"You'll be my 'Butch' for a day!" - Larry (Bozo) Harmon - RIP - Part 2
- From: Garrison Hilliard <garrison@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:30:51 -0400
Larry Harmon, longtime Bozo the Clown, dies at 83
By JOHN ROGERS ? 3 hours ago
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Larry Harmon, who turned the character Bozo the Clown
into a show business staple that delighted children for more than a
half-century, died Thursday of congestive heart failure. He was 83.
His publicist, Jerry Digney, told The Associated Press he died at his home.
Although not the original Bozo, Harmon portrayed the popular clown in
countless appearances and, as an entrepreneur, he licensed the character to
others, particularly dozens of television stations around the country. The
stations in turn hired actors to be their local Bozos.
"You might say, in a way, I was cloning BTC (Bozo the Clown) before anybody
else out there got around to cloning DNA," Harmon told the AP in a 1996
interview.
"Bozo is a combination of the wonderful wisdom of the adult and the
childlike ways in all of us," Harmon said.
Pinto Colvig, who also provided the voice for Walt Disney's Goofy, was the
first Bozo the Clown, a character created by writer-producer Alan W.
Livingston for a series of children's records in 1946. Livingston said he
came up with the name Bozo after polling several people at Capitol Records.
Harmon would later meet his alter ego while answering a casting call to
make personal appearances as a clown to promote the records.
He got that job and eventually bought the rights to Bozo. Along the way, he
embellished Bozo's distinctive look: the orange-tufted hair, the bulbous
nose, the outlandish red, white and blue costume.
"I felt if I could plant my size 83AAA shoes on this planet, (people) would
never be able to forget those footprints," he said.
Susan Harmon, his wife of 29 years, indicated Harmon was the perfect fit
for Bozo.
"He was the most optimistic man I ever met. He always saw a bright side; he
always had something good to say about everybody. He was the love of my
life," she said Thursday.
The business ? combining animation, licensing of the character, and
personal appearances ? made millions, as Harmon trained more than 200 Bozos
over the years to represent him in local markets.
"I'm looking for that sparkle in the eyes, that emotion, feeling,
directness, warmth. That is so important," he said of his criteria for
becoming a Bozo.
The Chicago version of Bozo ran on WGN-TV in Chicago for 40 years and was
seen in many other cities after cable television transformed WGN into a
superstation.
Bozo ? portrayed in Chicago for many years by Bob Bell ? was so popular
that the waiting list for tickets to a TV show eventually stretched to a
decade, prompting the station to stop taking reservations for 10 years. On
the day in 1990 when WGN started taking reservations again, it took just
five hours to book the show for five more years. The phone company reported
more than 27 million phone call attempts had been made.
By the time the show bowed out in Chicago, in 2001, it was the last locally
produced version. Harmon said at the time that he hoped to develop a new
cable or network show, as well as a Bozo feature film.
He became caught up in a minor controversy in 2004 when the International
Clown Hall of Fame in Milwaukee took down a plaque honoring him as Bozo and
formally endorsed Colvig as the first. Harmon denied ever misrepresenting
Bozo's history.
He said he was claiming credit only for what he added to the character ?
"What I sound like, what I look like, what I walk like" ? and what he did
to popularize Bozo.
"Isn't it a shame the credit that was given to me for the work I have done,
they arbitrarily take it down, like I didn't do anything for the last 52
years," he told the AP at the time.
Harmon protected Bozo's reputation with a vengeance, while embracing those
who poked good-natured fun at the clown.
As Bozo's influence spread through popular culture, his very name became a
synonym for clownish behavior.
"It takes a lot of effort and energy to keep a character that old fresh so
kids today still know about him and want to buy the products," Karen
Raugust, executive editor of The Licensing Letter, a New York-based trade
publication, said in 1996.
A normal character runs its course in three to five years, Raugust said.
"Harmon's is a classic character. It's been around 50 years."
On New Year's Day 1996, Harmon dressed up as Bozo for the first time in 10
years, appearing in the Rose Parade in Pasadena.
The crowd reaction, he recalled, "was deafening."
"They kept yelling, `Bozo, Bozo, love you, love you.' I shed more crocodile
tears for five miles in four hours than I realized I had," he said. "I
still get goose bumps."
Born in Toledo, Ohio, Harmon became interested in theater while studying at
the University of Southern California.
"Bozo is a star, an entertainer, bigger than life," Harmon once said.
"People see him as Mr. Bozo, somebody you can relate to, touch and laugh
with."
Besides his wife, Harmon is survived by his son, Jeff Harmon, and daughters
Lori Harmon, Marci Breth-Carabet and Leslie Breth.
Associated Press writers Polly Anderson in New York and Robert Jablon in
Los Angeles contributed to this story.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hhj-8BF2XnML69KPAiEQQkgECTRwD91MNJPG1
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