Cliffy the Clown - One of the resident clowns on the circus variety program SUPER CIRCUS which debuted in Chicago in 1949 on ABC-TV. This popular family oriented program featured Cliffy, Scampy, and Nicky the clowns. "Cliffy" Sobier was the head clown in this group of zany circus performers. Both Cliffy and Scampy, his sidekick (Bardy Patton/Sandy Dobritch) had bald heads, cherry red noses and oversized shoes. Nicky (Nicky Francis) looked more like a tramp with unshaven face, baggy pants and a tattered old top hat. The three tumbled, bounced, and slapstick-ed their way through Sunday afternoons on this live sixty-minute program. A popular segment on the show was when Cliffy, Scampy, and Nicky invited three lucky children from the audience to reach deep into jars filled with a mix of copper and silver coins. The kids got to keep whatever coins they could hold in their fingers as they pulled their hand from the jar. The series later moved to New York in 1955 but Cliffy, Scampy and Nicky were not to a part of the festivities. Ringmaster Claude Kirchner who supervised all the insanity of this circus world died from cancer on March 8, 1993 in Hawthorne, New York.