Mark Kausler’s CatBlog

Howdy!

Hello, fellow prisoners! Thanks to Mark Evanier’s website, I scored a $10 copy of the new Howdy Doody 40 Episode collection from NBC-Universal. The earliest episode on the collection seems to be from Feb. 1949, when the whole show was done live. You can hear Howdy’s mouth making little clicking sounds on the live microphone, and there are no scenes in these early shows with Bob Smith and Howdy talking in the same set-up. After all, Mr. Smith (as Howdy addresses him in the early shows) did Howdy’s voice live and not being a ventriloquist, he had to do the marionette’s lines off-camera. Bob Keeshan is very funny as Clarabelle the clown, in one episode the clown gets frustrated trying to do a magic trick and spends most of his screen time flailing around on the floor attempting to tie knots in a scarf without actually touching it. Keeshan’s Clarabelle is a small child in a clown suit who speaks through his horns. Paradoxically, he was the spear-carrier and on-camera engineer for the show as well, producing live rabbits from the Flapdoodle and running old Jones Family and Mickey McGuire silent comedies on the Scopedoodle. The quality of the old kinescopes is pretty sharp for their age and the audio levels are just fine for comfortable listening. This is a 5 disc set, and includes many extras, even the last episode broadcast in 1960. If you love 1950s television, try to pick this one up. It’s a window on a world before the mean-spirited scatology that passes for comedy became the norm in our 21st century world. It’s especially heartening to see the adoring reaction to the family of rabbits that Clarabelle produces from the Flapdoodle from the kids in the Peanut Gallery. They seem enchanted by the family of angoras. Bob Smith was one of the warmest on-air kid’s show hosts ever, he always seemed to have a loving and respectful relationship with the “little guy”, Howdy, which enhances the family atmosphere on the set.  I’ll report on some of the other features in the collection when I get to see them.

Our comics this week are, Hennery Hound from Barnyard Comics #7, by Jim Tyer. It looks like Jim inked this one with a brush. Hennery seems to be a forerunner of Huckleberry Hound, he looks a little like Huck, and is the same hard luck type of character as Huck was in the TV cartoons. His Hippo wife is a very funny touch. When her bridge club steps all over Hennery on the second page, a high-heel goes right into his eye! While we are looking at Tyer, here are the last two pages of the Flebus story, “Thumb’s Up”. I love that distorted thumb on Rudolph, and Flebus as a tall, cranky old man takes the story out with a laugh.

Marvelous Mike this week is from 12-10 to 12-15-1956. In a new story line, Mike wants to feed the homeless on Christmas Day, and finds a needy boy in the local department store that he wants to care for. Liz Crump wants to invite the boy and his mother for Christmas dinner, but Cliff is feeling the pinch financially and his inner Scrooge is emerging. Let’s give a birthday shout out to my brother Kurt (Dec. 10), who braved the somewhat “charged” atmosphere at the downtown St. Louis Public Library to copy all these strips from microfilm for our reading pleasure. Krazy Kat is from 5/1 to 5/6/1939 and continues Mimi the poodle(?)’s appearance from last week. Mimi is a heavy user of “Pomme d’or” perfume, much to Ignatz’s delight. Ig’s wife, Molly, is jealous of Mimi’s perfume and starts to use some of it herself. Garge gets a week’s worth of gags out of these olfactory antics.