Atlanta has a rich media history, and Don McClellan has been part of it for 50 years with WSB-TV. While McClellan’s blog is clearly focused on WSB history, McClellan is also an avid runner (I remember when WSB would allow him to document a test run of the Peachtree every year, the day before the race) who loves to photograph other runners and document their stories at his blog. In fact, a co-worker who was photographed by McClellan at a race is how I found out he had started a blog.
Doug Richards’ Live Apartment Fire (Richards is another veteran Atlanta [granted not 50 years] long with WAGA, but currently at WXIA) is another great Atlanta media blog–and Richards recently directed folks to McClellan’s wealth of knowledge. So this time when I revisited McClellan’s blog (after my initial visit several months ago) I was pleasantly surprised to see he’d written a number of posts on Don Kennedy. For some of my older siblings, Kennedy was an important part of their childhood (through his alter ego, Officer Don) because of his live kids TV show on WSB-TV, The Popeye Club. (Really, one of these days I should do a post about my older sister, who had her appearance [the show was done with a live studio audience] on the Popeye Club preempted by coverage of the Six-Day War).
WSB-TV ended the show back in 1969, but I remember seeing Kennedy back on TV when he relaunched (as one of the owners of) WATL/Channel 36 in the mid-1970s. As a kid, it fascinated me to see the “birth” of a TV station, so Kennedy was an icon in my mind. In fact, Kennedy’s station was the home of a future Muppet talent when Steve Whitmire honed his early puppet skills with Otis–a 1970s beach bum puppet that hosted a kids show. As Whitmire described in this 1999 interview: “I filled two-and-a-half hours a day doing this by taking phone calls from children in the area who were watching the show. I loved doing it.” I was one of the kids that would call in almost every day. I remember meeting Steve and Otis as a kid at an appearance at Northlake Mall. Only in writing this piece, did I suddenly realize that Kennedy was indirectly a big part of my childhood entertainment fun.
It’s a pleasure to read these posts by McClellan about Kennedy (who currently hosts a successful syndicated musical show, Big Band Jump–a project that got its start at Album 88 back in the early 1980s [I remember briefly meeting Kennedy once or twice when I worked at GSU Music Library back in the late 1980s, in fact] and also does periodic voice work for Cartoon Network). You can find McClellan’s posts covering Kennedy here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
One last thing, I was astounded to find this Officer Don clip on YouTube, where Kennedy did an amazing channeling of the spirit of Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton.
#1 by Theresa O'Shea on December 2, 2009 - 7:51 am
And here are some obscure, yet I believe valid, dots to connect. One of Officer Don’s puppet sidekicks was Orville the Dragon. Bonnie and Terry Turner left Atlanta and the Wits’ End Players to write for “Saturday Night Live.” They found film success when their television skits of “Wayne’s World” transferred to the big screen. They then developed the tv series “Third Rock from the Sun” (and later “That ’70s Show,” but that’s off course). I’m convinced these former Atlantans (and baby boomers) were paying homage to Don Kennedy’s character and show in naming Wayne Knight’s “Third Rock” character: Officer Don Orville (whom most characters addressed as “Officer Don”). O.K., so it’s not a cosmic revelation, but I enjoy it.