In a number of recent posts, I’ve made mention of “the haze” that surrounds much of Shatner’s early years as an actor. That haze runs basically from when he graduated from college in 1952 up to about 1960 or so when the air begins to clear and more programs (and information about those programs) begins to appear. Meanwhile, as stated, things are pretty murky at times regarding Le Shat.
And I don’t think any program more exemplifies “the haze” like The Canadian Howdy Doody Show.
One of the main reasons for the missing, incomplete and/or contradictory information about a number of television shows that Shatner appeared in was due to the very nature of television in the 1950’s.
As a nascent medium, and one trying to be both highbrow but quickly made while on a tight budget, television was often broadcast live. Sometimes the broadcast would be “live-to-tape” which allowed for the broadcasters to simply air the same filmed program a little later for West Coast audiences. But even most of those taped programs would then be wiped so that stations could reuse the tapes for the future productions. Filmed television was much more rare because it was more expensive both for the film stock and processing, as well as for the editing. So when Canada’s CBC licensed Howdy Doody from the U.S.’s NBC to be broadcast using local casts, they sure were going to make it as cheaply as possible. To my knowledge, no episodes of it still exist.
But first: what was Howdy Doody? The short answer is that he was a puppet. He had some other puppet friends and a human friend, the host of the show named Buffalo Bob. Howdy, his friends and Buffalo Bob lived in some western town…they all dressed like cowboys or ranch hands, and I suppose had adventures or some shit. Apparently, Howdy had 48 freckles, one for each of the (then) 48 states.
When imported to Canada, some changes were made. Gone was the Western theme, replaced by a Northern one as the show took place in the great “North Woods.” Buffalo Bob was replaced by Timber Tom, and there was a greater emphasis on history and education, and a de-emphasis on violence and villains. In short, they made it more Canadian.
Fun story: early in the show’s run on the CBC, there was a character called “Mr. X”, who traveled through time and space in his “Whatsis Box” to help teach kids about history. He was removed fairly quickly after complaints that he was too scary. (As an aside, Mr. X must have looked like Freddy Krueger if he was fired and that terrifying Clarabelle character remained.) Anyway, what’s interesting is that Sydney Newman was the executive producer of The Canadian Howdy Doody Show, later moving to England and becoming Head of Drama at the BBC. There he created a number of programs including Doctor Who, a show about a man everyone called “The Doctor” who traveled through time and space in his police box and helped kids learn about history. Hmmm….
So, back to the haze. There is so much of it for this program that I’m going to just try to break it down point by conflicting point. Perhaps walking through it in a deliberate manner will help us make some sense of the whole thing. I doubt it, but here we go.
One thing that all sources seem to agree on is that Shatner made at least one (and probably more than one) appearance on the show as Ranger Bob, a fill-in host when the main host was unavailable. From there, all accounts diverge so much that a researcher could get lost in a Möbius loop of confusion.
The first point of contention comes from Shatner’s own autobiography. Shatner writes that this was his first appearance on television in the United States. In fact, I found one eyewitness account online stating that, as a little girl, she remembers going to a filming of Howdy Doody and seeing Shatner there…in New York City. While this is certainly possible, I don’t think it is very plausible for a number of reasons.
One: The Canadian Howdy Doody Show debuted on November 15th, 1954, at a time when Shatner was beginning to really work often at the CBC in Toronto. Sydney Newman was executive producer, and he had already hired Shatner for a number of different roles on various anthology programs, and would continue to hire him for the next several years. I find it hard to believe that Shatner never worked on Howdy Doody in Canada…it makes very little sense.
Two: Shatner didn’t move to New York until late 1956. Although Howdy Doody was still being filmed at that time in NYC, I know of some other programs that he appeared on starting in September of ’56, right after he arrived. So it just doesn’t ring true that he got there and the first thing he did was a children’s show. The same children’s show being done at the CBC which he never appeared on.
Three: But what about the woman who says she attended a show and saw Shatner? Well, if I were a lawyer for the defense I would point out how unreliable eyewitness accounts can be, especially when originally viewed by a child 60+ years ago. I mean, how would a little girl even know or care about who Shatner was at the time? Because he would have been basically a nobody (sorry, Bill.) My guess: this woman wanted to blog about her experience at the Howdy Doody show ages ago, did a bit of googling and found that Shatner was supposedly on the show and so she “remembered” it happening.
So my verdict on point one: Shatner and the other eyewitness are wrong and/or mis-remembering. He almost certainly did not appear on the U.S. version.
The second point of contention doesn’t necessarily involve Shatner that much, but it is interesting in a tangential way: many sources found online state that James “Jimmy” Doohan, Star Trek’s future Mr. Scott, either was the host of the show for a while as Timber Tom or was offered and turned down the role prior to production beginning. All sources seem to agree that there was a contract dispute over money (Doohan wanted more) and so the role went to Peter Mews instead. But there is no definitive evidence, one way or another, as to whether Doohan ever actually appeared as Timber Tom on the program.
I don’t know which of these assertions is accurate. If I had to bet, I would say the most likely scenario is that Doohan agreed to be Timber Tom and then backed out before a contract was signed. I would guess that he never appeared on the show as Timber Tom. But I could be wrong. (Update: According to Peter “Shatner’s” book, The Search, Doohan confirmed that he did not appear on the show after asking for more money.)
Contentious point three: when and in what circumstances did Shatner appear on the show? This is actually somewhat related to point two above. Some sources found imply that Doohan was the host for a short time, and then backed out. They quickly hired Peter Mews to be the full-time host, but he wasn’t ready in time so they had Shatner come in as “Ranger Bob” to fill in while “Timber Tom” was out. If that is the case, then Shatner most probably first appeared on the show in December of 1954 or early 1955…although it could have been later in 1955 as well.
If Doohan was never the host, some sources still indicate that he backed out at the last minute which still led the CBC to scramble and get Shatner as a stand-in until Mews could get ready. If that is the case, then Shatner could have appeared as early as the first episode on November 15th, 1954. Because of this possibility (although unlikely), I’ve slotted this post in just prior to Shatner’s next documented performance on November 16th, 1954.
And then there is the possibility that neither of these scenarios is true. It’s certainly possible that while Doohan or Mews was hosting, Shatner simply came in as a fill-in host when the regular host was not there. If this is the case, then Shatner could have appeared on the show as early as late 1954 all the way through early 1956. Possibly multiple times.
Which is the final point of contention: how many times did he appear? Was it just once as a fill-in? Was it multiple times? Did he ever show up with the host or was he only a fill-in? Unknown.
So there you go, folks. This is the kind of research and forensics I’ve dedicated my life to. Please send whiskey and wine my way so that I don’t kill myself.
Shatnerweb’s Rating:
Unknown – Not Viewed
Shat Level: Unknown – Not Viewed
Shatner’s Web
It’s time to detail all of the connections between The Canadian Howdy Doody Show and other Shatner appearances!
It would have been cool if I could find any evidence that Doohan was ever on the program, especially if he might have been on with Shatner. But I can’t, so let’s move on. Nothing to see here.
Peter Mews was at Stratford with Shatner for the 1954 season, and would go back for the 1955 season as well. I still don’t know if they ever appeared together on Howdy Doody, but this is a connection nonetheless. The fact that Mews went back to Stratford in 1955 lends credence to the possibility that perhaps Doohan was the host for the first year or 9 months of the show. It’s also possible that production shut down for the summer months, allowing Mews to attend Stratford. Again…who knows?
A young actress by the name of Kathy Burt (later Kathy McNeil) also supposedly worked on this show. She would later appear with Shatner in the General Motors Theatre episode, “Forever Galatea.” She also almost certainly slept with Shatner in 1956, leading to a possible illegitimate Shatner son. Scandalous!
I’ve already discussed the connection with Sydney Newman a bit, but to flesh it out: Before Howdy Doody, Newman acted as producer or supervising producer in the Shatner-featuring CBC/General Motors‘ episode “The Man Who Ran Away,” and “I Like It Here.” After that, he would do the same for the episodes “Billy Budd,” “Forever Galatea,” “Never Say No,” “The Black Eye,” and “The Coming Out of Ellie Swan.”
Further Studies
Read what Wikipedia says about Howdy Doody here. There is a section on The Canadian Howdy Doody Show there near the bottom.
Google it yourself. Try not to get lost in the wiki-hole. I’m tapping out.
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There is yet another possibility: that in his remark about his “first appearance in the U.S.”, Shatner was alluding to the Canadian version of Howdy Doody having aired somewhere in the United States, however briefly. There were many shows emanating from either country that probably could be picked up across the border in either direction in the antenna days. There were shows that aired in both countries by licensing agreement and/or co-production agreements. In those days, right up through the 1980’s in fact, the individual broadcasting stations controlled programming–even that supplied by the networks. For example, an affiliate might refuse to air a network program locally, or might substitute programs based on local audience preferences. I lived in a smallish market where a single station licensed programming from both CBS and NBC for different parts of the day and we only received full programming on either network via cable from a larger market (that was really weird). And there were places without enough stations to carry all programming, so for example, the DuMont network wasn’t carried everywhere in the 1950s. Later on, it took UPN, WB, and Fox time to acquire or build affiliate stations when they became networks. In this environment, there probably were individual stations in parts of the country that carried some CBC programming instead of U.S. programming.
I suspect that Shatner either knew or believed that CBC’s Howdy Doody show was aired in parts of the U.S., and although he might have been wrong about whether there were licensing agreements to carry it, he may have assumed it was officially carried in the U.S. if he heard from fans who saw it in the U.S. “unofficially”–either because they could pick it up on antenna feed or because their local station made a separate carriage deal to carry CBC programs (or simply “stole” them by picking them up and boosting them out to their audiences without a contractual agreement).
Oh sure, that makes sense. I still think he is just plain wrong about it though. In his autobiography he does mention that it was one of his first jobs after moving to New York, right? Which I don’t think can possibly be true. He was almost certainly never on the US/New York version of Howdy Doody. But yes, I think it is possible that some folks in the USA were able to watch the CBC version of Howdy Doody and may have seen Shatner.
You know, I met some guy recently who claimed to know the co-writer of Shatner’s autobiography. He said that this guy really just researched a bunch of Shatner appearances, put them down in a timeline and then Shatner would add some things…but that Shatner really didn’t write most of that stuff. He said that Shatner didn’t remember hardly anything about any of the timelines or appearances at all, which certainly jives with a lot of what Shatner admits publicly. Of course, “I met a guy who knows a guy isn’t all that compelling,” but I’ll go on record as saying that’s pretty much what I figured the writing of his autobiography was like even before hearing that! LOL.
The Canadian Howdy Doody show was available as a kinescope recording (16mm film) for the rest of Canada not yet hooked up to receive live broadcasts over CBC. As for the shows no longer existing, I own two 16mm kinescopes of 1955 broadcasts. And BTW…..the character with Tom Mews is Dilly Dally, Howdy’s best friend. So, at least three shows that I know of still survive.