Henry Novotny

The Happy Hour was WTCN’s follow up to the Dave Lee Show starting in 1970.   The program was hosted by Henry Novotny as “Uncle Henry” and featured Phil Johnson as Fred and the program’s puppeteer.   Warren Martin was the program announcer.

Phil Johnson

Phil Johnson remembers, “The WTCN days were almost always fun. During the school year our show was the top show in its time slot, and we always new we had a gratifying little spotlight on our efforts.    I was Fred and all the puppet characters. The set survived many years after that and was lugged all over the United States for stage shows and TV shows. It ended its life in the dumpster at KARE-11 in 1987. Pretty beat up by then, too.”

After The Happy Houre ended in 1973, Phil Johnson teamed up with Roger Awsumb for “The New Casey Jones Show” on KMSP for a year.    You can read more about that on the Lunch With Casey page

Sources:

Photos and memories from Phil Johnson.  Adopted from the Lunch with Casey website.

Casey Jones, Axel and Carmen, T.N. Tatters, Clancy and Willie, Joe the Cook and Roo Roo the Kangaroo, Dave Lee and Pete the Penguin, Sheriff Sev, Sgt. Scotty, Boots and Saddles, Rocko Dyne, Horror Incorporated, Roundhouse Rodney, Skipper Darl, J.P. Patches, Romper Room and Miss Betty, Grandpa Ken, Wrangler Steve and Chuck Wagon Chuck, The Happy Hour, Captain 11, Commodore Cappy, Johnny .44,  Grandma Lumpitt’s Boarding House, KartoonTime at NoonTime, Bozo the Clown, Dr. Paul Bearer

You remember all of them don’t you?   Or some of them.   Between 1953 and 1977 (or so), there were dozens of local children’s shows on the four commercial stations – WCCO, KMSP, KSTP and WTCN.   Some shows lasted 15 years or more.   Others came and went in a season.   And they changed their names and time slots constantly.    KartoonTime at NoonTime on channel 9 became Popeye and Pete on channel 11, and eventually was just The Dave Lee Show.   Clancy the Keystone Cop became Clancy the Space Cop and then Clancy and Willie, though it was also called Clancy and Company.   But it started with John Gallos as Commodore Cappy.     Lunch with Casey started as Noontime Express.  And there was Wake Up with Casey and Roundhouse, and Grandma Lumpitt’s Boarding House.    J. P. Patches with Daryl Laub on channel 11 was called Carnival Clown and moved over to channel 5 and became Circus Sideshow with T.N. Tatters.   Yet J. P. Patches continued on channel 11 with Chris Wedes.

But what about Rocko Dyne?  Or Sheriff Sev?  Anyone remember Sgt. Scotty?  How about Cousin Lem?  Do you remember Chuck Wagon Chuck?  Some of these are fleeting names in old TV listings.   Some are remembered vaguely by people that watched them.    Some are known through photos buried in dusty file cabinets.   Trying to find information about these programs, these personalities, is challenging  and difficult.   Do the names Jimmy Valentine, Bob Montgomery or Dale Woodley bring back memories?   Sometimes a fragment of a memory brings back all sorts of questions and prvokes new research.

I was born in 1962 and my earliest TV memories are watching Casey and Roundhouse perhaps in 1965 or 66.   I never saw Joe the Cook, Roo Roo the Kangaroo, T.N. Tatters, J. P. Patches, or even Axel.   So when people started talking about them in some newsgroups back in the late 1990′s, I was intrigued.    I posted my memories of Lunch With Casey and people began to send me their memories.    Out of this came the Lunch With Casey website.    I soon met Julian West, the authority on Axel and Clellan Card and he was a wealth of information.   Together we started to work on this Minnesota Kid Vid site.

What did we have to work with?   Not a lot.   Many of these shows were 50 years ago.   These programs were broadcast live every day.   Videotape was not available.   In those earliest days of television, if you wanted to save a program, you pointed a 16mm film camera at a television screen and made a “kinescope.”   When video tape became available in the early sixties, it was bulky and expensive.   If something was recorded, chances are it would be erased and taped over at a later date.   Video tape was very expensive and used over and over.   What exists today are several hours of Axel shows that were actually filmed on 16mm for Sunday broadcasts, a couple hours of Casey and Roundhouse clips from the late 60s, single kinescopes of Captain Daryl and T.N. Tatter shows.   There is one taped copy of the Dave Lee show, and one known tape of Grandpa Ken.    The surviving clips of Clancy and Willie and Carmen come from thier last week of broadcasts in 1977.    There are a couple rare kinescopes of early WCCO shows like Commodor Cappy.   We have a few scant minutes of J.P. Patches in Minneapolis.  We have one film clip of Joe the Cook and Roo Roo standing on their set.  There are even a few rare holiday reels prepared for Christmas parties that preserve the only known footage of some of these programs.   The earliest Casey footage seems to date to 1962, meaning nothing exists of the programs that aired between 1954 and 1961.   Nothing exists of Dave Lee’s shows at channel 9.   No footage exists of Steve Cannon as Wrangler Steve or Sev Widman as Sheriff Sev.

We have photos.  Some shows, like the earliest version of Romper Room on channel 11 are preserved in a handful of photos in the files at the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting in St. Louis Park.   We have a few pictures of Wrangler Steve and Captain 11.   Some photos survived because they were distributed as trading cards.   There are occasional newspaper articles from the Minneapolis Tribune or St. Paul Pioneer Press.  There are advertisements in old TV Guides.  And there are lots of TV listings.    To find all this material requires research and time and access.      I live in Atlanta, Georgia these days, so researching Minnesota TV schedules and old newspaper archines is not the easiest thing to do.

Fortunately, we have resources like the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting that is available when I have time to visit.   Julian West is a wealth of knowledge thanks to his incredible research into the life of Clellan Card.   I’ve been able to interview Dave Lee, Pegge Forest, Chris Wedes, Daryl Laub and director Al DeRusha and they have shared their stories and rare photos from the early days of television.  Tim Hollis wrote and incredible book called  “Hi There, Boys and Girls! America’s Local Children’s TV Programs” which has some information about some of these obscure shows.  Another interesting book is “Media Tales” by Sheri O’Meara and Martin Keller.  ”J.P. Patches Northwest Icon” is a wonderful book.    I’ve had help and support from the families of Roger Awsumb and Lynn Dwyer.    Other collectors and writers in Minnesota like Joel Rasmussen and J.R. Lonto have lots of information.  There are a couple great video collections on YouTube that includes surviving clips of Axel, Cappy, Casey and others.   Even Ebay has proven to be a good resource for old collectibles such as postcards, buttons, magazines and even Axel dolls!

The internet is a very frustrating resource if you are trying to research any of this material.   There are some good websites for J.P. Patches (Chris Wedes) and Grandpa Ken (Ken Wagner).    Unfortunately, the memory of the internet really only covers the last 10 years.    Newspapers and news websites don’t even keep much of their archives online.  When you can locate an obituary, you have a great deal of information, but even those are hard to locate.   I’ve found some old issues of Billboard magazine available on Google Books, but those only seem to bring us up to 1954 or so.   And about 95% of the Google search results lead right back to the Minnesota Kid Vid and Lunch with Casey websites, or Wikipedia’s listing of children’s shows.

But the best resource of all are the visitors to the website.   Larry Iverson shared his photos and stories about appearing on the Casey Jones show.   Barbara Kline passed along her photo from when she appeared on Popeye’s Clubhouse.  Gary McDonald shared his stories and photos of Casey and Roundhouse.   Mary Herzog told memories of her father, an engineer at channel 11.   Your photos and memories are what helps bring these websites to life.

Julian and I still have a lot of stories and photos to share here.   Casey and Axel will be remembered along with Dave Lee and Pete, J.P. Patches and Joe the Cook, Captain Daryl and T.N. Tatters, Clancy and Willie and all the rest as best we can.

So if you have any stories, photos, old films or tapes, or audio recordings, please share them if you can.  Did Casey or Axel come to your birthday party?   Did you record their TV shows on audio tapee?   Did you take a trip to Wisconsin Dells with Casey?   Did you see any of your TV heroes at a shopping mall or maybe Como Zoo or Excelsior Amusement park?   We’d really like your photos!   Did your family shoot any home movies?   Did your parents work at these stations and save any printed materials?  Maybe 16mm films?

I’m looking for information about Jimmy Valentine, Bob Montgomery, Sev Widman and Dale Woodley from the 50′s.  Do you haev any thing on Steve Cannon from his early TV days, before he was on WCCO radio?   Do you have information on Jack Hastings?    How about when Jim Lange was Captain 11?

You can drop me an email at CultTVman@aol.com ro use the contact form on this site.

All my thanks

Steve Iverson

Here’s a clip from a  WCCO program called Out & About from July 2002.   Ralph John Fritz talks to people that knew and worked with Axel including Don Stoltz (Tallulah).   Roger Awsumb (Casey Jones)  also appears.

The early days of WMIN, channel 11, featured a number of children’s programs.  One of the first, starting in 1954 was Captain 11, which aired on weekday afternoons and featured old movie serials such as Buck Rogers and The Lost Jungle.   According to channel 11 director Al DeRusha, the set was made of parts from old pinball machines with flashing lights.   They made use of sound effects such as roaring rocket engines.

Captain 11 was originally played by Saint Paul native Jim Lange.   Lange started in radio, winning a local contest while still in high school.  He studied broadcasting at the University of Minnesota and served three years in the Marines.   He left channel 11 in 1955 and moved to California where he became a popular disc jockey at KGO and later KSFO.   In 1965 he begain hosting the popular game show, The Dating Game, continuing for 17 years.    He worked in radio until his retirement in 2005.

Chris Wedes took over the role following Jim Lange’s departure.    Chris was a man of many hats at channel 11, playing Joe the Cook on the Casey Jones show and his own program, as well as Chuck Wagon Chuck alongside Wrangler Steve, and eventually taking over J.P. Patches from Daryl Laub.    Chris left Minneapolis in 1957 to work in Seattle where he hosted the long running J.P. Patches show until 1983.    He continued to make personal appearances through 2011.

Captain 11 also inspired Dave Dedrick to launch his own Captain 11 show on KELO in Sioux Falls, SD which ran from 1955 to  1996.

Other posts about Captain 11:

• WMIN-TV Kids Day at Excelsior Amusement Park Aug 7, 1954

Sources
Interivews with Chris Wedes, Al DeRusha
The Jim Lange Show at The Bay Area Radio Museum
Jim Lange at Broadcast Legends
Remembering Captain 11

John Gallos is best known to viewers as Clancy the Cop on the long running Clancy and Willie show on WCCO television.   His career spanned more than 40 years at WCCO and included news, public affairs, and religious programming, in addition to children’s shows.

Gallos was born in 1923 and grew up in Minneapolis.   He graduated from North High School in 1940 and joined the army during World War II.  He was part of the Army’s 66th “Black Panther” Division and worked with Armed Forces Radio.   Following the war, Gallos attended Macalester College with future TV personalities Roger Awsumb and Chris Wedes and he joined KYSM radio in Mankato.

He started at WCCO-TV in 1950, along with Dave Moore. In 1951 he hosted a Sunday morning talk show called News and Personalities. In 1957 he began hosting children’s programming on WCCO on Bugs Bunny Time with Commodore Cappy. This evolved into Clancy the Keystone Cop in 1959 and later Clancy the Space Cop in 1962. Eventually he settled into the familiar Clancy the Cop role with Allan Lotsberg on Clancy and Willie which ran from 1963 to 1977.

From 1970 to 1985, John Gallos hosted Laurel and Hardy movies on Sunday mornings.  He also hosted a long running community service program called Jobs Now. His religious show Sunday Morning with John Gallos ran for 31 years from 1963 to 1994. He retired from WCCO in 1996.    Gallos was inducted into the Minnesota Broadcast Hall of Fame in 2002.

Here’s John Gallos as Clancy the Cop at a personal appearance in the 1990s. He was always happy to meet his fans who grew up watching him on WCCO-TV. Sadly, John Gallos passed away at the age of 82 on November 15, 2005.

Sources:
Julian West, Chris Wedes, Roger Awsumb
“Gallos brought puppets to life”  St. Paul Pioneer Press Nov 19, 2005
John Gallos obituary  St. Paul Pioneer Press Nov 2005
Pavek Museum of Broadcasting website

Commodore Cappy featured a rabbit puppet named Bats Bunny.  Bats was described as “the younger and less famous brother of Bugs.”   John Gallos created the puppet from a stuffed rabbit dressed in a baseball uniform, which belonged to his daughter Nancy.

Sources: ”Gallos brought puppets to life”  St. Paul Pioneer Press Nov 19, 2005

Jim Lange as Captain 11, Steve Cannon as Wrangler Steve and Roger Awsumb as Casey Jones are shown together here.  The three of them appeared together at Excelsior Amusement Park on August 7, 1954.   The heavily promoted event was called WMIN-TV Kids Day.    The ad below was featured in the Minnesota edition of TV Guide.

from 1954

Steve Cannon is a Minnesota broadcast legend.    His career spanned over 40 years, but he is best remembered for his long running program “The Cannon Mess” on WCCO radio.   The drive time show ran for 26 years and featured Cannon and his alter-ego creations Morgan Mundane, Ma Linger, and Backlash LaRue.   All of the characters were voiced by Cannon.

Cannon was born in 1927 in Michigan but grew up in Eveleth, Minnesota.   Broadcasting proved to be an escape from the iron range and in 1954, he was working at WMIN radio in Saint Paul.   A note in Broadcasting magazine in 1954 notes he “just completed a six week contest on ‘Why I Hate Steve Cannon.’ Cannon reports a slight inferiority complex as a result.”   Another 1954 blurb in Broadcasting says Cannon “will emcee the Duke Ellington concert at the Minneapolis Lyceum Theater on June 2.”

In 1954, Cannon was also on television with his show “Wrangler Steve” on WMIN, channel 11.    Wrangler Steve was one of the first children’s shows on channel 11, along with Casey Jones and Captain 11.   He was joined by Chris Wedes as Chuck Wagon Chuck, hosting old western movies.

Cannon continued to work at radio stations in Bemidji, Duluth and other cities.   In 1958 he landed at KSTP radio, hosting a morning show for 13 years.   When KSTP fired him, he moved to WCCO in 1971, broadcasting until his retirement in 1997.  Cannon was inducted into the Minnesota Broadcast Hall of Fame in 2002.  He passed away in 2009.

Links

• Steve Cannon: A man of many voices signs off
• Remembering Steve Cannon at RadioTapes – features many of Steve Cannon’s broadcasts and interviews
• Museum of Broadcasting Hall of Fame 
• Steve Cannon on YouTube

Sources: Museum of Broadcasting, Star Tribune, and other news articles.

Wrangler Steve was one of the early WMIN, channel 11, childern’s programs, debuting in late 1953 or early 1954, along with Casey Jones Noontime Express, and Captain 11.  It featured a young Steve Cannon, years before he became known for his radio show on WCCO.     The program aired old western movies on Saturdays.  The show continued on WTCN when the two stations merged.

Wrangler Steve Casey Jones and Captain 11 were heavily promoted and appeared together at many local events including WMIN Kids Day at Excelsior Amusement Park.

Chris Wedes joined the show as Wrangler Steve’s sidekick Chuck Wagon Chuck.

More about Wranger Steve:

• Wrangler Steve – Steve Cannon
• WMIN Kids Day at Excelsior Amusement Park Aug 7, 1954

In the mid-1950s, Clellan Card appeared as Olaf the Janitor on the WCCO-TV program The Mel Jass Show to provide comedy relief.