Tweet Silent Comedies on HOWDY DOODY

Throughout the early years of Howdy Doody, silent comedies were a very regular part of the daily telecast. I'd like to say they were presented with loving care, but the opposite is true. The prints were in average condition, stock music was used (when there was music at all, which was seldom), every intertitle was edited out, and the films were invariably narrated, usually by Buffalo Bob Smith.

I'd also like to say that the comedies were greeted with uproarious shouts of juvenile laughter, but again the opposite is true. During the live telecast, I believe the shorts were shown on one monitor, somewhere on stage, and it had to be 20 or 30 feet away from the kids in the Peanut Gallery. They probably couldn't even see what was going on; very, very little laughter can be heard from them.

Watching some of these episodes today, you can tell that Smith has previewed the films before the telecast. Occasionally, he informs the kids in the Peanut Gallery that they're seeing Mickey McGuire or Eddie Lyons. Far more often, though, he simply makes up a name on the spot, and then asks the kids if they remember the comedian:

"And here's George Smiddlyfoozis with a bouquet of flowers! You remember him, right, kids?"

"Yeahhh!!!" (The inevitable response when the Peanut Gallery is asked anything)

I have 42 episodes from the show's heyday (1947-1955), and all but five or six of them include a silent comedy. I have no idea where the prints came from (an archive? a private collector?), but they all seem to have been public-domain films, and I guess that's no accident. There are no films with Chaplin, Keaton or Lloyd, possibly out of fear that they were still copyrighted.

I zipped through my episodes, just to see which comedians were represented. I'm ashamed to admit that I couldn't identify very many of the films, and in several cases I couldn't even identify the comedian. Here's what they were showing on Howdy Doody:

Harry Langdon's Shanghaied Lovers and All Night Long
Carole Lombard's Run, Girl Run
Charley Chase's All Wet and another of his Jimmie Jump shorts
The Smith Family's Smith's Restaurant, Smith's Army Life, Smith's Pets and 1 more short
Martha Sleeper's Sure, Mike!
Snub Pollard's Days of Old
7 Mickey McGuire shorts
4 Ton of Fun shorts
2 Billy West shorts (both from his early 1920s period)
2 Bobby Ray shorts, one of which features Oliver Hardy
1 Eddie Lyons short
1 Bobby Dunn short
1 Paul Parrott short

Throughout the early years of Howdy Doody, silent comedies were a very regular part of the daily telecast. I'd like to say they were presented with loving care, but the opposite is true. The prints were in average condition, stock music was used (when there was music at all, which was seldom), every intertitle was edited out, and the films were invariably narrated, usually by Buffalo Bob Smith.

I'd also like to say that the comedies were greeted with uproarious shouts of juvenile laughter, but again the opposite is true. During the live telecast, I believe the shorts were shown on one monitor, somewhere on stage, and it had to be 20 or 30 feet away from the kids in the Peanut Gallery. They probably couldn't even see what was going on; very, very little laughter can be heard from them.

Watching some of these episodes today, you can tell that Smith has previewed the films before the telecast. Occasionally, he informs the kids in the Peanut Gallery that they're seeing Mickey McGuire or Eddie Lyons. Far more often, though, he simply makes up a name on the spot, and then asks the kids if they remember the comedian:

"And here's George Smiddlyfoozis with a bouquet of flowers! You remember him, right, kids?"

"Yeahhh!!!" (The inevitable response when the Peanut Gallery is asked anything)

I have 42 episodes from the show's heyday (1947-1955), and all but five or six of them include a silent comedy. I have no idea where the prints came from (an archive? a private collector?), but they all seem to have been public-domain films, and I guess that's no accident. There are no films with Chaplin, Keaton or Lloyd, possibly out of fear that they were still copyrighted.

I zipped through my episodes, just to see which comedians were represented. I'm ashamed to admit that I couldn't identify very many of the films, and in several cases I couldn't even identify the comedian. Here's what they were showing on Howdy Doody:

Harry Langdon's Shanghaied Lovers and All Night Long
Carole Lombard's Run, Girl Run
Charley Chase's All Wet and another of his Jimmie Jump shorts
The Smith Family's Smith's Restaurant, Smith's Army Life, Smith's Pets and 1 more short
Martha Sleeper's Sure, Mike!
Snub Pollard's Days of Old
7 Mickey McGuire shorts
4 Ton of Fun shorts
2 Billy West shorts (both from his early 1920s period)
2 Bobby Ray shorts, one of which features Oliver Hardy
1 Eddie Lyons short
1 Bobby Dunn short
1 Paul Parrott short

The silent comedies shown on HOWDY DOODY were supplied by collector and early television film distributor MIlton Menell, of later Mar-lu Television fame. Their use was a lot like the way old B westerns were cut up and serialized on Dumont's CAPTAIN VIDEO program, it essentially ate up a third of the half-hour the writers had to supply for a five-day a week program. However one may feel about the presentation, there seems to be a lot of middle-and-more-so-aged film silent comedy film buffs out there who grew up watching HOWDY DOODY, and the Silent Comedy bits are easily way funnnier than the rest of the show.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

In 1972, I got to see Buffalo Bob Smith perform during his Howdy Doody Revival tour. He spoke about how he and Chief Thunderthud (Dayton Allen) would narrate silent movies. During one of these occasions while narrating, a kid came up to Buffalo Bob, pulled on his pant leg and said, "Buffalo Bob, I have to tinkle." BB was occupied with the film, and pointed the kid toward the camera crew who were enjoying a down moment. What BB didn't know was that between him and the crew was a Jack O'Lantern with the top off from the previous week's Halloween show. The kid headed for the pumpkin and proceeded to "tinkle". The crew saw him and broke up. When BB heard the crew laughing, he turned and saw the kid tinkling, and lost it himself. He said he laughed so hard he couldn't stop, and Dayton Allen was called in to finish the film narration. BB was sent home by the producer. Evidently, the funniest things on Howdy Doody went on behind the scenes.

The Smith Family's Smith's Restaurant, Smith's Army Life, Smith's Pets and 1 more short

Is SMITHS UNCLE the short set during the Holidays? If so, that is also on the DVD. Dad falls into the X-mas tree, Mary Ann laughs and a relative enters the house.

In reply to Native Baltimoron's comments, please note that the role of Chief Thunderthud was played by an actor named Bill LeCornec. Dayton Allen was, circa 1952, quite busy on the "Howdy Doody Show" "doing" no fewer than 6 puppets (The Blusters <Phineas T., Don Jose and Hector Hamhock>, The Inspector, and The Flub A Dubs (Senior and Junior) plus 4 "live" characters on the program: Pierre The Chef, Ugly Sam, Sir Archibald and Lanky Lou.