Anybody Know What Time it is? It's WHIZZO time!

Who's always smiling never sad?
Whizzo!
Who makes the boys and girls so glad?
Whizzo!
Who's that jolly fellow, with the big red shiny nose,
Dressed in the craziest mixed up clothes from his head down to his toes.
He has a great big trunk of tricks.
Whizzo!
He'll sing a song or do a dance for you.
And when you're sad he'll make you glad.
The very best friend you ever had.
Whizzo the Clown, that's who!

I remember Whizzo, right along with Howdy Doody. I was so jealous of my older cousin, Larry, who actually got to go and be on Whizzo's show. Though I never met Whizzo in person, I have to thank him for some very happy times during my childhood.

I found this brief history of Whizzo in one of the strangest places, an eBay ad for some old home movies. I'm not sure if it's original or copied from somewhere. But I found it entertaining:

Whizzo, Kansas City's own television entertainer, was Frank Wiziarde, a boy born in Westmoreland, Kansas who joined his parents in a vaudeville act when he was only six
years old.

Vaudeville was popular entertainment in the early part of the 20th century. Comics, singers, dancers and acrobats appeared in thousands of theaters across the country. The Wiziardes performed somersaults and other acrobatics on a thin wire, seven feet from the stage floor, ten times every day. Frank Wiziarde grew up watching from backstage, later giving credit to these performances as his clown training.

By the early 1930s, vaudeville was dying, losing audiences to movie houses and radio. Wiziarde soon started working in radio, which brought him to Kansas City and led him to television, transforming him into Whizzo the Clown.

In the early days of television, networks did not program daytime shows, so local stations had to fill the time slots. Wiziarde worked as a director at KMBC-TV, and the station asked him to come up with an idea for a children's show. His idea was Whizzo.

The show went on the air in 1954. Whizzo jumped out from behind a curtain, tripped over items scattered around his set and sang the song he composed, "Who's always smiling, never sad? It's Whizzo!" He tried tricks that usually fizzled and then introduced cartoon films. Kids were invited to the show to be dressed in clown costumes and join the singing and dancing. Nearly every kid in town knew the Whizzo song and many of today's baby boomers can sing all of the verses.

Whizzo remained on KMBC-TV for 15 years before moving to KCMO-TV and then to a Topeka television station. He was invited by President Reagan in 1983 to entertain children at the annual Easter Egg Hunt at the White House. Kansas City's Mayor H. Roe Bartle once predicted that if kids could vote, Whizzo would be Mayor of Kansas City.

The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus played at Kemper Arena the day that Whizzo the Clown died in 1987.

posted by B.G. Roberts @ 8:31 AM