Online Encyclopedia
Kukla, Fran and Ollie
"Kukla, Fran and Ollie", was an early television show using puppets, originally created for children but soon watched by more adults than children. Like many early shows, it did not have a script and was entirely ad-libbed.
Burr Tillstrom was the creator and only puppeteer on the show, which premiered as "Junior Jamboree" locally on WBKB in Chicago on October 13, 1947. "Fran" was Fran Allison, a radio comedienne and singer who was usually the only human to appear onscreen. The cast included Kukla, the leader of the troupe; Ollie, a one-toothed dragon; Madame Ooglepuss, a retired opera diva; Buelah Witch, a liberated witch; Fletcher Rabbit, the troupe's mailman and resident fuss-budget; Cecil Bill, the troupe's union stagehand who spoke in "tooie talk;" Colonel Crackie, a Southern gentleman; Doloras, Ollie's cousin, and a number of others.
Like Jack Benny's radio program, KFO's humor relied on building a relationship between its characters and the audience over time. The humor was quite tame by the standards of later comedy. There were few laugh-out-loud jokes per show — KFO relied on the humor of familiarity, much like The Honeymooners.
KFO evoked not only loyalty but also a deep belief in its characters from regular viewers. Fans became so attached to the show that when it was cut back to 15 minutes, letters of outrage poured in to NBC and The New York Times. Bob & Ray, who had the unfortunate job of rounding-out the half-hour, had considerable vitriol heaped on them by angry KFO viewers.
After the original series ended in 1957, Tillstrom continued to search for a place for the Kuklapolitans, doing a daily 5-minute show for NBC, and even appearing on Broadway. In 1967, KFO began hosting "The CBS Children's Film Festival," and it is through this filmed show and their later taped series for PBS, that many know the troupe. Burr also brought the troupe to the Goodman Theater in Chicago for a series of live performances in the early 1980s.
For the 10 years that it appeared live, KFO was a hugely successful show that counted counted Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Tallulah Bankhead and Adlai Stevenson among its many adult fans, and had sponsors like Life magazine and Ford Motor Co., who surely weren't trying to reach children. James Thurber once wrote that Tillstrom was "helping to save the sanity of the nation and to improve, if not even to invent, the quality of television."
KFO can claim a number of television firsts, including the first ship-to-shore telecast and the first color televison broadcast of a network program. Burr was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1986 for his many contributions to the medium.