Blast from Chicago's TV childhood on WGN

The following show will be broadcast on WGN (Channel 9 Chicago)/WGN Superstation on Wednesday, Dec 24 2008:

Bozo, Gar, and Ray: WGN TV Classics

There still are many areas that get WGN through their cable networks, and many of you will remember these children's shows. The special will post many clips and short cartoons from the Bozo, Garfield Goose, and Ray Rayner shows. I do remember these shows and would watch them before going to school. They are rather low budget, and it will be humorous to see if they are what I remembered.

The link (sorry, I don't know how to shorten these yet.)

www.titantv.com... tentType=digital&psipMajor=9&psipMinor=1

These shows will also show our age, as many of today's children have never seen them, growing up on Nick and Disney. Feel free to post comments on the local TV shows that aired on broadcast TV when you were younger.

After seeing the retrospective, the show does look different through adult eyes. The budget was lower than any showstring budget for these types of shows, and the animated cartoons (which were syndicated to morning kids shows at the time) were terrible. Clutch Cargo was and is the worst animated show ever made. Suzy Snowflake was a Barbie Doll in a fairy dress, and all they did was have her fly on a string.
You can also see the actors doing the children's shows would rather of been elsewhere, with the exception of Bob Bell and Cookie the Clown. Many of the actors had that frustrated look on their faces, although they did their best to hide it. As a kid, I loved those shows, but as an adult they were quite bad.
I also remember Marshall Brodien's magic sets and cards. The cards consisted of 26 regular cards and 26 Ace of Spades. I remember some kids who had the cards and they were trying to do the magic tricks. Many of the kids asked to see the deck, and they did not know what to do. The tricks didn't work very well, and several aces would appear instead of the regular cards. Mr Brodien took in a lot of kids' allowances on that scam of his.

I guess some TV shows are best left to the memories and moments in time they created. Visiting the old reruns is like going back in time and finding out people were not as nice as you remember them.

The very first memory of ANYTHING on TV, was the Ranger Hal show.
I don't really remember much about the show, other than the creepy looking Rabbit, and the theme song. I actually knew the theme song. It had been in my head for years and years, but I didn't know. Finding this clip reminded me.
Here is Ranger Hal, and his creepy rabbit.


Then there was Captain Chesapeake.
He was a pretty mild mannered guy. With a looping scene of the Chesapeake bay playing over and over behind him.
I watched, not because of him, but because of Speed Racer, Ultraman, and the Three Stooges re-run..
Six Bells! time for SpeedRacer!

reply to post by spacedoubt


Most of the local kids shows were extremely low budget. They would get a has been (better than a never was) to host the show, and show cheap reruns of cartoons and other shorts that were available for syndication. The local TV station would make tons of money, and they would satisfy FCC rules of educational TV. When we were young, the shows were entertaining to us, and they would have weather reports and other tidbits for the parents. In the 1950s, there were some great TV shows for kids. As they went off the air in the early 1960s, they were replaced with these local shows.
When Nick, Disney and Cartoon Network came along, the doom was spelled out for those shows.

Thank you for sharing your memories of the shows. It is so true when one looks back and finds the shows were actually quite horrible. As I have stated, some things are best left as pleasant memories.