Sid and Marty Krofft Saturdays?
Our early 1970s childhood just keeps slipping further and further away.
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Is it just me Gen Xer’s or does every time someone or something connected to our childhood or youth dies, that time seems further and further away? Does it even seem like that time is becoming so faint in our memories, that we start to question if it was real at all? Thank goodness for our collective memory. Someone will eventually confirm, yeah, I remember that too!
The co-creator of shows like Sigmond and the Sea Monster, The Bugaloos Banana Splits and my favorite, H.R. Pufnstuf died last week, see his obit in the New York Times. Marty Krofft died of kidney failure at 86, but the silly, “far out” characters, laugh tracks, and songs, especially the opening theme songs, live on in my memory. Remember when broadcast television shows had theme songs? What song are you humming right now? The Bugaloos, the part with the kazoo, is buzzing in my head right now.
These shows were so much apart of Saturday morning my body clock was just set to them. My parents were working class people, for whom sleep was as luxurious as our mom’s Estee Lauder Youth Dew perfume. She was a registered nurse who commuted daily to New York in a red Volkswagen Beetle. Our dad, who we called Pop, worked at Nestle’s, the local plant in Freehold, N.J. , where he drove off to daily in a silver Chevy he called Betsy. He smelled of Marlboro cigarettes when he left and coffee grinds when he returned.
My Saturday morning routine began with slowly walking down the hall to the kitchen, climbing into the cabinet to the top shelf where our mom tucked the Frosted Flakes, Alphabets and if we were lucky, Captain Crunch. I’d pour the cereal into a napkin. I wasn’t steady enough to pour milk into a bowl, and didn’t want anyone to know I was sneaking cereal anyway. I’d slowly fold the wax paper bag in the box so as not to grab the attention of the “dead asleep” parents. Nothing could alert a parent faster than the sound of the wax paper being folded over, and tucked back into the cereal box.
Once on the couch, the fun could begin. Or should I say the trouble? Weren’t the kids or creatures always in trouble in those shows? The premise was always dire now that I think about it.
In H.R. Pufnstuf (1969-1970) Jimmy gets in a boat and is sailed off to some strange land with a magic dragon in groovy white boots, with a laugh track and good dance moves. A witch (played by actress Martha Raye) keeps trying to steel his one treasure and friend, Freddy, a magical flute. Was anyone else made anxious by the weekly threat of Freddy being kidnapped? And why was Pufnstuf, a dragon, not able to help Jimmy more than he could? Wasn’t he the mayor? Where was his fire? Was the idea that Jimmy had the power, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, all along and didn’t know it?
In Sigmund and Sea Monsters (1973-1975) wasn’t the sea monster found on a beach, unable to go home and being hidden in their bedroom? How does a sea monster survive in a boys closet? Why didn’t he just roll back out when the tide came in? Didn’t those boys surf? Why couldn’t they just get on the surf board with the sea monster and send him back to where he came from?
In Land of the Lost (1974-1977) the whole family was on some mission with their scientist dad, trapped in a time before fire, with dinosaurs and always in danger of being caught by the deadly Sleestacks. Was there a wall between the world were they were and they just couldn’t get through? Was there a passage in a cave that led to the real world? That show made me glad my dad wasn’t a scientist. Sometimes on a Saturday, we’d go on long drives on the back roads of Millhurst, N.J. , and it seemed like we were lost but we’d always be home by night fall after an endless card game with his cousins and brothers, but he always bought us back home even if it was just before midnight, before our mom got home.
Another one of those shows that I loved was The Bugaloos (1970-1972), but you already learned that from my opening lines, right? At the time we lived in very rural area just outside of Freehold, N.J. full of wildlife-possums, ground hogs, moles, wild geese, Gypsy moths caterpillar invasions, dragon flies and lady bugs. The Bugaloos (1970-1971) was a sweet show about fairies who could fly with interesting accents and an equally cool theme song. It made the creepy crawly things outside in the yard and the cornfield that surrounded it, safer. I was about 5 when this show aired, so the idea of flying was still possible, as possible as becoming a fairy, spouting wings, and singing in a band with my bug mates as we flew around.
The Bugaloos had something that those other Saturday morning shows in the other Sid and Marty Krofft creations didn’t have, and that is a black cast member.
In the early 1970s it wasn’t that Black people weren’t on television, it was just that every time they were, you literally got called into the living room to sit down and watch. My mother and father often talked about how they marveled at seeing black people on television when it was new in their 1950s world, and they continued this habit with us as children, as did my great-grandparents. To put this in context, my great-grandmother raised my mother, and she also was instrumental in the rearing of three generations. She was born in 1907, Charleston, South Carolina. There is no address on her birth certificate, just the name of the road. My parents grew up in segregation but my great-grandparents lived most of their lives under Southern Jim Crow. Even when they moved north, the customs and habits of Jim Crow remained a large part of how we were raised.
Watching television with a black cast member meant a hyper focused television experience. You focused on what they wore, how they talked and how they behaved around white people. Something I noticed early on in watching TV as a kid, was that a mixed cast had a formula. Think like Mod Squad, James as 15, which then became James at 16. The formula was always white guy, white girl, black guy. This is why when the Jackson 5 began airing their live variety show specials and their little sister Janet was featured, we were completely captivated. Black girls didn’t see black girls often on television in the early 1970s. Eventually, there was Dee on What’s Happening and then What’s Happening Now, Shawnte Northcutte, the only black girl on The New Mickey Mouse Club, then Tootie, played by Kim Fields on The Facts of Life.
So watching Wayne Laryea on The Bugaloos was as a little kid, exciting.
Fun fact, I learned today: Wayne Laryea who portrayed Harmony in The Bugaloos had a television and film career including Empire Road (1978-1979) a drama about life in racially mixed neighborhood of Caribbean-African, South Asian and East Indian in community of and a mini series Das Ding (1978) a robbery heist film.
I’m surprised that I never heard of it since I loved watching shows like East Enders, and Absolutely Fabulous.
One thing I loved about these shows was the music. The Bugaloos opening was definitely a bop. At least in my five-year-old taste. Again, that kazoo was just annoying enough for a kid to enjoy.
Sigmund and the Sea Monsters had a very surfs up, Beach Boys sound. I think I liked the theme song more than the show. And maybe somebody could tell me if the theme song for Sigmund and the Sea Monsters changed at some point? This is the theme song I remember, but the opening also had this song.
I didn’t care for the theme song for PufNStuff, but my all time favorite song from any of those shows was Mechanical Boy! I stunned myself, when I listened to this again and remembered all the words. Like I wonder, will I be some old woman in my late 90s singing this to my great-grandkids? Goals!
Did any of you ever see Jack Wild in the movie Oliver as the slick Artful Dodger and the film version of PufNStuf.
What are your own memories of Sid & Marty Krofft Saturdays? Leave a comment. I’d love to hear your thoughts. If you enjoyed, had fun, were moved, laughed, please share.