THE CHILDREN’S HOUR
by Bob Foreman © 2013
“As practically every child knows,” Atlanta’s first TV star was a red-headed blue-eyed cowboy named Woody Willow. A child marionette and the creation of the late Don and Ruth Gilpin, Woody was commissioned by WSB-TV for the station’s debut on September 29, 1948. Woody who lived in a shoe co-hosted with Mr. Don “a jam-packed hour of fun with movies, comedy, games and a puppet soap opera.” Only the kids in the studio could tell the color of Woody’s eyes because all local live telecasts were in black and white until the late 1960s. “Bye Ma, I’m gone to television” was a daily cry from kids rushing to the home of the nearest neighbor who owned a receiver to watch “TV’s funniest little guy,” on the town’s only station. As the above quotations illustrate, Woody never received any bad press because WSB was owned by the Atlanta Journal. During Willow’s eight year run, Mrs. Gilpin puppeted Woody from a tall step ladder and supplied his “boyishly high pitched” voice in full view of the studio audience. After the broadcast, kids would frequently ask her, “why don’t you let him talk for himself?” Why indeed. Shortly after the 1956 opening of WSB’s magnificent “White Columns” studios, The Popeye Club made its debut, featuring Officer Don. Don Kennedy’s witty banter, daily birthday celebrations, and games with the peanut gallery (including the eagerly anticipated Ooey-Gooey) served as a bumper between Popeye cartoons. In point of fact, the entire show served as a bumper between local commercials, but Don’s live copy pitches for Merita Brown-and-Serve Rolls and Blue Horse Nifty Notebooks were never dull. The nicest cop ever, Officer Don stood alone among kid show hosts, network included, because he never talked down to kids and offered no preachy moralizing. “I like kids better than people,” he said, and it showed. His was the top-rated local show for its twelve year run. No kid shows from channel 5 (which hit the air waves in 1949) came anywhere close to Popeye, but the fact that WAGA had a mascot (a Scottie dog named “Waga”) was as strange and pleasing as was their host for Shocker movies, George “Bestoink Dooley” Ellis. Waga the dog was found at a pound and named by the late and affable Don Barber. Best recalled as the only station with a hyphen in its name, WLW-A, channel 11 limped onto the air two years later, with the worst reception (there was no such thing as cable), the worst networks (ABC and DuMont), and a programming budget of three cents. In between eight doses a week of Live Atlanta Wrestling and Freddie Miller’s Stars of Tomorrow were nestled Fun with Fran and Miss Boo. Speed Artist Fran Kearton hosted the former, also with a studio audience, while Miss Boo was arguably the weirdest kids’ show of all time. A nice witch who loved bugs, Miss Boo performed her daily one woman act in a “cave,” actually a series of large and unadorned cardboard boxes. Here finally was a show which could be faithfully recreated in one’s own home. Kids of higher intellect, it was said, found equal contentment in watching the test pattern (with its attendant 1000 cycle tone) which aired for hours each day, free of commercials, on all three channels. Atlanta’s kid vid hosts had real lives as well. Officer Don Kennedy founded WKLS-FM and is the big band maven to beat the band; Bestoink Dooley introduced art film theaters to the town; Fran Kearton wrote a great book about her other Atlanta show Music Shop, with co-host Dick van Dyke; and Miss Boo whose true name is Rosie Clark is a painter of excellent and terribly funny miniatures. Woody Willow lives with his girlfriend Theresa Termite at Vince Anthony’s puppet museum.
THE PHANTOM STILL WALKS
by Bob Foreman © 2013
“Phantom of the Fox” Joe Patten (right) and Robert L. Foreman, Jr. were honored on July 2nd by the national American Theatre Organ Society (ATOS) at their annual convention, this year held at Atlanta’s FOX Theatre. Patten and Foreman were recognized as the prime movers in saving the theatre from demolition in 1975. Joe Patten, 86, is in good spirits and his mind is keen, but the Phantom now walks with the aid of a walker or for longer jaunts, a wheelchair. In 2010, Patten won a court battle against the FOX Board and management who had attempted to evict him from his residence in the theatre building. -30-