It’s Howdy Doody Time??? The X Rated, Ultimate Inside Story!

It’s Howdy Doody Time??? The X Rated, Ultimate Inside Story!

This is the only place you will ever read about of some of the backstage shenanigans on the world’s most famous kids show. Let me start by saying that these things only happened in rehearsals. When children were on the set, everything was squeaky clean and on the up and up, but…it was a different story when they weren’t.

What follows is a first hand account from our old friend Frank Merklien who started as an NBC cameraman in March of 1948. Till 1961, Frank worked almost every show and was one of the first to work at NBC’s first color studio at The Colonial Theater. He was on Camera 2 on the ‘Today’ show’s debut and shot Howdy Doody in black and white and color.

Both events took place long before anyone had ever even thought of sexual harassment, so with the stage set, here we go, and speaking of stages…that’s where part one takes place. Although the show started in Studio 3H, Howdy was done from 8G for a few weeks for some updates in 3H.

It seems that the puppet stage was put up in front of a window in 8G that tour guides liked to bring visitors to. For that week, it blocked the view of the studio as the raised stage, the puppet masters stood on, backed up almost to it and on their first day in 8G, everybody on the tour got a real eye full! The very tall Dayton Allen played Pierre The Chef and was the voice of Mr. Bluster. The very short Rhoda Mann was then the voice of Howdy. As they stood on the raised platform, the ever playful comedian that he was, Dayton Allen introduced Rhoda and Howdy to “Mr. Ding Dong”. Yes. He whipped it out. As fate would have it, naturally there was a tour group outside the window and as the story goes, the female page leading the very surprised group fainted. Both Mann and Allen were fired on the spot by Buffalo Bob.

Speaking of Buffalo Bob Smith, he had a playful streak too! Usually the straight arrow, Bob had one favorite target…the production secretary. Live spots were a fact of life and occasionally had to be done from a set behind the camera that faced away from the kids. It so happened that one of these had to be done with Bob seated to the left of a prop with the product in his left hand. The newly rewritten script was being held by the production secretary who was sitting to the left of Bob, and very close. As he read the script live into a tightly framed shot, he put his right hand on her leg and began moving it up, ever so slowly. It was a two page script and, since she was using both hands, could not stop the advancing hand, or so Bob thought. She managed to give him a good stomping with her left high heel and he let out a surprised yelp. Only the production secretary, the host and the cameraman, our buddy Frank, ever knew why.

Up top is Dayton Allen as Pierre The Chef, in the center Rhoda Mann and on the bottom, an Allan character colage from other shows.

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