October 13, 1947…”Kukla, Fran & Ollie” Debuts On Chicago’s WBKB
At the link is a timeline of the shows milestones, including their October 13, 1947 debut as “The Junior Jamboree” on WBKB in Chicago, the move to WNBQ and NBC, and their last show, 10 years later, which was also on WBKB. http://kukla.tv/history.html
In the five years that the show ran on NBC nationally, fan mail averaged 5,000 letters a day, and the show’s ratings rivaled Milton Burle’s and even Ed Sullivan’s at CBS.
The photo is of one of the early shows at WBKB. The dolly was a home-made rig, with the camera mounted on a barber’s chair. Thanks for the memories, Burr, Fran, Kukla and Ollie! -Bobby Ellerbee
I loved watching The Kuklapolitans when I was a kid.
Fran Allison raised a lot of kids in the early 50’s
We all loved them. Burr was great and so was Fran.
WBKB stood for Balaban & Katz, the owners of a midwest theater chain affiliated with Paramount until the 1949 consent decree forced the 5 major studios to divest themselves of their theater chains. The station started as W9XBK. It was first on channel 2, then switched to channel 7 (the former WENR-TV). It would remain on channel 7 until 1968 when 7 became WLS-TV.
http://www.earlytelevision.org/w9xbk.html
My brother and I watched every afternoon.
Bobbie mentioned this previously, but it’s interesting that the TK 30 in this photo is mounted on the base of a barber’s chair!
I didn’t realize it was that old.