Name: Buffalo Bob Smith on Letterman, November 6, 1987
Uploaded: 2016-07-12T22:44:17.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Buffalo Bob Smith on Letterman, November 6, 1987' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-07-12. Transcript available. Buffalo Bob Smith and Howdy Doody guest on Late Night.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Buffalo Bob Smith on Letterman, November 6, 1987' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-07-12. Transcript available. Buffalo Bob Smith and Howdy Doody guest on Late Night.

Our next guest is one of the founding fathers of modern television for 13 years.
13 years, 2,543 performances.
This man introduced America's boys and girls to the residents of Doodyville.
What time is it?
Happy Doodyville!
Yes, sir, boys and girls there in Doodyville, kids in Mannheim, Pennsylvania,
and all over America.
Let's go!
It is Happy Doodyville!
It's Happy Doodyville!
What's in it now, do you?
Say Happy Doodyville!
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Buffalo Bob Smith.
Hi, Bob.
Nice to see you. How are you?
Come on over here.
Buffalo Bob and Howdy.
Good to see you.
Thank you, sir.
You did 2,500 shows in front of, I guess that was the peanut gallery we saw
there.
Was that fun? Was that annoying? Was it a good thing about the show?
Was it ever trouble? How many kids were in the gallery?
We had 40. We limited to 40.
And how were they picked?
I hate to tell you, I don't think very many people that wrote in for tickets
got them.
They're all friends of Big Shots.
Yeah, we see, we had two sponsors a day, and each sponsor got 10.
There's half of them gone.
I got four a day.
Each cast member maybe got three or four a week.
And the rest went internally through station relations and whatever.
Just one of many scandals surrounding the show.
Was it, well, what was it like going out there having to do live television
with 40 kids?
Well, it was wonderful. The kids really turned you on.
I mean, you'd be very tired besides doing the Howdy Show.
I did the morning radio show on WNBC.
I was on from 6 to 8.30 every morning.
And then you'd work on those terrifically hot lights.
So it was a lot of work.
Yeah, and by 5 o'clock, you were tired.
But gee, you'd walk out there, and the response, just like walking out here,
just right away.
You get the energy, and you're on, you know?
Any trouble, anything untoward ever developed?
Yeah, if we were taped, we would have deleted some of the stuff that happened
on the show.
You just had to keep rolling.
You had to keep going.
I was doing a Tootsie Roll commercial one time.
I was standing in front of the peanut gallery, and I'm telling all the kids
about Tootsies.
And the one kid, doing the whole commercial, driving me crazy.
You know, it's live, and you've got to get that commercial in a minute and 30
seconds.
Sure, you're paying a lot of dough for it.
Or whatever, sure.
So I just walked away from the peanut gallery, and boom, Mike followed me.
And finally, the commercial's over, and I went over, and I said,
Yeah, now, Sonny, what would you like?
He says, Buffalo Bob, I can't eat Tootsie Rolls.
I'm allergic to chocolate.
And I thought, uh-oh, there goes our client.
But after the show, the agency man said,
Don't worry, Buffalo Bob.
He said, the kid probably isn't allergic to chocolate at all.
His mom's probably too cheap to buy him a candy bar.
Would they get really excited and sometimes want to come up and grab you or Howdy?
As a matter of fact, one day, one kid did grab me.
It was early 50s.
It was a Halloween night.
And we had the whole set decorated with live pumpkins and cats and witches and
whatever.
And we always had no time movie at the end of the show.
It would turn down the lights to cool the studio.
And I was narrating the film, and the cameramen were watching just whatever.
Well, I'm telling about the movie about this fellow who was asleep all the time,
and I nicknamed him Rip Van Winkle.
So I'm telling kids about old Rip, and the little kid came out of the gallery
and tugged at my pants.
Like, I said, what do you want, son?
And he says, Buffalo Bob, I got a tinkle.
Well, obviously, I can't go tinkling with the kid.
Right.
So I pointed to one of our cameramen, thinking the kid would go over and get a
tinkle partner.
But in the same direction that I was pointing was our puppet stage,
and on the floor in front was a tremendous lighted pumpkin.
So I guess the little kid thought I was pointing toward the pumpkin
because he proceeded to go over and put out the candle.
So I didn't see this.
I thought he really enjoyed that one, didn't he?
He certainly got a good laugh about that one.
Oh, come on, Holly.
Now, uh...
So I didn't see this, David.
I'm watching the monitor, but the cameramen saw it, and they were hysterical.
Then the kids in the peanut gallery saw it, and one kid said,
Buffalo Bob, a sissy in the pumpkin!
So I stood up and saw this kid standing there, and I was completely hysterical.
I crawled off the set on my hands and knees.
I didn't come back till the next night.
Dayton Allen, one of our puppeteers, had enough composure to come down
and do the closing narration on the film and say goodbye to the kids.
So the letters and the phone calls we got were terrific.
So we said, now, we've got to answer these people.
What do we do?
So we sent to them the following poem.
We said, so many of you asked what happened on the night of Halloween
when everyone was hysterical and Buffalo Bob had to leave the scene.
It was during an old-time movie about a man named Rip Van Winkle
when a four-year-old boy from the gallery told Bob that he had to take him.
Well, Buffalo Bob couldn't take him, so he pointed to someone who could,
but the little kid didn't follow directions.
He just walked to a pumpkin and stood.
Now, the rest of the story is obvious, and we didn't even need a mop
because our little friend had great aim, and he never spilled a drop.
Oh.
Two more pieces of pumpkin pie for David.
And, uh, this was, this was, now, this was, that's not the original Howdy Doody,
is it?
No.
And, in fact, you started the show without Howdy, right?
That's right.
We, uh, I had had Howdy Doody on a local radio show, WNBC Radio, but just a
voice.
Right.
I'd say, here's Howdy, hi, Howdy, and he'd say, oh, well, Howdy Doody.
And then I just talked to myself.
Well, the kids would come in, and they'd see this radio show.
Right.
And they, they said, well, where is Howdy Doody?
We, we want to see him.
So we talked to the network people, NBC, and, and they said, yeah, we, uh, had
a kid's show
in mind.
Matter of fact, we were going to do a show with puppets.
This is, fits right into our plans.
We'll make another puppet.
We'll call him Howdy Doody.
Right.
This was on a Tuesday afternoon.
Is this the original puppet that you were going to use?
Oh, yes.
Isn't that absolutely atrocious?
That is the very first puppet that we had.
Isn't that something?
That would have turned the kid psychotic to have seen that.
A generation of serial killers looking at that guy.
Isn't that terrible?
Well, the thing that, that was so funny, they, we decided Tuesday we were going
to go on television.
They said, we got some old time movies.
You can narrate them.
And, uh, uh, you can have Howdy.
And I said, well, where, when do you want to go on?
They said, Saturday.
And it's Tuesday.
Right.
Well, we don't have a puppet.
Yeah.
So we had the camera take a picture of my desk drawer.
Yeah.
And we pretended that Howdy was in the desk drawer.
Right.
Is it he in there, Howdy?
Oh, yeah, but I'm, like, too bashful to come out.
Well, he was too bashful for three weeks.
Three weeks.
Until we made one.
Yeah, you got a puppet.
That's great.
Now, this is, uh, we're, we're coming up here.
Is it, is it the 20th anniversary?
Is that what we're looking at here?
20th anniversary.
Howdy is 40 years old.
We started in 1947.
We just came back from the coast.
We did a marvelous two-hour special.
Got a big special coming up.
Johnny Carson.
We've got Milton Berle.
We've got Dick Clark.
We've got John Ritter.
We've got Monty Hall.
A host of wonderful people.
And it's going to be syndicated two hours all over the country,
over 210 stations.
It'll be on over Thanksgiving.
Good enough.
Good enough.
Nice to meet you, Bob.
Thank you for being here so much.
Buffalo Bob, folks.
We'll be right back with Joe Copper.
We'll be right back with Joe Copper.
We'll be right back with Joe Copper.
We'll be right back with Joe Copper.
We'll be right back with Joe Copper.
We'll be right back with Joe Copper.
We'll be right back with Joe Copper.
We'll be right back with Joe Copper.
We'll be right back with Joe Copper.
We'll be right back with Joe Copper.
We'll be right back with Joe Copper.
We'll be right back with Joe Copper.
We'll be right back with Joe Copper.
We'll be right back with Joe Copper.