OT: You're Hung Up on Some Clown From the 60's

[sinatrastar]

Colvig to Join Clown Hall of Fame As Bozo

There are no hand buzzers, trick flowers or balloon animals in this clown story. The issue is who created Bozo the Clown - and the dispute is wiping the smile off some clowns' faces.

For years, promoter and entertainer Larry Harmon claimed to have both created the character and said he was the original.

Now the International Clown Hall of Fame in downtown Milwaukee is formally endorsing a different version: Capitol Records executive Alan Livingston created Bozo for recordings in 1946, and the late Vance "Pinto" Colvig was the first person to play the clown.

On Friday, the hall is posthumously inducting Colvig as the first Bozo.

That reverses the hall's "Lifetime of Laughter Award" given to Harmon in 1990 as Bozo's creator. The hall has since taken Harmon's plaque off its honor wall.

Kathryn O'Dell, the hall's executive director, said the hall was duped to believe Harmon created Bozo and didn't find out the truth until ABCnews.com columnist and entertainment producer Buck Wolf reported Harmon was wrongly laying claim to the character.

"It was something that was hinted at and hinted at and we started to do research and sure enough the information we were getting from outside sources was true," O'Dell said.

While Harmon popularized the character since the 1950s, Livingston and Colvig were first to develop it, she said.

Colvig's voice was used in the first recordings and he wrote some of Bozo's first songs, made the first live appearances and was the first Bozo on television.

Capitol Records Inc. sold all the rights to Bozo the Capitol Clown, except the masters for the previous records, in the mid 1950s to Harmon, who a few years earlier had answered a Capitol casting call to be a Bozo.

Harmon ended up training more than 200 Bozos over the years and turning Bozo into a character for 156 cartoons that he sold in the United States and around the world.

Harmon, 79, said from his home in Los Angeles that he's saddened to have the hall remove his plaque and he denied misrepresenting Bozo's history.

"Isn't it a shame the credit that was given to me for the work I have done they arbitrarily take it down, like I didn't do anything for the last 52 years," he said.

He said he has always acknowledged that Livingston created Bozo The Capitol Clown. But he said he created Bozo's personality and image today as Bozo The World's Most Famous Clown.

"What I created for the world was me and my image, what I sound like, what I look like, what I walk like, what the costume looked like, with my animation studio," he said.

Bozo The Capitol Clown had red mop hair and spoke with a drawl. Harmon's Bozo had bright orange-red yak hair and spoke faster and made up an entirely new vocabulary, like "wowie-kazowie." The laugh was also different.

[Brian Damage]

[Maestro]

I'm an oldster & remember the Harmon TV version of Bozo as a kid. Weatherman Willard Scott also did a stint as the famous clown.

I also remember the urban legend "Cram it clownie" story from back in the day.

sinatrastar's "You're Hung Up on Some Clown From the 60's" thread title refers to the line by "Eric the Clown" (Jon Favreau) from episode 084 The Fire.

[Ant-Lox]

Bozo was a great clown, I remember watching his tv show as a kid.

[Maestro]

Before he was NBC weather reporter (Today show) Willard Scott went from playing Bozo to [apparently] creating Ronald McDonald.

The attatched pic is him as Bozo & the quote is from a book of his (1982 The Joy Of Living)

>>>"At the time, Bozo was the hottest children's show on the air. You could probably have sent Pluto the Dog or Dumbo the Elephant over and it would have been equally as successful. But I was there, and I was Bozo... There was something about the combination of hamburgers and Bozo that was irresistable to kids... That's why when Bozo went off the air a few years later, the local McDonald's people asked me to come up with a new character to take Bozo's place. So, I sat down and created Ronald McDonald."<<<

[Brian Damage]

Willard was a very scary Bozo. He looks like a serial killer.

[sinatrastar]

Yes. Gacy comes to mind.

[Ant-Lox]

Yes, that B&W photo does look scary...