Wonderama
Encyclopedia
Wonderama was a long-running children's television program that appeared on the Metromedia
Metromedia
Metromedia was a media company that owned radio and television stations in the United States from 1956 to 1986 and owned Orion Pictures from 1986-1997.- Overview :...

-owned stations from 1955 to 1986, with WNEW-TV
WNYW
WNYW, virtual channel 5 , is the flagship television station of the News Corporation-owned Fox Broadcasting Company, located in New York City. The station's transmitter is atop the Empire State Building and its studio facilities are located in the Yorkville section of Manhattan...

 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 being its originating station.

Wonderama also was run in five other markets in which Metromedia owned television stations, including WTTG
WTTG
WTTG, channel 5, is an owned-and-operated television station of the Fox Broadcasting Company, located in the American capital city of Washington, D.C...

 in Washington D.C., KMBC-TV
KMBC-TV
KMBC-TV virtual channel 9 is a television station affiliated with the ABC television network, located in Kansas City, Missouri. KMBC-TV is owned by Hearst Television and its studios are located on Winchester Ave. near Swope Park in Kansas City, Missouri. The station's high guyed mast broadcast...

 in Kansas City
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...

, KTTV
KTTV
KTTV, channel 11, is an owned-and-operated television station of the News Corporation-owned Fox Broadcasting Company, located in Los Angeles, California. Serving the vast Los Angeles metropolitan area, KTTV is a sister station to KCOP , Los Angeles' MyNetworkTV station...

 in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, WXIX-TV
WXIX-TV
WXIX-TV channel 19 is the Fox Broadcasting Company affiliate in Cincinnati, Ohio. The station's city of license is Newport, Kentucky, across the Ohio River...

 in Cincinnati
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...

 and WTCN-TV
KARE
KARE, digital channel 11, is an NBC-affiliated television station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and serving the Minneapolis-St. Paul area of Minnesota and portions of western Wisconsin. It also operates KARE WX NOW, formerly known as NBC Weather Plus on its second digital subchannel...

 in Minneapolis – Saint Paul. The show ran three hours long, and later two hours on Sunday mornings.

Hosts

  • Al Hodge
    Al Hodge
    For "Big" Al Hodge, the Cornish rock musician, see Al Hodge Albert E. Hodge was an American actor best known for playing space adventurer Captain Video on the DuMont Television Network from December 15, 1950 to April 1, 1955...

     (as Captain Video
    Captain Video
    Captain Video and His Video Rangers is an American science fiction television series. It was broadcast on the DuMont Television Network, and was the first series of its kind on American television...

     1955 - 1956)
  • Jon Gnagy
    Jon Gnagy
    Jon Gnagy was a self-taught artist most remembered for being America's original television art instructor, hosting You Are an Artist, which began on the NBC network. On May 16, 1946, Jon Gnagy was the first "act" on the first television program broadcast from the antenna atop the Empire State...

     (mid late 1950s)
  • Sandy Becker
    Sandy Becker
    George Sanford Becker , who was known professionally as Sandy Becker, was a television announcer, actor, and comedian who hosted several popular children's programs in New York City...

     (1955–56)
  • Pat Meikle (co-hosting from 1955 to 1956)
  • Herb Sheldon
    Herb Sheldon
    Herb Sheldon was born Herbert Sussman in Brooklyn, New York. Sheldon was originally slated to train for a career in textiles, but a scholarship at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and some work in the theater sidetracked his plans.- Television career :He worked in some Broadway shows in small...

     (1956–1958)
  • Bill Britten
    Bill Britten
    Bill Britten is an American actor best known for his portrayal of Bozo the Clown. He performed as a mimic and pantomimist for local parties in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, before enrolling in college. He studied clown makeup at Temple University, later attending the University of Washington in Seattle...

     (best known as New York's Bozo the Clown
    Bozo the Clown
    Bozo the Clown is a clown character very popular in the United States, peaking in the 1960s as a result of widespread franchising in early television.Originally created by Alan W...

    , co-host in 1958)
  • Doris Faye (co-host in 1958)
  • Sonny Fox
    Sonny Fox
    Irwin "Sonny" Fox is an American television host, executive and broadcasting consultant, who was the fourth full-time host of the children's television program, Wonderama.-Biography:...

     (1959–1967)
  • Bob McAllister
    Bob McAllister
    Bob McAllister was an American television personality, magician and children's entertainer and a host of Wonderama. -Early career:...

     (1967–1977)
  • A documentary hosted by teens (1980–1985)

The Bob McAllister years

Despite the frequent turnover of hosts throughout the 1950s, Wonderama experienced its greatest viewership by way of one-time Baltimore kids' show host Bob McAllister, who replaced Sonny Fox as host in 1967 and remained host until 1977.

Each show's taping included (but was not necessarily limited to) education, music, audience participation, games, interviews and cartoon shorts. Popular features of Wonderama during the McAllister years included:
  • "Snake Cans
    Snake Nut Can
    A snake nut can is a practical joke device that closely resembles a can of nuts, but contains a long wire spring covered by a cloth or vinyl sheath, printed like snake skin, which leaps out of the can and startles the unsuspecting victim....

    "
    : the classic game in which Bob would pick kids from the audience one-by-one to open one of ten cans, nine of which were filled with spring-loaded "snakes," and the tenth one containing an artificial flower bouquet which earned them the grand prize (usually a Ross Apollo bicycle) along with other prizes for answering trivia questions.

  • Wonderama A Go-Go (later called "Disco City"): An American Bandstand
    American Bandstand
    American Bandstand is an American music-performance show that aired in various versions from 1952 to 1989 and was hosted from 1956 until its final season by Dick Clark, who also served as producer...

    -type dance contest in which the best dancer won a prize. By the time it was renamed "Disco City" the contest would feature contestants each doing their own dance to the same record, which was usually brought in at the beginning of the segment by "The Disco Kid", a boy dressed in a costume reminiscent of The Lone Ranger
    The Lone Ranger
    The Lone Ranger is a fictional masked Texas Ranger who, with his Native American companion Tonto, fights injustice in the American Old West. The character has become an enduring icon of American culture....

    . (Originally the Disco Kid's theme was a loop of the chorus from The Raspberries' "Overnight Sensation
    Starting Over (Raspberries album)
    Starting Over is the fourth album by the 1970s Power pop band Raspberries. It peaked at #143 on the Billboard pop album chart in 1974; it generated the #18 Billboard pop single "Overnight Sensation" in the same year....

    " before being replaced with a song called "Ride On, Disco Kid")

  • "Does Anybody Here Have an Aardvark?": a segment in which Bob would ask members of the audience to produce unusual objects.

  • "Exercise, Exercise!": Most often jumping jacks, involving all the kids in the audience. The segment had its own theme ("Exercise, exercise, come on everybody, do your exercise...").

  • "Good News" Selected audience members were picked to read "good" news items from around the country before McAllister sang a song:
"Have you heard any good news today, today?
I wanna hear what you have to say,
wait 'till I get to the count of three,
and tell me all the good news you have for me, one-two-three!

After singing, Bob would canvass the audience for their own good news.
  • "Guess Your Best": A game show-like segment where three kids as contestants made predictions on the outcome of audience polls and race relay competitions. (McAllister himself hosted the game with the phony nickname "Bert Beautiful")

  • "Whose is Whose is Whose": Contestants were introduced to four children and four adults, and had to guess which adult was which child's father. As a help, the children and parents were sometimes asked to do things like jump up in the air that they may ostensibly do in a similar fashion. (Again, McAllister adopted a silly pseudonym for this segment, calling himself either "Chuck Chuckles" or "Chuck Roast")

  • "Head Of The House": Selected kids took part in a series of quirky competitions, including gerbil races, balloon breaking contests, and so forth. The child who won the most events or scored the most points was crowned the "Head of the House".


Each week, audience members received a package of parting gifts as detailed on the show, containing varying items including:
  • A Lactona toothbrush
  • An issue of Dynamite Magazine or Golden Magazine
  • A supply of Good Humor
    Good Humor
    Good Humor is an American brand of ice cream novelties sold from ice cream trucks as well as stores and other retail outlets. Originally, Good Humors were chocolate-coated ice cream bars on a stick, but the line was expanded over the years to include a wide range of novelties...

     ice cream
  • A box of Hostess Twinkies
  • A 6-pack of RC Cola
  • A tube of Hold! cough lozenges
  • A package of Fruit Stripe
    Fruit Stripe
    Fruit Stripe is an artificially and naturally flavored fruit chewing gum that is notorious for its strong but fleeting flavor. It is packaged in zebra-striped wrappers, and every stick now comes with one or more temporary tattoos. Three five-flavor packs are made: cherry, lemon, orange, mixed...

     Gum
  • A gift certificate for Burger King
    Burger King
    Burger King, often abbreviated as BK, is a global chain of hamburger fast food restaurants headquartered in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. The company began in 1953 as Insta-Burger King, a Jacksonville, Florida-based restaurant chain...

     or McDonald's
    McDonald's
    McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 64 million customers daily in 119 countries. Headquartered in the United States, the company began in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by the eponymous Richard and Maurice McDonald; in 1948...

  • A pack of Lender's Bagelettes.
    (Each child also got a necklace made from a Lenders Bagelette which had either their name or their last initial painted on it.)
  • A 45 record of one of the music artists who performed on the Wonderama episode each week.


The program aired for three hours included several breaks to allow for cartoon insertions. On most of Metromedia's stations, these would be Warner Brothers cartoons from the 1940s and 1950s. KMBC-TV in Kansas City, an ABC affiliate, the show only ran two hours without the cartoon inserts (since these stations did not own broadcast rights to cartoon shorts).

The program's closing theme song, sung by McAllister, was called Kids Are People Too ("wacka-doo, wacka-doo, wacka-doo") which was later adapted as the show's title when ABC picked it up as a Sunday morning kids show. The song was also featured on an album of music from Wonderama by McAllister called Oh Gee It's Great To Be A Kid.

In 1977, the show was scaled back to two hours before being canceled in December of that year. The last produced show was taped December 21, 1977 and aired on December 25, 1977. McAllister was upset when an advertisement for the 1972 Charles Bronson
Charles Bronson
Charles Bronson , born Charles Dennis Buchinsky was an American actor, best-known for such films as Once Upon a Time in the West, The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, Rider on the Rain, The Mechanic, and the popular Death Wish series...

 movie The Mechanic
The Mechanic
The Mechanic is a 1972 American action-thriller film directed by Michael Winner. It stars Charles Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent.The film is noted for its opening...

aired during the show. He bought an ad in the New York Times telling viewers to stop watching. In a 1990s interview with the Southern California interview show, "Remember When", McAllister said that might have led to the cancellation. However, in an interview on WNEW-TV's local talk show Midday with Bill Boggs
Bill Boggs
William "Bill" Boggs III is an Emmy Award–winning American television presenter and journalist.Boggs was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...

on the day of the show's cancellation, McAllister claimed to have no idea why the show ended. After its cancellation Wonderama continued in two-hour Sunday morning reruns from January 1978 until June 1980. McAllister reportedly was unhappy with the edits, which usually eliminated celebrity performances in order to avoid having to pay royalty fees.

In the 1960s, Wonderama aired in a one-hour weekday version in addition to the three-hour Sunday show. The one-hour program lasted until 1970.

Originating from New York, top stars from all genres of entertainment (music, movies, television, etc.) made appearances on Wonderama, including:
  • The Sylvers
    The Sylvers
    The Sylvers were a popular R&B/soul and disco family group during the 1970s. Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, the family would later relocate to Watts, California.- Beginnings :...

  • ABBA
    ABBA
    ABBA was a Swedish pop group formed in Stockholm in 1970 which consisted of Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Agnetha Fältskog...

  • Jerry Lewis
    Jerry Lewis
    Jerry Lewis is an American comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter and film director. He is best known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the famed comedy team of Martin and Lewis...

  • Jodie Foster
    Jodie Foster
    Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is an American actress, film director, producer as well as a former child actress....

  • Paul Lynde
    Paul Lynde
    Paul Edward Lynde was an American comedian and actor. A noted character actor, Lynde was well known for his roles as Uncle Arthur on Bewitched and Harry MacAfee, the befuddled father in Bye Bye Birdie...

  • Roger Daltrey
    Roger Daltrey
    Roger Harry Daltrey, CBE , is an English singer and actor, best known as the founder and lead singer of English rock band The Who. He has maintained a musical career as a solo artist and has also worked in the film industry, acting in a large number of films, theatre and television roles and also...

  • Muhammad Ali
    Muhammad Ali
    Muhammad Ali is an American former professional boxer, philanthropist and social activist...

  • Joe Frazier
    Joe Frazier
    Joseph William "Joe" Frazier , also known as Smokin' Joe, was an Olympic and Undisputed World Heavyweight boxing champion, whose professional career lasted from 1965 to 1976, with a one-fight comeback in 1981....

    • (In a publicity build-up to their rematch bout, Ali & Frazier both appeared on the show together in January 1974 and competed against one another in a game of marbles
      Marbles
      A marble is a small spherical toy usually made from glass, clay, steel, or agate. These balls vary in size. Most commonly, they are about ½ inch in diameter, but they may range from less than ¼ inch to over 3 inches , while some art glass marbles fordisplay purposes are over 12 inches ...

      .)
  • José Feliciano
    José Feliciano
    José Feliciano is a Puerto Rican singer, virtuoso guitarist and composer known for many international hits including the 1970 holiday single "Feliz Navidad".-Childhood:...

  • The Jackson 5
    The Jackson 5
    The Jackson 5 , later known as The Jacksons, were an American popular music family group from Gary, Indiana...

  • The cast of Monty Python
    Monty Python
    Monty Python was a British surreal comedy group who created their influential Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series...

  • The Amazing Randi
  • Wolfman Jack
    Wolfman Jack
    Robert Weston Smith, known commonly as Wolfman Jack was a gravelly voiced US disc jockey who became famous in the 1960s and 1970s.-Early career:...

  • Lena Zavaroni
    Lena Zavaroni
    Lena Hilda Zavaroni was a Scottish child singer and a television show host. With her album Ma! He's Making Eyes At Me at ten years of age, she is the youngest person in history to have an album in the UK album chart top ten. Later in life she hosted TV shows and appeared on stage...

  • ..and numerous others.

1980 revival

Beginning in 1980, a documentary/magazine show for children (and hosted by teens) ran on Sunday mornings on WNEW-TV. While this show maintained the Wonderama title, the show itself was nothing like the kids festival that it once was. This hour-long incarnation ran until 1983; reruns edited to 30 minutes aired from 1984 to 1986 on WNEW-TV/WNYW on Saturday mornings.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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