Epsode 295: The Lone Ranger – “Drink of Water” (October 26, 1950)

What I watched: The seventh episode of the second season of The Lone Ranger, a kid-friendly Western created by George Trendle and starring Clayton Moore as the titular hero and Jay Silverheels as Tonto. “Drink of Water” was written by Joseph F. Poland, directed by John H. Morse, and featured guest stars Bill Kennedy, Arthur Stone, and Gregg Barton. “Drink of Water” aired on Thursday, October 26, 1950 on ABC at 7:30 pm., and is available on YouTube.

What happened: The Ranger and Toto are wandering through a particularly desolate stretch of country. They’re running out of water, and the watering holes have all gone dry. The vegetation in the area seems very healthy, though. In town, a few men are having an argument, with one man believing that his father did a date to bring on the rain. They’re interrupted by Phinaeus Stacey (Kennedy), who claims he has a scientific way to bring on the rain. He takes them to a wagon full of all kinds of science-y equipment. Stacey tells them it’ll cost them $5000 from the village, but he won’t take the payment until the rain starts.

Shockingly, this guy is not on the up-and-up. He meets with a couple of goons, and it becomes clear that his plan is to have the town gather their money and then steal it from the safe. Meanwhile, the Ranger and Tonto find a young boy with his leg stuck under a rock. When they take him to his parents, his father Jim (Barton) holds a gun at them, afraid they’re going to take his water. His wife manages to talk him down. It turns out the kid, Jackie (Stone), has been growing up on stories of the Lone Ranger, although Jim still thinks he’s a mythological figure.

Go horse go!

Jackie tells them about Mr. Stacey the rainmaker. The guy from the town visits saying that they need Jim to pitch in. Stacey plays at being reluctant to strong-arm them, but Jim agrees to donate their savings of $500. The Ranger is suspicious and holds Stacey at gunpoint but isn’t able to get anything out of him. The money is put in the safe, and everyone leaves town to watch the explosions that are supposed to bring rain.

The bad guys decide to kidnap Jackie when he starts asking too many questions. When they find one of the Ranger’s silver bullets in his pocket, they realize that it’s the real deal. Tonto eavesdrops and runs away, but Stacey notices and lets him go to create a trap for the Ranger. It works, and all three get locked in a cabin with burning explosives, but Silver is able to rescue them by pulling out the bars of the window, thus representing the first time the very special horse has played a meaningful role in the plot. They get out just as the cabin blows up, of course.

The Ranger interrupts the robbery. This leads to a brief shoot-out, with the two goons subdued. Stacey is seemingly arrested off-screen, and Jackie’s parents look on beatifically as the Ranger ride off. Thunder sounds in the sky, meaning that these people aren’t all going to starve after all. Hooray!

What I thought: This episode of The Lone Ranger opens with a surprisingly real and mundane problem: there isn’t enough rain for the farms in the surrounding area. Western shows, especially kids’ Westerns, typically envision owning a ranch or farm as a grand adventure where you get to hang out with horses all day, but in real life the West was often a brutal and precarious place to make a living. It’s not really a problem that the Lone Ranger can solve, but droughts could be life-ruining. The end of the episode promises the arrival of rain, but agriculture is an unpredictable business.

Fortunately, there’s a human villain that the Lone Ranger can punch in the face. The “rainmaker” Stacey is not as memorable as past inventor characters, including last episode’s clock guy, but the straightforward nature of the performance is kind of an asset as well. You could almost see yourself trusting this guy, like the genial narrator of so many 1950s educational films.

One of the thing that helps Stacey’s believability is that rainmaking, or cloud seeding, was considered the forefront of technology in the 1950s. Major companies believed that they could manipulate the weather by bombarding clouds, and had some success with early experiments. Kurt Vonnegut’s brother Bernard was one of the scientists working on it, at General Electric. Of course, this technology was never fully adopted, but various countries have continued to attempt it well into the 21rst century.

They may have raided the sci-fi prop department for this episode.

The other interesting aspect of this episode is the dynamic between the Lone Ranger, Jim, and young Jackie. Jim basically thinks of the Lone Ranger as a man in a Santa costume, performing a fictitious role for his son, and in a sense he’s right. Clayton Moore is, after all, playing a role that predates him. It doesn’t quite fit with past episodes, where the Lone Ranger is known as a very real person in the West, but maybe this town is a real backwater.

There’s an obvious way in which Jackie is an audience surrogate, meant to let kids imagine themselves making friends with the Lone Ranger. In that case, perhaps Jim is also a surrogate for the imagined parental figure that allows their child to sit down and watch The Lone Ranger after dinner. This may all be cheap and corny, the show suggests, but isn’t it nice to let your kids believe in something?

Coming up next: Two of radio’s biggest stars come to TV with The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show.

Episode 294: Kukla, Fran and Ollie “Ollie Swallows a Whistle” (October 26, 1950)

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 Swallows a Whistle” aired on Thursday, October 26, 1950 at 7:00 PM on NBC. Video is available on the official KFO YouTube channel.

What happened: Colonel Crackle welcomes us to another one of the Kuklapolitans’ periodic concerts. Starting us off is an encore performance from last season, as Madame Ophelia Oglepuss (was that always her first name?) steps up to sing an aria. However, it takes a while to get going, as she’s having a hard time getting someone off-stage to play a bird whistle whistle to accompany her at the right times. She also stops to give directions to the cameraman, having apparently skipped the TV rehearsal.

Colonel Crackle and the Cecil Bill try to talk Madame O into being less of a diva, but it’s a lost cause. There’s a bit of a physical altercation between Madame O and Cecil Bill, and she breaks the whistle, leading to her trying to do it herself. Once she finally finishes, Ollie and Fran pop up to have a chat, ad are quickly joined by Kukla, who carries with him the broken bird whistle. I think I know where this is going.

Don’tcha put it in your mouth.

Kukla practices playing on the whistle, with Ollie and Fran also trying. Ollie sees Fran playing the whistle with her mouth open and decides he wants to practice the same thing. Ollie heads offstage, and can be heard gulping it down. Kukla and Fran immediately recognize what’s happening, but Ollie tries to deny it for a while.

Ollie decides to make the most of his plight and sings “Ain’t She Nice”, with the squeaking whistle interspersed throughout. Kukla decides to survey the troupe about their favourite songs. Fletcher Rabbit tells a story about his voice changing late in high school (at Rabbit Prep, of course), and expresses his love of operettas and Schubert. Fran encourages him just a bit, and he launches into an impromptu ballad to Sealtest ice cream. This leads into a narrated explanation of how to get your Kukla and Ollie ice cream spoons.

When we’re back from the commercial music, Kukla sings about the girl he will marry. I never figured him for the romantic type. Dolores briefly pops up to give him a kiss on the cheek. That’ll complicate things with Ollie, I bet. Fran joins in the singing. Kukla gives his kiss to a new, nasally-voiced female Kuklapolitan (Linwood?), but she doesn’t return his affection, instead singing a very annoying rendition of Mary Had A Little Lamb.

Ollie returns, with the whistle apparently digesting much better. The title trio engage in a song that has their own names in it a lot. It sounds like it could be the theme song, but this is the first time I’ve heard it. The whistle returns a moment later just as they’re trying to get the final Sealtest plug in.

What I thought: They sure do love singing on this show, huh? No episode of Kukla, Fran, and Ollie is complete without at least a couple songs, and many, like today’s installment, are essentially miniature concerts. Songs were not only a staple of children’s entertainment then as now, but were also commonplace on the still very radio-influenced TV. One might here just as much music turning into a variety show an hour or two after KFO.

Still, it makes shows like this a little difficult to write about, especially for someone as musically illiterate as I am. This episodic at least shifts the format a bit by introducing a comedic subplot to the concert, with the eponymous swallowing of the whistle. It isn’t really so much a plot, though, as a brief gag that goes away. To be honest, if I had swallowed a whistle, I would probably be more worried about choking than musical hiccups, but I guess dragons’ esophagi are made of stronger stuff.

We also see the appearance of a new member of the Kuklapolitans in this episode – well, new to me anyway. The character is treated as if they’ve been introduced before, so it seems likely that they were introduced in one of the earlier episodes I haven’t reviewed yet. Her name is Linwood, and she seems to have something of an amorous but childish relationship to Kukla. When I searched for more information, my own blog posts are on the first page, so sadly it would appear that easily-distracted me is now one of the foremost experts on this show.

The mysterious Linwood.

Speaking of recurring bits that I am being exposed to for the first time, apparently there’s a custom song with Kukla, Fran, and Ollie’s names all in it. They’re actually showing a lot of restraint, using the song tonight for the first time in at least a month. Buffalo Bob would have had the kids singing it every episode.

Coming up next: The Lone Ranger has a long, tall drink of water.

Episode 293: Kukla, Fran and Ollie – “Ollie’s Would-Be Biography” (October 25, 1950)

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.

Fletcher would later appear in 1970s wrestling as the Grand Wizard.

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.

The Mama Dragon portrait is always a good laugh.

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.

Episode 292: The Cisco Kid – Railroad Land Rush (October 24, 1950)

What I watched: Season 1, episode 10 of The Cisco Kid, a Western drama starring Duncan Renaldo as the eponymous Cisco and Leo Carillo as his sidekick Pancho. “Railrod Land Rush” guest starred Pamela Blake (in her second straight episode as the token female character), Pierre Watkins, Nelson Leigh, and Fred Kohler Jr. This episode was written by Sherman L. Lowe, and was directed by Derwin Abrahams. This episode has an air date of October 17, 1950, although as a syndicated series exactly when it aired would have varied by market, and it is currently available on Tubi.

What happened: We open at the well-appointed office of John Warren, president of the CP&R railway. He tells his employee Manning to check into a letter sent by a rancher named Holbrook. He thinks they’re expanding the railroad near his town of Echo, but they aren’t. On the way, Manning is strangled and his assailant (Kohler) takes his place, all without the coach driver noticing a thing. Must have been listening to a podcast. He checks into a hotel, and inquires about a Mr. Blake (Leigh). Blake turns out to be his associate, looking to scam Holbrook into thinking his land is worth a fortune.

This horse has seen some things.

Cisco and Pancho finally arrive on the scene, noticing from signs that all the land around them is owned by Blake. They see the real Manning’s body lying in a ditch, in his underclothes. As they investigate the body, two goons come along and shoot at them, but Cisco and Pancho are able to ward them off.

Meanwhile, the fake Manning meets with Holbrook (Watkin) and acts like he’s pressuring Blake to sell the land to the railroad. Cisco and Pancho ride into town just as one of the goons is notifying Blake of his failure to dispose of the body. We finally get this episode’s female character in Holbrook’s daughter (Blake), as Cisco breezes by her looking for the goon. Pancho remarks on how they always seem to end up in strange situations, and wants to mind their own business.

An old guy says that the small town of Echo will soon be a metropolis after the railroad extension, and fills Cisco in on the whole Blake/Holbrook/Manning relationship. He finds Blake offering to sell some of his land to local ranchers. Cisco offers to make a purchase. Suspicious, Blake sends Cisco out to “Coyote Pass” with a goon. They’ll probably rename it when it’s time to build a suburb. Blake tells his goons to take out Cisco, just in case we’re unclear on the point of the trip.

Cisco is wise to the trap, and holds up the gunman once they get into the brush, telling him to strip and put on his outfit. There’s a lot of disrobing in this episode. When they reach the rocks, the goon shoots his partner. Pancho tries to get revenge on the wrong guy, to much hilarity. Cisco goes back to town and confronts Blake, including punching him in the mouth. He accuses Holbrook of being part of the plot, and swears revenge.

Pancho retrieves the registry from the local hotel at Cisco’s request. He notices that Manning and Blake are staying in adjacent rooms. Cisco finds the letter Holbrook wrote to the railroad in Blake’s room. Cisco runs into Holbrook’s daughter and says he’s realized that she’s innocent. Blake and the fake Manning hold them up, bu Cisco is able to get the upper hand after a pretty thin distraction. Pancho knocks over Blake’s signs to add insult to injury, and the duo laugh thteir way into the sunset.

What I thought: It’s become fairly common to remark how many children’s movies of the 1980s and 90s have surprisingly complicated and very business-y plots at their core. The villain is always some kind of businessman involved in a complex real estate scheme that the young audience presumably couldn’t care less about. As a kid, you learned that rich men in suits were bad (a very valuable lesson) even if you weren’t sure what they were doing or why they were in a movie with the Olsen twins. Maybe it was the adult writers getting out their hang-ups or maybe it was just the Reaganite neoliberalism in the air.

“Look at the scripts they’re writing for us, Pancho!”

I thought something similar when watching this episode of The Cisco Kid. Blake’s plot is certainly villainous, but fairly mundane and irrelevant to a kid’s interest. Essentially, he’s using false information to drive up the price of land so that he can sell it to other ranchers, which is basically real estate 101. Okay sure, he kills a guy, but there’s not really an emotional connection for Cisco and Pancho to dig into here.

This is also one of several Western episodes we’ve seen where changing outfits is a major plot point. Here we get a double ruse, with Blake’s henchman disguising himself as Manning and Cisco disguising himself as an ordinary rancher. Cisco and Pancho may not be masked characters, but they are basically personas, and changing clothes marks a shift in identity as fundamental as the Lone Ranger taking off his mask does. When characters are this archetypal, they become their clothes.

Another thing that kind of stuck out to me in this episode is the music. The Cisco Kid’s score is a collection of jaunty and wistful tunes that try to conjure up the image of fun Western adventure, but often seems ill-applied. When Cisco is exploring the villain’s office to music that sounds like the intro to the Twin Peaks theme, it creates a certain tonal dissonance. TV series typically have a limited music library, but the score for The Cisco Kid seems like it’s designed for an entirely different show. Maybe that’s a show where a low-stakes real estate plot would also belong more.

What else was on: YouTube has two clips from Your Show of Shows for this date. I’m not sure these are the correct dates – Your Show of Shows aired on a Saturday, and the 24th was a Tuesday – but since I don’t know where else to put them, I thought I would do it here anyway.

The two sketches are from the “The Hickenloopers” series, with Sid Ceasar and Imogene Coca as a suburban married couple. In “The Sleep Sketch”, Ceasar tosses and turns in bed, unable to get to sleep, with his narcoleptic wife proving little help. They both end up taking sleeping pills, which has the side effect of both dancing the night away. In “Life Begins at 7:45”, the two are headed out to the opera, but Coca keeps changing her dress, leading a frustrated Ceasar to strip to his boxers before heading out.

Gleason cer5ainly wasn’t shy about taking his shirt off.

You can kind of see the transition from the Ceasar and Coca of Admiral Broadway Revue to that of The Honeymooners here. These look more like sitcom scenes than variety show acts, although I have no idea what the rest of the program looked like. Both sketches ultimately rely on Ceasar going back to his nonsense-talking routine by the end, though, which may show that the classic sitcom wasn’t fully formed yet. In any case, these were pretty funny, and it was nice to see Ceasar and Coca again.

Coming up next: Oliver J. Dragon sets out to write his biography.

Episode 291: Kukla, Fran and Ollie – “Crooning Contest” (October 23, 1950)

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. “Crooning Contest” aired on Monday, October 23, 1950 at 7:00 PM  on NBC. Video is available on the official KFO YouTube channel.

What happened: Kukla and Ollie are reading a magazine, and Ollie pokes his head in to see what’s up. It turns out to be a collection of Bing Crosby songs. Fran launches into one of the songs, “Learn to Croon”, after plugging a local music show. Kukla boasts that he has the widest range of anyone in the show, and that show pianist Jack Fascinato plays random notes to test him.

I think I saw this hat at the Oscars.

Fran reflects on the importance of singers, especially the old-fashioned crooner. She idly wishes that the show had one of those crooners that could make women scream and faint. Ollie thought he was already doing that. The group decides that there should be an official Kuklapolitan crooner, and decide to hold a contest to award the position.

This brings out Madame Oglepuss and Beulah, in a truly magnificent hat. She’s on her way to the opera. Fran dragoons the two of them into being judges, even blindfolding them to make sure there’s no bias. The first contestant is Kukla, who does a very sensitive opera number. Next is Colonel Crackle, who sings a jaunty tune and makes out with the microphone a bit.

Kukla and Ollie devise a plan to play a Perry Como record and lip-sync to it. Hey, I specifically said I didn’t want to see that guy. Who knew the RCA Victor record player could be used for evil? Kukla tries it, but a blindfolded Madame Oglepuss is suspicious. There’s a little bit of slapstick as she gropes around the stage. Fletcher comers on and absolutely butchers a song about how there’s no tomorrow.

Well, it’s at least what passes for a dress shirt around these parts.

Finally, Ollie takes the stage in a fedora and dress shirt, such as it is. He sings a genuinely pretty nice ballad about heartbreak. But there’s still one male character left: Cecil Bill, who is insistent on taking his turn. He gives a passionate performance in his carny language. Fran is blown away, and awards Cecil Bill the title of official crooner, much to Ollie’s sorrow.

What I thought: I still can’t say I’m very familiar with 1950s music, but I’ve gotten a bit more of an education thanks to doing this blog. This episode of Kukla, Fran, and Ollie references Perry Como, who we’ve seen hosting his own show, and Bing Crosby, who had recently ventured onto the small screen with the pre-taped syndicated series The Fireside Theater, which I don’t think is available anywhere. But it’s also rooted in the general idea of crooners as a universal cultural touchstone, who are certainly mockable but to the same time undeniably relevant.

The crooner phenomenon is both alien and familiar from the modern perspective. The music itself, while undoubtedly involving a lot of vocal skill, can seem sappy and soporific and impossibly old, before the early 60s cut-off of “modern music.” But the social phenomenon around crooners, particularly the passionate female fanbase, would come to be a familiar one, where youthful male performers became a commodity as well as an opportunity for women to express desire in a more-or-less socially sanctioned way. The crooners created the path that would be followed by Elvis, the Beatles, and countless boy bands all the way up to the present day.

The status of crooners as male performers for an amorous female audience is unstated in this episode of Kukla, Fran, and Ollie but obviously assumed. All of the male Kuklapolitans audition, whereas the women on the cast are the judges, with the exception of Dolores, who is presumably too young. Fran sings a Bing Crosby song in a reasonably deep tone, but there’s no suggestion that a woman could be the show’s crooner. (What would a female crooner sound like? Florence Welch?)

All of this is mostly irrelevant to the episode, which is another performance-fest episode of KFO. Tilstrom does a good job performing most of the songs in a way that’s still silly but has some musical value, so we aren’t just listening to nails on a chalkboard for thirty minutes. Kukla’s attempt to cheat the system seems a bit out of character for him (it’s honestly more of an Ollie idea), but Ollie’s arrogance at the end and Cecil Bill’s ultimate triumph is perfectly on-point. It’s not the most memorable episode of Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, and I don’t know if Cecil Bill’s position as official crooner will ever be recognized again, but it’s an enjoyable experience throughout.

Coming up next: There’s no Tuesday KFO on the YouTube playlist, so we’ll be skipping right to The Cisco Kid, plus a bonus look in at Your Show of Shows.

Episode 289: The Gene Autry Show – “The Black Rider” (October 22, 1950)

What I watched: The fourteenth episode of The Gene Autry Show, a kid-friendly Western starring the titular singing cowboy and his sidekick Pat Buttram. “The Black Rider” was directed by Frank McDonald and written by Elizabeth Beecher, with guest stars Sheila Ryan, Tom London, and Don C. Harvey. The episode originally aired at 7:30 PM on Sunday, October 8, 1950 on CBS, and is available on Shout Factory TV.

What happened: A rider dressed in black shoots a guy and drops a coin near his body. Gene comes across the body only a minute too late. The shooter, the Black Rider, is apparently well known in the town and no one can catch him. Gene is a friend of the old sheriff (London) at the town, called Golf Flats. One of the lunks, named Conlan (Harvey), around goes to visit a woman in black (Ryan), warning her that Gene is investigating the mysterious rider. However, when we see him Gene is just singing. Oh, Gene!

Gene doesn’t put too much effort into the lip-syncing here.

The Black Rider shoots at him, and Gene falls off his horse. Pat comes to the rescue with a hot pan of food, and shoots back at her. He hits her horse and she flees. In this episode, Pat doesn’t know Gene, or that he’s faking being killed. Pat says he’s a prospector who’s studying to be a detective, and is eager to tag along with Gene.

The Rider is off doing some more murders and tossing her coin onto the corpse. Seems like a good way to go broke. Pat and Gene are also onto the corpse, but assume that the Rider is a man. But it turns out that this guy isn’t dead, so she has to go back to stop him from talking. The Rider gets into some hijinx with Pat outside the cabin, and knocks him upside the head. Her accomplice then warns Pat not to go southwest, saying that the area is haunted.

Pat promptly wanders out there to look for his donkey, imitating his cries. The Black Rider comes out and shoots at him in the bushes, and he sees her face. When she takes off to do another murder, Pat takes after her. Gene confronts the accomplice, sensing his lies, and the two get into a donnybrook. The Black Rider shows up and shoots at Gene to allow Conlan to escape. Pat is eager to tell Gene who the Rider is, but he won’t listen. Pat’s habit of applying detective-y facial prosthetics isn’t helping.

The old sheriff is thinking about making a deal where he surrenders himself to the Rider in exchange for peace. Pat finally is able to tell Gene where the Rider is, although no who, and Gene takes off to the nicely—made stone cabin. Once there, he is promptly ambushed and held at gunpoint by the Rider and Conlan. Her identity is Sheila Dexter, the sister of an outlaw who was hung by the sheriff. She plans to hang Gene too. The Sheriff gets caught too and tied up to a tree. She’s suddenly into very elaborate ways of killing people.

Pat is still sneaking around, and Gene gives him some instructions to lasso the Rider. She’s captured fairly easily as Gene has another punch—out with Conlan, this time winning decisively. All’s well at the end, and Pat even has his donkey back.

What I thought: This edition of The Gene Autry Show is most notable for featuring a female villain in the eponymous Black Rider. She’s not the first we’ve seen, but usually in the kid Westerns women are there for the hero to chastely flirt with. There’s usually a nominal effort to show that the woman is tough and capable before having her play a supporting role in the hero’s story. Even if they are an antagonist, the odds are that they’ll be converted to the side of good by the end, or revealed as having been a heroine all along as in the Cisco Kid episode I watched recently.

Not Sheila Dexter, though. She’s a completely unrepentant killer, and is even the muscle of this episode’s two bad guys. (Although she isn’t really involved in the final fight, presumably to avoid the imagery of Gene Autry beating the crap out of a woman). She has a clear motivation in her brother’s death, but isn’t really treated as a tragic figure who might be redeemed through the hero’s love. Sheila Ryan is someone we’ve seen a couple times playing supporting roles on this type of show, and she seems to enjoy getting a chance to stretch her legs a bit more. (Plus, she’s hotter evil.)

Western fight choreographers sure loved their monkey flips.

There’s an interesting way in which Sheila almost loses her gender as the Black Rider. Pat refers to the Rider as “he” even when he knows the truth. No one seems to consider that the assassin could be anything but a man, but there’s no expression of shock or regret when they learn the Rider’s true identity. Rather than being a lesson about underestimating women, it’s as though Sheila puts on a cloak of masculinity that is as real as it is performative. This episode is also written by a woman, Elizabeth Beecher, which may have contributed to her portrayal.

And is it just me, or is Pat the real hero in this story? He discovers the truth of the Rider’s identity, rescues Gene, and takes down the lead villain with a lasso. All Gene does is get in a fistfight with a henchman. Perhaps because he’s a “lesser” man, Pat is treated as the appropriate adversary for a female villain, which ironically propels him towards the centre of the narrative. I’m usually annoyed by Pat’s antics more than anything, but I would definitely watch a show about him tracking down lady baddies through a mixture of doggedness and dumb luck.

Coming up next: We have an actual new show to watch in The Arthur Murray Party.

Episode 288: Kukla, Fran and Ollie – Fletcher Loses His Pumpkin (October 20, 1950)

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. “Fletcher Loses His Pumpkin” aired on Friday, October 20, 1950 at 7:00 PM  on NBC. Video is available on the official KFO YouTube channel.

What happened: Kukla introduces the popularly-requested musician: himself, playing a xylophone (pronounced “zillophone.”) It sounds pretty good once the backing track kicks in. Cecil Bill comes out to put the kibosh on an encore. The next act up is Fletcher Rabbit showing us how to carve the Halloween pumpkin, although it looks more like a gourd to me. He tells us that he doesn’t approve of patterns, because everyone should use the opportunity to show their inner creativity. Well that’s nice.

It’s always the last place you look.

Fletcher goes to show how to use a knife, and in the interim Beulah Witch appears to snatch his pumpkin. When Fletcher returns, he asks Jack and other producers where the pumpkin went, but they don’t have any straight answers. Fran also doesn’t know where it is, and Fletcher gets very emotional about the missing gourd. This situation calls for Cecil Bill in his Sherlock costume to gather information to help solve the mystery.

Cecil Bill gives Fletcher the third degree, and drags him away, suspecting him of some sort of plan. Ollie and Fran pop up, and she lets him know what’s going on. Ollie smells ginger in Beulah’s stall, and she tells him not to come near her pumpkin pie. Meanwhile, Colonel Crackle pops up to say that Fran has been named the Sweetest Girl in Television. Should I add that to the Golden Potatoes categories? She receives a bouquet of roses.

Fran and Madame Oglepuss bicker about whether you can have a “quince” or “mince”, which sounds very British to me. Kukla visits Madame O making her pie off stage and brings out the RCA Victor record player. It’s a shame this isn’t a Sealtest day or they could have the pie a la mode. Kukla, Fran, and Ollie sing from a sheet about the greatness of the RCA Victor player, in one of the clumsier commercial segments that the show has done. They make up for it a little afterwards by giving Jack some funny backhanded compliments.

Madame O pops up again wanting to sing the song, but it’s too late. She tries throwing her weight around as the Director of the Kuklapolitans Ladies Auxiliary. Fran eventually agrees to re-do the song with Madame Oglepuss and Beulah. After this she sings another song to try to comfort Fletcher. He’s happy enough to do another RCA plug afterwards, but he never does find out what happened to his pumpkin.

What I thought: Fletcher Rabbit was sitting backstage at the Kuklapolitan theatre. He quickly tried to gather information from his surroundings. Ollie was raiding the costume department again, entertaining everyone by coming out in crowns and feather boas. Kukla and Cecil Bill were hammering away at a set for next week. It was an ordinary evening after the show. It was almost just like it had been before The Incident.

He tugged down his sleeve and found a message, written in permanent marker. Beulah W. stole my pumpkin.

“Fletcher?”

Given the daily, improvised nature of the show, I’m surprised we don’t see more sheet music on screen.

He snapped to attention and saw Beulah Witch. What had he been thinking about? “I’m sorry. I have a condition.”

“I know about your condition, Fletch, you’ve told me a thousand times,” said Beulah. “I was asking if you wanted some pumpkin pie.”

So that was the pleasant smell. Fletcher loved pumpkin pie, but something bothered him. He looked down and rifled through the group of photographs he had put together to jog his memory. One snapshot depicted Beulah stirring a mixture in her cauldron. Don’t believe her lies was scrawled in his own handwriting.

“I’m not supposed to believe your lies,” said Fletcher.

“Well, believe whatever you want,” said Beulah. “The pie is real.”

She was right. That pie did smell delicious. Fletcher couldn’t remember what he was so upset about. He stood up to get a piece.

Coming up next: Gene Autry meets “The Black Rider.” Sounds tough!

Episode 287: The Lone Ranger – “Crime in Time” (October 19, 1950)

What I watched: The sixth episode of the second season of The Lone Ranger, a kid-friendly Western created by George Trendle and starring Clayton Moore as the titular hero and Jay Silverheels as Tonto. “Crime in Time” written by Herb Meadow, directed by John H. Morse, and featured guest stars Lane Bradford, John A. Butler, and Monte Blue. “Crime in Time” aired on Thursday, October 19, 1950 on ABC at 7:30 pm., and is available on YouTube.

For a second I thought this might be Groucho Marx.

What happened: A man with a very complicated glasses set-up is the target of a stagecoach robbery. He’s sassy to the robbers and explains that he’s a watchmaker, carrying nothing but sand. He uses a fancy contraption in his car to shoot one of the robbers, and holds the other at gunpoint. The watchmaker then offers him a job in his operation, after he buries his partner.

The Ranger and Tonto are on the trail of the robbers, known as the Watkin boys. They find the watchmaker’s bag of dirt, and are ambushed by the remaining Watkin. He seems at least a little broken up by his brother’s death, and forces the Ranger and Tonto to bury him. As they dig he relates the story, and is unable to figure out the shooting car trick. Just as he’s about to make the Ranger unmask, Tonto blinds him with the ol’ fistful of dirt, and a horse chase ensues.

The Ranger fills in the local sheriff about what he’s discovered. The sheriff is sure that the local watchmaker, McArdle, couldn’t hurt anyone. In reality, he’s building an underground tunnel to rob the bank, explaining the bags of dirt he was disposing of. He switches out the money with counterfeit bills, which he calls “engravings.” The only issue is that a bank examiner is coming in a few days. McArdle wants Watkin to rob the bank to get rid of the counterfeit money.

They discover Tonto sneaking into the house, and he of course gets caught in the process. Tonto tries to escape, but gets a chair broken over his back. At least it wasn’t another concussion. The Ranger accosts McArdle in his stagecoach, but gets gutshot by the gun in it. He no-sells it, however, and follows the stagecoach at a distance.

When Watkin goes to rob the bank, he’s being watched by the Ranger and the Sheriff. McArdle thinks that Watkin is going to shoot him after the robbery as revenge for the killing of his brother, and shoots him right in front of the Sheriff, claiming self-defense. But the Ranger is still there, explaining that he replaced McArdle’s stagecoch gun with blanks. Despite saying “I thought I killed you”, McArdle continues to plead innocent. But Tonto is able to signal from the underground tunnel, and McArdle is arrested after his scheme is exposed. He curses that the Ranger is so smart.

What I thought: I wrote in my post on “Danger Ahead”, the previous Lone Ranger episode, about how the key to a great episodic series is good guest stars and fun gimmicks. “Crime in Time” has both in John A. Buutler as evil watchmaker Feeny McArdle. Maybe it’s just because I love vaguely steampunk stuff in the Old West, but McArdle and his weird glasses and stage coach-mounted gun immediately stood out amidst a sea of grizzled toughs.

The Lone Ranger frequently utilizes a kind of Columbo-esque structure. The Ranger is confronted with a mystery but we, as the audience, already know the answer – it’s just a question of how the Ranger will figure it out in time. The Lone Ranger typically parcels out the mystery answers a bit more than Columbo, mind you – we don’t know what McArdle is doing with the bags of dirt until about ten minutes into the episode, after the Ranger and Tonto have already started investigating.

This episode, like most, turns into the Ranger trying to figure out the villain’s scheme and prove his guilt. McArdle is stronger than your average villain because he’s clearly a man who relies upon his mental prowess, and it’s more plausible that a gunslinger like the Ranger could get tricked by him than by your average rustler. (This is also why so many Superman villains are primarily defined by their intelligence.) Notably, McArdle doesn’t even try to put up a fight at the end, making this a fairly fisticuffs-free episode of the show.

McArdle dug a very spacious tunnel.

If anything, the flaw here is that McArdle is too likeable. His plan seems like the least disruptive and violent way to possibly rob a bank, and you sort of want him to get away with it. Maybe if they had shown someone being wrongfully arrested for passing his counterfeit bills there would have been better moral stakes, I don’t know. But as it is, McArdle is the great American archetype: a hustler whose ingenuity makes you forget about his immorality.

John A. Butler was not a very well-known actor. For one thing, he was usually credited under just John Butler. Most of his film appearances are as small, uncredited roles in B-movies. IMDb says that he is best known for appearing in Torchy Runs for Mayor, which is to say that he wasn’t well-known at all. But he got a really fun role that he could do something with here, and made the most out of it.

Coming up next: We close out the week with some more Halloween prep on Kukla, Fran and Ollie.

Episode 286: Kukla, Fran, and Ollie – “Everyone Feels Good Today” (October 19, 1950)

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. “Everybody Feels Good” aired on Thursday, October 19, 1950 at 7:00 PM  on NBC. Video is available on the official KFO YouTube channel.

What happened: The curtains part on Kukla sweeping the stage. He chats with Jack a bit and sings “Look to the Rainbow.” Fletcher walks in on him doing weird screeches, and Kukla tries to muster an explanation that he was playing “hide and seek.” Fletcher doesn’t understand, but says that he’s never felt better in his entire life. The first hit’s always like that, Fletch. He celebrates by banging his snare drum against the stage, much to Kukla’s consternation.

It’s very cute.

Kukla expresses his happiness and cheer as he kicks Fletcher off the stage. He calls in Fran to play with him. What emerges from the bottom, however, is Ollie with a Kukla mask on. When Fran mentions that someone’s come to see him, Ollie blows his cover, saying that he has a Kukla mask for Halloween. Fran notes that it’s made out of a potholder. Kukla sees the mask and freaks out.

He’s back pretty quickly, however, to talk to Fran about feeling good. She tells a story about buying a hat she really wanted as a child. Not exactly one-woman-show material. Madame Oglepuss shows up with her harp, and is also feeling very happy today. She offers Kukla the harp, but he turns it down flat. Ollie is feeling so good he’s decided to host the first poetry hour of the year. Well, he’s got about 15 minutes.

Ollie calls Fran in, and she hands him Old Mother Hubbard. He doesn’t want to read this one, and asks for another assignment from the deck. While they’re arguing, Kukla pops up in a tutu, apparently thinking they were doing ballet. Despite some frustrated yelling, he maintains that he is very happy, as does everyone else. Meanwhile, Beulah Witch is trying to sign people up for a broomstick ride, and Cecil Bill is still investigating in his Sherlock Holmes outfit and a “clues hamper”.

Fletcher manages to seize the mic and makes an address to “Halloween Friends”, saying that he wants to teach them how to carve a pumpkin. But it’s already time for Kukla to plug Sealtest ice cream. Fletcher finally gets the phone call he’s been waiting for, and agrees to appear on We, The Rabbit. Ollie pops up in a new hat, fully in his DJ persona. He proposes singing their number from “Big Top” last year, which he and Fran do. A surprising amount of it is about the landscape. Ollie is finally ready to launch into the poetry hour, but Kukla cuts him off as they’re out of time.

What I thought: A lot of TV comedies these days are pointedly “nice.” Ted Lasso has become the standard-bearer of this genre, but one can find roots of it in Parks and Recreation and possibly much further back. Whether it’s because of a fear of backlash if a character shows an intolerant attitude, a desire to model moral behaviour, or the goal of providing a relief from the very upsetting world, there’s a trend towards art which aims to be friendly and have “good vibes” instead of compelling conflict.

It’s always nice when they get the harp out.

Kukla, Fran, and Ollie is a very nice show. All of the characters on it are friends, and nobody really means each other any harm. They sometimes have fights or disputes but always come back together because, fundamentally, they love each other.. But it doesn’t feel like a “nicecore” sitcom to me. The puppets are always butting heads and finding points of disagreements like real friends who work together do.

“Everyone Feels Good Today” shows how just insincere the show would come off if this wasn’t the case. Throughout the half hour every character maintains that they’re very happy. But they all also seem very annoyed, and unable to get on the same page about what they want the show to be today. The proclamations of happiness are a kind of facade to avoid dealing with the emotions of frustration and annoyance. The more plans fall apart, the more intense the pretense becomes, until characters are swearing they’re the happiest they’ve ever been in their life.

I’m not sure how much of this was intentional – there’s no real climactic moment where we learn a lesson about processing our emotions. But through its manic tone “Everyone Feels Good Today” illustrates the absurdity of trying to be eternally pleasant. As an audience, we like when Ollie is being impossible or Beulah Witch is throwing a fit. When everyone is happy, it’s a little off-putting.

Even back in the 1950s, there was plenty of gormless children’s entertainment which aimed to simply be a bombardment of happiness. (We’ve seen some of it.) I’m not sure if this episode was a reaction to anything else, but it certainly highlights how the element of conflict, even petty and mostly silly conflict, was crucial to making Kukla, Fran, and Ollie the show it was.

Coming up next: The Lone Ranger tries to stop a rhyming crime in time.

Episode 285: Kukla, Fran, and Ollie – “Round Table Discussion” (October 18, 1950)

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. “Round Table Discussion” aired on Wednesday, October 18, 1950 at 7:00 PM  on NBC. Video is available on the official KFO YouTube channel.

What happened: Fletcher Rabbit is here with a package for Kukla. It contains a shiny ornament that just looks like Kukla. I swear, Christmas starts earlier and earlier every year. There’s also a present for Dolores, who is taking a nap right now. Beulah accepts the present for her, a pillow reading “Dolores is a good girl.” Dolores also receives a little knitted hat from a woman in Brooklyn.

Cecil Bill arrives in a Sherlock Holmes hat and coat, but keeps his distinctive role of speaking. This was apparently an anonymous gift. Fletcher sings about the sadness of being a mailman and never getting any mail himself. Fran meets up with Cecil Bill to admire his Sherlock outfit. Fletcher translates for him off-stage, noting that he’s been dusting the piano keys for clues.

I didn’t get this many presents when I turned 3.

We finally get two of the title characters talking as Ollie pops in from lunch, during which he enjoyed a roundtable discussion. He also has a nice hat. Ollie is now bent on making the show educational, so everyone can learn from it. Fran agrees to go along with his plan to have “some kind of forum”, which Ollie dubs a “squaretable discussion.”

Colonel Crackle pops up to suggest that at least two members of the troupe leave in case “the fur begins to fly.” This discussion is going to be so intense they need a designated survivor. He and Madame Oglepuss drive away in their 1950 Ford. The panel discussion begins with Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, with Kukla in a nice little hat. Fran has selected a topic randomly from the bookshelf and decided on the topic of “The Little Red Hen.” She starts reading from the book, and is frequently interrupted by Kukla and Ollie, offering their literary interpretation. Leave it to the professionals, guys.

Kukla and Ollie get into an argument about the nature of the little red hen, which continues even after Fran tries to keep reading. They get in a fight, and Ollie rips off Kukla’s hat and toupee. Fran notes that this is just like everyone talking over each other on panel shows. Instead of continuing, she decides to sing “So this is Love.”

What I thought: This episode of KFO is a parody of something that hasn’t come up much in our viewing sample so far: the public-affairs show. Early TV often hosted remarkably intellectual roundtable discussions on political and literary issues. This would peak later on in the decade with series like Omnibus, but by 1950 we already had The Johns Hopkins Science Review and Meet the Press as well as shows with titles like Author Meets the Critics and The Week in Review. Eventually, this type of show would be shuttled off to PBS where they could be not watched in piece.

I have to assume this hat was also a regular part of panel shows.

The existence of these shows could make early TV seem like a golden age of earnest, high-minded public discourse. In truth, the shows were mostly made for cheap to fill up less lucrative timeslots, such as Sunday afternoons, or to run against popular programs on other networks. When the FCC came calling, networks could point to this educational programming as proof they were doing a public service by enlightening the masses.

While we’ve reviewed some documentary and educational programming here at ECP, I don’t think we’ve had a panel discussion, so I can’t judge how accurate KFO’s parody is. In the segment Kukla and Ollie are constantly interjecting their ideas about what the author really meant, almost a parody of close reading that reveals the absurdity of analysis by applying it to a simplistic pre-school text. (Some might say this blog is a parody of close reading, but I ensure you, it’s entirely in earnest.)

This approach is broadly in line with what was happening in academia in the 1950s. Modernist-influenced close reading dominated, which demanded exhaustive formal analysis of a text to reveal the true genus of the author who wrote it. The next half-century of literary studies would be a fervent opposition to this approach, but in many ways it is still the mainstream understanding of critical analysis. Today, a panel discussion at an academic conference might instead talk about how the Little Red Hen disrupts heteronormative epistemology or provides us new ways to think about the climate crisis.

Last time out on KFO I speculated about whether Beulah’s quest to prepare for Halloween would be an ongoing plot thread. It isn’t really present in this episode, although we do get a reference to her arrest, and Dolores is under the weather from her excursion. But t does seem as though many of the characters are thinking about yesterday’s events. Call it continuity in thought, if not in plot.

Coming up next: Now that the discussion’s over, everyone’s just happy.