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Grandfather Clock - Talking
grandfather clock that lived in the Treasure House on the
long-running CBS children's series CAPTAIN KANGAROO/CBS/1955-84.
Sometime during each episode, the Captain needed the answer to a
question and said to his viewers "Let's ask Grandfather", who was
usually sleeping.
With the help of his young viewers, Captain
Kangaroo instructed the kids at home, "Shhhh….(Tip toe, tip toe,
tip toe) “All together now: One, two, three…”WAKE UP,
GRANDFATHER!!!
Roused from his sleep by the noise, the venerable
timepiece rapidly blinked his sleepy eyes open and then greeted
the Captain and his friends.
After a minute or so of rhymed
conversation (usually a recitation of a poem), Grandfather Clock
nodded off to sleep again. Cosmo "Gus" Allegretti provided the
voice to the Grandfather Clock character.
When the CAPTAIN KANGAROO show was cancelled in 1984, many of the
props on the set were simply discarded without any concern for
their possible historical value.
David E. Powell, a former CBS News employee chronicled this fact
in part of his article entitled "Mornings with the Captain
(1/27/2004) written for National Review Online:
"Not long afterward I arrived for work one day to see an old
friend amid the trash at the Broadcast Center loading dock. It was
Grandfather Clock. I wrestled him out of the other pieces of the
Captain Kangaroo set that were to be carted to the dump. I dragged
him aside, and then spent a little while trying to get someone at
CBS to recognize that he was an important TV-historical artifact,
which I finally succeeded in doing. Grandfather Clock was unwanted
and abandoned because, sadly, Captain Kangaroo had been canceled a
few months earlier."
Produced by Saban Entertainment, a new Grandfather Clock returned
to TV on the Fox Family Channel with the short-lived revival THE
NEW CAPTAIN KANGAROO SHOW/FFC/1997 starring John McDonough as the
Captain.
In the tradition of the old show, the Grandfather Clock character
still shares rhymes and riddles (and occasionally speaks in French
and Spanish) with a segment called "Finish My Rhyme."
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1956 Buster Brown
Premium - Keeshan- Miller Enterprises
8.25" x 11.25" Punch-out Assembly Panel
that makes a replica of Grandfather Clock
seen on the Captain Kangaroo program on
CBS. Click image to enlarge. |
One of the sets from
THE NEW CAPTAIN KANGAROO SHOW aired in
1997. In the background, you can see the
newest reincarnation of Grandfather Clock.
Click image to enlarge.
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