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. “Oliver Dragn, Disc Jockey” aired on Friday, September 29, 1950 at 7:00 PM on NBC. Video is available on the official KFO YouTube channel.
What happened: We open with Ollie singing a long baritone note, going through all the vowels, including “sometimes Y”. (I loved this gag in middle school.) Jack tells him he’s flat, which is a cause for concern.) He works through some more vocal exercises. He’s apparently going to make a record, and so is Kukla. Both are just a little insecure about things. Kukla tells Ollie to get help from Fran, who has plenty of experience making recordings.
When Fran arrives, however, Ollie is too shy to express his nerves. Fran tries to comfort him, saying that no one will be watching. (The TV ratings say otherwise.) Fran explains the importance of disc jockeys, explaining how they can make hits. This makes Ollie want to skip the middleman and be a DJ himself. They decide to roleplay it, with Ollie being a disc jockey and Fran being a musician who’s sent her records in.
Ollie adopts his disc jockey persona, which involves putting on a cowboy hat that covers his eyes and talking into a boxy mic. Fran comes in to be “interviewed”, saying that she has a new Halloween-themed release called Punky Pumpkins. Don’t you hate it how Halloween starts earlier every year? Ollie has his assistant, Kooky Kooks, put on the record, but only plays it briefly, as Fran’s song is interrupted by news of Kukla, Fran, and Ollie winning an award.
Fran barely gets started a second time before it’s time to do an ad for the mysterious Formula 22. After that, it’s time for Ollie to sign off. We cut to the next day, as marked by Ollie wearing a leopard-print hat that looks a lot like his neck. Once again, Fran’s record (which is just her singing in real-time) is cut off, first by the Community Chest fund-raising drive followed by a genuine advertisement for the RCA Victor Rhapsody in Blue record. This leads to Fran singing a different song called “Navy Blue”, with occasional interjections from Kukla.
The next obstacle to playing Fran’s record is that one of the engineers took it and is playing it for themselves. Fran tries taking her record to another DJ, this time a Southern gentlemen also played by Kukla. She manages to get a line and a half into it before being interrupted by a phone call answering the contest. Fran starts doing a Southern accent too. Their TV is tuned to Captain Video, much to Ollie’s dismay. After that, there’s not enough time left in the show for Punky Pumpkin. After all the play is done, Fran berates Ollie for being a poor DJ. He sheepishly lets her sing Punky Pumpkin the whole way through. It wasn’t really worth the build-up.
What I thought: It was a cold, rainy night as Oliver J. Dragon trundled in for the midnight shift. The secretary gave him an accusing look, as she always did when he was late for the on-call time. Whatever, it was still fifteen minutes to midnight. He had time.
The station manager, a nerdy-looking guy a couple decades younger with him, gave a long sigh that indicated he wasn’t ready to have this conversation again. “Thanks for joining us, Ollie. You ready to go?”
“Always,” he said, shucking off his sodden trenchcoat.
“We have three things to hit tonight,” the manager said. “Number one, write-in contest for the morning show. Winner gets a trip to Cancun. Number two, the festival in the park next month. Remember, we got Motley Crue, hit that heavy. Number three, new Jane’s Addiction single. Try not to play oldies all the time, okay?”
“Will do,” said Ollie. He remembered the early days, where he had so much freedom. He had been one of the first ones to embrace rock and roll, and taken glee in pissing off his old manager who had just wanted to play Perry Como the whole time. It had been hard, breaking into the radio biz as a dragon, and he felt an affinity with other underdogs. But now he missed those old pop songs. Grunge, death metal, hip-hop… it just all seemed so unpleasant for the sake of it.
The DJ before him finished her sign-off. “And at the midnight hour, we have local legend Oliver J. Dragon’s Midnight Music. Keep your dials tuned to KROC 103.4, Chicago’s home of rock.” She switched over to the ads, the latest in an endless serial of annoying skits by a local mattress company.
Ollie settled into the console. He instinctively dug into his pocket for a cigarette, before remembering the studio had gone non-smoking two years earlier. Instead, he swallowed a lozenge and went through his usual throat exercises, trying to summon the silky baritone that had become his trademark. The producer started counting him down, and Ollie pulled the mic closer to him.
“Hello cats and kittens, this is Oliver J. Dragon, and you’re listening to Midnight Music right here on KROC 103.4. We’re headed into October, the weather’s getting colder, and it’s almost time for spooky season to begin. You know, this time of year always gets me thinking about a song from when I was just starting out as a DJ. So I thought I would start tonight off with a blast from the past. Here’s Fran Allison with ‘Punky Pumpkin.'”
All of these years later, and Ollie still loved pissing off the station manager.
Coming up next: We stay in Chicago for the weird one-off beauty pageant Miss Television.
The Eternal Couch Potato 