The day after Gary Weir died on Oct. 5, with memories flooding in from grown-ups who had loved Bozo the Clown as children, an office wit at Arkansas Business summed up the loss: He left some big shoes to fill.
Weir would have loved the gag, according to folks who knew him during his 25 years as the state’s TV clown. His TV humor was childlike, and riddles like “Do you walk to school or carry your lunch?” and “Is your birthday in Septober or Octember?” became staples in his gentle repertoire.
In floppy size 83-AAA shoes and fluorescent orange hair, Bozo enchanted generations of Arkansas children between 1966 and 1991 — live in KATV’s Little Rock studios and by the thousands on TV each weekday afternoon — with cartoons, silly jokes and games like kick-the-balloon-in-the-barrel. The waiting list to get on the show stretched to a couple of years.
“Rootie kazootie, wowie kazow, old Bozo is my best pal,” Weir would prompt the boys and girls to say, and he was. His popularity transcended the Bozo franchise, which once had clowns on hundreds of local TV stations nationwide. In Arkansas, Weir was “the one and only Bozo,” KATV anchor Chris May said. Other stations aired the Bozo show over more years, but they had more than one man behind the paint.
Arkansas broadcast professionals emphasized that Weir, who was 75, also had a career beyond the red nose. He filled sales roles and was a radio and TV voice in Arkansas for several years before KATV Manager Bob Doubleday offered him a clown suit, and after his clowning days, Weir spent 18 years producing “The Oaklawn Report,” a horse-racing recap from Hot Springs.
He was also a shrewd businessman, as Jay Grelen recounted in his definitive profile of Weir in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in July 2016. After pressing Doubleday for a raise some four decades ago, Weir arranged a $100,000 loan from an Arkadelphia banking acquaintance and bought the Arkansas Bozo franchise away from KATV. Doubleday fumed, but the station had no choice but to accept Weir’s terms or lose one of its top shows.
Grelen quoted Cal Dring, another name from Little Rock TV’s golden years, as saying “Doubleday was pissed,” convinced that Weir’s maneuver was devious. “I think Doubleday, after Gary pulled that little number, had a little animosity.” But “Gary was looking after Gary,” Dring told Grelen. “From a business standpoint, he should have.”
Bozo became a marketing force, too, his greasepainted face peering out on everything from forks and spoons to coloring books, puzzles and punching bags. In Arkansas, his image helped sell Bozo Franks and milk from Coleman Dairy.
Still, it will be Weir’s TV rapport with children that endures in a thousand memories. Keli Jacobi, director of strategic communication at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, tweeted out a common refrain: “Never got to go meet Bozo in person, but obsessively watched the show, dreaming someday I would.”
Melinda Mayo, a Pine Bluff native who co-hosts “Good Morning Arkansas,” said “If you’re an Arkansas kid, there was no other Bozo, no other clown.”
“We are continuing to get viewer photos sent to us in record numbers,” KATV News Director Nick Genty said a few days after Weir’s death. Genty, who remembers “sitting in front of the TV at 3:30 every afternoon and being entertained,” believes a deep bond was forged in simpler times “when things were much calmer” in the world. “For 25 years, Bozo was welcomed into every house, and parents didn’t have to worry about what was going to be said or shown.”
Ron Sherman, the TV veteran and tireless advertising man, recalled drawing his trademark weather cartoon, Gusty, on “Bozo’s Big Top” and in personal appearances with Weir. The clowning magic didn’t come from just smearing on some makeup, Sherman said.
“He was one of the hardest-working guys ever. Not everybody can put on a clown suit and really connect with kids, and Gary mastered the trade. He was better than the original Bozo up in Chicago, and I don’t think Arkansas TV will ever reach anything like the magnitude of Bozo for family viewing.
“It was a phenomenon,” he said. “The show was like a rock concert for kids, and Gary was the rock star. I remember the kids in the lobby at Channel 7, and they’d be so excited they were jumping up and down. But the moms were all smiling, and frankly they were excited, too. They were all either young or young at heart, and the whole scene was just joyful.”