Uncle Bert Lynn, Host of Looney Town on KPRC

I don't recall where this pictures came from, but I may have found it on the Facebook page, "Southwest Houston - Do you remember when ... ?"   If you're a Facebook subscriber, you may want to check it out.

Uncle Bert Lynn hosted a kids' show on KPRC TV in the 1950s.  It was called "Looney Town."  I vaguely recall watching it.  One of my classmates has told me she was on the show.

I found this comment on another Web site about Houston history: 

"That sailboat place inbound between Park Place and the South Loop was and still is Lynn's Sailboats. It was opened and owned for a good many years by the late Bert Lynn, who owned Lynn's Music Shop on Telephone at Park Place and was also Uncle Bert Lynn on KPRC TV's Looney Town in the mid '50s. That was an afternoon kid show a lot like the show Kitirik did on channel 13.

As this person indicates, Bert Lynn had the misfortune of competing with Kitirik.  She beat him hands down.
 

KPRC Transmitter Located in Sugar Land, 1930

An anonymous former employee of KPRC moderates a Facebook group devoted to the history of the KPRC radio and television stations.  I recommend it highly to anyone interested in Houston's broadcasting history.  The blog includes the following photos of the KPRC transmission tower located on the northwest quadrant where Eldridge Road intersects Highway-90A.  Actually, Eldridge Road was known as KPRC Road even when I was a child.

I think I can find the exact date, but I'm too lazy to do it right now.  Anyway, the tower and transmitter building stayed in Sugar Land for a very short time around 1929/30 -- just a year or so.  I think it moved to La Porte and then other locations through the '30s and '40s.  The picture above shows a snow-covered scene from the winter of 1930.

The following picture shows the equipment room in the building.

The next picture shows the engineer and his wife in May, 1926 before their move to the Sugar Land transmitter station.

Here's what the blogger said about them:

"KPRC's first couple, Olin S Brown and his wife Ruby Jo, at the piano in KPRC Radio's solo studio on the 22nd floor of the Post-Dispatch building. Olin and Ruby both worked at the station, he as remote engineer, she as studio hostess and secretary to Alfred P. Daniel. Later they lived at the transmitter site in Sugar Land. In 1934 they moved to Dallas where Olin worked for WFAA until his retirement in 1967."

Sometime after KPRC left the transmitter station, it became the home (minus the tower) of Mr. and Mrs. A. H. Weth.  He was Chief Engineer at Imperial Sugar.
  
My thanks go to the anonymous employee moderating the KPRC Facebook group.  I would have linked directly to his photos, but I couldn't find a way that non-Facebook viewers could get access.
 

Early Photos of the KPRC TV Studios near Post Oak & Westheimer

I think the early history of Houston television is fascinating.  Jack Harris was KPRC's first station manager.  I can recommend his book,"The Fault Does Not Lie With Your Set."  Its only drawback is that it doesn't include Kitirik since she was on rival station KTRK.

Open House at KPRC Studios in 1953.

J. R. Gonzales runs a good blog on Bayou City History.  He's posted some good photos from the Chronicle archive showing the old KPRC studios that stood just south of present-day Galleria.  You may remember seeing the Quonset hut and antenna.  I'd forgotten that the Post Oak Drive In was so close by.  You'll see how close in the aerial photos.

Link to BCH blog entry on the KPRC studios.

America's Got Talent, 1950s Style

My aunt sent me this video link to acrobat/comedian Larry Griswold's performance on Frank Sinatra's television show that aired on November 13, 1951. I thought it was amazing. (If the audience screams, it's got to be good.)

I don't think this kind of act still exists.

Andy's Gang, a Kid's TV Show from the mid-1950s

This was one of my favorite Saturday morning shows in the mid-1950s. The original host was Smilin' Ed O'Connell, and the show's name was Smilin' Ed's Gang. He died in 1954 - I think. I can barely remember him, but I remember Andy Devine's version of the show pretty well.

As you can see from the clip, Buster Brown Shoes was the sponsor. (I wore Buster Brown Shoes. I can remember buying them at a shoe store in Rosenberg.) Jerry Maren, a midget, played Buster Brown and did the ads in live-action with his dog, Tige. (You can see Maren in the introduction.)

The show had skits with puppets, like Midnight the Cat and Froggie The Gremlin. He always appeared or disappeared when he 'plunked his magic twanger.' The show usually had a serial in it. The only one I can remember was one involving a young boy in India who had all types of adventures.

What impressed me most back then was the audience. They had a theater full of kids who appeared to be unsupervised. They went ape all through the show. You could always hear them screaming, yelling, and laughing to beat the band. Sometime the camera would pan the theater and kids seemed to be everywhere, jumping up and down in their seats. You get a sense of the mayhem at the end of this clip, although I recall seeing scenes where they were much rowdier. Maybe it's just my imagination.

A Couple of Old TV Beer Ads

Does anyone else remember these beer ads? I do. I think Hamm's was a late-comer to our market. It seems like I first saw these ads in the early 1960s. Lone Star, Falstaff, Schlitz, and Jax owned the market back in the '50s.



Speaking of Jax Beer, here's a commercial I remember pretty well. Mike Nichols and Elaine May wrote and performed it. They used the same skit for other regional beers. As I recall, they did several different animated commercials for Jax.

Curly Fox & Texas Ruby

I remember watching a local afternoon television show on KPRC back in the mid to late 50s. It was called "Matinee" and Dick Gottlieb was its host. They had local talent, which included Johnny Nash, who was just a teenager at the time.

I recall another pair of artists featured on the show, Curly Fox and Texas Ruby. They had a C&W band. Curly played the fiddle and sang. Ruby sang and played guitar. I found some of their work on YouTube and liked it.

Pat Schiller Bono (DHS '65) told me she and Linda Goerlitz Tamburri (DHS '66) were related to Curly and Ruby. Of course, I never knew that.

I'm going to see if Jerry Naill is on YouTube. (Update: I've found a newsreel clip of the Houston premiere of "Tomboy And The Champ" in 1961. See above.)

A Houston Television Schedule for Thursday, July 12, 1962

From TV Guide, Southeast Texas Edition.
Note the difference in ABC's daytime
schedule vs. CBS and NBC's.

KPRC Ch. 2 (NBC)

7 AM Today (John Chancellor)
9 AM Say When
9:30 Play Your Hunch (COLOR)
10 AM Price Is Right (Cullen) (COLOR)
10:30 Concentration
11 AM Your First Impression (COLOR)
11:30 Truth Or Consequences
11:55 NBC News--Ray Scherer
12 N Topper
12:30 Highway Patrol
1 PM Jan Murray (COLOR)
1:25 NBC News--Floyd Kalber
1:30 Loretta Young
2 PM Young Dr. Malone
2:30 Our Five Daughters
3 PM Make Room For Daddy
3:30 Captain Bob (pre-empts Here's Hollywood)
4 PM Dick Tracy (cartoon) (COLOR)
4:05 Movie: "The Cockeyed Miracle"
5:40 Almanac Newsreel (an event on this
day in history--I've also found this
on WKYT Lexington, KY)
5:45 Huntley-Brinkley Report (Edwin Newman
subs for David Brinkley)
6 PM News
6:10 Sports
6:15 News
6:25 Weather
6:30 Outlaws
7:30 Dr. Kildare
8:30 Hazel
9 PM Sing Along With Mitch (COLOR)
10 PM News
10:15 Weather And Sports
10:30 Tonight Show (COLOR) (Jimmy Dean hosts
this week. This is the interim between
Paar and Carson.)
12 M Consult Dr. Brothers
12:10 Debbie Drake

KUHT Ch. 8 (NET)

5:30 World Traveler
5:45 Americans At Work
6 PM What's New
6:30 Friendly Giant
6:45 Industry On Parade
7 PM Achievement
7:30 Human Rights
8 PM Your Marriage
8:30 Travel Club
9 PM Folksay
9:30 Written Word
10 PM Frontiers Of Science

KHOU Ch. 11 (CBS)

7 AM News
7:15 Mr. Caboose, Engineer
8 AM Captain Kangaroo
9 AM Calendar (Harry Reasoner)
9:30 I Love Lucy
10 AM Verdict Is Yours
10:30 Brighter Day
10:55 CBS News--Harry Reasoner
11 AM Love Of Life
11:30 Search For Tomorrow
11:45 Guiding Light
12 N News (one of the anchors is
Ron Stone, later a legend on
Ch. 2)
12:15 Lee Shepherd (women's show)
12:30 As The World Turns
1 PM Password
1:30 House Party
2 PM Millionaire (a man who detonates
bombs for a living receives the
check today)
2:30 To Tell The Truth
2:55 CBS News--Douglas Edwards
3 PM Secret Storm
3:30 Edge Of Night
4 PM Mahalia Jackson Sings
4:05 Movie: "Zanzibar"
5:30 Whirlybirds
6 PM News
6:10 Weather
6:15 CBS News (Charles Collingwood
subs for Walter Cronkite)
6:30 Accent
7 PM Frontier Circus
8 PM Men Into Space (pre-empts
Brenner)
8:30 Zane Grey Theater (Edward G. Robinson
and son Edward Jr. in a story of a farmer
turned bitter when his son joins the
Confederate Army.)
9 PM Nighttime Calendar (the daytime show has
a special nighttime edition, with Vivian
Vance, Bob and Ray, and Bob Keeshan)
10 PM News
10:10 Weather
10:15 Movie: "Without Warning"
12 M News

KTRK Ch. 13 (ABC)

6 AM Operation Lift
6:30 Cadet Don
7:30 News
8 AM Cadet Don continues
8:30 People Are Funny
9 AM Jack LaLanne
9:30 Movie: "Rainmakers"
11 AM Tennessee Ernie Ford
11:30 Yours For A Song
12 N Jane Wyman
12:30 Camouflage
12:55 ABC News--Alex Dreier
1 PM News
1:30 Dragnet (the '50s episodes with
Ben Alexander as Jack Webb's
partner)
2 PM Day In Court
2:30 Seven Keys
3 PM Queen For A Day
3:30 Who Do You Trust?
4 PM American Bandstand
4:30 Rocky And His Friends
5 PM Kitirik's Clubhouse (Kitirik is
KTRK spelled phonetically)
5:25 Huckleberry Hound
5:55 News, Weather, Sports
6:15 ABC News--Ron Cochran
6:30 Ozzie And Harriet
7 PM Donna Reed
7:30 Real McCoys
8 PM My Three Sons
8:30 King Of Diamonds (Broderick
Crawford's unsuccessful followup
to Highway Patrol--pre-empts The
Law And Mr. Jones.)
9 PM Untouchables
10 PM News, Weather, Sports
10:20 ABC News Final
10:30 Hong Kong
11:30 Follow That Man (syndicated title
for Man Against Crime, with Ralph
Bellamy)

"The Outer Limits" And A Little More

I wonder if you remember a television show that debuted in 1963. It was called "The Outer Limits." I was in the 8th grade and became a big fan. My mother and her sister owned and operated a private kindergarten, "The Merry Moppets." It was a great job for my mother and did quite well. Anyway, we ate out a lot in those days because she didn't want to cook. Don't start throwing rocks at my dad. He was worn out from a day at the office, so we'd eat out quite a lot. The usual routine was that my parents and my brother would pick me up at school after sports practice (football, basketball, or track), and we'd drive to some place like Wyatt's Cafeteria in Sharpstown Mall, Paul's BBQ Shack on South Post Oak, or maybe Larry's Mexican Restaurant in Richmond. Wherever we went, I insisted that we get back in time to watch "The Outer Limits." Since my parents seemed to like the show, we rarely missed the start.

I can think of at least one time when we may have missed the show. For some reason my parents couldn't meet each other before picking me up at the school gym at Sugar Land Junior High School. They came in separate cars, so we drove off to a restaurant in the family car and left my dad's car parked on Lakeview Drive next to the gym.

As we came back from the restaurant and went to pick up my dad's car, we noticed a commotion down the street. I think there were flashing red lights. As we got closer we noticed glass and metal parts glistening in the street. (Dusk was setting.) Then we could see the carcass of my dad's old blue Ford knocked out of the street almost to the wall of the gym. I don't recall who it was, but a woman wasn't paying attention and bashed the back of the parked car pretty hard. She wasn't hurt, and I can't recall what happened to her car. She and her car were gone by the time we got there.

The funny thing is that my dad had the car repaired and drove it several more years. The repair shop did a good job. You couldn't tell the car had ever been whacked.

Well, back to "The Outer Limits." I rented a DVD of the show's first season and watched 8 episodes. They were terrific. I recommend them highly if you liked "The Twilight Zone." Click here if you want to learn more about the show. BTW, the guy with the big bald head and pointy ears on the linked page is David McCallum, who played Illya Kuryakin in "The Man from U.N.C.L.E."