Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 222

kids sent in nearly 10,000 valentines. Just an outpouring of love and pity for this puppet character." Commodore Cappy got torpedoed after a couple of years because Continued page 16 John Gallos, who is still at WCCO-TV as announcer, community-affairs specialist and host of the station's "Career Network Report" spots, evolved as a whole series of characters for the station beginning in the 1950s. First he was Commodore Cappy, an old submarine skipper, gurgling around in a weird atomic tub, wearing a gray wig and mustache and talking like Lionel Barrymore. Also aboard the sub was Vivian Vulture, a sort of benevolent witch character, again a puppet created by Stolz. "One of the most amazing things that ever happened," Gallos remembers, "was when Vivian sniffled and sobbed and said, 'I've never received one single valentine from It was just a throwaway line from Don, nothing planned the whole show was ad-libbed, and we didn't ask for anything but within the next week, (3 I i i r.

Above, John Gallos as Commodore Cappy comforted a rheumatic-fever patient In South St. Paul In 1957. At right, Gallos as Clancy the Keystone Cop, 1959..