TFTP Kids: "Bozo's Circus" from WGN/Chicago (1968)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Brian P. Collins'
Length - 56:10

Bozo the Clown is a legendary children's TV character that appeared in local kids' programs in various cities but nowhere as famously as in Chicago on WGN-TV. The Bozo character had been around since the late-1940s on children's record albums and by the late-'50s had begun to be franchised for television. WGN started to air "Bozo's Circus" in 1961 as a midday program aimed at kids who were home from school over the lunch hour.

The episode above is from 1968 and features Bozo (Bob Bell), Ringmaster Ned (Ned Clarke) who was the nominal host of the program, and Sandy the Clown (Don Sandburg). The cast engages in a number of shenanigans, including an attempt at plate-spinning by Bozo and a human-marionette act in which Bozo pulls the strings on Sandy. A Bozo cartoon is shown and two lucky kids (one boy and one girl) from the studio audience get to play the "Grand Prize Game".

This game was the centerpiece of the program into the 1980s, after WGN had begun to be carried on cable systems nationally and the program shifted to an early-morning timeslot (with a new name, "The Bozo Show"). In the "Grand Prize Game", kids attempted to toss ping-pong balls into a series of six buckets, with each successful toss resulting in a group of prizes, progressively more valuable as the game proceeded from bucket #1 to bucket #6. This 1968 episode (which includes original commercial breaks) ends with another signature segment of the Bozo show--the grand march that closes the program.