Bird bell bob bell3/2/2023 In addition to presiding over the Kiwanis Club of Lake San Marcos, he served on the board of directors of a community educational association that raised funds for the local school system. Joey D'Auria took over the Bozo role until 2001.Īfter raising four children, Bell and his wife Carol moved from Deerfield, Illinois to Lake San Marcos, California, an area he had visited while serving in the Marine Corps during World War II. Oliver, Roy Brown as Cooky the Cook, Marshall Brodien as Wizzo the Wizard, and Frazier Thomas. Bob, Don Sandburg as Sandy the Tramp, Ray Rayner as Oliver O. Fellow cast members throughout his 24-year run as Bozo included Ned Locke as Ringmaster Ned, Bob Trendler as Mr. Immediately following his retirement, the Chicago Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Board of Directors honored him with their Governors' Award. In 1980, the series moved to weekday mornings as "The Bozo Show" and aired on tape delay.īell retired in 1984 with the show remaining #1 in its timeslot. The program began airing nationally via cable and satellite in 1978, and studio audience reservations surpassed a 10-year wait. His improvisational skills on live television, double-entendres and Jackie Gleason-like mannerisms also attracted a huge adult following. The show and Bell's portrayal achieved a popularity and success unlike any locally produced children's show in the history of television. The show was expanded to an hour and returned as "Bozo's Circus" on Septemwith additional cast members, a 13-piece orchestra, comedy sketches, circus acts, cartoons, games and prizes before a 200+ member studio audience. The program was placed on hiatus in January 1961 to facilitate WGN-TV and Radio's move from Tribune Tower in downtown Chicago to the city's northwest side. In the late 1950s, Livingston and Capitol briefly parted ways and sold the licensing rights to Larry Harmon, whose business partner, Jayark Films Corporation, began distributing Bozo limited-animation cartoons to television stations along with the rights for each to hire its own live Bozo host.Ĭhicago's Bozo debuted on Jstarring Bob Bell on a live 30-minute "Bozo" show weekdays at noon, performing comedy sketches and introducing Bozo cartoons. He hired voice artist and former circus clown, 'Pinto Colvig', to portray the character on the recordings and first Bozo television series, "Bozo's Circus", on KTTV-TV in Los Angeles in 1949. But it was in 1960 when WGN-TV asked him to portray the character that would make him a Chicago television legend, "Bozo the Clown".Īlan Livingston created "Bozo" for Capitol Records in Hollywood, California in 1946. From 1959 until 1968, he hosted "The Three Stooges" weekday afternoon showcase as "Andy Starr", the elderly custodian of the Odeon Theater. During the four years that followed, Phillips and Bell starred on their own variety series, which included "The Wally Phillips Show" and "Midnight Ticker". In 1956, the stations' Executive Vice President, Ward Quaal, left the company to become General Manager of WGN Continental Broadcasting Company (WGN-TV & Radio) in Chicago and brought Bell, Phillips and the show's writer/director/producer Don Sandburg along. In 1950, they moved to Indianapolis, where he broke into television on WFBM-TV.īell's flair for comedic character acting surfaced in 1953, when he was paired with variety/talk show host Wally Phillips at WLWT-TV and WLW Radio in Cincinnati, Ohio. A year later, he moved to South Bend, Indiana's WHOT Radio where he met and married copywriter Carol Atkinson. Upon his discharge, he returned to Flint, where he joined a community theater production and was subsequently offered a job as an announcer and disc jockey at WMRP Radio. With the help of a sympathetic Navy doctor, he was accepted and served in San Francisco and, later, the Philippines, until 1946. Less than a year later, however, he was given a medical discharge but decided to try again, only this time, with the Navy. Cavalryman extra for the motion picture Arizona (1940), where he also helped build the village of "Old Tucson" for the movie.Īlthough he was certifiably blind in his right eye, he succeeded in passing the Marine Corps physical in 1941, by memorizing the eye charts. After graduating high school, a friend's family offered to take him along to Arizona, where he dug ditches, worked as a carhop and lumberjack, and signed onto construction jobs. His father was an assembly worker at General Motors and his mother was a housewife. Robert Lewis Bell was born on Januin Flint, Michigan.
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