Bozo The Clown

Larry Harmon, the man who owned the rights to Bozo the Clown, and who often played the venerable children’s TV character, died not too long ago. This barely rocked the entertainment world and I myself wasn’t too terribly broken up by the old guy’s passing, but it did stir a memory which I had conveniently kept locked away in a rarely-used corner of my mind. As I have an excess of corners, it’s a miracle I found it at all.

Virtually unknown to kids today, Bozo was a fixture on local TV in many American Cities when I was a child. Chicago had the Bozo show the longest, ending just recently after a 40 year run. They got to a point where they took reservations for kids who appeared in the bleachers on Bozo’s show. At one time, the reservation wait was ten years, although it’s unclear how many former kids, now 16 or 17, were clamoring to appear with a big clown on afternoon TV.

Being on Bozo was like being admitted to an exclusive country club. You were in the stands right behind the Big Guy, so you had, if you were placed just right, a good deal of prime camera exposure. But one of the best parts of being on Bozo was that you had a chance to kiss Bozo’s big red nose at the end of the show while credits rolled. Not every kid on the show got to do that; there were only so many credits. So the prime gig on that show was available to only a handful of lucky kids. To be on Bozo and kiss his nose was to have found the Holy Grail. Truly the Brass Ring of kid’s television. And since you couldn’t be a Mouseketeer, you could at least have this one-time glory.

I was on the Bozo show in the early sixties in New York. I remember riding the train down to the City, my mother and I, and taking a cab to the television studio. WPIX –TV, channel 11. Back then you had channel 11 and channel 5 for most of your kid friendly programming and between the two of them, a kid could get through the dullest week of pre-elementary school life with a hearty helping of slapstick and toy commercials. Best were the live shows where hosts like Soupy Sales, Chuck McCann and a band of others regaled us with goofy skits, cartoons and general silliness. Pure kid Heaven on Earth.

As we walked into the building, I asked my mother where she thought Bozo might be at that particular moment, hoping that she might suggest that he would be right there at the front door greeting us with a big laugh and maybe a pratfall or two as he led us into the giant 3-ring circus that was his studio.

“He’s probably in his office,” was her reply.

His office? That’s weird, I thought. What’s a clown, especially one as famous as Bozo, need with an office? That was for ordinary Joes like my father. I’d seen his office and it was a box with a desk and a small window. I couldn’t see it as a holding pen for a guy with bright orange hair who showed cartoons and gladdened the hearts of children everywhere. I decided Mom was hopelessly out of touch with the Clown Mystique.


We went in and sat in a waiting room with a bunch of other kids, all anticipating their encounter with the King of Clowns. We were fidgety but under control. We didn’t have to wait long.

We were all gathered together and sent out into the hallway single-file and placed in a line-up against the wall.

In walked Bozo. Tall, bright orange hair, dressed in bright red, white and blue ( I never knew that…his show was in black and white) and, of course, the NOSE. He stood there looking at us, his hands on his hips. What was he planning to do? Break into a big knee-slap and guffaw?

“All right, you kids”, he began. “I wanna make sure you keep in line and behave yerselves, you hear me?”

What was this, a joke? He just had to be ready to break into a big grin and do a Bozo dance, didn’t he?

“I don’t want no monkey business out there. You sit on those benches and don’t move, you got it?”

This was terrible! We had come on this special day expecting a big, goofy funnyman in loose-fitting pants to give us clownly encouragement, and here he was, already anticipating several serious “Bozo-No-Nos”! We were already on the outs with the Big Guy!

We stood, trembling in our Buster Browns and Keds and nodding our heads. Who’s gonna argue with Bozo, we all thought, throwing quick sidelong glances at each other.

“OK,” said Bozo, evidently satisfied. “Now let’s have some fun!” And in we all went to the studio. By now I was thinking that maybe if we were all super-good clown citizens, we could win his trust back and maybe all of us could do the nose-kiss.

The studio was dark. The familiar bleachers, the stands I’d seen a hundred times on TV, stood to the left. They were much smaller than they looked on television. They seemed to have been built for little kids. By that I mean kids much smaller than me. Six was most definitely not a little kid.

We were settled in and, before we knew it, the show had begun. From a tangle of cameras and cables and equipment and lights came a signal for Bozo to start talking and, boy, did he talk! He came alive! Darting back and forth, throwing out Bozo-isms at a furious rate, he was in fine form. Some of the hardier souls in the audience started reacting to him as he exhorted them to cheer and clap, but I looked into a nearby monitor as a camera panned down my row of seats and a close-up of my face appeared. I was, let us say, contemplative. Actually, the picture that pops up in my mind after all these years is kind of more, well, lost and vacant.

Boy, I had really blown it. Here I was on TV, with a close-up even. And I had let the Bozo tirade get the best of me. Shake me up. My frizzy-haired hero had clearly had a bad day. That’s all. Maybe his nose was crooked or there was too much starch in his too big pants. Who knows? But I had to get myself together. And quick.

I looked around to try and steady myself. Over on the other side of the studio was Officer Joe’s Precinct set. I hadn’t noticed it before! Officer Joe was in the top five of kids TV shows. And one of the main reasons, maybe the only one, was that he showed Three Stooges shorts. But what had made him the real hero was that he had actually had the Three Stooges themselves as guests on his show! I gazed longingly at the dark and empty set. If only I could be there trading quips with Moe himself, giving him an affectionate poke in the eye!

But my attention went back to Bozo as he mugged his way through an introduction to another cartoon. One camera was pointed directly at him, while the other two were directed at other kids in the bleachers; those kids who had sucked up to Bozo and laughed at his antics as soon as the lights had burst on. Laughed a little too hard, I thought.

But the fact is that I still loved Bozo and I still wanted one more chance of getting a close up of my smiling face. And the only way to do that, I knew, was to be caught giving him a great big kiss on the schnozz. A kiss framed perfectly by camera number one and viewed with envy all over the Tri-State Area.

But now the show was getting ready to end so I had to make my move. And the only way I could do that now was to be as heartrendingly cute as I could possibly be. You couldn’t very well get up out of your seat, grab Bozo by the orange hair and kiss his nose by force. He’d been pretty clear about that. But the right look, the proper winsome expression would not only melt the Clown-Master’s heart, but it might very well even turn his rotten day around one hundred and eighty degrees.

I steeled myself for a really adorable look. I widened my eyes and lifted my eyebrows. I put my knees together and pointed my toes inward and I was ready.

The light blinked on and so did Bozo. Earlier in the show, when a cartoon or commercial had come on, he had left the set briefly, I guess to slap on a little more white-face or frizzy out his hair some more. And each time the stage manager had counted down from three to start the show again, Bozo was back in front of the camera just before he was done counting. So I had no time to waste. I had to get his attention.

And I had to do it fast because now I could see the credits rolling in the monitor and Bozo was saying goodbye to all the kids at home and then he was done.

And the nose kissing began.

All I had to do was make eye contact and I felt sure that the big nose would be mine! I put on the most achingly adorable face and positively willed him to look my way. But I was running out of time, so I added one last touch. It was physical but, in my opinion, not overdoing it. I slowly raised my arms as if asking for a hug. It wasn’t that no one else in the bleachers was using arm tactics; most were. They raised their hands, they waived their arms frantically, even crying out “Me, Bozo!! Me, me, me!!” But my plaintive expression of longing was a subtle, but much more powerful, tool.

And it was working! Bozo looked my way and our eyes met. Almost in slow motion, I saw him coming my way. He was headed towards me and it was clear now that we were destined to meet, mouth-to-nose. I stood up, he drew closer, and contact was imminent.

Then it happened. The kid next to me jumped up without warning and reached for the nose. I had been intercepted! The kiss was planted and then Bozo moved away, his nose lost to me forever. The little brat next to me hadn’t even been trying to get a kiss. In fact, he had been picking the wax out of his ear and studying it. This disgusting display had been seen everywhere in TV land and the kid had still been rewarded with the Grand Prize! But it had all been an act; he had to be cleverer than I had given him credit for. Now he had Bozo in his back pocket.

My mother and I left the studio in the chilly winter evening air and she asked me if I had had a good time. I said I had, but I didn’t tell her that I felt strange about the whole Bozo thing. I had been on the show now, seen him in person, but something was, I don’t know…different, I guess. It wasn’t the nose thing. But it wasn’t something I could put my seven year old finger on.

I still watched the show. I still watched Soupy Sales and Officer Joe and the Three Stooges and the great and wonderful Chuck McCann. But it was kind of weird to know what goes on behind the scenes on TV. Because once you do, you join a club you don’t really want to join. The fantasy is sort of taken away a little and you grow up a bit and you gain knowledge you’d rather not have.

I don’t know what Bozo did after the show that day. I never really wondered. But he probably went back to his office, lit a cigar, poured himself a bourbon and muttered to himself about the next group of kids he’d have to face tomorrow afternoon.

Oh, well. I never thought he was that funny anyway.