TELEVISION: Charm in the Morning

She sings, she dances, she is an expert ventriloquist and a hypnotic spieler of commercials, she had her first book (The Shari Lewis Puppet Book) published last week; at the age of 24, she makes more than $75,000 a year, and children write her letters: “My mother says I have to cat spinach if I’m going to grow up as big as you. Please stand up so I can see how much I have to eat.”

Even standing on her toes, tiny (5 ft., 95 Ibs.) Shari Lewis is hardly likely to inspire a spurt in the spinach market, but she can inspire almost anything or anyone else. Five times a week, more than half a million sets within range of New York’s WRCA-TV click on at 9 a.m. for Hi Mom and its highly successful potpourri of sense and nonsense. For prekindergarten children, there are songs and games, puppets and magic; for mothers, there are health tips and stretch-the-budget menus. For late-rising males, who write her lots of letters, there is the elfin charm and shining morning face of Shari Lewis herself.

Pushing Buttons. Shari’s surface-simple formula: “Children are so open, it’s easy to see what’s in their minds. If I push a button, I get a response.” Shari gets her best responses with four hand puppets—named Lamb Chop, Charlie Horse, Hush Puppy and Wing Ding—who trade wisecracks with her, play geography and spelling games, croak weekly through 20-odd songs. Shari has a sure hand with animals (at home, in a Manhattan apartment with second husband Jeremy Tarcher, she keeps a collie, an owl monkey, a parrot, and a mink), and on the show she trots out everything from marmosets to white mice.

Manhattan-born Shari has been aiming at one audience or another since she pulled her first rabbit out of a hat at the age of four. A broken leg in adolescence ended her dream of becoming a professional dancer, so she turned to ventriloquism. A year later, at 18, she had her own TV show, has had one or more ever since. Today her pell-mell schedule leaves her about an hour and a half a day to herself, during which “I look at my husband.”

Gauging Hangovers. “She is altogether too good for your preschool children.” wrote TV Critic John Crosby, “and should have a show aimed at older children, say. me.” Among older children who have fallen for her are Pat Boone and Jerry Lewis. Sammy Davis Jr. will stay up all night to be sure to catch her show when he is in New York. Other adult male viewers find the going a bit sticky. Says one: “Much depends on the strength of one’s stomach, extent of one’s hangover, love of young mothers, and ability to endure small children at an early hour.” But with young mothers, small children and her 13 sponsors, Shari Lewis is solid.