Which of these tv shows famously aired a series finale that abruptly cuts to black?
In 1948, the network decided to offer Howdy for President campaign buttons to kids. While "The Howdy Doody Show" would log 2,543 episodes, NBC knew it had a hit right away. "Say, kids! What time is it?" Buffalo Bob would call out at the top of each show, to which the kids would scream in response, "It's 'Howdy Doody' time!"Īmong its supporting cast was, famously, Bob Keeshan, who was the first of three actors to play Clarabell, the silent, seltzer-spraying clown, and who left in the mid-1950s to launch his own groundbreaking kids show, "Captain Kangaroo." Set in fictional Doodyville, where stringed puppets cavorted with flesh-and-blood characters, the show's human host was "Buffalo Bob" Smith, who furnished Howdy's voice while presiding over the comic hijinks and a studio audience of kids dubbed the Peanut Gallery. It was also among the first series to be color-cast (starting in 1955). "Hopefully, this will get noticed," he said, "and people will want more."Ī formative influence on nearly every baby boomer's childhood, "The Howdy Doody Show" premiered in 1947 as the first nationally televised children's show and the first NBC show to air five days a week (which it did until moving to Saturdays in 1956). If the marathon is a success, Goodman added, the network, which specializes in repeats of classic shows, has more "Howdy Doody" episodes, retrofitted with fresh wraparounds, ready to air at a later date, "When we realized that we could do something around the time of the national conventions and that we had these election episodes," said Goodman, "we knew Howdy could represent a much different point of view from what we're hearing in the campaign today."
It's been a two-year process that entailed not only a search for episode prints but also, before that step, tracking down who owns the series rights (turns out, conveniently, that COZI TV parent NBC still does). "Howdy's position has not changed," said Burt Dubrow, perhaps the world's leading Doody disciple and a partner with COZI TV consulting creative director Alan Goodman in this effort to get Howdy back on the air. The special brings out of retirement Howdy himself, still remarkably boyish as he weighs in on the current presidential race.
The six-hour marathon will be bookended by a brand-new, half-hour "Howdy Doody for President" special, which looks back on Howdy's two runs for the White House - in 19 - on a platform that included double sodas for a dime, two Christmas holidays annually and only one school day per year. US Expected to Announce Diplomatic Boycott of Winter Olympics in Beijing