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From: twcaps@tennyson.lbl.gov (Terry Chan) Subject: More on TV Legends First, pearl@sw.stratus.com (Dan Pearl) writes: + +>> The "little bastards" comment was made by a radio personality by the name +>> of "Uncle Don" (in the 40's?). After his sign-off jingle "sing this +>> song with your Uncle Don", he thought he was off the air when he uttered +>> his famous line. then, system@codewks.nacjack.gen.nz (Wayne McDougall) writes: +>I heard this was a UK announcer, who after Children's Hour (Sundays at 7pm?) +>having read the story the announcer said "well that should keep the little +>bastards happy for another week". I was told this was about the same era - followed by lorange@spot.Colorado.EDU (Hans L'Orange) who writes: + +A friend claims (you have to love it) to have seen the following during a +local kiddies TV show in the late '60s: + + The host ( a clown in more ways than one ) was trying to get a little + hippie kid (the 60s remember) to play some game with the other kids. + There was no way he was going to roll the egg with his nose or + whatever it was but the clown kept trying to 'nicely' badger him in + to it. They finally cut to commercial when the kid yelled out ... + "CRAM IT, CLOWN !!!" Ah, this is great. Several variations on similar themes. In _The Mexican Pet_, JHB mentions several of these legends and records the following: In version A of "Bozo the Clown's Blooper," a fellow named John Witkowski wrote a letter to JHB in November 1984 on the legend recounted by Hans. "Bozo the Clown" aired in the late 1950s and early 1960s. There is a group of children who are playing a game where they try to carry an egg in a spoon across the room. One kid drops the egg halfway and swears. Bozo "gently reprimands" the kid and the kid tells him "shove it or worse." John had at least a half-dozen friends who claimed to have seen the episode but were always vague as to approximate date shown and exact language used. There is another version where Bozo is interviewing the kids in the audience and asking them routine questions such as what do they want to be when they grow up. One kid then says "Ram it, clown!" The show is cut to a commercial and when it returns, the kid is gone and "order is restored." The fellow Douglas Kaplan recalls that this happened on the Baltimore version of the Bozo the Clown show when it was done live. When he moved to New Orleans, he heard his boss say that line. His boss then said that he got it from the New Orleans version of that show. In true UL fashion, the line mentioned by Dan and Wayne (or one very close to it) has been attributed to virtually every children's local TV host in the US. "Despite a complete lack of supporting evidence--no one telling the story had ever seen the episode themselves--the myth was widely believed. Many who heard it as children still consider the myth fact." [This last part JHB attributes, heh, heh, to Morgan and Tucker's _Rumor!_, p. 92). JHB himself says he thought that the host of one of his favorite kids _radio_ shows "Happy Hank" which he thought he heard in Lansing, Michigan in the 1940s had said those words (about the bastards). He also was pretty sure that some kid had sassed "Uncle Howdy" on radio as well. But that's the way it goes.