons. Unlike many other shows on television, Bozo was a franchise as opposed to being syndicated, meaning that local TV stations could put on their own local productions of the show complete with their own Bozo. Another show that used this model successfully was Romper Room.
Helped along by the widespread local publicity, Bozo-themed toys and novelties were sold widely and by the mid-1960s, Bozo was reportedly grossing over $150 million in merchandise worldwide.
Contents |
Local Bozos
Local television portrayers of Bozo who followed Pinto Colvig include:
Memphis, Tennessee
Los Angeles, California
New York City
Washington, D.C.
- Willard Scott (1959-1962) at WRC-TV (NBC Today Show weatherman)
- Dick Dyszel on WDCA-TV
Boston
Chicago
El Paso, Texas
- Howell Eurich (1968-1972) at KROD-TV (now KDBC-TV)
Baltimore, Maryland
Little Rock, Arkansas
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
- Pat Tobin KSOO-TV
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Bozo on Chicago TV
The Chicago Bozo franchise was the most popular and successful locally-produced children's program in the history of television. It also became the most widely-known Bozo show as WGN became a national cable television staple. Chicago's "Bozo" debuted in 1960 starring Bob Bell on a live half-hour show weekdays at noon, performing comedy sketches and introducing cartoons. It evolved into Bozo's Circus in 1961 as a live hour-long show with additional cast members, a 13-piece orchestra, circus acts, games and prizes before a 200+ member studio audience. By the early-1980s, there was a 10-year waiting list for tickets to the show. It underwent various changes in the 1980s and 1990s, most notably the retirement of Bob Bell in 1984. After a nationwide search, Bell was replaced by Gong Show regular Joey D'Auria, who would play the role of Bozo for the next 17 years.
Other significant characters on the Chicago TV show through its 40+ year run included "Ringmaster Ned" Locke, Mr. Bob (Bob Trendler) and fellow clowns Sandy the Tramp (producer/writer Don Sandburg) and Oliver O. Oliver (Ray Rayner). Later on, Frazier Thomas, Cooky the Cook (Roy Brown), Wizzo the Wizard (Marshall Brodien), Professor Andy (Andy Mitran) and Rusty the Handyman (Robin Eurich, whose father, Howell Eurich, was the local Bozo in El Paso, Texas from 1968 to 1972) joined in as well. Spifford Q. Fahrquarrr (Michael Immel), Pepper (Cathy Schenkelberg) and Tunia (Michele Gregory) also appeared for a few years in the 1990s.
The show also featured contests including the "Grand Prize Game" created by Don Sandburg, where a boy and girl were selected from the studio audience by the Magic Arrows, and later the Bozoputer (a random number generator), to toss a ping-pong ball into a series of successively-numbered buckets until they missed. If they made the winning toss into the sixth bucket, they received a cash prize, a bike and, in later years, a trip. It became so popular, Larry Harmon adopted it for other Bozo shows (as "Bozo Buckets" to some) and also licensed home and coin-operated versions.
The Bozo Super Sunday Show was the final incarnation of the WGN-TV show, airing from 1994 to 2001. Originally a weekday program, it was moved to Sunday mornings after Roy Brown and Marshall Brodien retired from television and WGN began airing weekday morning newscasts. The show's format was revised in 1997 in response to an FCC rule requiring broadcast television stations to air a minimum three hours per week of "educational and informational" children’s programs.
The last show taped June 12, 2001 was the "Bozo: 40 Years of Fun!" special and aired on July 14, 2001 featuring a guest appearance by singer Billy Corgan, a loyal fan of the WGN show, who performed Bob Dylan's "Forever Young." The final rerun of "The Bozo Super Sunday Show" was broadcast August 26th, 2001.
During the height of the Bo Jackson TV ads with the running theme "Bo knows football," "Bo knows baseball," etc., WGN-TV had a clever promo featuring Bozo with the theme that "Boze" knows football, baseball, news, etc. Naturally, Bozo was mostly in over his head, finding himself tangled up in videotape and so forth.
Actor Dan Castellaneta, a Chicago native, has credited Bob Bell's Bozo (with his slightly raspy voice) as the inspiration for his very raspy voiced characterization of Krusty the Clown on The Simpsons television series.
Bozo urban legend
Many rumors have arisen about misbehavior on a Bozo show making it onto the air although none have been substantiated and relatively few of the local Bozo episodes were preserved on tape. The most famous tale involves Bozo attempting to manage the behavior of an outspoken child by making the comment, "That's a Bozo no-no," which is said to have elicited the response from the kid: "Cram it, clownie!" On a Kermit Schaefer compilation of bloopers, a clip appears with the retort, "F*** off, clown!". However, Schaefer was notorious for fabricating audio clips using hired actors.
Ronald McDonald
Immediately following Willard Scott's three-year-run as WRC-TV Washington, D.C.'s Bozo, the show's sponsors, McDonald's drive-in restaurant franchisees John Gibson and Oscar Goldstein (Gee Gee Distributing Corporation), created "Ronald McDonald the Hamburger-Happy Clown" and hired Scott to portray the character for their local commercials. Although the character's outfit was different from Ronald McDonald as he's known today, the McDonald's mascot evolved from Bozo.
McDonald's replaced Scott with other actors for their national commercials and the character's costume was changed.
Bozo around the world
Bozo TV shows were also produced in other countries including Mexico, Thailand, Greece and Brazil. Larry Harmon has claimed that more than 200 actors have portrayed the clown.
Brazil
In 1981, Brazil's famous TV show host Silvio Santos (founder and owner of the SBT television network) decided to produce a national version of a Bozo the Clown show for the extinct TVS-Record TV station. Comedian Wandeko Pipoca was chosen by Larry Harmon to be the first Brazilian Bozo.
With the clown's large success in Brazil, two more actors, Luís Ricardo and Arlindo Barreto, were hired to play Bozo for additional shows which ran from mornings to afternoons and more comedians were chosen to play Bozo in other parts of the country. Brazil's Bozo shows ended in 1991, following the death of Décio Roberto, the last actor to portray the clown in that country.
Brazil's Bozo won five Troféus Imprensa, a famous Brazilian award given to personalities and productions in the media (in 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987 and 1989), as well as three Gold Albums.
"Bozo" as generic noun or verb
- The Firesign Theater produced a comedy album called, I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus.
- At the height of the Watergate scandal, comedian Robert Klein observed how apt it was that Richard Nixon's good friend was named Bebe Rebozo, as his last name sounded like a verb meaning "to 'Bozo' again."
Mexican parody of Bozo
In Mexico, TV star, comedian and political comentarist Victor Trujillo, created in 1988 the character of "Brozo, El Payaso Tenebroso" (Brozo, the Dark Clown) ( parodied to Bozo ) for a TV show in TV Azteca with Ausencio Cruz called "La Caravana" (The Caravane). He pleased the audience with his typical Mexican double-entendre humor, and adult, sarcastic versions of classic children's tales. He became so popular that TV Azteca asked him to join the reporters and anchors during coverage of the FIFA World Cup in 1994, 1998 and 2002. He also gave his particular view on the Olympics, starting with the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, until the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. From 1994 to 2004 Victor Trujillo as Brozo was anchor of a popular and successful TV news show: "El Mañanero"[1]. Curiously, it was broadcast on Azteca competitors Canal 40 and later Televisa, since Azteca was unable to provide him a daily morning time slot.
Currently, Trujillo has left behind the Brozo character, mostly in respect for the late wife Carolina Padilla. When she died in 2004, he lost not only the most important producer on his team and mother of his two daughters.
External links
- ABC News Investigates Bozo's Origin (2001)
- ABC News: Bozo Finally Unmasked (2004)
- Associated Press: Who's the First Bozo? (2004)
- Clown Ministry - History of Bozo
- History (fan website) of WGN-TV Chicago's Bozo show
- Urban Legends Reference Pages discussion of the "Cram it, Clownie!" tale
- A virtual museum (fan website) of Chicago's Bozo/Ray/Gar/etc...pt:Bozo