Happy Valentine's Day: the Finale
And today, to end up our Valentine's Day Fest, we have the Valentine's Day episode from Kukla, Fran & Ollie, from February 14, 1950, a full 72 years ago.
It's a fun, leisurely episode that even is fine with just putting a putting a valentine box on the stage alone and letting it sit there for a while in silence.
What I also love is that the very first character you see is my favorite (who's rarely on show), Cecil Bill. He doesn't say anything, which is half the fun with him in his weird "ta toi toi toi" language that the others are able to understand, but happily he returns later about 19 minutes in.
(Several years back, when the Chicago Historical Society had a huge, great exhibit on Kukla, Fran and Ollie for the show's 50th anniversary, where the program was done, I learned something fun about Cecil Bill. They had a display with the puppets, and up close you could see that puppeteer Burr Tillstrom had painted Cecil Bill's on so that it was a bit off-center, which subtlety gave the added sense that he was crazier than even just his language. If you look closely here, you'll see that.)
The episode features three songs, including Kukla singing Rodgers & Hart’s “My Funny Valentine”. (All the better since it's sung to Cecil Bill, who gets a lot more screen time that he usually does, reacting to it.) What's also impressive is that in the first song, Burr Tillstrom sings a duets with himself, in two totally different voices. One low, and the other a coloratura with trills. And there's a very nice song Fran sings at the end.
And for one of the rare times that I'm aware of, Fran actually does a slight quick impersonation of one of the Kuklapolitans, in this case the screech of Beulah Witch.
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