There was also Grandee the Talking Piano! This show's pedigree goes back to 1902 when the Brown Shoe Company purchased the rights to Buster Brown comic strip in The New York Herald. It progressed through to radio and then TV.
Ed McConnell was the front man who transferred from radio to TV. He worked a live kid's audience, but as his health faded, he found it easier to work in a dead studio with taped audience. When McConnell died and Andy Devine took over (he was a famed sidekick in some matinée movie westerns), he carried on with the taped audience. Trouble is, it was the same footage, the same audience week after week. Devine had more gimmicks and less natural laughs, but it was still fun and a little anarchic, especially with the Froggy the Gremlin, a cross between Bart Simpson and the Crazy Frog.
More information at Bygonetv.com
Ed McConnell was the front man who transferred from radio to TV. He worked a live kid's audience, but as his health faded, he found it easier to work in a dead studio with taped audience. When McConnell died and Andy Devine took over (he was a famed sidekick in some matinée movie westerns), he carried on with the taped audience. Trouble is, it was the same footage, the same audience week after week. Devine had more gimmicks and less natural laughs, but it was still fun and a little anarchic, especially with the Froggy the Gremlin, a cross between Bart Simpson and the Crazy Frog.
More information at Bygonetv.com