What I watched: The May 1, 1950 episode of Howdy Doody. This episode would have aired in the afternoon on NBC, and is available to view on the Internet Archive. With “Buffalo” Bob Smith out, “Rodeo” Ray once again guest hosts.. Bob Keeshan co-starred as Clarabell. The series was created by Smith and E. Roger Muir.
What happened: The show starts, but Howdy Doody and Buffalo Bob are both missing, so it’s up to Flubadub to lead the kids through their normal dissonant chorus of “Howdy Doody Time.”. The ongoing storyline is apparently something about figuring out riddles issued by a Don Jose Bluster. A human-like puppet named Dilly Dally wanders in, but is quickly sent away. Flubadub suspects that he’s working for the Blusters. This is becoming an episode of The Americans.
Dilly Dally comes back, and Flubadub makes fun of him for subscribing to the Ladies’ Home Journal. Clarabell is also here, as there are no Native Americans to scare him off. Dilly Dally is upset that no one’s commented on his long absence, and starts feeling sorry for himself. Rodeo Ray shows up to say that Howdy and Bob are off on the trail of the mystery, but he’s here to help figure things out. So it’s an episode of Howdy Doody without Howdy Doody.
Ray’s brought a bag full of tools to help figure out the mystery, which has to do with five mysterious “L”s. He has a bunch of stuff that begins with the letter L, ranging from a lock to a picture of the Statue of Liberty. Ray and Clarabell then play a “game” where they bounce Flubadub around on a blanket, to his obvious displeasure.
After landing on the piano, Flubadub commands that they put on the movie. He does a terrible job of summarizing the plot of the silent comedy, but it has to do with a newsboy pretending to be a count so as to help another man seduce a rich woman. Very relatable to kids.
Don Jose comes out, and it’s basically the same puppet as Phineas T. Bluster but with a Spanish accent. Flubadub verbally abuses him for seemingly no reason. He wants to “win” the mystery, whatever that means. As the two puppets yell at each other, we fade to the Howdy Doody NBC logo, giving an abrupt closure to the program.
What I thought: We have a fairly small selection of Howdy Doody episodes, compared to its daily schedule, but this is already the second we’ve seen where Buffalo Bob is out and has to be replaced by Rodeo Ray. I’m not complaining — Ray seems like a nicer and more genuine guy, and who cares about Howdy Doody — but it does make me wonder how many vacations Bob Smith took.
Unfortunately, the absence of Howdy Doody this time means that the role of lead puppet falls to Flubadub, who I am ready to declare the most annoying character in television history up to this point. On top of his hideous appearance, Flubadub has an incredibly grating voice, and the personality of a kid-friendly version of a New York wise-ass. He’s a failure of design on a number of levels, but apparently the kids of 1950 loved him.
To make matters worse, Flubadub is paired with a set of other annoying, B-list puppets. There’s a long, terrible dialogue sequence between him and Dilly Dally, a kind of sad-sack beta male puppet. Flubadub makes a lot out of the fact that Dilly hasn’t been around for two weeks, but honestly it’s more striking that they brought him back at all. The ostensible villain of the story, Don Jose Bluster, is a bad Spanish accent and not much more. Maybe Bob Smith did the voices for all the decent puppets.
We’re also in the midst of another ongoing storyline, which would seem to have become a regular feature for Howdy Doody. This one involves the crew investigating a mystery about “five Ls”, and given that one of the Ls is stated to be lima beans, I’m not too upset about missing out on the reveal. It must have been an interesting balancing act, maintaining serialized stories without ever making them too upsetting for young kids. Brain-teaser mysteries may have been the best solution they found — the most recent episode we looked at also had to do with a mystery, although one that felt slightly more important to the characters.
Maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh on a kid’s show that was clearly looking to fill time while its star was away. But it’s hard to imagine how even children would have enjoyed this episode. Myself, I was actually happy to get to the canned silent film segment. At least that had a plot that moved forward.
Coming up next: We’ll see what local colour we get next in Suspense.
-little girl covering her ears during entrance (0:50)
The Eternal Couch Potato 