Captain Kangaroo Military - According to fact-checking and myth-busting website Snopes, there appear to be a few rumors about Bob Keeshan circulating the internet. The prominent rumor argues that it has a clip of dialogue taken from 'The Tonight Show' between actor Lee Marvin and host Johnny Carson.
Developing ideas from Tinker's Workshop, Keeshan and his long-time friend Jack Miller submitted the concept of Captain Kangaroo to the CBS network, which was looking for innovative approaches to children's television programming. CBS approved the show, and Keeshan starred as the title character when it premiered on CBS on October 3, 1955.[5]
Captain Kangaroo Military
Keeshan described his character as based on "the warm relationship between grandparents and children." The show was an immediate success, and he served as its host for nearly three decades. Network television programs began shortly after the end of the war.
Debunking The Military Myth
Howdy Doody, an early show which premiered in 1947 on NBC, was one of the first. Debuting on January 3, 1948,[4] Keeshan played Clarabell the Clown, a silent Auguste clown who communicated by honking several horns attached to a belt around his waist.
One horn meant "yes"; two meant "no". Clarabell often sprayed Buffalo Bob Smith with a seltzer bottle and played practical jokes. Keeshan gave up the role in 1952, and was replaced. Although Bob Keeshan was a children's television personality, he disapproved of parents who simply let their children watch television all day instead of engaging with them.
He said to The New York Times, "Back in the old days, when I was a child, we sat around the family table at dinner time and exchanged our daily experiences. ... We listened to each other and the interest was not put on;
it was real." In the 1990s, Keeshan expressed an interest in bringing back a new version of Captain Kangaroo as a gentler and kinder answer to the violent cartoons on children's television. Despite having sponsors and television stations lined up, Keeshan was unable to obtain permission from ICM, the company that owned the rights to Captain Kangaroo[14] at that time.
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Keeshan was an adopted member of the Dartmouth College class of 1942, receiving an honorary doctorate from the college in 1975. He was also awarded an honorary doctor of humane letters by Fordham University in 1975. Le Moyne College, a Jesuit liberal arts college in Syracuse
, New York, awarded him an honorary doctor of humane letters in 1983. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the College of New Rochelle in 1985, after serving for several years on its board of trustees.
In 1997, he received an honorary doctorate from Middlebury College, the alma mater of his grandson Britton Keeshan, for his work in children's literacy. Bob Keeshan cared deeply about his young audiences and never patronized them, saying, "A child needs to be listened to and talked to at 3 and 4 and 5 years of age.
Parents should not wait for the sophisticated conversation of a teenager." Bob Keeshan, later famous as television's "Captain Kangaroo," also enlisted in the U.S. Marines, but he did so too late to see any action during World War II.
Heart Attack And Cancellation
Keeshan was born on 27 June 1927 and enlisted two weeks before his 18th birthday, several months after the fighting at Iwo Jima. In a 1997 interview, Keeshan explained that he "enlisted in the U.S. Marines but saw no combat" because he signed up "just before we dropped the atom bomb."
Keeshan suffered a severe heart attack just moments after stepping off a plane at Toronto International Airport on July 13, 1981,[9] which pushed the start of a revamped version of his show back to at least mid-August.
He had come to the city to accept a children's service award. Johnny said... "Lee, I'll bet a lot of people are unaware that you were a Marine in the initial landing at Iwo Jima... and that during the course of that action you earned the Navy Cross and were severely wounded
." Numerous rumors about children's television host Fred Rogers having a violent, criminal, or military background have been bandied about for years, but there is nothing to any of them. As our Mr. Rogers page explains, Fred Rogers never served in the military.
Youth Education Military
By September 21, 1953, Keeshan was back on the air on WABC-TV (New York City), in a new children's show, Time for Fun. He played Corny the Clown, and this time he spoke.[5] Later that same year, in addition to Time for Fun, Keeshan began Tinker's Workshop, a program aimed at preschoolers, with him playing the grandfather-like Tinker.[6]
Jack Green, who works with the Naval Historical Center in Washington, is frequently asked to fact-check the legend about Captain Kangaroo being a war hero. "I have to tell them it's a nice story, but it didn't happen," he said.
Additionally, his show 'Captain Kangaroo' holds a record for being the longest-running children's show on commercial television. Its competition is 'Sesame Street,' which is the longest-running children's show on public television - or at least it was before it switched over to HBO.
After Captain Kangaroo ended, Keeshan hosted 1985's CBS Storybreak, which featured animated versions of children's literature. Keeshan appeared in framing sequences for the animated stories, showcasing the book versions and suggesting similar books for the viewers to seek out.
Urban Legend
In 1987, Keeshan founded Corporate Family Solutions with former Tennessee Republican Governor Lamar Alexander. The company provided day-care programs to businesses. It doesn't seem to be a malicious legend, just someone sharing some accidental misinformation, although it's nearly impossible to trace where these sorts of internet myths crop up.
However, it is an excellent reminder to always fact-check information from email threads. Keeshan also had a Saturday morning show called Mister Mayor during the 1964-65 season. Keeshan, in his role as the central character in both Captain Kangaroo and Mister Mayor, heavily promoted the products of the Schwinn Bicycle Co., a sponsor, directly on-air to his audience.[7]
By 1972, Keeshan had introduced another character on Captain Kangaroo to recommend Schwinn products, Mr. Schwinn Dealer,[8] due to the Federal Trade Commission ruling against children's show hosts directly endorsing their sponsor's products during their programs after 1969.
Keeshan was born in Lynbrook, New York.[3] After an early graduation from Forest Hills High School in Queens, New York, in 1945, during World War II, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve, but was still in the United States when Japan surrendered.
He attended Fordham University on the GI Bill and a few years at Hillsdale College. Fred Rogers, of the television show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, also had a rumor flying around about him serving in the military.
There's a rumor that he was a Navy SEAL; however, this is entirely untrue as Fred Rogers never served in the military. A bit of purported dialogue purportedly taken from a Tonight Show appearance by actor Lee Marvin with host Johnny Carson holds that Marvin and Bob Keeshan, the latter to become famous as long-time children's television host Captain Kangaroo, were World War II veterans who fought together
at the battle for Iwo Jima in the Pacific theater. That account does have some elements of truth to it, but although actor Lee Marvin was a guest on that late-night talk show at least seven times during Carson's tenure as host, most of what is included in that account is outright fiction or a transcript
based on someone's badly flawed memory: Bob Keeshan enlisted two weeks before his 18th birthday, which was after the battle for Iwo Jima. In fact, by the time he was old enough to enlist, the war was ending, and he did not go overseas to fight.
Keeshan died in Windsor, Vermont, on January 23, 2004, at age 76. He was survived by three children: Michael Derek, Laurie Margaret, and Maeve Jeanne. His wife of 45 years, Anne Jeanne Laurie Keeshan, died February 25, 1996.[15]
Keeshan's grandson, Britton Keeshan, became the youngest person at that time to have climbed the Seven Summits by climbing Mount Everest in May 2004. He carried photographs of his grandfather on that ascent, and buried a photo of the two of them at the summit.
[16] Keeshan lived on Melbury Road in Babylon Village, Long Island, New York, before moving to spend the last 14 years of his life in Norwich, Vermont,[13] where he became a children's advocate, as well as an author.
His memoirs, entitled Good Morning, Captain, were published in 1995 by Fairview Press. He was a strong advocate against video game violence and took part in congressional hearings in 1993. In addition, he joined with parents' groups in the 1980s who protested children's TV shows based on then present toys on the market, like He-Man and Transformers
; he felt that toys turned into TV shows did not teach children anything about the real world. He also made a rare film appearance in The Stupids in 1996. An urban legend claims that actor Lee Marvin said on The Tonight Show that he had fought alongside Keeshan at the Battle of Iwo Jima in February–March, 1945. However, Marvin not only never said this, but had not served on Iwo Jima (having
been hospitalized from June 1944 until October 1945, from wounds received in the Battle of Saipan),[19] and Keeshan himself never saw combat, having enlisted too late to serve overseas.[20] Lee Marvin did enlist in the U.S.
Marines, saw action as Private First Class in the Pacific during World War II, and was wounded (in the buttocks) by fire which severed his sciatic nerve. However, his injury occurred during the battle for Saipan in June 1944, not the battle for Iwo Jima, which took place several months later, in February 1945. Marvin also received a Purple Heart and was indeed interred at Arlington National Cemetery (but he was
not, as some versions of this piece claim, awarded a Navy Cross). Robert James "Bob" Keeshan (June 27, 1927 – January 23, 2004) was an American television producer and actor. He created and played the title role in the children's television program Captain Kangaroo, which ran from 1955 to 1984, the longest-running nationally broadcast children's television program of its day.[1][2]
In the clip, Lee Marvin talks about how Bob Keeshan is the bravest man he ever knew and maintained that the two fought together at Iwo Jima in the Pacific. The transcript of the dialogue has been shared widely through emails.
Many people have always been a bit offended that Lee Marvin is buried in a grove of 3 and 4 star generals at Arlington. His marker gives his name, rank (PVT) and service (USMC). Nothing else.
Following the heart attack, Keeshan received three Emmy awards for Outstanding Performer in 1982, 1983, and 1984.[12] Despite these accolades, Keeshan's show was shortened from its hour-long format to a half hour in 1981, to make room for the expansion of the CBS Morning News lineup.
The program was retitled Wake Up with the Captain, and was moved to a new 7:00 am time slot. At the beginning of 1982, the show was rescheduled to an even earlier slot of 6:30 am.
In the fall of 1982, CBS installed it as a weekend-only hour offering, and two years later, in the fall of 1984, the show became a Saturday half-hour entry. Tired of CBS' constant reductions of his show, Keeshan left Captain Kangaroo when his contract with the network ended in December 1984, just nine months shy of the show's 30th anniversary.
By 1987, repeats of the show were airing daily on many PBS stations.
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