Street Gang (7 page)

Perhaps the most extreme demonstration of the character’s popularity came in the election year of 1948, when the show’s writer, Eddie Kean, got the idea to mount a presidential campaign for Howdy. Smith recalled the stunt in a special issue of
People
magazine in the summer of 1989:

On November 14, 1948, a week after Harry Truman’s upset victory over Republican rival Thomas Dewey,
New York Times
writer Jack Gould
¹⁰
hailed the newly elected “president of the boys and girls of America,” perhaps the most successful write-in candidate in American history:

 

On the show, Keeshan was at first a combination propmaster-child wrangler, part gofer, part babysitter. Dressed in a smart blazer, he dutifully dispensed prizes to the kiddies. But after donning a clown costume in one episode, to the audience’s glee, he became Clarabell Hornblow, a baggy-pants prankster who had three thatches of hair sprouting from his powdered dome, two above his ears, and one above the cranium. His mirthful makeup choice, highlighted by an upturned grin and arched eyebrows, was the antithesis of Weary Willy, Emmett Kelly’s downcast, heavy-bearded hobo clown, so popular in the 1940s. Like Willy, though, Clarabell was mute. To make a point, he’d squeeze the rubber bulb of a bicycle-style horn belted to his waist, honking in a style reminiscent of Harpo Marx. Clarabell’s fizzy answer to most any comedic impasse was to douse a cast member with a shower of seltzer from a spray canister, although once, as a special guest on NBC’s prime-time comedy cavalcade,
Texaco Star Theater,
Keeshan (as Clarabell) hit Milton Berle right in the kisser with a cream pie.

Second only to Berle’s live show,
Howdy Doody
was the hottest ticket in television. You had to know someone who knew someone who knew someone to snag a ticket for your child. Smith told
People
magazine that “Forty Peanut Gallery tickets were issued a day, and a sponsor got ten. I got four, and each cast member got two or four a week. The station relations department got all the rest. So actually, hardly anyone who wrote in for a ticket ever got one.”
¹¹

On a half-dozen occasions or so, Sam Gibbon, a matinee-idol-handsome NBC production staff member, was assigned to keep an eye on the Peanut Gallery. He was, to say the least, overqualified. A Princeton grad and newly repatriated Rhodes Scholar, Gibbon had completed a study of children’s theater in Europe before landing at NBC Studios. That his standards for children’s entertainment were highly refined, while Buffalo Bob’s were not, meant that Gibbon found
Howdy Doody
a deplorable waste of time. “The show was an abortion,” he said. “The kids would come in dressed in their Sunday best and excited beyond measure, and they’d always leave cranky and crying. The mothers never understood why, but the reason was Smith. Before airtime, the kids would be saying, ‘Where’s Buffalo Bob?’ When he finally came on, he would ignore them completely, except when he was on camera, and even then, he would sort of shove the kids aside to make room for himself in the Peanut Gallery. One time when a kid said something to him, he spun around and sort of kicked in the general direction of where the boy was sitting. Smith’s moccasin flew off and skimmed up over the heads of the Peanut Gallery.”

Years after
Howdy Doody
had completed its thirteen-season run (it ended September 24, 1960, after 2,343 shows), Smith admitted to some appalling off-camera behavior, citing two examples of his impatience with—and hostility toward—his overexuberant young fans.

Gibbon, then a lowly studio hand, would later write and produce for three of the most acclaimed children’s shows in television history:
Captain Kangaroo
,
Sesame Street,
and
The Electric Company
. He said many times that he learned a lot about what
not
to do on television from watching Buffalo Bob Smith.

 

NBC also was home to network television’s first series targeted—and marketed—to preschoolers. Its history reads like a cautionary tale about advertising’s corruptive influence on even the best-intentioned efforts of using television to teach.

One day in 1952 an arts editor at the
New York Times
answered the phone, only to hear a strange admission from Jules Herbuveaux, program director at NBC Television. “We’ve got a new show over here that’s either the worst show we ever pitched up or the best,” he said. “Right now, I just don’t know.”
¹³

Days earlier, without any promotion or advance notice, the network added a children’s show to its midmorning lineup, one that was initially produced at NBC’s affiliate station in Chicago, WNBQ. On the occasion of its first day on the network, a cranky cameraman offered his sour assessment of the proceedings. “Where did they come up with
this
one?” he groused. Over on camera two, his buddy cracked, “This old gal won’t last out the week—if that long.”
¹⁴

Though out of earshot, that old gal could decipher every word. Not only was Dr. Frances Horwich an accomplished educator, she also was a master lip-reader, a skill honed over twenty years in the classroom. And, like most teachers, she had grown eyes in the back of her head. Nothing got past her.

Within a matter of weeks, Dr. Horwich—as Miss Frances—would become a household name in the twenty-one major markets where the program aired. Miss Frances opened the show by ringing a handbell, like a teacher summoning students to a little red schoolhouse. That prompted the three-year-old-daughter of producer Reinald Werrenrath Jr. to suggest the title
Ding Dong School
. It stuck.

Billed as the “Nursery School of the Air,”
Ding Dong School
was just that, a busy twenty-five minutes of stories and activities for three- to five-year-olds. The final five minutes of the half-hour show were directed to parents, after the children were dispatched to go find them. Miss Frances would then recap what the children had learned that day, like a teacher on back-to-school night.

NBC began receiving sacks of mail from pleased parents, sometimes as many as a thousand letters a day.
New York Times
writer Larry Wolters marveled at the phenomenon. “It’s the only program NBC has ever devised that wins practically a hundred percent acclaim. . . . [Miss Frances] brings [children] a wide variety of experiences, through action, scenes, and events, which most mothers seem to be just too busy to give the youngsters.”
¹⁵

Dr. Horwich, chairman of the Education Department at Chicago’s Roosevelt College, accomplished nothing less than inventing interactive children’s television, five decades before
Blue’s Clues
. Not surprisingly, her method combined equal parts show and tell. During activity segments, she would ask children to join along as she cut construction paper into five puzzle pieces or planted radish seeds in a Dixie Cup or made a doll from pipe cleaners and a shoehorn. The demonstrations moved at a child’s pace, and Miss Frances paused frequently to encourage and question viewers, addressing them as if they were seated right in front of her, which, in a sense, they were.

At times, Miss Frances would even carry on as if the children were actually answering her. She would open a Monday broadcast: “How was your weekend? Did you go for a ride in the car? Oh! You went to see grandmother.” Then, with a little gasp of surprise, she’d say, “Your cousin Billy was there! And his sister Susie?” To the adult ear, it was fruitcake nutty, but kids by the thousands began talking back to their sets.

The show’s popularity spawned a line of
Ding Dong School
products, including long-playing albums on the RCA label (
Fun with Instruments
), a small library of Golden Books (
Your Friend the Policeman
), and finger-painting sets. It was reported that eight hundred offers were considered to extend the branded line of merchandise.

While commercialism built and sustained the show, it ultimately also eroded its credibility. For inasmuch as Miss Frances was a persuasive teacher, she also was a shameless huckster for
Ding Dong School
’s sponsors. Her live commercials for breakfast cereals, vitamins, and other consumables—along with her plugs for
Ding Dong School
products—were woven into the show and directed at children: “When you’re going to the store, you help [mother] find the brand-new Wheaties box. I know you will!”

Critic Jack Gould gave Dr. Horwich quite a lecture in 1955. In a blistering column in the
Times
, he questioned the propriety of testimonial vitamin ads, re-creating one for his readers.

 

Despite such criticism, in 1953
Ding Dong School
won a George Foster Peabody Award for Outstanding Children’s Program.
¹⁶
NBC nevertheless dropped the show after two years on the network in favor of a new game show called
The Price Is Right
. Stung by the cancellation, Dr. Horwich quit her position as NBC’s supervisor for children’s programming. “With the lack of teachers and shortage of schools, many boys and girls are attending school on a half-day basis,” she said. “
Ding Dong School
filled a need.”

Dr. Horwich retained the rights to
Ding Dong School
, which continued in syndication until 1965.

 

In 1952, after a tiff with Buffalo Bob, Keeshan ended his stint as Clarabell. The former page was cut loose, Clarabell was recast, and that was that. A year later, Keeshan resurfaced as Corny the Clown on
Time for Fun
, a local New York lunchtime show produced at WABC. Corny, less manic and mischievous than Clarabell, wore a bowler hat, a floppy tie, and a wide-striped jacket. From a park bench on the set, he would talk sweetly into the camera to the kids at home, his panting cocker spaniel Pudgy (a Keeshan family pet) perched on his lap. In 1954, Keeshan’s character repertoire expanded again with
Tinker’s Workshop
, which consistently won its early time slot in the weekly ratings, beating out news and information shows on rival stations.