Episode 336: Kukla, Fran and Ollie - "Getting Ready for Christmas Shopping" (November 17, 1950)
What I watched: An episode of the early children's show Kukla, Fran and Ollie. The series starred the titular Fran Allison, with all other roles being played by series creator and puppeteer Burr Tilstrom. "Getting Ready for Christmas Shopping" was directed by Lewis Gomavitz and aired on Friday, November 17, 1950 at 7:00 PM on NBC. Video is available on the official KFO YouTube channel.
What happened: We open with Kukla arguing with Cecil Bill about the opening of the curtains, as “We’ve got to get everything perfect for His Majesty.” The argument continues as Bill wanders offstage. The mysterious tyrant turns out to be Ollie, of course, as he emerges from behind the curtain with a tie, looking for all the world like a late-night talk show host.
Ollie says he’s hear to repeat a number he’s done before, acting like he’s a special guest instead of one of the regular hosts of the show. The song is from the new Happy Mother Goose album, “Sing A Song of Sixpence”, and we have indeed heard Ollie’s fancy-lad version of it before. Fran is the next guest, and she plugs their participation in the Chicago Thanksgiving parade. They also discuss the upcoming Kuklapolitan Christmas cartoons that will be appearing in the Chicago Sun-Times, and needing to think about shopping for Christmas presents.
Linwood comes on screen, and Kukla asks him what he wants to buy Mercedes for Christmas. It’s Friday, so Linwood is definitely getting her something from RCA Victor. Mercedes, on the other hand, wants to buy him some clothing. Kukla and Fran plan to buy Jack Fascinato a course. Colonel Crackle is stumped as to what to get his “girlfriends” Madame Oglepuss and Beulah. They do definitely have a polycule vibe. He decides on pom-poms and shoes.
Ollie pops up and asks Burr what Fran would like for Christmas, within a dragon’s budget of course. It turns out both him and Kukla were thinking of giving her “carpet slippers”, so they decide to give her one slipper each. Conversation turns, as it naturally does, to RCA’s impact on television history, including the 1939 World’s Fair in Chicago.
Ollie wants to buy some TV tubes for the crew, which is a little bit like buying coal for the bookkeepers I suppose. This leads into a serious pitch to buy RCA tubes to improve the picture quality on your set. With everyone in the holiday spirit, Fran sings “Angie, the Christmas Tree Angel” again, leading into the closing credits and one more RCA pitch.
What I thought: After the extravaganza of “The Bohemian Girl”, this is another of a bit of a cool-down episode. The opening bit, with Kukla being upset over Ollie’s primadonna behaviour, is maybe the most adversarial we’ve seen the relationship between the two puppets. Maybe this was just another role the two puppets could be inserted into: Ollie the hard-to-work-with performer, and Kukla the bitter stagehand.
For a while, the episode seems to take the form of a mock variety show, with each of the puppets (and Fran, of course) presenting their own act. But this structure only lasts for a little bit until we instead move onto everyone planning their Christmas gifts. There are some nice gags here, especially when the different human members of the crew get involved.
In these days it’s common to think of “long Christmas” as a modern phenomenon, but here we have a lengthy holiday discussion in mid-November 1950, before Thanksgiving. I suppose gift-buying timetables haven’t changed that much over the years as much as the general intensity of holiday-ness has. Or maybe the young audience of KFO was already counting down the days to the Christmas break. In any case, it made me a little antsy to get some shopping done, even though it’s August in the present day.
TV Guide: You can read the first instalment of the KFO holiday comic here. The version depicted online seems to be an illustrated story which follows on with the holiday shopping theme. It’s cute, and also made me realize I’ve been spelling some of the character names wrong.
Coming up next: No Trouble with Father episode available this week, so we’ll skip right to Gene Autry trying to rescue another wayward boy.
It's a "long Christmas" in the sense that when the stations that couldn't (or wouldn't) take the live feed from Chicago, the kinescopes could take up to three weeks to reach them, so they have to get a running start for everybody to get at least one holiday episode before the holidays. Of course, it's because of that supply chain that we have any of these at all.