The Pittsburgh Press from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 93

The Pittsburgh Press Shannon jTom page Fl Sunday. July 10, 19SS It's the last show. In color. He is standing in front of the Mzgic Castle and the Adventure Time Machine. Hardly looking 65 years oil Franklin C.

Snyder, then general manager of WTAE, steps up at the end of that last show for a rare appearance. "We'll all miss you he recites slowly. "AH those great people in Western Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh who you helped grow up into adults they'll be thinking of you, too." The film runs out and the TV goes dark. Many of them still are. SHOWCASE CINEMAS Mil III II 8AHGAIN MATINEE iZ SO UNTIL 6PM DAILY CONT SHOWS OAllYLATf SHOWS Ffll A SAT PHANTASM II 44 JlS .5 4i 7 50 10 0C ARTHUR JPG.

100 05. to. IS 30 things move slower. The famous Magic Sword still hangs from the wall in Paul Shannon's condominium. He has done a few shows at the Del Ray Beach Playhouse.

He is "on call" to do voice-overs at a local television station. "I had a cataract operation," Shannon says. "It's sort of hard to get away from it for this long. They say you can never go back, and I believe it But I think about it a great deal. I had as much fun as the children did Maybe I left too soon.

It would be fun to be back in the studio again, doing a show." Shannon says whenever he returns to Pittsburgh, "I know I'm home. People come up to me and say. Thanks for those happy I must have been doing something right." The old film flickers. The lighting is fading in and out Paul Shannon enters the TV screen with a striped sweater, a big black belt to hold up his pants, and slicked-back hair that presents a fatherly image. The year is 1960.

"We get many questions from boys and girls each day," he says into the long microphone he carries in one hand. "Is Mr. Magoo really near-. sighted? When can we come visit the 4 studios Minutes later, he is sitting in the middle of the bleachers marked "Paul's Rooters," Magic Sword in hand, with a collection of little girls in Brownie uniforms (Fox Chapel and Aspinwall, on this day). He waves the sword.

They begin screaming, waving their arms, reading intently from long lists of names they want to say hello to at home, in 10 seconds. Cut to Randy Rocket, a few years later. He is flying in herky-jerky motions over the City of Pittsburgh, waving, with the Bridge-to-Nowhere still incomplete on the Allegheny River. The film pauses, jumps ahead. Almost all of the "Adventuretime" shows have been erased; lost forever.

Only a few have been salvaged, in a single spool of film that even Paul Shannon himself has never seen. COMING TO AMERICA 5 05 7 74 9 0 1ULI DURHAM 115 3 70 5 JS 745 9 50 -J THE GREAT OUTDOORS TZ. 700 1 00 5 00 0 00 1 0 1 0 WHO FRAMED ROGER fiABUT WZ 100 3 00 5 00.770 Paul Shannon with Scout visitors in 1964 CROCODILE DUNDEE II 1 15 5 30.7 40 955 FUNNY farm ra: 1 45. 3 45. i 45.755.

10 05 BARGAIN MATINEE S2 SO UNTIL EPM DAILY leather express." Over the phone from Florida. Shannon speaks in the same deep, gentle voice that was his trademark. He grew up in Crafton. "a quiet little town." where his father. Stewart A.

Shannon, was in the janitor supply business, and unsuccessfully ran for Congress in the 1930s. (Paul's age at that time was. well, we can't say.) "We had a little radio set it was one of those crystal sets. My brothers and I (there were five boys) decided we should have our own little radio station in the basement We cooked up a large cardboard box that was our studio. Our father somehow fed it into the radio set in the living room that's when I knew what I wanted to do with Shannon began his formal radio career in 1937 after several years of acting in community theaters.

He did a stint on Johnny Davis's "Wayside Theatre" on WWSW, and finally landed a steady job at KDKA, staying there for 19 years. It was during the KDKA years that Shannon became a familiar voice on Pittsburgh radio, along with a number of other then-obscure names like Ed Schaughency, Bill Hines and Carl Ide. In 1958 he made the leap to television and accepted a position at WTAE (Channel 4) when it opened for business. "They had regular auditions. Nick Perry, Del Taylor and I were the first three announcers," Shannon recalls.

"Dave Murray was the program director. He said to Nick you'll do a studio show. To Del Taylor we have 'Dialing for Dollars' for you. Paul let's see we have some children's films to show about the time kids are getting back from school. We'll try it for a few weeks.

We'll call it 'Six O'Clock From the first moment, Shannon saw "all sorts of possibilities" in the new show. He began creating characters to fill in the slots between cartoons and children's movies, and sought out a comedy trio who had all but vanished from movies. "I remember the director came in and said 'The Three Stooges are in They were booked at the Holiday House for a week. I said, 'Maybe we could go up there and ask them to be on the They came right down. That was the beginning of a long, long friendship." The popularity of the show and the Three Stooges grew rapidly.

"In later years," Shannon says, "Moe and Larry wrote books about their careers, and in both of these books '-Adventuretime' was credited with bringing them back." About 1960, the hour-long show's time slot was changed to 4:30 p.m. prime-time for children getting home from school and the show was redubbed "Paul Shannon's Adventuretime." It featured short-length films of the Three Stooges, Little Rascals and Shirley Temple and cartoons such as Mighty Mouse, Kimba the White Lion, Casper the Friendly Ghost. Felix the Cat, Popeye and Huckleberry Hound. In the early 1960s, the station began getting requests for schoolchildren to visit the set Bleachers were constructed in the enchanted Channel 4 studios to accommodate Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, Brownies and pack leaders, who booked reservations a year in advance. The director who really put Paul on the map was John Vince," says McCune.

"He had a lot of wild ideas he had everything imaginable on the show elephants, horses, marching bands, helicopters landing. We were live. It was great he'd be yelling, 'Cue that helicopter down. Did you ever try to cue a helicopter to land in the middle of a TV show?" The live thrills brought their own perils. One afternoon a leopard was in the studio as part of Hank Stohl's "Popeye and Knish" show, directly before "Adventuretime." As Knish, the mop-headed puppet waved "hel-'lo," Shannon responded with a flutter of a newspaper.

The leopard leaped and ended up "taking a part of my arm with him," Shannon says. Stohl and Knish had to host "Adventuretime" for a short while until Shannon's stitches healed. Shannon's props and make-believe characters sparked the imagination of children. There was the Magic Sword, a glittering-handled treasure of painted wood and colored glass, which he used to wave the curtain up and down between feature shows. He had help from a hundred tiny arms in the studio audience.

The sword was a cue to the men in the control room. They pulled a lever and followed the sword until they cut for the next attraction. Then there was the "video chroma-key," a gimmick used to make children's faces from the audience appear inside the sliding doors of Shannon's player piano. Some fans also will remember the "twirl-a-scope" and "Stooge-a-scope," a twirling record with the Three Stooges' faces, which spun and dissolved into the next cartoon; a snowball-throwing machine; Lippy the Leprechaun; Randy Rocket (Shannon in a rocket suit); the Great Mysto (Shannon in a swallow-tail coat, 'stache and tall pointed hat). He learned tricks from local magician Harry Albacker and "sometimes they worked." Some of Shannon's stunts and characters became Pittsburgh classics.

One was a Christmas rocket ship that blasted off for the North Pole. It attracted as many as 25,000 letters to Santa each year, and created a field day for toy advertisers. Another was Nosmo King, named after a "No Smoking" sign in the WTAE studio. It was really Paul Shannon dressed up in an old trench-coat, beard, fake nose and glasses, and floppy cap. He worked strictly in pantomime, so he never gave away CONT.

SHOWS DAILY LATE SHOWS FHI 4 SAT. PHANTASM ii a 1 45.3 15.5 45.7 50 1 0 05 ARTHUR 2 IE 100.305.510.7 15.930 SHORT CIRCUIT 2m. LICENSE TO DRIVE pfQX 100 315 5 40.7 55.10 00 1245,300 5 10.7 15 9 35 cartoon hours. According to Dave Crantz, publicity director at WTAE, "Sales departments would say, 'We have Tom Jerry and Bugs The national advertisers would say If you said, 'We have Paul they'd say, 'Who is Paul "Adventuretime" dropped to one day a week, on Sundays. Faced with a dwindling audience, Shannon aired his last show on March 30, 1975.

He was presented a golden key to the city by Mayor Pete Flaherty, and a plaque of the flags of the world by an Eagle Scout. On that day in 1975, the hero of Pittsburgh kid shows was 65 years old (but don't even try to get me to reveal how old he is today). In Florida, the air is warmer and COMING TO AMERICA 17 45 2 55 5 05.7 25 9 40 VHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT 1 00 3 00. 5 00 7 20 9 20 RED HEAT 1245.305.5 20.7 40 9 55 THE GREAT OUTDOORS 1 30.330.5 30.7 35.945 BIG businesses: BULL DURHAM 1:15.320.5 25.7 45 9 50 200.400 600 800. 10 10 BIG ieg: 1:15,315,525.725,925 CROCODILE DUNDEE II PI 1 15.3 25.5 30.7 40.9 55 his identity.

"I would just talk to him like 'Nosmo, we're glad you walked in' today. You see that rope behind you? (He would nod his head.) We're ready for the Little Rascals. Why don't you reach up and pull the rope? (Nothing). Go ahead, pull the "He would reach up and pull it, and a long length of rope would come down on his head. Immediately the Little Rascals would appear." Nosmo King became so popular for his dull-witted antics (he could never resist pulling ropes) that he was making personal appearances at moviehouses, skating rinks and shopping malls.

To preserve Nosmo King's identity, Jack Fitzenhenry, a cameraman from "Adventuretime," filled in for Shannon so he could appear on stage at the same time as the shadowy ragabond. In the summer, Shannon kept the children busy with "backyard carnivals" to fight muscular dystrophy. Over a stretch of 13 summers, "Adventuretime" viewers raised more than $650,000 from penny-pitchers and bean-bag tosses. Shannon rode the crest of popularity until the mid-1970s, when live children's shows began folding across the country. "One by one, all of these people lost their shows," he says, his voice betraying a touch of sadness.

"A lot of them were clowns, Westerners, puppeteers, all very clever in what they did." The TV industry's late afternoon programming began moving toward reruns of "Gilligan's Island." Na-' tional advertisers frowned on local talent and insisted on pre-packaged MDN -THIIRS ALL SEATS ALL SHOWS ALL PICTURES ii SI 50 TO 6 00 PM 6:00 PM TO CLOSING S2.50M BARGAIN MATINEE S2 SO UNTIL 6PM FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY i HOLIDAYS CONT SHOWS DAILY (LATE SHOWS FHI SAT Gary Franklin. KABC-TYloj Angeles A rosantk coned? about America's other favorite pastime. BURHAIJ ARTHUR 2 iE I PHANTASM II LTL 1 00. 3 05. 5 10.

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