Above, courtesy of our dear friends over at OldTVTickets.com, we have a ticket for a local, Los Angeles show called Bill Stulla's Parlor Party. The date on this ticket, as you can see, is September 9. I believe the year was 1952.
Bill Stulla was a fixture for years of L.A. broadcasting. His Parlor Party started life on radio and segued to TV…in what year, I do not know. The premise of the show was that it was an on-air birthday party. It was done live, of course, and each day they'd have on a batch of individuals who'd been born on that day. They'd entertain them and play games with them and interview them and serve cake and award prizes. I have a vague idea that at one point in the program's existence, the birthday celebrants covered a wide range of ages. But on the day I made my television debut on the program, the premise was that it was all kids, aged ten or younger. In my case, it was much younger.
I am describing to you one of my earliest memories. I remember being taken to the TV studio — I don't recall where but it was probably Sunset and Vine like the ticket says. KNBH was then the local NBC television affiliate. (In 1954, it became KRCA and in 1960, it was renamed KNBC.) I remember being dressed up, which I never liked. I remember being backstage and my mother furiously combing my hair (which I also never liked) and dealing with the fact that I didn't want to be there and do whatever I was supposed to do. I remember being told that my relatives and neighbors were all watching so I had to go through with it.
I had seen the show. Mr. Stulla, a genial man with glasses, welcomed his young guests as they came in through the door of a little storybook-type house on the stage. I remember being backstage without my mother, waiting on the other side of that door for someone to tell me to go through it and onto live television. Back there, it didn't look like a storybook house. It was all fake and that seemed odd and scary. Everything backstage was odd and scary.
Then someone shoved me out onto the stage. I remember blinding lights and Mr. Stulla sticking a microphone in my face and asking me my name. If he had waited for an answer, we'd still be there today.
I was absolutely terrified. I'm not sure of what but I was absolutely terrified. I mumbled something. I don't know what it was but it wasn't my name. Someone off-camera told it to him. Mr. Stulla, who'd done this before, attempted gamely to get me to speak up and answer his questions: How old was I? Did I have any brothers and sisters? Did I have any pets? (There's not a lot you can ask a kid that age.) But it didn't matter what he asked. I wasn't answering. In a very short span of time, he decided I was just one of those children who wasn't going to cooperate and he passed me over to the party area and brought the next toddler out through the phony door.
In the party area, I sat with complete strangers, awaiting cake that would celebrate our mutual birthday. I didn't see the point of that, either. There was a cake waiting for me at home. As I sat there, I went from really, really not wanting to be there to really, really, really not wanting to be there. Well before it was time to bring out the cake and have about a dozen of us make a group effort to blow out the candles, I wandered off the stage, found my parents in the audience and made them get me the hell out of there.
So what year was I on that show? That's what I'm trying to figure out. (In case it's not clear, the above ticket has nothing to do with my being on the program. It's just the only visual evidence I've ever come across that the series even existed.)
I was born in March of 1952. I once thought I was three or four when I made my inauspicious television debut. My mother doesn't remember but one time when I asked her about it, she did recall that my going on the show was at the urging of my Aunt Dot, who thought it would be the greatest thing in the world to see her adorable nephew on the television machine. Parents apparently wrote away in advance and if their kid was selected, they were told to bring him or her down to the studio on the day in question at such-and-such a time. They were also sent some number of tickets to dispense to friends and relatives to come down and watch the festivities.
Research suggests that Bill Stulla's Parlor Party was off the air before my third birthday. All the history I've seen says that in 1954, Mr. Stulla went to work on KHJ, Channel 9 here in Los Angeles, hosting what always seemed like the worst cartoons available. He was the guy who ran Colonel Bleep, for God's sake. He adopted a train motif for his show, called it Cartoon Express and became Engineer Bill. I'll bet a lot of people reading this who grew up in L.A. remember Engineer Bill. He did that series, Monday through Friday, until 1964.
If he stopped Parlor Partying on Channel 4 when he began Engineer Billing on Channel 9, that would mean I must have been two when I made my traumatic appearance. That seems too young to me. A few years ago when I met Mr. Stulla (he's still around, by the way), I asked him what year Bill Stulla's Parlor Party ended and if there was an overlap with his KHJ job. He told me it was probably '52. I told him it couldn't possibly have been '52 because I was on the show on my birthday and I was born in '52. He said in that case, he didn't remember the year but was sure it was "long" before he became Engineer Bill. It couldn't have been too long.
I'll be 55 years old this Friday. Up until I was around 40, I hated being in front of a TV camera. Twice in my earlier career, I was asked to play on-camera roles in shows I was writing. Once on Welcome Back, Kotter, they needed a tall guy to hover over Arnold Horshack and threaten to beat the crap out of him. I was asked to be that guy and I refused. I was willing to beat the crap out of Arnold Horshack but not to go on camera. Later on Pink Lady, they used the whole writing staff as extras (dancing, no less) in a sketch and I couldn't get out of that one. I did it but disliked every second of the experience. In fact, if my parents had been there, I think I would have walked off the stage, found them and forced them to take me home for cake.
I still don't love being on the business end of a lens but I can do it now without fleeing in terror. I do not think, by the way, that when I recoiled from it in my adult life, it was because it reminded me of my bad experience on Bill Stulla's Parlor Party. I think I was born hating to be on television and that like acne, my Snagglepuss t-shirt and thinking fart jokes were funny, I eventually outgrew it.
This has been the first in a series of my Horrible Childhood Memories. I'm not sure if and when I'll post another because I had a great childhood and don't have many horrible memories. But one of these days, I may post another one. (I still can't believe I was two when this one happened…)