TFTP Kids: "Calvin and the Colonel" from ABC (Feb. 3, 1962)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Tomorrowpictures.TV'
Length - 28:00

The early-1960s cartoon series "Calvin and the Colonel" is one of the more interesting phenomena of media history. The show, created and voiced by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll of "Amos n' Andy" fame, is an obvious adaptation of that earlier, more famous and more controversial program.

Created shortly after "Amos n' Andy" ended on radio in 1960, and several years after the "Amos n' Andy" television show's brief but controversial run, "Calvin and the Colonel" is a clear attempt on the part of Gosden and Correll to take the elements that had become questionable about "Amos n' Andy"--the voice characterizations of white men impersonating blacks, the stereotypical situations the characters found themselves in--and transplant them to a less threatening cartoon format where the characters were animals.

The episode above, titled "Wheeling and Dealing" and originally aired on February 3, 1962, is from about midway through the program's one-season 1961-62 run. At a time when prime-time cartoon programs were prevalent (this was the height of the popularity of "The Flintstones"), "Calvin and the Colonel" started out in prime-time in October and November of 1961 before being transferred to Saturday morning until its June 1962 cancellation.

The two lead characters are Calvin T. Burnside, a dimwitted bear (voiced by Correll), and Colonel Montgomery J. Klaxon, a wily fox (voiced by Gosden). Calvin and the Colonel propagate an insurance scam in which they try to get and cash in on auto insurance for the Colonel's nephew's car--after it had already been in an accident. This plot was one that would have been right at home in "Amos n' Andy".