Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Wallace & Ladmo

The Wallace & Ladmo Show ran from April 1, 1954 to December 29, 1989—36 years—making it the longest-running daily, locally produced children's television show. I never saw it, having grown up in Northern California, but after reading in "We Got the Neutron Bomb" that the Dickies & the Alice Cooper band were childhood watchers of & undoubtedly inspired by the show, i had to check it out. Seems like it was not unlike my own "Uncle Show", "Mr. Sean's Cartoon Club" which ran at Eugene's Bijou Theatre for a couple of years.


The Ladmo Bag!!! This was the dream of several generation of kids in Arizona from Yuma to Flagstaff to Phoenix to even Kearny. What was it? It was a show bag of goodies, usually sweets & stuff like that, usually coming from the show's sponsors. Every day there would be a range of winners who would be on the show. Wallace & Ladmo would interview each one for their name & age. Also, a lucky audience member would win a Ladmo Bag. Ladmo would go out into the crowd, & Wallace would call out the correct Row number & the number of seats in from the corner. What a joy it must have been for the kids the next day when they would go back to school & the rest of the kids would be envious of their good fortune.

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