The obits for Lew Anderson, who died last week, said that he was the third and final actor to play Clarabell the Clown on the original Howdy Doody program. I believe there were at least four. Bob Keeshan, as we all know, was the first and the character was largely an accident. Keeshan, who then worked as an assistant and go-fer for host "Buffalo" Bob Smith, was assigned to herd around the kids who sat in the show's famous Peanut Gallery and to get them to shut up while Smith told stories, sang and fraternized with the show's puppet players. He kept getting on camera and someone suggested that the drab-looking guy in the sport coat didn't fit in with the program's circus theme. "Put that guy in a clown suit," they said…and that's how Clarabell was born. Keeshan researched clown makeups and devised one for himself — a pretty good one, as it turned out. Clarabell never spoke, in part because the show didn't want to pay Keeshan extra and in part because he really couldn't.
Years later — to make a living in children's television — Bob Keeshan learned how to talk on camera, and this made possible his legendary character, Captain Kangaroo. But back in his Howdy Doody days, he couldn't deliver lines and couldn't do much of anything. To the ongoing frustration of "Buffalo" Bob, who liked music on the show, Clarabell couldn't play an instrument…couldn't even master the triangle, despite repeated attempts to teach him. At least once, they let Keeshan go and put the clown suit on a professional musician who didn't work out. The replacement could accompany Smith but he flopped at replicating the Clarabell personality and when viewers (and more critically, licensors) complained, Bob Keeshan was hired back and Clarabell went back to being non-musical. Later, when Keeshan was fired for the last time, he was replaced by Bob Nicholson and then Anderson, both of whom were musicians.
The one time I met and talked with Bob Keeshan, he told me that his successors had pleased Smith and had also "nicened" the clown a touch, which he did not think was a bad thing. At times, Clarabell was a pretty nasty clown, less interested in making anyone laugh than in just spraying seltzer on other cast members out of sheer meanness. Keeshan mused that his first creation probably appealed to the worst in children, whereas his greatest (Cap'n Kangaroo) probably brought out their best.
I never met Lew Anderson but he was the Clarabell I knew as a viewer. I was never a very steady one because Howdy Doody was on the downslope by the time I was old enough to know what I was watching on TV. Much of the show's appeal was lost on me, at least when the clown was not on screen. When I watched at all, I watched for him…and I do remember viewing live that sad day when they aired the final episode and Clarabell broke his silence and said, "Goodbye." Goodbye, Lew Anderson. I hope someone at the funeral had the guts to get up and talk about "A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down my pants…"