MISSING FOR FOUR DECADES!!!! RAGS THE CLOWN HAS BEEN FOUND!!!! PRESENTING A CONVERSATION WITH CHRIS GRANTZ (SHEPPARD) WHO PLAYED RAGS THE CLOWN ON WQAD'S BOZO'S BIG TOP!!!!

Actually Patches was quite young as well. I was really young - sixteen, seventeen and eighteen years old during the duration of the show. I started on the show when I was sixteen and had my birthday. I was then 17 and a Junior at Moline High School. It has been so many years, however, I would guess that Patches would have been twenty-five or so. Keith Andrews, who played Bozo, was older, of course, and I would think that he was in his forties.

I started out in drama in 7th grade when I went to Wilson Junior High. The other schools were Coolidge and John Deere. I don't know how it is now, if it is still the same, but back then Moline had some "drama rivalries" between the Junior Highs. We would go and see each others shows to see what the other kids were doing. That was under Don Florence who was the director there for a long time. That is what peaked my interest in acting.

When I got to Moline High School we were doing four plays a year. For all of us Drama Geeks, that was just not enough for us so we got involved in the Quad City Music Guild. One time we were doing a show at Music Guild and the set director started talking about how he was going to be on this new kids TV show, Bozo's Big Top. He was going to play the part of Patches the Clown and they were going to have a Shrine clown on every week. As a result, he was trying to get his costume together. He had this top hat but he wanted it to look crushed because he was going to be this sort of Hobo character. I said "well I will do this for costume for you" because when you are in drama you take care of the sets and costumes and pretty much everything.

So I took his hat and crushed it down and attached it with a piece of thread so it would stay crushed down. I was going to give it to him over at WQAD but by the time I got there the station was closed except for a back door which was open. I walked in the back door and nobody stopped me. I found him and I said "here is your hat". He said "how did you get in here?" I said "well, the back door was open." So that is when we started talking. I sat there and listened to him for a while and then I said "So, you are going to do this live on Saturday mornings, there is going to be all kinds of kids there and there will also be the WQAD staff, my question is who is going to take all of the little girls to the bathroom?!" It stopped him dead in his tracks because they were going to have a live TV audience, half of which would be little girls, and there would not even be a female WQAD secretary there to help them since it was on Saturday. Keith Andrews was there and he said "Look, we do not have a Shrine clown for the first week. If you show up in costume, we will put you on." I said, great!

This was on a Tuesday night when he told me that I could be on the show the next Saturday. Thankfully my mom was always game for something like this so she went & helped me with a pair of bloomers I had which came from the a part I played in Oklahoma when I was in ninth grade. We shortened the bloomers and added the skirt. It could not cost too much because it was for one week. We got the costume and I came up with the face paint for the character at home in my bathroom. We shortened the bloomers and added the skirt and that is how I became Rags the Clown! I showed up the first time like they told me to. After the first show the director came up to me and said "You two guys (Bozo and Patches) were terrible but you (Rags) get to stay!" Everyone got a big laugh out of that and they decided that having a different clown on every week would be disruptive because you could not get any kind of repertoire going and so that is how I got the job as Rags the Clown on Bozo's Big Top!

They did not have any money to pay me so I did it for free for the first year and one-half or so. We also did personal appearances. Keith (Bozo) did not always come. Patches and I did several appearances by ourselves. WQAD had a softball team. This team would go to different games and occasionally they would hire us to go along but they would not let me go with the team because I was a seventeen year old girl. They were not going to just throw me on the bus with the WQAD All Stars all guy team! So I would have to go to these events with either Keith or the guy who played Patches. It was just so much fun. I remember most of it really well. We even were able to skate with the Ice Capades! Wow! That was really incredible. We also were able to be a part of the circus when it came to town. One of the lions had just given birth to cubs and the mother was rejecting them. I was able to feed one of the cubs as a result. I was even able to ride an elephant. All of this stuff to me as a seventeen year old kid was just amazing! I finally did get paid after I was on the show for awhile. I told my brother how much I got paid and he just about fell over. The pay was $10 an hour. What I did not tell him was it was a half-hour show so I was really only making five bucks a week. It was certainly worth it because I received an enormous amount of experience. I also remember being at the Rock Island County Fair. WQAD had most of the "personalities" make an appearance in their tent. I just remember that it was SO hot and we couldn't wipe our faces or the make-up would come off. We had our pictures taken and signed autographs on the promo card.

There was a dance show that came on after our show. Bozo started at 10:30am on Saturday mornings and the dance show started at 12:30 or 1pm. I used to hang around and learn about cameras and directing. I learned an awful lot about television during this time period. That was when I decided that I wanted to be a broadcasting major in college.

Bozo's Big Top on WQAD was a half-hour show. There were two cartoon breaks. These cartoons were the Larry Harmon package of Bozo cartoons. We always did some little skits during the program. There was always some animosity between Patches and Rags on the show. I got a hair cut once so we had a big thing on one episode where Patches was coming after me with garden sheers. The plot was that he cut my hair and that was horrible. We came up with all of the skits ourselves. Of course we also did a bunch of pie in the face routines. I never got hit in the face by a pie because I always ducked at the right time. Everyone else on the show was hit by a pie but I was the only one who never did. The pies were not whipped cream, they were shaving cream so they would not melt in the hot studio lights.

Keith Andrews as Bozo was right on the money for the part. He was so good at what he did. He took his role very very seriously. He took how he behaved seriously. To him this was not a joke. He made us take it very seriously as well. This is because he knew that kids were looking up to us and he respected them. There were times that he could not get his hair on right or something would happen. The hair was very interesting and you had to have it just right in order to be Bozo. He would fuss about it and make sure it was just right because he really cared about what he was doing. I was honored to be a part of all of this. Looking back, I was so lucky to have my first role in the television field to be with a gentleman like Keith because he was just one amazing guy. Anybody whom you would talk with about him would say the same exact thing. Larry Harmon, the gentleman who held the trademark and made Bozo famous was the man who taught Keith. I remember this very well. Keith was sent to the east coast to study under him for a week. Sometimes we would be discussing what we would be doing on the show that day and Keith would say no, we can not do it that way because Mr. Harmon said that was not the right way to do it. Keith would go on to say "I can not do this or I can not say that because that is not the way it is supposed to be done."

On the internet there are some urban legends about Bozo and some things that children said on the show. You have to remember that there were hundreds of Bozo franchised shows across the country. None of the stories that I know of have ever been confirmed as fact. However, this I can tell you actually did happen because I was there. I stood there that day when it happened and I was so stunned that I could hardly move. We played the Bozo's Grand Prize Game on the show. This game has ping pong balls which a child tosses into six different buckets. You received a prize for every bucket that you did. If you made the ping pong ball into bucket number one, you got to keep the prize and so on. Well the grand prize for the last bucket was a bike! It was really difficult to make it because the buckets were kind of at an angle and they were the furthest one away. I don't think that we gave away more than three bikes for the whole time that we were there. This one kid was chosen to play the game and he was just acing every one of the buckets. It was pretty obvious that he had been practicing. Then he got to the last one, bucket number six and he missed and said "S***!!!!" Keith Andrews, who was always the gentlemen, one of the nicest guys I have ever met, turned to him and very gently said "That's a Bozo No-No!!!" The kid turned to him and said "F*** You Bozo!" My children do not understand this but back in 1967 I had never heard that word spoken out loud in my life. I knew it was a bad word. You could not even use a few other bad words that come to mind let alone THAT word! He used the whole word, not the abbreviated version. I stood there and my mouth just dropped open and we went immediately to a commercial. After he had said the first bad thing, they had decided to que up and get ready because they did not know what was going to happen next. The station was really young at the time, WQAD had only been on the air for a few years and this was something you could get your license pulled for. It was very embarrassing. I was not privy as to if there was any feedback from the viewing audience to the station since I was not there at the station all of the time. All I can tell you is that we had a big conference after the show was over and they said that they could not go live on the air with that show ever again (since they did not have tape delay at the station back then) and so they said we have to start taping.

All I can tell you is it happened. You can go on line and find rumors of different things that happened on different Bozo shows in the nation. Something may have happened in Boston, something else may have happened in Chicago, etc, however, I can tell you for a fact that it did happen in Moline because I was there. Larry Harmon is quoted as having told this story and it was questioned as to if what he was saying was true. I am sure that after this happened, Keith contacted Mr. Harmon and let him know since it involved the reputation of the Bozo franchise. Keith would have required that we did let them know that it happened in case they received any repercussions as a result. The story has been told a billion times and the story may have changed over time but like I said, it did happen in Moline and that may very well be the origin of the story. There are things in your life that you remember because they are so shocking in your life and that was one of those things that happened in my life.

Taping the show was really difficult for me because it was after school. Not only did it take place after my school was over but then they had to gather all of these kids who were done for the day in grade school to appear in the audience on the show. They were afraid at that point that people would not be able to bring their children on the show. That was one of many concerns from going live on Saturdays to being taped on Tuesday nights.

When we were live on Saturdays I could get to the studio in time to change into my costume without the kids seeing me. Taping the show on Tuesday after my school let out made it very difficult to get changed. My mom had to pick me up on Tuesdays after school (since girls were not driving around in their own cars back then) and I would have to change in the car! When I arrived at the station, the kids would see me going in and I would have to turn my head and literally run into the station so they would not see me. Again, I had my costume on by that point but not my make-up. So I am thinking that we taped at either 4pm or 4:30pm. When Bozo was on Saturdays I would be around the station hanging out for three or four hours. When it was moved to being taped on Tuesdays, I hardly had time at all other than being on the show because I had Music Guild practice right away after the show was over. There were times that I would leave the studio with my costume in my bag and head right over to the Guild (which is near WQAD). There just was not that much time to hang out anymore.

After a year and one-half, around the time that I was going off to college, I worked in the news room in the evenings. Then the following summer I worked days in the news room. There were a couple of projects that I had to do for radio broadcasting class in college. One was to put together a script. I ended up with some of the WQAD guys not only writing one but producing an entire script!

I was not on the show when Keith left the program. By that point I was in college. However, when I came home for Thanksgiving and Christmas and then during the summer I did get together with them and film an episode. Don Welch is correct, I do remember that he came on the show and read books to the children. This was around the time period when I had left for school. They did not replace me so it was down to two characters and they needed a third person to round out the show. He is also correct that the characters from Creature Feature would come on the show as well. This was because we were trying to cross promote the live shows for the station. The kids were a little nervous about it when they arrived on the show since the characters were so scary & the kids were too young to appreciate Creature Feature, plus they were probably not allowed at home to watch it! It is pretty mind-boggling to think of the cross promotion of Creature Feature on Bozo's Big Top. If only the film existed today from those shows! - Chris Grantz Sheppard

Special thanks to Karl Huntoon for the picture of myself putting on clown make-up in the mirror!

More about Bozo on WQAD from a 1960's clipping in the Moline Dispatch.

Bozo the Clown has been enchanting children in this community for almost two years. He's not the baggy-pants type clown. Most of the pranks are pulled on Bozo himself.

Bozo cavorts on the television screen on Channel 8 at 10:30 each Saturday morning for 30 minutes. Bozo himself thinks "its great fun". He considers the role "a welcome change of pace."

Bozo will remain anonymous in this article, just as he is on the television screen. It really doesnt matter who he is, because Bozo is a fun character and part of the charm of the show is maintained through imagination.

It is a fact that Bozo is from this area and has three children himself - his oldest two are sort of non-committal on his "extra" role but his youngest still likes Bozo the Clown.

Bozo the Clown is really a syndicated character and the 150 Bozo cartoons are likewise syndicated. Each Bozo on a local television station has spent a week at a training center learing the characteristics the a clown, the make-up and some of the games. There are over a hundred Bozos in the country now.

Scheduling the happy clown show in the middle of Saturday mornings breaks up the mayhem of regular cartoons on Channel 8.

About 60 youngsters watch Bozo in the studio each week and there is a long waiting list, according to a station representative. These young viewers also participate in the activities on the show and receive a bag of goodies.

For the last week, Bozo has been appearing at the Rock Island County Fair for an hour each afternoon. More than 200 children came to talk to Bozo on the first day he was there and many tried their talent at drawing Bozo to win an extra prize.

This grainy picture from a clipping the the Moline Dispatch shows Keith Andrews applying face paint to a boy at the Rock Island County Fair.

As Bozo says: "Its great fun" to know that children still like a clown.

Don Welch remembers his friend at WQAD and explains why Bozo went off the air -

Keith Andrews was the chaps name who played BOZO. He left WQAD to become the marketing director for Bear Manufacturing in Rock Island. Very talented fellow who was in the programming department at the TV station for several years.

The fee to use the BOZO name and likeness became too expensive, and once Keith left, Art Swift (GM) just dropped the show. Actually, Vinnie and Emmitt (from Acri Creature Feature) made several guest appearances on the show and the little kids loved them.

I was on at least twice reading books to the kids. It was all "live" and in our main studio A.

If you have any memorabilia, pictures or stories of WQAD's Bozo Show or other great items from the 1960's and 70's at WQAD, please email me!

Click here to go to WQAD Acri Creature Feature's co-creator Don (Welch) Raymond's page

Click here to go to WQAD Acri Creature Feature's co-creator Bill Flannery's page

Click here to go to Captain Ernie's Showboat

Special thanks to Dave Coopman, author of "Someplace Special ... KSTT" for the image scan of the original Channel 8 logo.