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The
Show:
I really love early television. Back in
the days when the medium was young,
no one really knew what the public would want to watch or how to bring
in
viewers. As a cost cutting measure the
shows were more often live than not, and that meant that the performers
had to
get it right the first time. One of the
earliest shows was a children's puppet show created by Burr Tillstrom, Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. Consisting
of a cast of puppets operated by
Tillstrom with a live host, comedienne and singer Fran Allison, the
program
first aired in 1947. To give you an idea
of how early that is, I Love Lucy and
the first Honeymooners sketch wouldn't
first appear until 1951, Mr. Television himself, Milton Berle, wouldn't
host
Texaco Star Theater until June of the following year and even Howdy
Doody
himself wasn't on the air until a couple of months after Tillstrom
started his
show. Running for just a few months shy
of a decade in it's original incarnation, and then appearing in several
new
versions over the following decades, Tillstrom and his creation had a
lasting
impact on television. He was inducted
into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1986.
Unfortunately there has been little in the way of Kukla,
Fran, and Ollie shows making
their way to DVD. There's a single but
very fun episode include in Shout! Factory's excellent Hiya
Kids! A 50's
Saturday Morning Box,
and there was a "clumsy, in some ways inept and overpriced" set of
later
episodes, released as Kukla,
Fran and Ollie - 60th Anniversary Premiere
Collector's Edition,
but aside from that, nada. Until
now. The Burr Tillstrom Copyright Trust
has gathered together 20 very early shows and released them in an
wonderful two
disc set, Kukla, Fran, and
Ollie - The First Episodes: 1949-1950. It's a great collection that will please even
fans too young to remember this original series.
For those who aren't familiar with the trio, Kukla and Ollie
are puppets, (Ollie is a dragon and Kukla is "a Kukla" as Ollie reveals
in one
of these shows) who interact with Fran, their friend.
The show also has a wide cast of other
puppets including the wanna-be opera diva Madame Ooglepuss, the
friendly (more
or less) Buelah Witch, and southern blowhard Colonel Crackie. The thing that makes the show so special, and
causes it to stand head and shoulders above other kids shows of the
era, is the
slightly bizarre off-kilter sense of humor that permeates the program. It takes a few episodes to really get the
hang of the humor, but it's surprisingly amusing even now.
Their rendition of Hansel and Gretel, where
no one, including Buelah Witch, wanted to play the evil witch and Kukla
and
Ollie got in a fight over who had to play the female lead is
wonderfully
comic. The introductions by the confused
narrator add a lot to the mayhem. Their
performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado was similarly
hilarious.
The best show presented in this collection has to be the one
that starts off the set, A Salute to Television. In
this one the trio welcomes some of the new
TV stations that are just starting to receive the show, and then they
warp up
the show with a marvelously comic song singing the praises of
television. "All hail television! Goodbye to gloom and sorrow."
All of these episodes were also ad-libbed too. That's
right, they went on live television
without a script, just some vague ideas of what they were going to do
and let
the show unfold as it would. You can
hear the piano player and stage hands laughing at times, but even more
amusing
is when Fran isn't sure what Burr (operating the puppets) is going for. There were a couple of times where Fran
excuses herself only to have Kukla say something to the effect of 'no
stay here
Fran." This gives the show a free
wheeling and spontaneous feel that is totally lacking in shows of today.
The DVD:
The 20 episodes, running either 15 or 30 minutes each, are
presented on a pair of DVDs that come in a single-width double case.
All of these episodes were broadcast live, but these were
saved thanks to Kinescope copies. In
these days before videotape the only way to preserve a live show was to
point a
camera at a monitor showing the broadcast and film it.
Needless to say there was some loss of
quality inherent in this method. All of
the shows in this set are Kinescopes but they've been cleaned up and
look and
sound better than I was expecting.
Audio:
The mono soundtrack does have some hiss and pops and the
dynamic range is very limited, but these DVDs reproduce the show better
than
the small screen and scratchy single paper cone speaker would back when
they
were first broadcast. The dialog does
get a bit muddled in a couple of parts, but in general it's easy to
hear the
dialog and follow the show. I never had
to strain to follow the shows, so I was very happy with the audio on
these.
Video:
Recorded between 1949 and 1954, the image quality is very
good for Kinescopes. Yes, the picture is
a bit soft and the contrast isn't as strong as it could be, but the
shows are
generally clear and easy on the eyes. It's
easy to tell that these have had work done on them since they look
better than
most Kinescopes from this time frame.
Extras:
As a bonus there are excerpts from two other shows, one
featuring Marlin Perkins (of Wild Kingdom
Fame) and the other with Gene Rayburn who later went on to host Match Game. These were great
extended clips and I'm glad
they were included.
Final Thoughts:
This is a great set that will hopefully find its way into a
lot of DVD collections. A highlight in
early television, Kukla, Fran, and Ollie are woefully ignored today,
and
hopefully this set will expose a new generation of viewers to the
amusing
comedy of this fantastic show. Highly
recommended. |
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