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. “Ollie’s Would-Be Biography” aired on Monday, October 23, 1950 at 7:00 PM on NBC. Video is available on the official KFO YouTube channel.
What happened: Ollie pops up with a sheaf of fanmail, including a drawing of him and poetry in his honour. The crew delivers him some more mail, and Ollie lips off to a tech named Linwood. Eventually he has to call Kukla up to help him with a difficult word, then sends him away so he can read more tribute poems under the guise of “Poetry Corner.” He invites the audience to send in their own poems.
All hyped up, Ollie decides that the troupe will now be called the “Olliepolitans” and put on plays about dragons. Fran comes in, having been also been reading fanmail. She sings a song about dreaming about someone all day. Ollie proposes a new format for the show: The Story of Oliver Dragon, as told by Oliver Dragon.
Kukla and Fran hear out the idea but make fun of Ollie behind his back. They’re interrupted by Fletcher Rabbit in a very shiny hat, who plans to send his own photos to the people who have written in to Ollie. He then takes on the role of “Fletch, the friendly Ford dealer” to get in today’s commercial placement.
Next to check in is Beulah, who has a story about being punched by a chimpanzee. Kukla seems skeptical. Ollie is back in a wistful mode, and brings up a picture of Mama Dragon, which he says will be the start of his biography. Well, that’s where all biographies technically begin. Ollie sings a song about his mother in a very campy tone. He then gets a phone call from his actual Mom telling him to knock it off, and wait until he’s a little older to write his autobiography. After all, he’s no Dave Stieb.
What I thought: In my days as a grad student taking fancy-pants cultural studies classes, I learned that texts and narratives always created a “public” – that is, some ideal body of readers that the text was meant to address. One of the clearest examples of a public being formed is fan mail, which pops up in this episode of Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. I remember being slightly fascinated by the idea of fan mail when I was a kid, of having a direct dialogue with the people on TV, although it never really occurred to me that I could do it myself. (This kind of sums up my approach to social interaction in general.)
Through fan mail, a series helps to establish that you are not alone watching on your TV set: you re in fact part of a group, a fandom. For KFO, fan mail had a more prosaic purpose. Reading and answering fan letters was an easy way to fill time with content that someone else had come up with. Howdy Doody used fan mail and its live “peanut gallery” for a similar function. And there’s a lot to show off in the mail. There’s a genuine cleverness to some of the poetry read on air, and the artistic gifts are well-made. I enjoyed seeing and hearing all of it.
Here, the mail leads directly into the day’s story, about Ollie becoming even more conceited than usual and deciding to write his autobiography. To be honest, I wanted a bit more of this story. There’s a lot of potential here, from revisiting Ollie’s childhood days at Dragon Prep to trying to get his friends to weigh in on his life and writing. We do get a good gag with Mama Dragon, but a lot of episode is taken up with the business of plugging forward and answering letters.
Also: what was up with Beulah’s story about the chimpanzee? I wonder if this was an inside joke, or a cultural reference I didn’t catch. Of course, it could just be some improvised humour. Maybe the monkey will pop up in the Halloween celebration next week. Who knows.
Coming up next: I’ll be doing another back-fill first, but the next numbered entry will be right back with KFO as Ollie gets into even more trouble.
The Eternal Couch Potato 