The Wallace and Ladmo Show facts for kids

The Wallace and Ladmo Show, also known as It's Wallace? and Wallace & Company, was a children's television show produced by and aired on KPHO-TV (Channel 5) in Phoenix, Arizona, from April 1, 1954, to December 29, 1989. For most of its 35-year run, it was broadcast in the morning, Monday through Friday, and usually live.

Ladmo Bags

A Ladmo Bag

In the mid-1960s, the Ladmo Bag first appeared on the show. Prior to this, children who were winners of one of the many ongoing contests run by the program, were invited on the show to pick a prize from the "Toy Cottage". Often they would have a difficult time choosing which prize they wanted, leading to delays and slowing the pace of the show. Wallace credits Pat McMahon with coming up with the idea, of putting items from the show's sponsors in a bag, and giving that to the winner instead. The Ladmo Bag could also be won by children in the in-studio audience or at stage performances. They were paper grocery bags filled with candy, potato chips, cans of soda, assorted coupons and so on.

To Wallace and Ladmo fans and collectors, an authentic Ladmo Bag from the original show can be worth a considerable amount of money. However, very few of these bags still exist intact, as most children that won the prizes consumed the content inside and discarded the bag. Some natives of the Phoenix area use the expression "I never got a Ladmo Bag when I was a kid" as a metaphor for "I had a deprived childhood."

The last Ladmo bag, on the final telecast, was given to Wallace in a symbolic gesture by Ladmo. Although Kwiatkowski died on Wednesday March 2, 1994, select people attending events like the Arizona State Fair would still win Ladmo bags as recently as 2014. Bill Thompson (Wallace) died on July 23, 2014.

In 2015, Pat McMahon revealed that the seating chart, ostensibly used to determine the winner of the Ladmo Bag during the show, was actually a blank sheet of paper. According to McMahon, Wallace would simply choose a seat at random.

Inmates of the Maricopa County jail have been known to call the bags of food given to them as "Ladmo Bags".

Plays

In recent years there have been two plays written about the show. The first play follows Wallace, Ladmo, Pat and Mike Condello as they struggle to hold the show together when the parody band, Hub Kapp and the Wheels, is offered a record deal with Capitol Records. The second play deals with the death of Ladmo from cancer. The first play was performed two times at the Herberger Theater Center in downtown Phoenix, with several celebrities showing up as "Time Machine" guests, including Alice Cooper. The plays were all written by Ben Tyler with input from both Thompson and McMahon.

Museum exhibits

The Wallace and Ladmo Show has been the subject of several museum exhibits over the years. In 2009, two different exhibits about the show's history were on view: one at the Arizona Historical Society in Tempe (AHS has over 2,500 Wallace and Ladmo items in their collection), and the other at the Mesa Historical Museum. There is also a permanent exhibit in the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix.

Legacy

a mural featuring Wallace, Gerald, and Ladmo

On April 1, 2015, the show's 61st anniversary, the creation of The Wallace and Ladmo Foundation was announced. The goal of the foundation is to support Arizona children in the performing arts.