Television: End of the Affair

When Burr Tillstrom’s gentle Kukla, Fran & Ollie was chopped down from half an hour to 15 minutes six years ago, some 10 million fans proved they could be as loud as they had been loyal. The New York Times complained that “minority” viewers were being disenfranchised. The Washington Times-Herald asked: “Who’s responsible for this brainstorm—someone who’s mad at the human race?” The late Playwright Robert Sherwood moaned: “Calamity.” Last week ABC’s Kukla, Fran & Ollie, TV’s second oldest network show (after Kraft TV Theater) went dark after a ten-year run, and all earlier sounds became mere whimpers. A New Jersey woman wrote Sponsor Gordon Baking Co.: “We do not intend to buy any more of your product.” A Chicago fan complained: “I bought my TV set on your account, and now I’m stuck with the damn thing.” More than one mother complained that she would miss cleaning the smudges her children made on the TV screen when they kissed the Kuklapolitans good night. To the chief programmer of NBC (and former ABC president) came a letter from Adlai Stevenson: “Surely such assassination, murther and mayhem cannot be permitted in this enlightened land . . .”

Break Away. But relief was not in sight. The smaller local stations felt the show’s humor too delicate and subtly modulated for listener tastes (though K.F.&O. once had a Sullivan-sized rating of 72% of the TV audience, drew 8,000 letters a week, went out over 57 stations). “There’s no right place in TV for us any more.” said 39-year-old Puppeteer Tillstrom. “People in TV would rather make money than provide entertainment.” He was relieved to leave “the world of ulcers and tranquilizers. If a man has anything in his heart, he has to break away.” Tillstrom declined local TV offers because he is “tired,” and peeved with both sponsor and ABC for taking him for granted: “Neither has congratulated me on a show in two years.” This fall he plans to “revitalize” his puppets on Broadway. “They are dying to get out on the stage.”

“Just Honestly.” Loyal fans were not dying to have them go. They would not soon forget bald, bulb-nosed-Kukla and mischievous Ollie. the one-toothed dragon who could not breathe tire because his father swallowed too much water swimming the Hellespont. Or sensitive Fletcher Rabbit, who complained when he washed his flop-ears: “I can’t do a thing with them,” or Beulah Witch, who was arrested for reckless broomstick driving on Halloween, or their foil and sweetheart Fran Allison, the only live character on the show, with her infectious Midwesternisms (“Wouldn’t you just know that would happen, just honestly”). Fran was so taken by the satiric little land of make-believe that she never could bear to watch the puppets being shut away in their box. Last week, as sad Kuklapolitans and sadder viewers said goodbye to a show that was simple, scriptless, sketchily rehearsed and never tied by contracts. Tillstrom said: “It endured on one principle —love. I hope it doesn’t sound too holy. But we loved our audience, and they loved us. It was just a big love affair.”