Recreating Memories in Black & White… and Color
by Mike Olszewski
Over the holidays, I stopped in a coffee shop to get one of those mocha peppermint concoctions that you can’t seem to make at home. It was the same place where, a couple of years back, I noticed some teenage girls using lunch boxes for purses.
Remember those? Cheap, metal boxes with plastic handles that somehow always ended up smelling like sour milk. They go for big money nowadays and today’s have themes.
But about the coffee shop. I glanced over at a table and saw a woman in a business-type suit with a box of Crayolas. She was coloring in a book. That’s right, a coloring book.
We had a brief conversation and it turns out that after an initial renaissance a few years ago, adult coloring books again are flying off the shelves. These aren’t the Little Lulu/Mickey Mouse-themed books we had when we struggled to color inside the lines. The books I spotted starred Jason Momoa, Idris Elba and Keanu Reeves. She called it her escape. And the books are a lot cheaper than a peppermint mocha whatever.
Jungle Fever
Last issue, I also wrote about the journey of Captain Penny’s engineer uniform back to the Penfound family. A member of Ron Penfound’s TV family has a new book out and it’s a must-read.
Nancy “Safari Jane” Tetzlaff wrote “Jaguar in the Kitchen – My Life with Jungle Larry.” It’s the story of how a girl from Cleveland’s west side ended up traveling the world in search of rare and exotic animals and became a TV star along the way. It’s got a bit of drama and lots of memories of Jungle Larry.
In keeping with the local TV theme, my wife Janice and I wrote “From Captain Penny to Superhost,” (Gray & Company Publishers) and the response was huge. We started work on a TV documentary and asked our old buddy Dan O’Shannon (who, along with his work on “Modern Family,” “Cheers” and others is a local media expert) if he’d like to be a part of it.
Here’s the story in Dan’s words:
“When Mike and I talked about basing a documentary on his book, I jumped at the chance. Not only did I love the book, but bringing it to television offered us the opportunity to go beyond merely sharing old photos and interviews and stories; if we wanted to bring the viewers back to that special time, why not use the medium to enhance the experience? Why not host the show from Captain Penny’s set, or the Romper Room or Franz the Toymaker set?”
He continues, “Of course, those sets were demolished decades ago, but after collecting photos and surviving footage, we hired a special effects group in Los Angeles to go about the process of digitally recreating them.
“Between these new 3-D renderings and the many props we hunted down (A lookalike birdcage from Barnaby, duplicate furniture from Captain Penny, the actual magic mirror from Romper Room, etc.) we could now host the documentary from the very places we saw years ago while sitting on the living room floor,” he adds.
“Mike and I would use an old-style remote control (a “clicker”) to zap us from one set to the other. After nearly 10 months of preparation, we were ready to begin our four-day shoot. After the first day — in which we visited Uncle Jake’s House and the Superhost theater — we were shut down because of Covid. We resume shooting in spring.”
It has lots of classic and rare TV footage, including some stuff that’s never been seen, and the hosts themselves talking about how they developed their characters. Despite the delay in production, it’s moving along quickly and will be well worth the wait.
BOOMER TRIVIA: Last issue, I asked you to name the pioneering Northeast Ohio rock trio that simulcast a live TV concert in stereo, years before MTV. It was Glass Harp. In 1972, the power trio broadcast live from WVIZ-TV with a simulcast on WMMS-FM. They still perform today.
For next time, name the noted songwriter who played on Jimi Hendrix’ records whose first performance was on WXEL-TV’s “Marjorie Harm’s Charming Children.”
