On
Thursday, October 11th, 2007, the Curator
of these pages (Rich Samuels) presented a brief tribute to Kukla,
Fran and Ollie on the Chicago
Tonight show---some sixty years after the Kuklapolitans made
their television debut.
Included in the piece were vintage video clips including the KFO
theme song (from the show's fifth anniversary in 1952), Olliver
J. Dragon's explanation of television technology, portions of
KFO's first broadcast after the show was cut back to fifteen minutes,
and a bit of sentimentality from KFO's third anniversary show.
The original KFO kinescopes are part of the collection at the
Chicago
History Museum, a gift of Burr Tillstrom. They aired on WTTW
with the permission of the Burr Tillstrom Copyright Trust.
Oh yes: in the clip I get the date of Burr's date wrong: he died
in 1989, not 1959. I knew better, of course---but things like
this happen in live television. |
