| Bozo the Clown is the name of a clown whose widespread syndication in early
television made him the best-known clown character in the United States. Partly as a result, the word "bozo" has become synonymous in
America with a generic clown or a foolish person: For example, "I Think We're All Bozos on This
Bus" was the title of a 1971 album by the comic group Firesign
Theater. The word is said to have originated earlier, among carnival
entertainers.
Bozo was created in 1946 by Alan W. Livingston. He
released a children's record titled Bozo at the Circus on Capitol
Records, with a read-along book set. Pinto Colvig narrated this record
and all the other read-along records. They were extremely popular, and by 1949, KTTV in Los Angeles was broadcasting a children's show featuring Pinto Colvig as Bozo, with his
blue-and-red costume, oversized red hair, and classic "whiteface" clown makeup, were starting to appear on then-new medium called
television.
Bozo became even more famous after Larry Harmon purchased the rights to the character in 1956, and
franchised it to local television stations 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 — as well as five-minute cartoons. Many people became famous locally such as Frank Averusch at WCVB-TV in Boston, and Bob Bell and later Joey D'Auria at WGN-TV in Chicago. Several performers who later became nationally known also took a turn as Bozo, notably Willard Scott, later a weatherman on NBC's
Today Show.
Helped along by the widespread local publicity, Bozo-themed toys and novelties were sold widely; by the mid-1960s, Bozo was reportedly grossing over $150 million in merchandise worldwide.
Bozo on Chicago TV
The Chicago Bozo franchise was the longest-running and longest-lasting; it also became the most widely-known as WGN became a
national cable television staple. Chicago's Bozo's Circus debuted in 1961 as a live, daily half-hour show and underwent various format changes over the years; the final
version, The Bozo Super Sunday Show, aired its last episode in 2001.
Other significant characters on the Chicago TV show through its forty year run included "Ringmaster Ned" Locke and fellow
clowns Sandy the Tramp and Oliver O. Oliver (the latter played by Chicago television icon Ray Rayner). Later on, Frazier Thomas replaced Locke, and
Cooky the Clown, portrayed by Roy Brown, joined in as well. Other clowns that
appeared on the show included Spifford Quitz Farquharrr (or "Spiffy" for short), Rusty the Handyclown, and two female clowns
— Pepper and Tunia.
The show also featured contests including "The Grand Prize Game", a daily contest where two child contestants were selected
from the audience with magic arrows [later a computer device called the "Bozoputer"] for each game. The game involved tossing a
ping-pong ball into a series of successively-numbered buckets until the contestant missed a bucket. If they reached the sixth
bucket and made the winning toss, they received a cash prize, a new bike and a trip. At the peak of its run the WGN Bozo show was
wildly popular; at one point there was allegedly a ten-year waiting list for tickets to the show.
The Bozo Super Sunday Show was the final incarnation of the show, and airing from 1994 to 2001. It starred Joey D'Auria as Bozo. The show's format
was revised in response to an FCC rule requiring children's programming to contain
educational content; previously, the Bozo show was purely an entertainment program.
Bozo stories
Many stories have arisen about misbehavior on the show making it onto the air, although it is often difficult to know whether
they are true or not, particularly because relatively few of the local Bozo episodes were preserved on tape. The most famous
alleged incident involves Bozo attempting to manage the behavior of an outspoken child in the audience by making the comment:
"That's a Bozo no-no," which elicited the response from the kid: "Cram it, clownie!"
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