Street Gang (9 page)

As much as Stone disliked the office detail as a PA, he reveled in the time spent in the studio. “I was transfixed,” he said. “There was an energy and attitude and sense of shared purpose, and in that particular studio a delicious, dangerous, pungent sense of humor.”

In his memoir, Stone related an example of what went on behind the cameras, describing a calamity involving incompatible mammals who had lodged at the Treasure House one murderous night.

 

In later years, associate producer Norton Wright had two major responsibilities on
Captain Kangaroo
: to carefully review advertising copy that Keeshan would read on the air and to book variety talent, including animal acts. “If it was a kitty or doggy or a parakeet, Bob would do the segment,” Wright said. “But if it was a big animal or a dangerous one, he’d always give that task to Lumpy. Once, during a production rundown, Bob said, ‘What’s the animal today?’ and you could just tell by the look on his face that he was not interested in picking up a seal. ‘Lumpy, you handle it,’ he would say. Well, the cuddly little seal—who had been so wonderful in rehearsal—came out and went berserk under the lights. The seal affixed its jaw on Lumpy’s ear, and pretty soon, there was blood pouring down his neck,” Wright said. “The seal was hanging on for dear life.”

Keeshan could be a terrible tease and tormentor when it suited his mood. He liked to mock the high-wire tension of live television with an occasional practical joke during a live broadcast. This often happened while the control room was unspooling a four-minute episode of
The Adventures of Tom Terrific
, the delightfully spare animated shorts about an ingenious lad (Tom) and his sluggish pet (Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog).

During
Tom Terrific
, the studio crew would typically head out to the hallways for a smoke. Stone recalled that Keeshan would remain behind and “stealthily pass from camera to camera, unplugging the headsets and slipping them into his oversized Kangaroo pockets. When the stage manager called for a warning that we were about to come back live, the cameramen would snuff out their cigarettes and return, only to realize that they had been cut off completely from any contact with the director in the control room. There was no recourse. We were back on the air, live. Keeshan would amble around the set and presently would take one of the headsets from his pocket and explain its function. ‘This is called a headset, boys and girls. It’s a lot like the ones airplane pilots wear when they’re flying their big airplanes, and the pilots use them to talk to people on the ground. Why, if the pilots didn’t have these headsets, they wouldn’t know where to fly. There wouldn’t be anyone to tell them where to go and they might get lost—or even crash!’ ”

While Keeshan would indulge himself with such mischief, he brooked little nonsense from those who worked with him and for him. “He did not want to be shown up,” said associate producer Wright, who later served a term at Children’s Television Workshop before moving to Hollywood to become a producer of made-for-television films.

Wright said, “Bob would never talk about anything that had to do with politics on the show and was surprised one day when our puppeteer, Gus Allegretti, with Mr. Moose on his hand, piped up with, “So what do you think about Red China, Captain?” Keeshan froze for a beat before Mr. Moose completed his thought. “Do you think it goes well with a red tablecloth?”

 

From Jon Stone’s first days on the job, Keeshan’s regard for his audience made an immediate positive impression, as did the producer-star’s natural abilities to blend an ensemble while also excelling in his own on-camera role. “Bob was a brilliant performer, daily bringing to life the character he had so hastily but skillfully conceived,” Stone said. “
Kangaroo
was created on two bases: imitation of elements in children’s programming Bob admired and reaction to elements Bob detested.”

That Keeshan all but barred children from the set was directly attributable to his experiences on
Howdy Doody
. Rather than play to a studio audience jacked up on Tootsie Pops, he instead peered into the camera and, in direct address, imagined speaking to one preschooler at a time. Often, the Captain would pose a question to his young viewer, providing a pause to allow the child to think and respond. There was time for that on
Captain Kangaroo
, as there was later on
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood
.

In the early days, before the advent of videotape, Stone said Keeshan “was full of fun. Humor pervaded everything that went out on the air, much of it directed deliberately over the heads of the preschool target audience and right at the parent who might be watching at that moment. I learned early that television for children did not have to cause adults to retch. It was quite possible to entertain parents and older siblings and caregivers, folks watching in appliance stores and station managers without compromising any of the appeal that the program might have for the [preschool] audience.

“[Keeshan] was working a backbreaking schedule in his dual role of performer and producer, overseeing all aspects of the program, making sure his ideals and caveats were instilled in all the people involved,” Stone said. “And his ideals were exemplary.”

Like Miss Frances on
Ding Dong School
and Buffalo Bob on
Howdy Doody
, Keeshan was obliged to pitch products on air, but he did so under strict, self-defined limits: he would not eat or drink products on camera and would not sell to parents through children. “If I came across copy that said, essentially, ‘Hey kids, ask Mom and Dad to buy you . . .’ no matter how wholesome the product, I would have to make immediate changes in the copy,” Wright said. “The first thing Bob did each morning was read the cue cards. If I hadn’t caught something, he would force us into high gear. It meant getting an advertising agency on the phone to work through changing the wording for the commercial, with only minutes to spare until airtime.”

Keeshan would fly into a fury if he saw ad copy that asked a child to “Go get Mommy.” Stone recalled Keeshan’s “graphic and compelling” image to defend that rule: “Imagine a hapless mother being dragged from the toilet, panties around her ankles.”

Keeshan banned some products outright. “When Kenner Toys and Hasbro would want to introduce a weapon product, be it a gun or sword or spear, Bob would not accept the ad,” Wright said. “That put him on a collision course with the sales department, the lifeblood of the network. All hell would break loose.”

A dramatic standoff occurred in the late fall of 1964, when Keeshan refused to accept ads during the run-up to Christmas for a toy that could have been called Combat in a Box. Topper’s Johnny Seven O.M.A. (The One Man Army Gun) was a multiuse weapon that was at once a grenade and missile launcher, rifle, and tommy gun. It also had a removable pistol for whatever short-range warfare might erupt in the backyard.

The CBS sales department had signed a deal with Topper to air Johnny Seven commercials on Saturday morning shows, including
Captain Kangaroo
. When Keeshan refused to air them, he, along with his then executive producer, David D. Connell, was summoned to a meeting with representatives from Topper and CBS management. The network announced that it would be in violation of its contract if the spots did not air on
Captain Kangaroo
, and if Keeshan would not relent, his show would be canceled. “Bob, to his everlasting credit, stood firm,” Stone said. “He and Dave turned to leave the conference room. Then Bob turned back to the assembly and said, ‘Please remember that if the show is canceled, I will probably get a call from Jack Gould [of the
New York Times
]. As Captain Kangaroo would advise, I would have to tell the truth.’ ”

In the back of his mind, Keeshan knew that CBS chairman William Paley would likely have put a stop to any attempt to kill
Captain Kangaroo
. Paley had expressed his support of the show any number of times, in public and in private, and had shooed away the News Division every time it staged an attempt to commandeer the 8:00-9:00 a.m. hour.

Days after the tense meeting, the Johnny Seven battle ended with a victory for nonviolence. Not only were the commercials not going to air on
Captain Kangaroo
, but Keeshan was assured by CBS management that, in the future, standard advertising contracts would include a provision to allow individual shows to sign off on ads. “It was a true Frank Capra ending,” Stone said.

Connell, a Clark Kent type in conservative dress and black glasses, was a steadying influence for Keeshan. It was as if he knew what Keeshan would want or need in a situation even before his boss did. A company man and organizational wonder who worked ungodly hours, Connell rose quickly through the ranks. Unlike most of his peers at
Captain Kangaroo
, Connell had a background in education, earning an undergraduate teaching degree at the University of Michigan. His parents were vastly disappointed when, after serving in the air force during the Korean War, he returned to Michigan to pursue a master’s degree in speech. Their dream was for him to teach. His was to move to New York and find a job with a television network. Indeed, his thirty-two-page master’s thesis—“Network Television Employment”—was virtually a how-to manual for breaking into television. By following his own advice, Connell got what he was after, landing a spot in Lou Stone’s trainee program.

Regimented and dedicated to detail, to the point of being obsessive-compulsive, Connell was the production team’s station master. Under his coordination, the train always stayed on the tracks and left the depot on time. Behind every long-running television series is a man like Connell, who owned a plaque that said, “There’s no amount you can do so long as you don’t care who gets the credit.”

Character mattered to Keeshan. “It was no accident Bob surrounded himself with the people he did,” Stone said.“[They all] shared [his] conscience and instincts. Bob knew this about each of them, and by assembling this particular team, they were free from conflicts of taste. Had any of them been called on to create a new children’s program, as Bob had been, each one certainly would have come up with a show every bit as respectful of its audience as
Captain Kangaroo
.

“Then, too, Bob had a wonderful source of supply to augment this remarkable team: the CBS training program continually sent fresh young people to work on
Kangaroo
, and Bob scrutinized each new arrival, watched his performance, gauged his instincts and humor, then, when he found just the right person, plucked him out of the CBS program and put him on his own staff.”

He found one such person in Samuel Gibbon, the young caretaker of the Peanut Gallery who thought Buffalo Bob was full of bull.

 

Edward R. Murrow looked out toward Madison Avenue, illuminated by a stream of morning sunlight. He was standing by a corner window in contemplative silence, considering the pages from a tome on foreign policy plucked from a wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

Sam Gibbon was shown in to Murrow’s sanctum at CBS News on a spring afternoon in 1958, his arrival announced by Murrow’s assistant.

The door shut and forty-five awkward seconds passed, leaving Gibbon to wonder whether he should clear his throat or otherwise indicate that Mr. Murrow was, indeed, not alone. Gibbon shifted his weight from right to left and began to feel a solitary bead of perspiration run down his lower spine and trickle to his waist, a sweat spot developing on his blue Oxford cloth shirt, just above the belt line.

Staring down at the book now, Murrow finished a passage, “showing me his noble profile,” Gibbon said. “He then closed the book, put it back, and turned to me. It was just the most wonderfully theatrical moment, and I was in awe.”

Murrow neither asked to see Gibbon’s résumé nor engaged in pleasantries of any kind. “He really didn’t take notice of me, choosing instead to offer what amounted to a lecture about the future of television, its importance to the culture,” Gibbon recalled. “He said the role of television was to make the world aware of itself, the most prescient and sensible remark about television I’ve ever heard. I took that remark to have much wider significance than just news, and not many people were thinking that way back then. Murrow went on to describe the sort of person who would be necessary to carry the medium in that direction, and what he described was himself, a correspondent with an arsenal of abilities, including writing, performing, and directing.”