Author’s Note: It’s that time of year again for a short break so loyal Laughable Feast readers will be treated (or subjected) to a few weeks of summer reruns. Some of you have seen these golden oldies before, and may even remember them, but many haven’t so hopefully these posts from three or four years ago have stood the test of time.
The summer lineup is as follows:
July 3rd – Discovering Lewis & Clark
July 10th – Romper Room
July 17th – The Doctor Will See You Now
July 24th – The Pink Slip
July 31st – Thumper
August 7th – Pick Up the Pieces
August 14th – Mad Man
August 21st – Lawnmower Man
August 28th – Dude, Where’s My Brain
I hope you all have a wonderful summer. We’ll be back with fresh cooking for the Laughable Feast table on September 4th.
Romper Room
I was an armload at birth and the doctor actually had to break my collarbone to get me out the door. Of course, I had no memory of this auspicious entrance onto the world stage, but my mother sure did.
I’m told I suffered from the usual infant and toddler maladies – sleeping on a board due to the broken collarbone being the unusual exception – and as a tot endured a spate of entirely avoidable accidents that seemingly plague mostly little boys, but really nothing of note happened during those early years.
Except of course my brief but stellar career as a child actor. With appearances on Romper Room, The Ramblin’ Rod Show, The Rusty Nails Hour, and Heck Harper’s Cartoon Corral to my credit, I was a household name on the local Portland, Oregon television scene. Or at least in my household.
Some of you older readers may remember when local television was actually a thing. If you do, you’ll also remember that the shows were broadcast in black and white and there was a grand total of five networks to choose from.
There were local affiliates of ABC, NBC and CBS which carried grainy images of slickly produced variety shows, situation comedies, soap operas, courtroom dramas, and of course news reports that everyone believed to be true. Because they were.
There was also KOAP-TV which was the nascent public broadcasting system. The studio for Channel 10 was just up the hill from our house and to my knowledge nobody was ever seen coming or going. The neighborhood children considered it a creepy no-go zone. Somebody must have occasionally manned the station, however, but it was on the air for only about six hours a day with programming nobody gave a shit about. And then there was KPTV, Channel 12, which was our very own local television network that carried mostly shows which were essentially day care centers.
These shows were enormously popular in the 1950s and ’60s and consisted entirely of small children sitting and watching clowns and cartoons on TV which is exactly what they did at home.
Don’t get me wrong, watching children watching TV is must-see TV, but who was the genius in charge of programming at Channel 12? I mean, outside of the proud parents of the celebrity guests on any given week, and no doubt a few pedophiles with free time during the day, the viewership was probably zero.
And speaking of pedophiles, who came up with the porn names for the hosts? Ramblin’ Rod? Rusty Nails? Seriously? And does Romper Room not sound like an A-list party venue at the Playboy Mansion?
But at least Romper Room operated with the pretext that it was a learning experience, and the show was a national franchise which billed itself as “an actual kindergarten”. One can fairly question what the meaningful difference might be between an actual kindergarten and a make-believe kindergarten, but the producers of this program evidently fancied themselves serious educators, not merely entertainers.
Which is why after running the opening credits to the tune of Pop Goes the Weasel, the “cast” was required to stand with hands on hearts and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Just like we did in school. Except for the Pop Goes the Weasel part.
Portland’s Romper Room was permitted a tiny bit of leeway for local flavor but otherwise rigidly followed a script that was no doubt adapted from some great work of literature such as Horton Hears a Who. The hostess of the show – it was always a hostess skilled in the maternal arts, and presumably this was because parents were uncomfortable with the thought of their precious five-year old taking a nap in close proximity to Ramblin’ Rod – would then expertly guide the children through the Mr. Music segment before bringing out the star of the show, Mr. Do Bee, and his evil twin Mr. Don’t Bee.
I always thought Gary Cooper and Boris Karloff were perfect for the parts, but I guess they weren’t available. So instead, Channel 12 booked two local TV commercial actors and put them in giant bee costumes.
I’m sure there were valuable lessons to be learned from the bees, but nobody was paying attention and what we all were thinking was, hey mister, how about you roll us a doobie and we eat cookies and take a nap? And that’s what we did next, minus the doobie, but only after reciting a prayer. “God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food.” Which is another way of saying gimme the damn cookie. Amen.
Following a restful nap snuggled in a warm coat – it was strictly BYOCoat at Romper Room, even in the dead of summer – Miss So-and-So would wind up the festivities, but not before looking through the “Magic Mirror”.
Obviously, this would’ve been a helluva lot more fun if Mr. Do Bee was legal back then, especially when you consider that the mirror wasn’t a mirror at all but nothing more than an empty over-sized frame.
Still, Miss So-and-So would stare intently at the camera through the opening and pretend to see children out in “television land” who she would name off one by one. But I’m guessing only the radio-faced kids whose parents paid the network a fee because they couldn’t get them on the show. Then it was time to roll the closing credits and bring Jack in the Box back to serenade us with another stylized rendition of Pop Goes the Weasel.
I was a big star in my day and even though the paparazzi could be a pain, I frankly enjoyed the spotlight. The Emmys did not have a children’s show category, sadly, but based on my clippings I’m certain I’d have hauled in quite a few of those little winged beauties. After the well-received run on Romper Room and a couple final cameos in the Cartoon Corral, my agent tried to find me more serious work – I wanted to direct – but my career stalled and by the age of seven I’d aged out of lead roles and the studios stopped calling.