Cast
The action of the program centered around its eponymous host. Tico Bonomo said that finding a host wasn't easy. "You can't teach clowns to do magic, you have to have a magician and turn him into a clown. And, believe me, it's tough teaching a good magician to put on white face and act like a clown."
The first "Magic Clown" was known only by his stage name, Zovella, and he hosted the program from its inception in 1949 until 1952. At that time, a comedian named Richard DuBois took over, serving even after the show was cancelled by NBC and moved to DuMont-owned WABD, until 1958, when the show moved to Newark, NJ based WNTA.
The WNTA run was hosted by comedian, mimic, cartoonist, and puppeteer Doug Anderson, with assistance from his wife, former model Gayle Anderson. The couple added new segments to the show, including informational pieces and in-studio interviews as the show expanded from a weekly to a weekday basis. The Andersons, however, choked at the amount of creative control the sponsor had over the show, and the show was cancelled after only one year on WNTA.
A short-lived revival of the program, produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, was created for syndication in 1970. The Magic Clown was performed in this version by now-famous magician James Randi (a.k.a. "The Amazing Randi.")
Read more about this topic: The Magic Clown
Famous quotes containing the word cast:
“If you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it.”
—Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855)
“... stars that marked
those in whose faces
you had not
looked. ‘They were cast out
as if they were
some animals, some beasts.’”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“The greatest, or rather the most prominent, part of this city was constructed with the design to offer the deadest resistance to leaden and iron missiles that might be cast against it. But it is a remarkable meteorological and psychological fact, that it is rarely known to rain lead with much violence, except on places so constructed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)