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. “Halloween” aired on Friday, October 31, 1950 at 7:00 PM on NBC. Video is available on the official KFO YouTube channel.
Ollie tries to spook the audience from behind a pumpkin, then sings a song about being happy Halloween is here. He sings that he’ll wear “his new tailor-made white sheet”, which could come off the wrong way. Beulah is unhappy, despite this being her night, and Ollie tries to cheer her up. Despite his efforts, she persists in saying “Halloween, humbug!” Ollie recalls past experiences of Beulah enthusiastically doing magic tricks on Halloween. She alludes to problems in her life but won’t elaborate.
Fran enters to try to help solve the mystery. Ollie leaves and is replaced by Kukla, who calls on Beulah to try to get to the bottom of things. Beulah is still not talkative, but says that the other witches aren’t coming, and that there was trouble at the recent witch convention in Chicago. Just wait until 1968, girl. It gradually comes out that the witches voted to move the convention, and put an inexperienced witch in charge.
Kukla and Ollie put on some rather grotesque-looking human masks and sing a song about trick or treating. The title trio make plans to make some ice cream, and disappear off stage. While they’re gone, Fletcher Rabbit comes in, eager to finally have time on the show with a pumpkin. Again, another statement that could be taken the wrong way. He starts giving a very dry lecture on how to carve a pumpkin. He’s about to start in with a hammer, but Kukla snatches the pumpkin away, leading Fletcher to conclude that it’s a waste of time.
Beulah finds that someone’s been playing with her test tubes, and gets good and angry. She pours all the contents of the tubes into a measuring cup, and is delighted when they fizz up. The now cheered-up Beulah sings “That Old Black Magic.” She pulls out her vacuum-powered broomstick and is ready to celebrate Halloween. The title trio celebrate their plan to cheer her up, and resolve to go out trick or treating.
What I thought: In my somewhat foolish attempts to impose an ongoing narrative onto Kukla, Fran and Ollie I’ve focused on a few previous episodes which seemed to be building up to a big Halloween episode with a convocation of Beulah’s witch coven. I wondered how the series would pay this off with its limited set-up. Would there be new puppets to represent the other witches? Human guests? In the end, KFO gets around the limitations by not doing a big Halloween episode at all, and having the non-event of Beulah’s gathering be the main plot of the episode.
Beulah’s friends standing her up never really feels like that much of a let-down for the viewers. We still get to see all of our favourites doing Halloween things, including some genuinely unsettling puppet masks, and we also get the kind of emotional narrative that Kukla, Fran, and Ollie is best at. Watching the crew try to cheer up Beulah could help kids understand how to deal with disappointments in their own lives. (And aren’t holidays usually disappointing in one way or another?)
In a sense, this episode isn’t a subversion of expectations at all. The most archetypical holiday narrative is about someone who doesn’t want to participate in the holiday, whose skepticism can be despondent or angry – think of the Grinch, Scrooge, Charlie Brown. Over the course of the narrative, the protagonist learns how to appreciate the holiday, despite its imperfections. And so, at the end of Halloween, Beulah is ready to get back to her witchy best.
Coming up next: A probably not Halloween-themed Cisco Kid.
The Eternal Couch Potato 