My longtime (40+ years) friend Bruce Simon read what I wrote about the last TV series hosted by Skipper Frank, my fave local kids' show host. Bruce sent me this…
I remember Skipper Frank's last series of live remote shows very well. In the Summer of 1963, I believe, every morning the Skipper would be somewhere else with the KTLA remote truck and there would be a contest to see who could figure out where he was. One morning, I was happy to see the Skipper at Rancho Park in West Los Angeles, halfway between our childhood homes. I hopped on my bike to hop over there and by god there he was, working in front of a station wagon with a painted plywood backdrop attached to the side of it that was hinged to open up.
Just out of camera range was the KTLA remote truck with its tall microwave tower. From inside the truck, you could hear the live feed of the show and the Skipper's theme for this series, "Good Morning" from Singin' in the Rain. I stood there in rapt attention with the other kids who had figured out the location and was pleased that, after the show, Skipper Frank was so friendly and talked to us all and answered questions as he packed Ziggy into his carrying case and loaded his props and plywood backdrop into the station wagon. Not the classiest end to a memorable career at KTLA, but Skipper Frank was, as was Tom Hatten, Jimmy Weldon, Engineer Bill and all the other kids hosts I've been privileged to meet, a real gentleman and class act. That's why even 50 years later, we remember them with such fondness!
I remember that show the same way except that I think it was a few years later. The fascinating thing about it was how little there was to it. It was just Skipper Frank Herman standing in front of a cheap backdrop ad-libbing for much of an hour every morning, introducing a few scratchy cartoons. He didn't have a script or a sidekick or a budget. He was just using whatever was around…his old magic act, his old dummy. If kids showed up on the location (as Bruce did) he sometimes put them on camera for a little chat, but really he just went out there and winged an hour every day. I wonder how many entertainers today could do that.
In the sixties, the kids' show hosts pretty much went away, at least in Los Angeles. There were a number of reasons having to do with parents' groups objecting to such hosts doing commercials and intermingling them with entertainment…but I always thought the main reason was just that local programming stopped being cost-efficient. It wasn't just the kids' show hosts that disappeared. So did the horror movie hosts. So did the afternoon movie hosts. So did most locally-produced talk shows, and most local news teams were pared down.
There was never a lot of money for the local hosts of childrens' programming. The Skipper Franks of the world were paid very little and some couldn't have afforded to even do the job but for the extra loot they made by doing personal appearances on the weekend. Still, the job seemed to attract folks who did it well. As much as young viewers today may love Spongebob or Dora or any of them, I don't think they bond with cartoon characters the way they connect with a real person who just looks into the camera and talks to them as a human being.