Hot Dogs, Discoveries and a Batfink

An awful long time ago, there was an educational children’s show on Sundays on ABC called “Discovery.” I never saw it for a number of reasons. It co-starred a man named Frank Buxton. A number of years later, there was another educational children’s show on Saturdays on NBC called “Hot Dog.” I watched bits and pieces. It featured, among others, Jo Anne Worley from “Laugh-In” and that drew me into the tent. It had a quirky format and also featured a man named Frank Buxton.

Some years after that, I was poking around a used book store (long replaced by a huge commercial/residential building) and spotted a yellow hard-cover book called “The Big Broadcast.” It was like an encyclopaedia of old-time radio shows, packed with stock photos, transcriptions of commercials and catch phrases, and little essays on various aspects of radio, such as comedians. Remember, this was in the days before you could look up stuff on-line. That book is about 4½ feet from me and I still read it when my vision’s up to it. It was no doubt educational to those who saw it for the first time. It was co-written by a man named...well, you know where this is going.

The three Frank Buxtons I’ve mentioned were all one person. And he did a lot more before any of this.

The sad news has come in that Frank Buxton died yesterday.

He was very close to producer/cole slaw-hater Mark Evanier; I’m sure Mark must have something up on his blog as I bang together this post.

After graduating from Syracuse University in 1952, Buxton became a professional TV director and an amateur comedian. His TV direction career suddenly ended when his station was virtually forced off the air by the FCC in 1958. The Buffalo Evening News’ Sturgis Hedrick reported on January 28, 1959 that Buxton was out but not down:

Frank Buxton’s success in New York is nothing short of incredible. This former WGR-TV and WBUF producer-director landed his first professional job as an entertainer Dec. 15 in New York’s sophisticated Blue Angel. Now he has come up with a starring role in the Feb. 4 Armstrong Circle Theater on CBS-TV. He’ll play a disc jockey who happens to be on vacation in Nova Scotia at the time of last fall’s mine disaster.

He got some congrats for his first appearance as a TV comic on the “TV Guide Awards Show” in March 1960; the NBC special poked fun at television audiences. He was also the voice of Alpine cigarette commercials on radio and TV, and appeared in funny commercials for a car company during the 1960 World Series broadcast.

In May 1961, FCC commissioner Newton Minow gave his television-is-a-vast-wasteland speech, complaining especially about children’s programming, and television reacted. On October 1, 1962, ABC responded by debuting “Discovery ’62.” Buxton, age 28, was picked as the host; he had already produced the Peabody award-winning “Know Your Schools.” It was a 25-minute show airing at 4:30 p.m. weekdays, and moved into a Sunday slot for an hour the following season.

Praise was heaped on it. It got all kinds of press, too. Here’s a feature article on Buxton and the show from the Greenfield Recorder-Gazette, May 4, 1963.

“Discovery ‘63” Travels World For Material
By RUTH E. THOMPSON
If you're a nine-to-fiver (work day, that is) you've been missing out on one of the most informative — and entertaining — shows on the air. It's ABC-TV's "Discovery '63" (Mondays-Fridays, 4:30 PM, New York Time) hosted by Frank Buxton.
But come autumn the network is going to remedy that. It's changing "Discovery" to a one-hour format and moving it to Sunday afternoons. Sort of giving equal time to fathers, mothers, uncles and aunts instead of limiting its bounty to the seven-to-twelve (years-old, that is) group.
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THE SHOW HAD been on the air only two months when it won the Thomas Alva Edison Award as "The Best Science Television Program for Youth" ....and yet it isn't a science program per se! It's an "everything" program. Among the topics it's tackled are medicine, American Indians, Eskimos, armor and sportsgear, picture writing, silent movies, how to choose a puppy, how to train a police horse, gardening and money.
Recent "Discovery" guest Astronaut Walter Schirra in advising youngsters not to commit themselves too soon to science careers, accidentally summed, up "Discovery's" guiding philosophy. After cautioning, "not everyone can be an engineer or a scientist," Schirra said: "you should realize there are classical studies, there are arts, there are many, many professions, many fun-things to do besides pure science."
And if Schirra summed it up, host Frank Buxton epitomizes it.
Buxton majored in radio and television in college and minored in zoology and English. After pocketing one degree from Northwestern. University and another from Syracuse University he Went to work as a producer" then reversed the usual procedure and switched to acting in 1961 (with the Australian touring company of "Bye Bye Birdie.")

ASKED WHY he thought he got the "Discovery" spot for which over 100 actors had auditioned, Frank — a refreshing, unaffected person — crumpled bonelessly in a chair and mused, "perhaps because my own interests are so diverse. I'm not show biz you know." Maybe not but in his one year of acting (before the highest-quality, and currently most expensive, daytime television production swallowed him whole) Buxton managed to appear in stock with such name stars as Buster Keaton, Eva LeGalliene and William Lundigan.
"I have an attic mind," he explained further. "There's lots of junk there, lots of things to draw on. We don't work from full scripts here, you know, just sort of outlines so I can toss in something stupid of my own." His own, yes. Stupid, no. He's invariably right on the nose.
There's no time these days for Buxton to do any acting on the side (or even guest panel shots) for the demands of this one show make him the busiest emcee in the business. Not only do "Discovery" topics range widely, so do its locations. (The show is noted for its original film.)
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FRANK HAS gazed through a telescope in the desert and peered through a microscope in a New York laboratory, wandered through Tivoli Amusement Park in Denmark and broadcast from underwater in a Seaquarium tank in Florida. He's kept talking cheerfully while a runaway ocelot climbed and leaped around the set. Nervous? "No, I like animals, I know how to handle them." There was a time in the desert with a rattlesnake, though. No he wasn't afraid of the rattlesnake but in cooperating with the snake's handle to calm critter (it too had got away and was on the loose) Frank with the camera grinding away moved gently back — right onto a cactus.
"The time I really looked like a goof ball, though — a dead elephant — was the Square Dance show. Fortunately Ginny (co-star Virginia Gibson) made up for it. She was right in her element, music and dancing."
The show's other co-star, a velvety-eyed bloodhound named Corpuscle came in for some praise, too. "He rehearses hardly at all. His initial reactions are so wonderful to catch when we get him on a new set or location. He's great with his fans, too. When we're out on the job he lets children come up and pat him. He's an intelligent, sweet, wonderful individual."
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FRANK IS pretty nice to his own fans, too. He answers every letter himself by hand because "I wrote a radio program once when I was a child and I'm still waiting for an answer."
So the little girl who wrote, "I've saved $1.98 to buy a frame for your picture," and the 80-year old man who said, "I travel again with you," or the teacher who says "my entire class watches," will all get holographs.
And for that part of the mail that asks for one or another programs to be repeated, the producers have an answer. They've just commenced a series of carefully edited “Best of Discovery” re-runs.
And for the future where will "Discovery" go next? Well, we're told, maybe to Japan, maybe even to Moscow. And after THAT, what will they find to do? "Don't worry, waved Frank in parting, "we're certainly not going to run out of subject matter. The Universe is too big."

Discovery won an Emmy, and Buxton busied himself with a daytime game show called “Get the Message” (he eventually gave up hosting in favour of Robert Q. Lewis), followed by the one-season Peabody-winning “Hot Dog,” co-produced by Lee Mendelson of the TV Peanuts specials.

One of his other loves was old-time radio. His “The Big Broadcast” was a 1972 update of a 1966 book co-written with Bill Owen; the great Henry Morgan provided the foreword. Here’s an Associated Press article talking about the original. It ran November 24, 1967.

Buxton to Relive Heyday of Radio
By JERRY BUCK
NEW YORK (AP) – Big time radio has been dead now for about 18 years, but it is not forgotten by those who grew up during its heyday.
One man who remembers it and loves it, and even longs for its return, is Frank Buxton.v Buxton describes himself as a tape nut who has preserved thousands of hours of old radio programs for — well, certainly not for radio's return, but for the enjoyment of hearing the familiar voices just once more.
“Fred Allen was like a god to me when I was growing up,” he said.
Buxton, a radio and television personality, and author of “Radio's Golden Age,” will attempt to bring back a little of the old flavor when he teams up with Bill Cosby in January for a five-minute, five-day-a-week radio comedy program.

“Radio was a powerful force in our lives,” he said. “It was the sole source of entertainment in our lives for many of us during the depression. And it was free during a time when we needed something free.”
As an example of radio's force he cited Orson Welles' program on “The War of the Worlds,” that in 1938 drove some people from their homes and convinced many others that the earth war being invaded by Martians.
“It was beautifully done. It was an absolute documentary approach,” Buxton said. “The war jitters at the time helped it go over.”
What is behind radio's mystique?
“I think for one thing the past is always remembered as better than it was,” Buxton said. “And for another it's possible to recreate or find all the artifacts from the days we were growing up, from comic books to the old movie serials.
“But the one thing that's missing is radio. It's not possible to turn on your radio and recreate the past unless you're a tape nut like I am.
“It’s impossible to describe to a child what radio used to be like. Radio was a theater of the mind. You made, the hero what you wanted him to be. No one had to paint a castle for you because you did it much better than you own imagination,” he added.
Buxton also explodes a few of the myths about radio.
The story has long been repeated that Kato, the valet for “The Green Hornet,” was Japanese until World War II, then turned overnight into a Filipino.
“That story's apocryphal,” he said. "Kato was referred to as a Filipino almost two years before Pearl Harbor.”
Another myth is that of Uncle Don, the host of a New York children's program, who told the kiddies goodby and then, thinking he was off the air, added, “I guess that'll hold the little——
“That never happened,” Buxton said, “but after I wrote about the myth in my book I got three letters from different parts of the country saying it had happened to their own local versions of Uncle Don. I believe it's tricks of memory.”

Did I mention Buxton was a sitcom writer, too? Among his accomplishments was the script for one of my favourite episodes of The Odd Couple—when Oscar and Felix appear on “Password.” If I recall, he also wrote several episodes in the early period of Happy Days.

Frank Buxton had one other career. As odd as it seems for someone involved with Peabody-winning children’s programming, he starred in a syndicated TV cartoon show, the stiffly-animated Batfink. The series by Hal Seeger Productions was originally distributed in early 1967 by Mission Productions, the TV arm of WHAM-O, the toy maker, before Screen Gems took over to sell the show in more cities and cash in on its exclusive merchandising rights. A deal had closed to sell Hanna-Barbera to Taft Broadcasting, meaning Screen Gems needed to find new cartoon characters to push. Suffice it to say, I have serious doubts that Batfink won a Peabody. Incidentally, after finishing Batfink in June 1967, Seeger turned its attentions (according to Variety) to producing cartoon series called Wilbur the Wanted and Mr. E. Whether Buxton was involved in these, I don’t know.

You can go to Frank Buxton’s web site to learn about him and I see Mark Evanier does have some thoughtful remembrances in this post.