Bozo the Clown

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Bozo the Clown
Bozo.jpg
Premiere 1959
Finale 1960
Airs
Creator Alan W. Livingston
Network Syndication
Style 6-minute animated comedy
Company Larry Harmon Productions,
Jayark Films
Episodes 200
Seasons 1
Origin USA


Bozo the Clown was first the star of a series of records for children released by Capitol Records. He was created by Alan W. Livingston and voiced by Pinto Colvig (original voice of Disney's character Goofy). A local Los Angeles kids' show was launched with Bozo and a chap named Larry Harmon was hired to play him. Harmon was so enamored of the character that he bought out the license for Bozo and went on to create a nationwide franchise of live Bozo shows with children in the studio audience. The longest running Bozo show was the origination from WGN-TV in Chicago, which ran to 2001. In the 1970s, a syndicated edition, Bozo's Big Top, featured Bible readings among the circus frivolity.

Harmon would inaugurate Jayark Films, an animation studio where he had Bozo cartoons made for the local originations. In these cartoons, he had a young circus sidekick named Butchie Boy, and the ringleader, his boss. One of the cartoons' main adversaries was a thug named Short Biggie. Two batches of cartoons were made; the second had the designs more simplified and gave Bozo two other co-stars: Belinda (a little girl) and Wacko Wolf.

In the early 1960s, Bozo appeared in a commercial for Soaky bubble bath alongside Mighty Mouse. Soaky bubble bath came in containers shaped like cartoon stars and touted that Soaky soaks you clean and every girl and boy / gets a toy when it's empty, when it's empty it's a toy.

Cast

Actor Character Duration
Main Cast
Larry Harmon Bozo 1
Butchie Boy 1
Paul Frees Ringmaster 1
Short Biggie 1
Wacko Wolf 1
Penny Phillips Belinda 1

DVD Releases

Three volumes of the Bozo live action shows feature a five-minute cartoon.



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