This column first appeared in November 2010.
Children’s television shows of the 1960s and 1970s reflected good, old-fashioned ideas of family values. Households often gathered in front of the TV set as a family to eat frozen dinners out of space age aluminum trays, prime time programming was considered clean and safe to watch for all, and controversy was not on the menu. Television was just starting to become an essential item in many households. In the previous two decades, a TV set was considered a major purchase and families considered themselves lucky to own one. During the 1960s, the prices of television sets were starting to come down and everyone could afford to buy at least one TV for their home.
In the early 1960s, families loved to entertain themselves by watching clean family oriented shows that always had a father who worked nine-to-five, arriving home just in time for dinner and a talk or lecture for the children. The mother was always a magical housewife dressed in a freshly pressed dress, high heels and make-up after a day of doing chores, baking cookies, making meals, and tending to the children in an always loving manner. The subservient mother never really questioned the authority of the husband who was always right, but if she thought he was wrong she would gently nudge him back in the right direction without confrontation. The children’s (always well mannered, clean, and polite to adults) most urgent troubles were usually bad grades, tearing their good clothes, or some other minor catastrophe that could easily be solved within a half an hour and finish with a moral or life lesson for the viewer.
Alternative family programs started to make the scene in the mid-60s by taking the same concept of family values and throwing them into unusual situations. “Bewitched” became an instant hit but was looked upon unfavorably due to the so-called “evils” of witchcraft. Its success opened the door to other not-so-normal families such as “The Addams Family” and “The Munsters” starring funny and lovable un-dead characters coping as a normal family. “My Favorite Martian” was a hit show about a normal man whose uncle was really an alien. “Gilligan’s Island” posed as one big happy family stranded on a desert island. Although entertaining, these shows were often too farfetched to maintain the attention of the adult viewers and seemed geared more to a younger audience. However, the wholesome family values and uncomplicated story lines were still there and parents felt comfortable in allowing their kids to watch these show unsupervised.
These same children were the target audience for morning, lunchtime and afterschool television programming. In Indianapolis, we were privileged to have three of the best children’s TV hosts in the country with Hal Fryar as “Harlow Hickenlooper,” Janie Hodge as “Janie,” and Bob Glaze as “Cowboy Bob.” This talented trio taught, counseled and entertained central Indiana youngsters for over three decades in a way that is sorely lacking on television today.
Hal Fryar was the first of the trio to make an impact on Hoosier kids by creating “Harlow Hickenlooper” as sort of a sad sack Peter Pan character with a heart of gold whose own childlike innocence appealed to kids — often his only reward was a pie-in-the-face. Harlow’s show, airing from 1960 to 1972, used a straightforward method to calmly get the lessons across with a touch of light humor.
Janie Hodge shot to prominence as the host of the “Popeye & Janie” show (1963 to 1986) and quickly became every central Indiana kid’s favorite teacher — ironic because Janie was an IPS teacher in real life. Janie would patiently display the artwork of local children and sing songs with her audience that echoed across Indiana family rooms for over two decades. An unexpected consequence for the shapely redhead was the adoration coming from men who often remarked on Janie’s legs and short skirts that she innocently sported on the show. Janie’s show was a great vehicle to teach children many things, using a lot of flash, music and colors to make the children pay attention, while teaching the kids valuable lessons using a cast of many puppet characters.
Bob Glaze was famous for his “Cowboy Bob” character (1970 to 1989) that rode horses, herded cattle, sang campfire songs and told corny jokes while teaching safety tips to wide-eyed Hoosier kids. Cowboy Bob brought along characters like Tumbleweed the dog, Cookie the chuck wagon cook, and Sourdough the singing biscuit that all became familiar names to any kid in Indiana. Cowboy Bob’s “Chuckwagon Theater” featured a more laid-back approach to learning new things, using jokes, stories and remote segments that helped make Cowboy Bob a household name in the Hoosier state.
These programs, designed to help children learn the alphabet, phonics, and numbers were innovative back then. Thanks in part to this trio’s efforts, programmers began to realize that preschool children were able to easily pick up educational concepts designed for older, school-aged kids. Soon, through these shows, youngsters became more sophisticated in the eyes of the media as programming was designed to enlighten them even further. It was a gradual change over the next couple of decades, but the line between children’s shows and adult’s shows soon became hard to differentiate.
Innovative was the watchword for all three of these Hoosier television pioneers. In the early 1960s, Hal Fryar’s show was among the first to introduce viewers to a pair of actors who would arguably become the two best known faces from that turbulent decade. Hal’s show featured a young William Shatner on his way to becoming Captain Kirk of Star Trek renown. Later, Harlow would be cast in a Three Stooges movie (The Outlaws is Coming) and costar with a young Adam West, who would soon become known to millions of TV viewers as the original “Batman.”
Janie Hodge was among the first female television hosts in the country who served as her own producer, director, writer and booking agent during an age when most women found it hard to break into the male-dominated entertainment industry at all. Janie was the first to make the transition from black and white to color television — her Janie show featuring the first ever Hoosier commercial shot entirely in color — a commercial for “Crazy Straws” that just happened to feature her own son.
Bob Glaze’s Cowboy Bob show was among the first TV programs to air what would now be considered PSAs (Public Service Announcements), teaching kids to stop, drop and roll in a fire emergency. Cowboy Bob actually taught his dog Tumbleweed how to perform the trick live on TV, which only helped the emergency instructions to resonate with Central Indiana children. He learned years later that these instructions were used more than once by his young viewers, probably saving lives.
These folks acted as surrogate parents, big brothers/sisters, teachers, babysitters and friends to generations of Hoosier children.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
