ECP 13.3: Howdy Doody – Howdy’s First Day at School (September 13, 1948)
An early, different version of Howdy Doody sends the puppet to school
What I watched An early episode of Puppet Theatre, better known as Howdy Doody. The series starred “Buffalo” Bob Smith as himself and the voice of Howdy, and Bob Keeshan as Clarabell, with E. Roger Muir as director. This episode was broadcast at 5:30 pm on NBC on September 13, 1948, and is available to watch on YouTube.
What happened: Howdy and Buffalo Bob, here referred to as just “Bob Smith”, welcome everyone to show. Howdy is happy because today was his first day of school. Bob asks the kids if they bring a briefcase to school. They start writing down Howdy’s favourite subjects, starting with recess, lunch, and gym. He eventually talks something about spelling and grammar, but he struggles in the latter as “too old for second grade.”
Clarabell arrives wearing a dunce cap, and Bob asks him “were you dumb in school?” Rude, my man. Bob quizzes the kids about their friends, and a notably older girl responds with “The kid’s best friend is the policeman.” Well, that’s slightly ominous. Bob and Howdy both pronounce it “pliceman.” He tells the kids to all draw cops. Is this our first instance of copaganda on TV?
While the kids are drawing, Buffalo Bob shows the old-time movie, featuring Louie, a “big fat fellow.” Louie gets shot at by a farmer and gets into a boat chase, then does blackface so that his wife doesn’t suspect him of cheating, before his mother-in-law attacks him with an axe. It’s a rich tapestry.
Bob brings “little Sharon” in from the audience to look at some of the pictures kids drew of cops. They admit that two of the pictures suck, but pick a decent one from each age group, with the artists brought up on stage to get prizes. In later years the prizes would be Howdy Doody merchandise, but here they get board games and a table tennis set.
Howdy is stalling for time before he has to perform a song, so Bob plays a game of “traffic cop” with the kids, having them race rocking horses across the floor. Howdy sings a song about looking both ways before you cross the street. Good advice, although I feel like we’ve kind of got off the school theme here. The cuckoo clock sounds out, signalling the end of the episode.
What I thought: This is not quite the earliest, most unformed version of Howdy Doody – I’ve watched one earlier episode in the first weeks of this project, and been linked to an episode with the original, truly hideous looking Howdy puppet. But this episode is remarkably raw and a contrast with what the show would be even two years in the future.
The Howdy Doody voice isn’t quite nailed on yet, and is a little too deep. Buffalo Bob, who is just called Bob Smith here, is kind of awkward around kids for someone whose job it is, although he didn’t get too much better at it as time went on. The Howdy puppet also sways weirdly throughout when he’s on screen. I think at this early point Smith was still ventriloquizing Howdy live in the studio instead of using pre-recorded lines, so maybe that accounts for the awkwardness.
A bigger change, however, is the subject matter of the show. Howdy Doody is imagined here as a kind of child surrogate, going to school and having a relatively mundane experience there. He’s identified as a second-grader, so maybe that suggests the age of the target audience, along with the fact that the drawing competition is divided into under-7 and over-7. The subject matter of the show as a whole is lower-concept and more directly educational, teaching kids the (perhaps questionable) lesson of obeying police. There’s also a lot more audience participation, with members of the Peanut Gallery invited up on stage to share drawings and participate in games.
The format, and the name, of Puppet Theatre changed not long after to focus on ongoing stories about riddles, evil puppets, and mystical Indigenous people. Evidently that proved more popular with kids, or maybe they just ran out of relatable topics doing a daily show. I can’t say this early version of the show is better, but it’s at least closer to the idea of kid’s TV as an educational service than the merchandising bonanza of later Howdy Doody.
Coming up next: We get back to the present day as the Kuklapolitans celebrate Election Day.