Marlin Perkins and Zoo Parade

Zoo Parade

Left: Marlin Perkins (1905-1986) and an unidentified chimpanzee, around 1950. Perkins parlayed his love of wild animals (initially reptiles) into a career as a zoo director (in Saint Louis, Buffalo and Chicago) and a television personality. His first efforts were local in Chicago on WBKB in the early post-war years. He's best known as the host of "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom", an NBC network feature from 1962 to 1971 (and syndicated thereafter). But he first reached a national audience on "Zoo Parade"---a weekly remote broadcast from Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo.

Zoo Parade aired from Chicago on the NBC television network from May, 1950 until September, 1957. The show was unsponsored until October, 1950, regularly sponsored from October, 1950 until May of 1955. Sponsorship was intermittent thereafter until December, 1956. Zoo Parade had no sponsorship for the last nine months of its network run.

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Created by Rich Samuels (e-mail to rich@richsamuels.com)