The UCLA Film and Television Archive does vast amounts of good work preserving and restoring old movies and TV shows that would, were it not for their efforts, probably cease to exist. I'm delighted to learn that one of the treasures they've been saving is The Shari Lewis Show which replaced Howdy Doody on NBC on Saturday mornings when I was a lad — from 1960 'til 1963. I generally preferred watching cartoons to watching real people at the time but I made an exception if the people did magic or were Shari Lewis or Paul Winchell. Shari and Paul did their own kind of magic.
I've not seen a Shari Lewis Show since they aired on Saturday morns but I remember it fondly. It was kind of a weekly half-hour musical comedy…and they did it in New York, tapping into the talent pool of folks then working in and around Broadway. The first time I saw Jerry Orbach in a show (the original 42nd Street), I wondered, "Where have I seen that man before?" Took a while but I figured out he was that guy who, a decade or two earlier, had appeared often on The Shari Lewis Show.
The series was, of course, all about Ms. Lewis and her fabric friends, Lamb Chop, Charlie Horse and Hush Puppy…and I remember having two distinct reactions to her. I was kind of an amateur ventriloquist then — not that I ever thought of pursuing that as a career — and at age nine, I resented that a "girl" (say that with a note of disdain as a nine-year-old boy would) could do it so well. On the other hand, she was awfully, awfully cute.
It wasn't until I was in my mid-thirties that I got to meet and work with Shari. CBS hired me to write and develop an idea she had for a Saturday morning series. It took place in a classroom and the idea was that she would play a strict, rather humorless teacher…and all the kids in the class would be puppets. We met a few times on the project and talked less about it than about her career.
Among the things I remember is that in her home in Beverly Hills, the front hall was pretty much filled by a huge, stuffed Lamb Chop doll. It was about six feet tall and when she stood next to it, it looked even bigger because she was a pretty tiny lady. I had this mental image of a burglar breaking into the house in the middle of the night, worrying that there might be a dog…and being scared off by a seven-foot Lamb Chop. I also remember her being quite smart and enthusiastic about the project…and disappointed when the network decided they could only have one live-action show on Saturday morning and it would be Pee-Wee's Playhouse.
I was disappointed, too. I was hoping we could recapture or maybe reinvent a little of the magic of The Shari Lewis Show. Here are two brief clips. The first of these is the opening of one episode. I am a little puzzled by the line in the lyrics about how you should throw your willie way over your thistle. Sounds to me like a good way to get a warning about going blind…
And here are two minutes from that episode which aired April 8, 1961. I wonder if what we got out here was a taped replay (in which case, why was NBC making kinescopes, which is what UCLA is restoring?) or if we got the kinescope a week later after it had been developed. Could they have been doing the show twice for broadcast? Anyone know?