Bozo The Clown - History

History

Bozo was created as a character by Alan W. Livingston, who produced a children's storytelling record-album and illustrative read-along book set, the first of its kind, titled Bozo at the Circus for Capitol Records and released in October 1946. Pinto Colvig portrayed the character on this and subsequent Bozo read-along records. The albums were very popular and the character became a mascot for the record company and was later nicknamed "Bozo the Capitol Clown." Many non-Bozo Capitol children's records had a "Bozo Approved" label on the jacket.

In 1948, Capitol and Livingston began setting up royalty arrangements with manufacturers and television stations for use of the Bozo character. KTTV in Los Angeles began broadcasting the first show, Bozo's Circus, in 1949 featuring Colvig as Bozo with his blue-and-red costume, oversized red hair and classic "whiteface" clown makeup on Fridays at 7:30 p.m.

In 1956, Larry Harmon, one of several actors hired by Livingston and Capitol Records to portray Bozo at promotional appearances, formed a business partnership and bought the licensing rights (excluding the record-readers) to the character when Livingston briefly left Capitol in 1956. Harmon had the vision and drive to take advantage of the growing television industry and make a better future for Bozo. He renamed the character "Bozo, The World’s Most Famous Clown" and modified the voice, laugh and costume. He then worked with a wig stylist to get the wing-tipped bright orange style and look of the hair that had previously appeared in Capitol's Bozo comic books. He started his own animation studio and distributed (through Jayark Films Corporation) a series of cartoons (with Harmon as the voice of Bozo) to television stations, along with the rights for each to hire its own live Bozo host, beginning with KTLA-TV in Los Angeles on January 5, 1959 and starring Vance Colvig, Jr., son of the original "Bozo the Clown," Pinto Colvig.

Unlike many other shows on television, "Bozo the Clown" was mostly a franchise as opposed to being syndicated, meaning that local TV stations could put on their own local productions of the show complete with their own Bozo. Another show that had previously used this model successfully was Romper Room. Since each market used a different portrayer for the character, the voice and look of each market's Bozo also differed slightly. One example is the voice and laugh of WGN-TV Chicago's Bob Bell, who also wore a red costume throughout the first decade of his portrayal.

The wigs for Bozo were originally manufactured through the famous Hollywood firm, Emil Corsillo Inc. This longtime Hollywood company designed and manufactured toupees and wigs for the entertainment industry. Bozo's headpiece was made from yak hair, which was adhered to a canvas base with a starched burlap interior foundation. The hair was first styled, formed, then sprayed with a heavy coat of lacquer to keep its form. From time to time, the headpiece needed freshening and was sent to the Hollywood factory for a quick refurbishing. The canvas top would slide over the actor's forehead. With the exception of the Bozo wigs for WGN-TV Chicago, the eyebrows were permanently painted on the headpiece.

In 1965, Harmon bought out his business partners and became the sole owner of the licensing rights. Thinking that one national show that he fully owned would be more profitable for his company, Harmon produced 130 of his own half-hour shows from 1965 to 1967 titled Bozo's Big Top with WHDH-TV (now WCVB-TV) Boston's Bozo, Frank Avruch, for syndication in 1966. Avruch's portrayal and look resembled Harmon's more so than most of the other portrayers at the time. The show's distribution included New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Boston at one point, though most television stations still preferred to continue producing their own versions, with the most popular being Bob Bell and WGN-TV Chicago's Bozo's Circus which went national via cable and satellite in 1978. Bell retired in 1984 and was replaced by Joey D'Auria. The WGN version successfully survived competition from syndicated and network children's programs for many years until 1994 when WGN management decided to get out of the weekday children's television business and buried The Bozo Show in an early Sunday timeslot as The Bozo Super Sunday Show. It suffered another blow in 1997 when its format became educational following a Federal Communications Commission mandate requiring broadcast television stations to air a minimum three hours of educational children's programs per week. In 2001, station management controversially ended production citing increased competition from newer children's cable channels. In 2005, WGN's Bozo returned to television in a two-hour retrospective titled Bozo, Gar and Ray: WGN TV Classics. The primetime premiere was #1 in the Chicago market and continues to be nationally rebroadcast annually during the holiday season. In 2003, Harmon released six of his Bozo's Big Top programs with Avruch on DVD and 2 box sets of 30 episodes each in 2007 retitled "Larry Harmon's Bozo, The World's Most Famous Clown Vols.1 & 2". The WGN Bozo shows have not been released commercially in any video format.

On July 3, 2008, Larry Harmon died of congestive heart failure at the age of 83. On March 13, 2009, Alan Livingston died of age-related causes at the age of 91.

On October 2, 2010, the New York Times posted that the father of U.S. Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell "worked a series of small television roles before scoring his signature gig – playing Bozo the Clown." But upon further investigation, a New York Times follow-up two days later reported that the father, Daniel O'Donnell, was an assistant and understudy for the full-time local TV Bozo in Philadelphia and would fill in for the full-time Bozo when the latter was unavailable.