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Bozo the Clown is the name of a clown whose widespread syndication in early television made him the best-known clown character in the United States. Partly as a result, the word "bozo" has become synonymous in America with a generic clown or a foolish person: For example, "I Think We're All Bozos on this Bus" was the title of a 1971 album by the comic group Firesign Theater. The word is said to have originated earlier, among carnival entertainers.
Bozo was created in 1946 by Alan W. Livingston. He released a children's record titled Bozo at the Circus on Capitol Records, with a read-along book set. Pinto Colvig narrated this record and all the other read-along records. They were extremely popular, and by 1949, KTTV in Los Angeles was broadcasting a children's show featuring Pinto Colvig as Bozo, with his blue-and-red costume, oversized red hair, and classic "whiteface" clown makeup, were starting to appear on then-new medium called television.
Bozo became even more famous after Larry Harmon purchased the rights to the character in 1956, and franchised it to local television stations as a daily half-hour show with a live Bozo the Clown — a different man in each city in front of a studio audience of children — as well as five-minute cartoons. Many people became famous locally such as Frank Averusch at WCVB-TV in Boston, and Bob Bell and later Joey D'Auria at WGN-TV in Chicago. Several performers who later became nationally known also took a turn as Bozo, notably Willard Scott, later a weatherman on NBC's Today Show.
Helped along by the widespread local publicity, Bozo-themed toys and novelties were sold widely; by the mid-1960s, Bozo was reportedly grossing over $150 million in merchandise worldwide.
The Chicago Bozo franchise was the longest-running and longest-lasting; it also became the most widely-known as WGN became a national cable television staple. Chicago's Bozo's Circus debuted in 1961 as a live, daily half-hour show and underwent various format changes over the years; the final version, The Bozo Super Sunday Show, aired its final episode in 2001. Other significant characters on the Chicago TV show through its forty year run included "Ringmaster Ned" Locke and fellow clowns Sandy the Tramp and Oliver O. Oliver (the latter played by Chicago television icon Ray Rayner). Later on, Frazier Thomas replaced Locke, and Cooky the Clown, portrayed by Roy Brown, joined in as well. Other clowns that appeared on the show included Spifford Quitz Farquharrr (or "Spiffy" for short), Rusty the Handyclown, and two female clowns — Pepper and Tunia. The show also featured contests including "The Grand Prize Game", a daily contest where two child contestants were selected from the audience with magic arrows [later a computer device called the "Bozoputer"] for each game. The game involved tossing a ping-pong ball into a series of successively-numbered buckets until the contestant missed a bucket. A prize such as a toy was won for each successful toss in a bucket. If they reached the sixth bucket and made the winning toss, they received a cash prize, a new bike and a trip. At the peak of its run the WGN Bozo show was wildly popular; at one point there was a ten-year waiting list for tickets to the show.
Many stories have arisen about misbehavior on the show making it onto the air, although it is often difficult to know whether they are true or not, particularly because relatively few of the local Bozo episodes were preserved on tape. The most famous alleged incident involves Bozo attempting to manage the behavior of an outspoken child in the audience by making the comment: "That's a Bozo no-no," which elicited the response from the kid: "Cram it, clownie!"
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