By John Rogers
Associated Press
Friday, July 4, 2008
Larry Harmon, 83, who turned the character Bozo the Clown into a show business staple that delighted children for more than half a century, died July 3 at his home in Los Angeles. He had congestive heart failure.
Although not the original Bozo, Mr. Harmon portrayed the popular clown in countless appearances, and, as an entrepreneur, he licensed the character to others, particularly dozens of television stations across the country. Those stations hired actors to be their local Bozos.
Pinto Colvig, who also provided the voice for Walt Disney's Goofy, originated Bozo when Capitol Records introduced a series of children's records in 1946. Mr. Harmon met his alter ego while answering a casting call to make personal appearances as a clown to promote the records.
He got that job and eventually bought the rights to Bozo. Along the way, he embellished Bozo's distinctive look: the orange-tufted hair, the bulbous nose, the outlandish red-white- and-blue costume.
"I felt if I could plant my size 83AAA shoes on this planet, [people] would never be able to forget those footprints," he said.
The business -- combining animation, character licensing and personal appearances -- made millions of dollars as Mr. Harmon trained more than 200 Bozos over the years to represent him in local markets.
"I'm looking for that sparkle in the eyes, that emotion, feeling, directness, warmth. That is so important," he said of his criteria for becoming a Bozo.
The Chicago version of Bozo ran on WGN in Chicago for 40 years and was seen in many other cities after cable television transformed WGN into a superstation.
Bozo, portrayed in Chicago for many years by Bob Bell, was so popular that the waiting list for tickets to a TV show eventually stretched to a decade, prompting the station to stop taking reservations for 10 years.
On the day in 1990 when WGN started taking reservations again, it took just five hours to book the show for five more years. The phone company reported that more than 27 million call attempts had been made.
By the time the show bowed out in Chicago in 2001, it was the last locally produced version. Mr. Harmon said at the time that he hoped to develop a cable or network show and well as a Bozo feature film.
He became caught up in a minor controversy in 2004 when the International Clown Hall of Fame in Milwaukee took down a plaque honoring him as Bozo and formally endorsed Colvig for creating the role. Mr. Harmon denied misrepresenting Bozo's history.
He said he was claiming credit only for what he added to the character -- "What I sound like, what I look like, what I walk like" -- and what he did to popularize Bozo.
"Isn't it a shame the credit that was given to me for the work I have done, they arbitrarily take it down, like I didn't do anything for the last 52 years," he told the Associated Press at the time.
Mr. Harmon protected Bozo's reputation with a vengeance and embraced those who poked good-natured fun at the clown.
As Bozo's influence spread through popular culture, his name became synonymous with clownish behavior.
"It takes a lot of effort and energy to keep a character that old fresh so kids today still know about him and want to buy the products," Karen Raugust, executive editor of the Licensing Letter, a New York-based trade publication, said in 1996.
A normal character runs its course in three to five years, Raugust said. "Harmon's is a classic character. It's been around 50 years."
Mr. Harmon was born in Toledo and became interested in theater while studying at the University of Southern California.
Survivors include his wife of 29 years, Susan Harmon, and four children.
Associated Press writers Polly Anderson in New York and Robert Jablon in Los Angeles contributed to this report.