Bruce Johnson

Charlie The Juggling Clown

Creating Happy Memories that Last a Lifetime

Jesteryear # 6

All the following events happened during the same year. Can you guess which it is?

1.  The United Nations establishes the International Atomic Energy Commission with the goal of restricting atomic energy to peaceful uses.

2.  Paul Jung's Adam Smasher routine premiers with the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus™.  A man, wearing a name tag identifying him as Adam, enters a cabinet.  A heavy weight crashes down on his head.  A door on each side of the cabinet opens, and four midgets, costumed as Adam scamper off in opposite directions.

3.  The movie Ziegfield Follies is released.  It includes Red Skelton performing his version of the Guzzler's Gin routine that Harry Tugend had written for Fred Allen's radio program.

4.  The war time ban on manufacturing television sets is lifted.  (During the war, electrical components were reserved for military use.)

5.  The Toast Of The Town (The Ed Sullivan Show) premieres on TV.

6.  Peugeot car designer Louis Renard introduces the two-piece swimsuit.  He calls it a bikini in reference to the recent atomic bomb tests on Bikini Atoll.

7.  Walt Disney releases Song Of The South, a movie musical combining live action and animation.  One of the songs, Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah, wins an Academy Award.  Before it is released, the NAACP begins protests because it depicts slavery on a Southern Plantation.  

Some of the voices of minor animal characters are provided by Pinto Colvig, a former circus and vaudeville clown who is an writer and voice artist at the Disney Studios.  Pinto is the voice of Goofy.

8.  Alan Livingston joins Capitol Records as a producer of children's records.  He produces Bozo At The Circus starring Pinto Colvig as Bozo.  Pinto also provides the voices for the menagerie animals.  (The laughing hyena sounds like Walt Disney's Goofy.)  It is the first read along record and book combination.  Alan Livingston and Pinto Colvig will collaborate on many more Bozo recordings which will sell millions of copies.  Pinto begins making personal appearances as Bozo, and especially enjoys his visits to Children's Hospitals.  Pinto will eventually star in the first Bozo TV production.

9.  Milton Berle is chosen as the permanent host of The Texaco Star Theater on television.

10.  It's A Wonderful Life, starring James Stewart and Donna Reed is released.

11.  The Marx Brothers star in A Night In Casablanca.

12.  The National Cartoonists Society is founded.  Co-founder Rube Goldberg is elected the first president.  He designs the trophy for the society's annual best cartoonist award, which becomes known as the Ruben.

13.  Following their first break up, Lou Costello and Bud Abbott are reconciled when Bud helps Lou raise funds for the Lou Costello Jr. Youth Foundation in honor of his one-year-old son who had fallen into a swimming pool and drowned.

14.  W.C. Fields dies on Christmas day, a holiday he had pretended to hate.

Answer

© Copyright by Bruce Johnson 2002, All rights reserved

Excerpted from The Clown In Times Volume Three  

Information On The Clown In Times, and other publications, by Bruce "Charlie" Johnson