TFTP's Monochrome March: "Ding Dong School" from NBC (1953)

Posted to Internet Archive by user 'Robin_1990'
Length - 29:33

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

"Ding Dong School" was an early children's program that laid the groundwork for later programs such as "Romper Room", "Sesame Street", and especially "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood". Airing on NBC from 1952 to 1956, "Ding Dong School" was hosted by the matronly Frances Horwich (referred to on-screen as "Miss Frances"). Horwich was an educator who would later become NBC's head of children's programming.

This 1953 episode seems typical of the series. For its entirety, Horwich sits on a stool in front of a neutral backdrop and for each segment (including commercials) interacts with objects of various kinds that are wheeled in and out on carts. Miss Frances methodically blows bubbles from a bubble pipe, reads a storybook with a crib full of baby dolls by her side, makes commercial pitches for Kix cereal, the show's sponsor, and makes animal shapes out of a folded handkerchief.

Throughout Horwich maintains a presentational style the likes of which would later become the hallmark of Fred Rogers on his program--and for which Horwich in "Ding Dong School" serves as a precursor and perhaps an inspiration. First, she addresses the TV camera as if it is the child viewer; she looks directly into the camera as if making eye contact with a child and speaks to it as if conversing with a child. Also, her tone of voice is soothing and mellifluent, very easy on the ears. This style of address and her style of program is one that clearly had some influence on later kids' TV, and in this way "Ding Dong School" is a pioneer of children's programming.