From 1948, here is Bob Smith with “Ugly Howdy” (his name for the Paris puppet) at their homebase desk. The next shot you will see is the 8 boys and girls that came to the studio for the live show. If you were sitting where Bob is, they would be just around the corner to his left, and it would he hard for them to see him with Howdy at the desk…which was on purpose, as Bob was the voice of Howdy too. The kids could see what was happening at the desk on a monitor, but could not see that Bob was doing the Howdy voice too, which would break the illusion. Even in later years, he always had his back to the Peanut Gallery when he spoke with Howdy.

This is a very rare show intro with the original Howdy puppet. This was on film and Bob Smith would talk over this to intro the show. At the end of the intro, the live camera would find Howdy and Bob at the desk, that you will see in the next shot. At this point, the show was actually called “The Puppet Playhouse”, and although Howdy was the star, Frank Paris’s Toby Tyler puppet was also a featured player. The approximate date of these images is sometime between February of 1948, which is when Bob Keeshan was first seen as “a clown” (but not yet Clarabell), and the debut of the new Howdy which was June 8, 1948. At this point, the show was only running on Tuesday afternoons from 5 til 6. I think by June or July, the show went to half an hour, Monday – Friday.

Before there was a Peanut Gallery, there was this…two 4 seat “bucking bronco” saw horses. Before there was a Howdy Doody, there was the “Triple B Ranch” radio show on Saturday mornings on WNBC, with Bob as the host. That was a kids game show with 200 to 300 elementary schoolers in the studio as schools competed. The contestants, aged 8 – 11, four from one school, four from another sat on these very “horses” on that show, and wrong answers got them “bucked off”.

In February of ’47, Triple B Ranch debuted in a new Saturday morning children’s radio block on WNBC with Bob as host. After a few weeks on the air, the show’s writer Eddie Kean told Bob the show needed a little more comedy and, with its western theme, he asked Bob if there was a character voice he wanted to do that could be fun and match the show. Smith went into a small studio and did a couple or three voices, and when he did a kind of country bumpkin voice for a character he called Elmer, Eddie’s ears perked up when he heard what would become Elmer’s tag line…“Oh, ho, ho, howdy doody, boys and girls.” The next week, Bob added the Elmer voice to the program, letting him ask a few questions, and as always when Elmer came in and left it was always with the same line…”Oh, ho, ho, howdy doody.” To be clear, there was no budget for the show and, no puppet named Elmer…just Bob talking to himself as both host, and as Elmer.

First, about this shot…notice to Bob’s right, there is a man in a classic operatic clown suit. This is the first time we see a page named Bob Keeshan, later Clarabell and even later, Captain Kangaroo. Bobby Keeshan, as Bob called him, came to TV from radio with Smith, and at first made and held cue cards and then began handing Smith props on camera, but in street clothes. Notice Bob is in street clothes here too, but before Keeshan got the Clarabell outfit, they apparently raided the NBC wardrobe department for this costume. Now…back to our continuing story on Howdy. What happened next at the Triple B Ranch was quite interesting! After a month or so on the air, kids that came to the show began to tell Bob “they came to see Howdy Doody, and were disappointed he had not been there.” When Bob, his producer Jim Gaines and Eddie Kean understood that the kids were thinking Elmer’s name was Howdy Doody, they decided they needed to not only change Elmer’s name, but if kids wanted to see him, why not talk to the television people. And they did. Roger Muir, who was a producer and director at NBC, had only been with the company for six months, but almost from the first week, he began a conversation with the man who hired him about the need for some kids television on the network. That man was Warren Wade, the head of programming. One day, Wade met Muir in a hallway and as they were passing, Wade called out to Muir, “Your wish has come true!” “What do you mean” asked Muir. “We are going to start a kid’s show and you are driving the boat!”

Here is another rare shot of Keeshan in the classic clown costume and in full makeup, but not his Clarabell face. By the way, Smith sang live on the show, and this was the only show on TV during a long and hard Musicians strike, with live music. Seem the AFM did not count a ukulele as an instrument covered in the contract. Back to Howdy. There wasn’t time to make a Howdy puppet for the first show (Dec. 27, 1947), and after Bob was invited in permanently as the host, they would have to make one. It took three weeks before Howdy made an appearance, but Howdy was there…hiding in a desk drawer, too bashful to come out and play, with Bob providing the voice. Did they did sing the Howdy Doody song on the first show? No, but according to Eddie Kean, they did on the second show. Eddie Kean took the public domain song, “Tra La La Boom De Ay” and put the now famous words to it and taught it to the kids just before the show started at 5 PM. The third week when he went to teach the kids the song, some of them already knew it, and that was a good omen. There couldn’t have been a better day for the premier of “Puppet Playhouse”. It was just after Christmas with lots of new TV sets in use, and outside, one of the worst snowstorms in years had hit the northeast, which gave them a captive audience. Inside NBC’s only television studio, 3H, it was hot and everyone had a headache. It wasn’t until April of 1948 that the new RCA TK30 Image Orthicon cameras were installed in 3H. The TK30s required less than a tenth of the 1200 foot-candles of light the old Iconoscope cameras required, and those lights were hot! Not being used to the bright television lights, Smith’s head was throbbing and the puppeteers were 10 feet off the floor and in the hottest part of the studio…they were soaking wet with sweat. The first show ended with aspirins for all.

This is the original Howdy Doody puppet, created by Frank Paris. The puppet Paris came up with was based mostly on the way Howdy sounded. Remember, the original character’s name was Elmer, and I don’t think Paris could shake that notion when he designed this unit. Bob Smith never liked this Howdy and always referred to the original as “Ugly Doody”, once the new one had arrived. In fairness, all Paris had to go on was the sound, and what he had heard Howdy do on the “Triple B Ranch.” Even Bob had not yet fully developed Howdy’s character or fleshed out what his general demeanor would be. It was all so new and happening so fast. To get rid of “Ugly Howdy”, his run for President was used as an excuse for him to go on the campaign trail for several weeks. To keep sponsors happy, and Howdy in the mix, he did reports on the phone, and in early June of ’48 returned with bandages over his face. The new Howdy was unbandaged on June 8 and revealed the red headed freckle face boy that became an icon. Howdy’s voice and demeanor changed too, to a lighter level. By the way, the reason Howdy wanted to have the plastic surgery on his face was to look as good as his handsome rival for President, Mr. X, who was later revealed to be Howdy’s twin brother Double Doody. The Double Doody puppet arrived some months later and was actually a backup puppet. Both new Howdy puppets were created by Velma Wayne Dawson, and were based on drawing from two friends of the show that worked for Disney…Mel Shaw and Robert Allen.