Wednesday, July 20, 2011

 

Obscurity of the Day: Art Linkletter's Kids






Art Linkletter was a radio and TV star of the 1940s-60s whose most enduring schtick was interviewing  children and eliciting cute repartee. He parleyed his fame into a series of books, but failed to make a big splash in the newspaper world with the King Features-distributed cartoon panel Art Linkletter's Kids.

Although Linkletter was the titular creator of the feature, he most likely had little to do with it, other than perhaps allowing an anonymous writer access to his voluminous files of cute kid sayings. The art was provided by Stan Fine, a veteran gag cartoonist. This seems to have been his only foray into the daily routine of newspaper syndication.

The series began on November 4 1963 and made it at least into October 1964; I suspect it probably got the axe at the end of a one year contract.

The feature had a revolving set of characters whose names show up as subtitles -- the most often used were Klunkhead, Powder Puff, Specs Webster and Terry the Terror.

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# posted by Allan Holtz @ 8:02 AM
Comments:
I'd guess that Linkletter's name was simply licensed for an existing unrelated panel. Linkletter collected cutesy malaprops and accidental double entendres from real kids, and these are "gaggy" gags with exaggerated characters. It's amusing, but it's so out of sync with Linkletter's reality-based show and books that Linkletter himself (or his managers) may well have pulled the plug.
# posted by Anonymous DBenson : 7/20/2011 1:21 PM
 
Mr. Holtz is badly mistaken, as that was not Stan Fine's "first foray into the daily routine of newspaper circulation." Fine would work with Ted Key and later enter the brave new world of adult humor with work published in Hustler and similar genre magazines.
# posted by Anonymous M. Douglas : 10/17/2016 11:33 PM
 
I don't know if anyone will see this but, my mother recently passed away and I found various original sketches and drawings by Stan Fine. I believe my Mom worked with him at Advertising Speciality Institute in the early 1960s. The drawings signed and dated 1961 and 1962. Are there any collectors who may be interested in these?
# posted by Blogger Christine : 2/24/2024 3:04 PM
 
I just discovered that Stan has passed. I worked with Stan for years sharing an enormous graphics art camera in the Creatives Services department. What a great time we had sharing the camera and darkroom for years. When it was my turn to use the camera he’d be working on the Hazel cartoons or proposing ideas to Playboy or Penthouse. He even did a cartoon logo for my baseball team’s uniforms called The Lima Beans. What else would you call a team from Lima, Pennsylvania? I miss you my friend. Jeff Apoian
# posted by Anonymous Jeffrey Apoian : 3/12/2024 11:19 PM
 
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