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 Tillstrom. “Ballet Day” aired on Monday, September 18, 1950 at 7:00 PM on NBC. Video is available on the official KFO YouTube channel.
What happened: Madame Oglepuss leads a ballet rehearsal. After a few minutes, Dolores Dragon pops up, and Oglepuss is upset about her being “underfoot.” Kukla calls for her to go downstairs. (He can’t come up, as there can only be two puppets at a time.) Madame O finally resumes her lesson, although it’s not clear who she’s teaching.
Fran comes in. She was supposed to get tutus for Oglepuss, but she forgot. Fran talks to Kukla, whose job in all this is to manage the finances. Apparently all of the puppets are doing different ballets: Ollie is the lead in Giselle, as he’s the only one who’s tall enough, while Beulah Witch is starring in The Spectre of the Rose. Dolores pops back up, and Fran tries to find a role for her in the ballets.
Ollie is, of course, a complete primadonna about his role, needing strawberries and cream after each performance. Madame O shows off her record of ballet music, which of course is available with a RCA Victor record player, but she wants to resist turning it into a commercial for aesthetic reasons. She decides the first one they practice will be Giselle, about a young woman in love who “loses her head.” Cecil Bill pops up in a fancy dress that looks a bit like a stripey sock, and dances his part.
Next up is Spectre of the Rose. Again, Madame O explains the plot in her own muddled way. Beulah pops up, saying she’s prepared because she saw the movie. Hey, that’s how I got my English PhD. Dolores again disrupts proceedings. Beulah comes out in her nightgown, with her scratchy voice contrasting just a bit with the elegant music. She doesn’t have ballet slippers, which also makes the dancing a bit difficult. Colonel Crackle plays the male lead, which upsets Beulah, who doesn’t want him to get near her.
Fran is impressed with Beulah’s skill and her claimed role as a “major general”, and apologizes for being bossy in last week’s ice cream soda episode. Dolores pops up again with a veil, and Fran intuits that she wants to dance too. She sings a nice, romantic song. Fletcher Rabbit turns up in a tutu, but it’s too late to dance. Ollie is also finally ready, but there’s only two minutes left in the episode, and they only have time left for one more RCA Victor plug.
What I thought: There’s nothing the Kuklapolitans love more than putting on a show. In the somewhat scattered collections of episodes I’ve seen so far we’ve seen opera, fairy tales, theatre, and now ballet. There’s always a double layer to these episodes: there’s the story of the show, and the story of putting on the show, both depicted with equal playfulness and verve. “Ballet Day” doesn’t have as much of an over-arcing story as some other KFO episodes — it’s a lot of short scenes, with different puppets popping in and out. Instead, it’s just a fun ensemble comedy, with the half-hour mark sneaking up on both viewer and actors.
I’m again amazed at how much knowledge of high culture was assumed of TV audiences in this era, even an audience that included young children. Today, I don’t think you could expect an average viewer to recognize any ballet except Swan Lake and The Nutcracker — and even for those, the extent of their knowledge might be that it’s a ballet. But this episode makes free reference to works like Giselle and The Spectre of the Rose, even using the French title of the latter. I don’t think this is a case of audiences becoming dumber so much as the vast increase in cultural production, including media and genres that hadn’t even been invented in 1950. Older, snootier culture forms naturally got pushed down into the recesses of public art.
“Ballet Day” is also kind of a showcase for the secondary Kuklapolitans. Kukla and Ollie are in distinctly secondary roles here, with Madame Oglepuss, Beulah Witch, and Fletcher Rabbit all getting solos. In general these characters don’t have quite as much depth as the title trio, but it’s important to have variety, especially for a daily show. Beulah and Madame O in particular seem to have a dynamic worth exploring.
Dolores Dragon gets more screen time here than in any previous episode I’ve seen. Kid’s shows and properties often add these kind of young, non-speaking characters. — the examples that spring to mind are Dil in Rugrats and Rerun in Peanuts, both added late in their series’ runs, although I’m sure there are better ones I’m missing. This type of character serves a dual purpose: for the youngest kids in the audience, she’s a point of identification, while for older children Dolores is a way to learn about treating a younger, non-speaking sibling or other child. That and it’s a cute puppet.
There’s a crassly commercial reason for this episode, one reinforced throughout: RCA Victor has a record of ballet music that comes with the record player, and they’d like to represent this as a great deal instead of a boring public-domain pack-in. But rather than coming off as a tacky half-hour commercial, there’s a playful, cheeky way that Kukla, Fran, and Ollie integrates the advertising into the plot. This might be the true thing that distinguishes television as an art form, that ballet and opera and all the rest couldn’t manage: turning commerce into entertainment, and vice versa.
Coming up next: I’m going to go back and fill in a very early recording next week, before returning to the next day’s KFO.
The Eternal Couch Potato 