Garfield Goose and Friends facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Garfield Goose and Friends |
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Romberg Rabbit, Beauregard Burnside III, Garfield Goose, Mackintosh Mouse, Frazier Thomas and Chris Goose on Garfield Goose and Friends.
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| Genre | Children's program |
| Created by | Frazier Thomas |
| Written by | Frazier Thomas |
| Directed by | Ron Weiner |
| Starring | Frazier Thomas Roy Brown |
| Theme music composer | Ethel Smith |
| Opening theme | "Monkey on a String" Trumpets heard are from "Cinderella" and were added through editing. |
| Ending theme | "Monkey on a String" |
| Country of origin | USA |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 24 (2 on WBKB/WBBM, 1 on WBKB (now WLS), 21 on WGN) |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Frazier Thomas |
| Release | |
| Original network | WBKB-TV/WBBM-TV (1952–1954) WBKB-TV (now WLS-TV) (1954–1955) |
| Original release | September 29, 1952 – October 1, 1976 |
Garfield Goose and Friends is a children's television show produced by WGN-TV in Chicago, Illinois, United States from 1955 to 1976. The show was known as Garfield Goose and Friend from 1952 to 1955 when it aired on WBKB and WBBM-TV. It was the longest running puppet show on television until Sesame Street broke that record. The host of the show was Frazier Thomas, who did all of the talking. The show centered on a clacking goose puppet named Garfield Goose, who considered himself "King of the United States." There were many other puppet characters such as Romberg Rabbit, Macintosh Mouse, Chris Goose (Garfield's nephew who was born on Christmas, hence "Christmas Goose") and a sleepy bloodhound called Beauregard Burnside III (whose name happened to be a mix of two American Civil War generals). The show used a "Little Theater Screen", upon which the camera would zoom before cartoons such as Commander McBragg, The Funny Company, Clutch Cargo, Mr. Magoo, Jay Ward, Hanna-Barbera, Space Angel and The Mighty Hercules were broadcast.
Aftermath
After quitting the show early on and against Frazier Thomas and Roy Brown's wishes, Bruce and Claire Newton mounted a live, traveling Garfield Goose Telepuppets show at neighborhood events for many years after the series had gone off the air, alongside other non-Garfield Goose puppets built and performed by the pair for other shows. To Thomas and Brown's chagrin, WGN-TV management chose not to pursue the matter. Although Bruce Newton would later claim his traveling show featured the first Garfield Goose puppet used on WBKB-TV, a 1991 news story described this puppet as a prototype. After Thomas' death, Newton attempted to claim that Garfield Goose was entirely his idea. The general manager of WBKB-TV at the time the program first went on the air, Sterling "Red" Quinlan, says it was Frazier Thomas who came up with the concept of Garfield Goose.
As often happened during the 1950s and early 1960s (such as with The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson or the first Super Bowl game), Garfield Goose and Friends aired live for much of its history. WGN did not keep many tapes of its local productions, including Garfield Goose And Friends. Rather, since the reels of videotape were very costly, they were thriftily recycled. Station management did not foresee how valuable recordings of these broadcasts would have become. Only four complete episodes were preserved: March 14–15, 1974, and September 9–10, 1976 (the latter two being the final two shows aired in the series).
In December 2005, WGN-TV ran a primetime special called Bozo, Gar and Ray: WGN TV Classics, which carried the earliest known saved clip of the show, wherein Garfield Goose had "luckily" gotten hold of tickets to the 1959 World Series at Chicago's Comiskey Park. As it happened at the time of this 2005 broadcast, the White Sox had won the 2005 World Series, which moreover was their first World Series appearance since 1959. Additional color kinescope footage from 1965 came from a vintage WGN-TV sales film which also includes some scenes from Bozo's Circus. The broadcast garnered #1 ratings in the Chicago market and is rerun annually during the holiday season.
In 2005, the Museum of Broadcast Communications awarded WGN-TV's Studio 1 a plaque to commemorate the forty years of children's television broadcast from the studio. Garfield Goose and Friends with a likeness of Frazier Thomas and Garfield, is on the plaque along with Ray Rayner for Ray Rayner and Friends and Bob Bell with Bozo's Circus.
Little Theater Screen segments
Images for kids
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Ad for the show before July 1953 when WBBM-TV began to broadcast as Channel 2.
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Geronimo, the butler, arrives: Thanksgiving Day, 1953.
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Frazier and Garfield join Bozo's Circus in 1976. Roy Brown (Cooky the Clown) and Bob Bell (Bozo) are also pictured.
