Aww…Sheriff John died. Sheriff John Rovick was a fixture of Los Angeles television from 1952 (the year of my birth) until 1970. He occasionally had other shows but most of his run was a noontime program called Sheriff John's Lunch Brigade. I am unable to explain to you the longtime success of a kids' show aired at an hour when most kids should have been off at school…but someone was watching him.
For a year or two before I began school, that roster included me…and I'd check in with him on days when there was no school. He did not run great cartoons and the ones he had, he seemed to run several times a week. Here's one I specifically remember seeing often on his program…
Others were filled with racist stereotypes and Nazis. A lot of Nazis. Mel Brooks has not put as many Nazis on screen as Sheriff John did before around 1962 or so. Somewhere around that date, perhaps inspired by other kid show hosts who were becoming socially or politically aware (or perhaps reacting to sponsors becoming concerned), the Good Sheriff demanded that his station clean up their library. I'm pretty sure, by the way, that Sheriff John's show was where I learned to draw a Swastika. I often sat in front of my cartoons with a drawing pad, racing to replicate things I saw on the screen and one day, I proudly showed my parents a whole page of Swastikas I had copied from wartime cartoons. This does not go over well in a mostly-Jewish household.
The main things most people probably recall of Sheriff John were two songs he "sang" every day. In the mid-fifties, he recorded a single record and whoever wrote the two tunes on it made a load of ASCAP money because he literally played each side each day. He would open his show by lip-syncing to "Laugh and Be Happy." Here — give a listen…
Then later in the show, he would read off the names of boys and girls who were celebrating their birthdays that day and he'd spin a prop birthday cake — the same non-edible one for decades — and he'd lip-sync the other side of his record, "The Birthday Cake Polka"…
If you grew up in Los Angeles when I grew up in Los Angeles, those songs were already embedded in your brain forever. And if they weren't before, they are now.
John Rovick went to work for KTTV Channel 11 in 1949 and stayed there for the rest of his career, retiring in 1981 and later relocating to Idaho. He was a staff announcer throughout this period and I remember recognizing his voice on and in-between other programs when he wasn't sheriffing. For a real overview of his career and life, read this obit in the L.A. Times by Dennis McLellan. Dennis, you call me for help with so many other obits, why didn't you call me for Sheriff John? I would have told you about my one (1) encounter with the man…
It was around 1977. It was in the Denny's at Sunset and Van Ness, right across the street from KTLA (where I was then working) and right across the street from KTTV (where he was then working). I recognized John Rovick strolling out as some co-workers and I were strolling in. I immediately abandoned my friends and ran over to him and said, "Mr. Rovick? May I tell you how much your show meant to me? And may I call you Sheriff?" He laughed, shook my hand and proceeded to be exactly the modest, friendly man you'd expect/want him to be. He asked about me and what I was doing…and I told him that I'd once watched Porky Pig cartoons on his show and had grown up (kinda) to write the Porky Pig comic book. He liked that a lot.
I was writing a show for Sid and Marty Krofft at the time and one of our voice actors (putting words into the mouths of Krofft puppets) was Walker Edmiston, who had also been a star of local kids' TV for a time and had even appeared with his own puppets on Sheriff John's series. I told Mr. Rovick this and his face lit up and he told me to give his best to Walker, which I of course did. Anyway, I sensed a gleam of pride in him that a kid who'd grown up on his program was now working in television. I also sensed that being stopped like that by a grown-up former Lunch Brigader was a near-daily occurrence for the man. And that's really all there is to this story —
— except that when I went back to my friends and told them who it was I'd fled them for, the ones who didn't grow up in L.A. didn't see what the big deal was, and the ones who had were angry that they'd missed their chance to say all the same things to him. One of them became a steady patron at that Denny's after that, hoping to get his own moment with Sheriff John. Or at least I think that's why he ate there every day. It certainly wasn't because of the food.