page_title: The Bozo Show
section_title: 1960s
hierarchical_section_title: The Bozo Show / History / 1960s
caption_attribution_description: English: Unused ticket and "visit" pin for Bozo's Circus broadcast of 2 July 1964. Copyright details The ticket came with an "I Visited Bozo's Circus" pin attached; the marks where the pin was attached to it can be seen on the image. The ticket has no copyright marks as can be seen on the front and back of the image. The pin has no visible copyright information. The ticket can be dated by the date it was valid for the television show. Both the ticket and the pin were issued by WGN-TV as promotional items for the show and for the station. Tickets for radio and television shows are given for the asking by networks and broadcasting stations. In the case of the Bozo Show, there was once an 8-10 year wait for the tickets issued to be valid for a broadcast date. From Cornell University: Cornell University The Cornell information indicates this image is in the public domain: "For works first registered or publisher in the US: "1923 through 1977 "Published without a copyright notice "None. In the public domain due to failure to comply with required formalities." There is no evidence any copyrights are claimed on either of these items. United States Copyright Office page 2 "Visually Perceptible Copies The notice for visually perceptible copies should contain all three elements described below. They should appear together or in close proximity on the copies. 1 The symbol © (letter C in a circle); the word “Copyright”; or the abbreviation “Copr.” 2 The year of first publication. If the work is a derivative work or a compilation incorporating previously published material, the year date of first publication of the derivative work or compilation is sufficient. Examples of derivative works are translations or dramatizations; an example of a compilation is an anthology. The year may be omitted when a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work, with accompanying textual matter, if any, is reproduced in or on greeting cards, postcards, stationery, jewelry, dolls, toys, or useful articles. 3 The name of the copyright owner, an abbreviation by which the name can be recognized, or a generally known alternative designation of owner.1 Example © 2007 Jane Doe."
context_page_description: The Bozo Show was a locally produced children's television program that aired on WGN-TV in Chicago and nationally on what is now WGN America. It was based on the children's record book series, Bozo the Clown by Capitol Records. The series is a local version of the internationally franchised Bozo the Clown format and is also the longest-running in the franchise. Recognized as the most popular and successful locally produced children's program in the history of television, it only aired under this title for 14 of its 40+ years: other titles were Bozo, Bozo's Circus, and The Bozo Super Sunday Show.
context_section_description: WGN-TV's first incarnation of the show was a live half-hour cartoon showcase titled Bozo, hosted by character actor and staff announcer Bob Bell in the title role performing comedy bits between cartoons, weekdays at noon for six-and-a-half months beginning June 20, 1960. After a short hiatus to facilitate WGN-TV's move from Tribune Tower in downtown Chicago to the city’s northwest side, the show was relaunched in an expanded one-hour format as Bozo's Circus, which premiered at noon on September 11, 1961. The live show featured Bell as Bozo (although he did not perform on the first telecast), host Ned Locke as "Ringmaster Ned," a 13-piece orchestra, comedy sketches, circus acts, cartoons, games and prizes before a 200+ member studio audience. In the early months of the series, a respected English acrobatic clown, "Wimpey" (played by Bertram William Hiles) worked on the show, providing some legitimate circus background and performing opposite Bell's Bozo in comedy sketches. Hiles continued to make periodic guest appearances on the show into the mid-1960s.
  In October 1961, Don Sandburg joined the show as producer and principal sketch writer, and also appeared as the mute clown "Sandy the Tramp," a character partly inspired by Harpo Marx. By November 1961, another eventual Chicago television legend joined the show's cast, actor Ray Rayner, as "Oliver O. Oliver," a country bumpkin from Puff Bluff, Kentucky. Rayner was hosting WGN-TV's Dick Tracy Show (which also premiered the same day as Bozo's Circus) and later replaced Dick Coughlan as host of Breakfast with Bugs Bunny, later retitled Ray Rayner and His Friends. WGN musical director Bob Trendler led the WGN Orchestra, dubbed the "Big Top Band."
  Games on the show included the "Grand Prize Game" created by Sandburg, wherein a boy and girl were selected from the studio audience by the Magic Arrows, and later the Bozoputer (a random number generator), to toss a ping-pong ball into a series of successively numbered buckets until they missed. If they made the winning toss into the sixth bucket, they (and an "at-home player") received a cash prize, a bike and, in later years, a trip. For many years, the cash prize for Bucket #6 was a progressive jackpot growing by one "silver dollar" each day "until someone wins them all." The Grand Prize Game became so popular, Larry Harmon, who purchased the rights to the Bozo the Clown character, later adapted it for other Bozo shows (as "Bozo Buckets" to some and "Bucket Bonanza" to others) and also licensed home and coin-operated versions.
  By 1963, the show welcomed its 100,000th visitor and reached the 250,000 mark in 1966. The show was so popular locally, that seven hours after the Chicago Blizzard of 1967 began, there were 193 people standing in line, waiting to use their Bozo show tickets; it was one of the few times the live show was canceled and the tape of an older show was run instead.
  In October 1968, Bell was hospitalized for a brain aneurysm and was absent from the show for several months. Meanwhile, Sandburg resolved to leave the show for the West Coast but stayed longer while Bell recuperated. To pick up the slack, WGN-TV floor manager Richard Shiloh Lubbers appeared as "Monty Melvin," named after a schoolmate of Sandburg's, while WGN Garfield Goose and Friends and Ray Rayner and His Friends puppeteer Roy Brown created a new character, "Cooky the Cook." Sandburg left the show in January 1969 and Bell returned in March. Lubbers left as well with Brown staying on as a permanent cast member.  Magician Marshall Brodien, who had been making semi-regular guest appearances in which he frequently interacted with the clowns, also began appearing as a wizard character in an Arabian Nights-inspired costume in 1968 and by the early 1970s evolved into "Wizzo the Wizard." From the beginning of the show until 1970, Bozo appeared in a red costume; Larry Harmon, owner of the character's license, insisted Bozo wear blue. Harmon did not have his way regarding the costume's color in Chicago until after Don Sandburg, who was also the show's producer,
caption: Unused ticket and pin for Bozo's Circus, 1964.
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