BELOVED TV HOST BUDDY BEDWETTER DEAD
The genial, gently mischievous host of one of
TV's longest running comedy shows, "Kittens are Cute",
Buddy Bedwetter, breathed his last breath in his Bel Air mansion
on Wednesday, at the age of 97.
Particularly shocked was Mrs. Susan Frances Galiczynski of
Chester, Pa, who exclaimed "My God, I had no idea that he
was even still alive. I would have thought that he would
have to be, like, 183 years old or something, by now."
Bedwetter hadn't been diagnosed with any life-threatening
disease. The general consensus among medical professionals
appeared to be that Bedwetter was "simply too darned old".
Born in Moose Jaw, Alaska, Buddy learned everything that he knew
about the Bible from his elderly father, a one-legged, one-eyed
evangelical organ-grinder and an all-around Holy Ghost-fearing
Hurdy-Gurdy Man.
In downtown Moose Jaw, which consisted of maybe 4 or 5 streets,
Buddy would tag along with a little tin cup, trying to
bum some small change from the grown-ups, saying thanks,
while his old man continuously turned the organ-grinder crank.
From this humble beginning as "Buddy the Monkey-Boy",
Bedwetter, in his little monkey suit, began to learn the ropes
in the art of being professionally cute.
When the schtick began to wear thin, as did Buddy and his
Dad's raggedy clothes, the clink of nickels and dimes
dried up and the window of opportunity began to close.
Tired of the constant mockery, Buddy abandoned the
"Monkey Boy" moniker and moved on, parlaying his
organ-grinding experience into a new employment
opportunity at a Chicago meat-packing plant.
Starting at the bottom floor, Buddy worked his way up
to foreman in charge of production for rodent hair sausage
fillers and passing off rat feces as a low-cost substitute
for capers and peppercorns.
Buddy also worked as a bat boy, an umbrella salesman,
a bar room bouncer, a broom-pusher, a bucking bronco rider,
a Brillo Soap Pad advertising entrepreneur, a beach bum,
a bootlegger, a Ball Park Frank street-vendor, a balloon-seller,
and a short, unsuccessful stint as an amateur brain surgeon.
After this long run of dreary careers and customers whom he
had fleeced, Bedwetter began selling lemons at six cents apiece.
No matter how economic conditions were dreary, Bedwetter
was always cheery, for he was filled with philanthropy
and had a philosophy, "When Life hands you lemons, you should
not only make lemonade, you should go into sales as a full-time
Lemonade Existential Entrepreneurial Executive, and set thee forth
on an global Lemonade Crusade to spread golden sunshine
to the darkest and remotest corners of the Earth."
Bedwetter was never bitter. No matter how stiff the competition,
Bedwetter would always try to do them one better.
Although a poor boy, the ambitious, got-getter Bedwetter
eventually grew up to become an international jet-setter.
During the McCarthy era, when his Hollywood friends were
being investigated, Buddy was called to testify, but hesitated.
Throughout the witch-hunts, Buddy resisted, and so he himself
was quickly blacklisted. He steadfastly defended his close
friend, Lucille Ball, who was accused of being a communist
because of her red hair. To this day, Buddy believes that
this entire episode was completely unfair.
Buddy married his home-town Moose Jaw, Alaska sweetheart,
Sara Paleface, and between them had something like 8-10 children,
maybe even more:
* Paulie of Parma, Ohio, who died of polio after years of paralysis
* Lucy, who committed suicide after years of failed, expensive
psychological analysis
* Kelly, of Cow Crossing, Kansas, who got hit by a car
* Jack, who died in Iraq and was posthumously awarded
the Bronze Star
* Mitzy, of Pittsburgh, who got killed in a barroom brawl
* ("King") Louis of Gumbo, Louisiana who died of oil ingestion
after a fall from a shrimp boat trawl
* Buzzy, who was executed in Texas after losing
his murder conviction court appeal
* Beanie, who had a fatal slip on a banana peel
* Barry, who got in the way of a Peruvian mudslide
and got buried
Though the untimely passing of his prodigious production
of improbable progeny was a pity, Buddy was the epitome
of an eternal optimist, exemplifying the old saying that
"An optimist is someone who needs an optometrist because
he cannot see things clearly"
Because precious life so quickly passes, Buddy preferred
to view things through rose-tinted glasses.
Buddy and Sara later divorced amicably, because Buddy concluded
that bearing fruit was not his strong suit, and that
he would make a more natural bachelor.
Sara became a popular darling of backward, backwoods hicks,
and so decided to make a run in politics.
After suffering these multitudinous losses, Buddy would
Pangloss things over with his pal and new boss, Alan Funt,
on the hit show "Candide Camera". Buddy and Alan found great
mirth in taking surreptitious snapshots of people in awkward
and embarrassing, contrived comical scenarios, which everyone
thought was more fun than licking the frosting off of Oreos.
America's best buddy Bedwetter had one tiny hangup,
barely worth mentioning, which was his highly seasoned,
anti-semitic sentiments. Bedwetter couldn't seem to find
a use for Jews other than making lampshades and big piles
of eyeglasses and shoes. However, Buddy's adoring American
public was always totally unconcerned, because Bedwetter was
otherwise such a wholesome, genial sort of gentile, an all-round
gentleman, an iconic Good Humor Man, pitching creamy vanilla ice
cream bars while wrapped in the strawberry goodness of his
country's Stripes and Stars.
In contrast, Buddy was fine with blacks, Asians, veterans,
Vikings, gays, Rosicrusians, Armenians, Scientologists,
Seventh Day Adventists, hillbillies, Texans, Lithuanians,
Lutherans, Polaks, Protestants, Moonies, mimes, karaoke singers,
cartoonists and Keynesian economists, which proves that his
extremely dim view of Jews was simply some unimportant old news,
and that Buddy was obviously no bigot. Like Mel Gibson.
To quibble definitions would be only so much anti-Semitic semantics.
Bedwetter had a major hit, delighting in the unspoiled
innocence of children, with his long-running skit,
"Kids Say the Goddamnedest, Friggingest Things"
While grilling one little tyke about the hanky-panky
of his bad-cop policeman Dad, the audience roared with
laughter when the youngster replied,
"Listen, Buddy, ya seem like a bright guy.
Yuv gotta bachelor's degree from MIT.
Now, just 'cause yer a bachelor don' necessarily
mean yer a bum-buster or back-door broom salesman,
if ya catch my drift, but just get outa my face,
will ya?
If ya don wanta have the country flyin'
flags at half-staff for ya, don try bustin my
childhood balloons fer cheap laughs. I'll stretch
ya from a rope til yer neck is longer than a giraffe's"
Buddy made bigger bucks off of cute kids than Pentagon
contractors selling overpriced toilet seat lids.
Even in these Uncertain Times of the Final Curtain, Buddy
always will be remembered for never committing the sin
of cynicism.
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Beloved TV personality Art Linkletter dies at age 97
LOS ANGELES, California -- Art Linkletter, who hosted the
popular TV shows "People Are Funny" and "House Party" in the
1950s and 1960s, ...
newstalkradiowhio.com/.../2010/.../beloved-tv-personality-art-lin.html
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http://www.whale.to/b/brussell1.html
Art Linkletter, a television personality, told a Congressional
committee investigating drug abuse that the "Beatles were the
leading advocates of an acid society." This is an example of
turning one hostile group against another. There is every reason
to believe that the LSD that caused Dr. Frank Olson and Diane
Linkletter to leap from buildings to their death could be
manufactured from the same laboratories. With justified anger,
Linkletter became a mouthpiece. Meanwhile, the so-called
straight society Linkletter was defending, spent sixteen years
and millions of dollars perfecting LSD into an operational weapon
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The Washington Monthly
Here is USA Next figurehead Art Linkletter, attempting a pale
imitation of the John Birch Society
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005700.php
By: Kevin Drum
AARP GETS THE SWIFT VETS TREATMENT....In my continuing quest to
prove that a picture is worth a thousand words, here's your
picture of the day. Via Josh Marshall, it's a screen capture
from the American Spectator site of an ad from USA Next, a loony
right group that thinks of itself as the conservative
alternative to AARP. Apparently "the real AARP agenda" is to
endorse gay marriage and disband the military.
Lovely folks, these USA Nexters. Clicking on the link doesn't
provide any explanation for this putrid charge, but no matter.
Clearly AARP is little more than a front group for godless
communism anyway. Here is USA Next figurehead Art Linkletter,
attempting a pale imitation of the John Birch Society:
I'd like to ask some blunt questions: Do you want more taxes
taken out of your earnings? Do you want more unelected
bureaucrats taking over more details of your life and your
family's life? Do you want federal regulators making your health
choices, instead of you, your family, and your doctor? Do you
want government regulators to control the investment and
retirement decisions of your family, instead of you?
If you answered "Yes," then AARP is your group....
That brings back memories. In any case, USA Next has now hired
the same guys who created the SwiftVets commercials last year ?
apparently the military/gay marriage ad wasn't quite incendiary
enough ? and they ought to be a good fit. A marriage made in
heaven, so to speak.
The lunatic right marches on. And on. And on.....
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http://www.metafilter.com/92278/Kids-told-him-the-darndest-things
He was abandoned on a door step in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan...
He ended up with the perfect name for a TV pitchman, too. One
wonders what line of work he'd have gone into if he'd been left
on the doorstep of, say, the Kleinschmidts. posted by Atom Eyes
at 1:46 PM on May 26 [1 favorite]
Well, it says no LSD was found in her system "at the time of her
death" - correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't LSD completely
metabolized in a few hours or less? The effects last much longer,
obviously, but no trace is left in the body. --- As I recall,
the claim was always that she must have been having flashbacks.
The claims by the family were generally made to cover for the
fact that the eyewitness account of her death rather clearly
stated that it was a straight up sober suicide, which had rather
severe stigmas surrounding it at the time (not that there isn't
now). posted by FatherDagon at 1:48 PM on May 26 [1 favorite]
posted by jgaiser at 1:49 PM on May 26
He came to my college and gave a presentation entitled "God and
The Pill." Immensely boring and ironic at the same time. posted
by Xurando at 1:50 PM on May 26
Yes, but was Mr. Linkletter on LSD when he died? That's the
question that needs answered here. posted by dortmunder at 1:52
PM on May 26 [1 favorite]
I was pretty ad-savvy as a kid, and rarely bought into the
"OHMYGODITSONTVANDIWANTIT" commercials, and as a 10 year old I
was nowhere near the target audience, (and what's a kid going to
do with a $5000 bed? Make the best trampoline ever?) a moving
robot-transforming bed seemed pretty cool. And hey, FREE TV! I
mean, you could have a robot bed that's terrible, but hey, a
FREE TV! C'mon, who wouldn't want a FREE TV! Who cares if you're
dropping $5000 for a chair and a 13" TV. Its FREE! FREE TV!!!!
Those ads got Craftmatic into trouble, and I think Mr.
Linkletter wasn't a spokesman after that, if I remember
correctly. posted by chambers at 2:20 PM on May 26
.
posted by disclaimer at 3:11 PM on May 26
i clicked on one of those yootoob links and this popped up in
the sidebar -- a very unfunny 1979 interview with Timothy Leary
that includes an uncomfortable phone conversation with Art
Linklater
posted by Hammond Rye at 3:17 PM on May 26 [1 favorite]
Hammond Rye, OUCH. That's brutal. I had to disconnect but will
probably check it out again later when I'm a little less ...
sensitive.
Seriously, that's a raw, ugly piece of history, worth its own
FPP probably. Two aging men arguing as to who's responsible for
the death of a then young girl.
I blame society
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Gordon Arthur Kelly was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Before
he was a month old he was abandoned by his parents and adopted
by Fulton John and Mary Metzler Linkletter, a middle-age couple
whose two children had died. It was not until he was 12, while
rummaging through his father's desk, that he discovered he was
adopted.
In his autobiography, "Confessions of a Happy Man,'' Mr.
Linkletter recalled his adoptive father, a one-legged cobbler
and itinerant evangelist, as "a strange, uncompromising man
whose main interest in life was the Bible.'' The family prayed
and performed on street corners, with Art playing the triangle.
By the time Art was 5 the family had moved to an unpaved adobe
section of San Diego. As a child he took on any job he could
find. At one point he sorted through lemons left abandoned in
piles outside a packing plant, cleaned them, and sold them for 6
cents a dozen.
Mr. Linkletter decided to see the world after he graduated from
high school at 16. With $10 in his pocket, he rode freight
trains and hitchhiked around the country, working as a
meatpacker, a harvester, and a busboy in a roadhouse.Continued...
A fast typist, he found work in a Wall Street bank just in time
to watch the stock market crash in 1929. He also shipped out to
Hawaii and Rio de Janeiro as a merchant seaman.
After returning to California, he entered San Diego State
Teachers College with plans to become an English teacher. He
earned a bachelor's degree in 1934, but in his last year he was
hired to do spot announcements by a local radio station, KGB, a
job that led to radio work at the California Pacific
International Exposition in San Diego and at similar fairs in
Dallas and San Francisco.
In 1936 he married Lois Foerster, a college student in San Diego.
The couple had five children: Jack, who followed his father into
television and died of lymphoma in 2007; Dawn, of Sedona, Ariz.;
Robert, who died in a car accident in 1980; Sharon, of Calabasas,
Calif.; and Diane, who committed suicide in 1969, which spurred
her father into becoming a crusader against drug use.
With John Guedel, Mr. Linkletter made an audition tape for an
audience-participation show, with contests and gags, that would
rely on his ability to ad-lib and coax humorous material from
virtually anyone. Guedel came up with the name "People Are Funny,''
and NBC put it on the air in 1942. Enormously popular, it ran on
radio until 1960. The television version, which made its debut
in 1954, ran until 1961.
Working without a script, Mr. Linkletter sent audience
volunteers on silly assignments outside the studio with
instructions to report back on their experiences.
On one show Mr. Linkletter spotted a woman's enormous purse and
began rummaging through it, announcing each item in turn: a can
opener, a can of snuff, a losing racetrack ticket and a
photograph of Herbert Hoover. The handbag bit became a staple of
the show.
"House Party,'' which ran five days a week on radio from 1945 to
1967 and on television from 1952 to 1969, was a looser version
of "People Are Funny,'' with beauty tips and cooking
demonstrations filling time between Mr. Linkletter's audience-
chatter sessions.
The highlight of the show was a segment in which five children
between the ages of 5 and 10 were interviewed by Mr. Linkletter.
After one boy revealed that his father was a policeman who
arrested lots of burglars, Mr. Linkletter asked if his mother
ever worried about the risks. "Naw, she thinks it's great,'' he
answered. "He brings home rings and bracelets and jewelry almost
every week.''
Mr. Linkletter assembled replies like that in "Kids Say the
Darndest Things!,'' illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, the
creator of "Peanuts,'' and its sequel, "Kids Still Say the
Darndest Things!''
A fast typist, he found work in a Wall Street bank just in time
to watch the stock market crash in 1929. He also shipped out to
Hawaii and Rio de Janeiro as a merchant seaman.
After returning to California, he entered San Diego State
Teachers College with plans to become an English teacher. He
earned a bachelor's degree in 1934, but in his last year he was
hired to do spot announcements by a local radio station, KGB, a
job that led to radio work at the California Pacific
International Exposition in San Diego and at similar fairs in
Dallas and San Francisco.
In 1936 he married Lois Foerster, a college student in San Diego.
The couple had five children: Jack, who followed his father into
television and died of lymphoma in 2007; Dawn, of Sedona, Ariz.;
Robert, who died in a car accident in 1980; Sharon, of Calabasas,
Calif.; and Diane, who committed suicide in 1969, which spurred
her father into becoming a crusader against drug use.
With John Guedel, Mr. Linkletter made an audition tape for an
audience-participation show, with contests and gags, that would
rely on his ability to ad-lib and coax humorous material from
virtually anyone. Guedel came up with the name "People Are Funny,''
and NBC put it on the air in 1942. Enormously popular, it ran on
radio until 1960. The television version, which made its debut
in 1954, ran until 1961.
Working without a script, Mr. Linkletter sent audience
volunteers on silly assignments outside the studio with
instructions to report back on their experiences.
On one show Mr. Linkletter spotted a woman's enormous purse and
began rummaging through it, announcing each item in turn: a can
opener, a can of snuff, a losing racetrack ticket and a
photograph of Herbert Hoover. The handbag bit became a staple of
the show.
"House Party,'' which ran five days a week on radio from 1945 to
1967 and on television from 1952 to 1969, was a looser version
of "People Are Funny,'' with beauty tips and cooking
demonstrations filling time between Mr. Linkletter's audience-
chatter sessions.
The highlight of the show was a segment in which five children
between the ages of 5 and 10 were interviewed by Mr. Linkletter.
After one boy revealed that his father was a policeman who
arrested lots of burglars, Mr. Linkletter asked if his mother
ever worried about the risks. "Naw, she thinks it's great,'' he
answered. "He brings home rings and bracelets and jewelry almost
every week.''
Mr. Linkletter assembled replies like that in "Kids Say the
Darndest Things!,'' illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, the
creator of "Peanuts,'' and its sequel, "Kids Still Say the
Darndest Things!''
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