Got a good one for you today, though it's a little long. It's a whole half hour of Time for Beany, the puppet show produced by the late, great Bob Clampett. The show originally starred Daws Butler and Stan Freberg but they had left by the time this episode was produced, which I'm guessing is late 1954 or early 1955. The cast in this one consisted of Walker Edmiston (as Beany and Clowny), Irv Shoemaker (as Cecil), Jim MacGeorge (as Cap'n Huffenpuff and the announcer) and I'm assuming that's Bill Oberlin in the gorilla suit. On the animated version produced a few years later, Shoemaker did the voices of Cecil and Dishonest John while MacGeorge voiced Beany and Huffenpuff.
The script for this one was written by Lloyd Turner, a fascinating gent who started his professional career as a gagman for Warner Brothers cartoons and ended it writing situation comedies including All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Mork & Mindy. He was also one of the more prolific writers of Dell funny animal comics in the fifties and early sixties. The one time I met and spoke with him, he didn't seem to think much of his years on Time for Beany but I think that, despite the meager production values, the shows hold up pretty well…
