When clowns were cool: Bozo's Big Top, aka The Bozo Show (1959)

 A year after launching a series of animated shorts, Larry Harmon brought Bozo The Clown to live-action. As with Bert Claster's Romper Room, Bozo was licensed to several stations across the country. To my knowledge, the 518 was not one of the markets.

In 1965, Harmon decided to take the show national. It went by the title, The Bozo Show, just for that season, but was changed to Bozo's Big Top the next year. The shorts, with Paul Frees' intro edited off for time, were included, one per episode. A future icon in Carroll Spinney, then billed as Ed Spinney, was part of Harmon's repertory company on Big Top, which was taped in Boston, home to Frank Avruch. Keep in mind this was three years before Spinney left for New York and Sesame Street.

Following is a sample episode.

Good, clean fun. Now, maybe this would be a good time for Bozo to be revived, to erase the stigma created since he left of clowns being bad (largely because of Batman's enemy, the Joker).

No rating. Just a public service.