TV Trivia For Boomers Trivia Quiz

Answer: Gala Poochy Pup

"Rootie Kazootie" was a puppet show about a baseball loving little fella in the very early 50s who had the oddest smile you ever saw! All bottom lip and a few teeth! His girlfriend's name was odd too, but that's another quiz question! There were a bunch of other characters, all with clever, silly names similar to Rootie's, all through the show: Deetle Dottle, El Squeeko and Poison Zoomack being some of the others.

Answer: Chatsworth Osborne Jr.

Chatsworth Osborne Jr. was Dobie's snotty, rich, high born rival for the affections of one Thalia Meninger, played by Tuesday Weld.

"Dobie" was one of the cleverest shows about teens ever on TV, and had a ton of taglines and innovations associated with it. "Lenny & Squiggy" from "Laverne & Shirley" owe a lot to this show, as did "Parker Lewis Can't Lose".

Answer: Burr Tilstrom

The characters were used a number of times on NBC and CBS, in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Though initially an NBC property, in the 70s they were used as hosts of the "CBS Childrens' Film Festival". Burr Tilstrom also was part of a satirical show of the sixties that was a clone of a British show.

Answer: That Was The Week That Was

"That Was The Week That Was", or "TW3" as it was called by its shrill fans, was the pretentious, weak clone of a British hit show that featured parodies of topical news stories and supposedly scathing satire in general. David Frost also managed to appear on this one as he had in the British version.

It was on opposite "Peyton Place" on NBC on Tuesdays and was routinely clobbered in the ratings. It only lasted one year.

Answer: Polka Dottie

Yep...Polka Dottie...now you know why "Howdy Doody" kicked his butt in Kiddie Nielsen Land.

"Rootie" was also one of the few 50s kiddie icons that either wasn't revived on TV or kept alive in print or toys more than two years beyond its TV demise. "Winky Dink" came back, so did "Howdy", Lord knows how many times, Shari Lewis, "Yogi Bear", "Kukla, Fran and Ollie".... "Captain Kangaroo" lasted well into the 80s....what happened to li'l Rootie and his pals?

Answer: Damn Yankees

Ray Walston, as a matter of fact, was a major denizen of Broadway, period. He was also in "South Pacific", and frequently repeated his Broadway roles in the film versions of the plays. He had very good comic timing and made anal retentives respectable.

Answer: Idlewild

Nat Hiken, who created the show "Car 54, Where Are You?" that the above song was taken from, was the James Burrows of his day. All he had to do was look at a script, come up with a concept, and it would turn into a classic. This was the same man who originated the old "Sgt. Bilko" show, "You'll Never Get Rich", which made a lot of TV comedy actors famous.

"Car 54" was about the misadventures of two NYPD cops, Gunther Toody and Francis Muldoon, who worked out of a precinct that looked suspiciously like the barracks of one Ernie Bilko. One of their colleagues was a cop named Schnauzer, an allusion to the Bilko character Doberman, who was played by Maurice Gosfield. Schnauzer was played by the extremely long lived comedian, Al Lewis, who could have been a "gurning" champion with very little effort. Beatrice Pons, the woman who played Gunther's wife, was hilarious!

Answer: Rod Serling

Like many of the members of the show's cast, Moorehead had worked in much better quality fare than the saccharine "Bewitched". She was, in fact, in Orson Welles' most famous film, "Citizen Kane". The _other_ "wunderkind" she worked with, in TV, was Rod Serling, on the classic "Twilight Zone" episode, "The Invaders", about an old lady and a UFO.

She also won a Golden Globe for best supporting actress for her role in "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte". We lost Ms. Moorehead in 1974 to lung cancer.

Answer: "Designing Women"

Alice Ghostley, believe it or not, was one of the oldest members of the cast of "Bewitched", and she survived just about everybody! Ms. Ghostley played the funny character Bernice Clifton, a character written much funnier than poor, bedraggled Esmeralda on "Bewitched", on this CBS show about two sisters and two friends who ran an interior design business in the laid back, liberalized Georgia of the 1990s.

She usually played domestics or harried, working-class housewives all through her career. She had been working in TV since the early 50s!

Answer: Shakespeare's "The Tempest"

Can you believe such a stellar acting personage would waste his time and reputation on this show? Thankfully, he compensated for it to some degree by portraying the curmudgeonly Dr. Zaius in the far more clever "The Planet of the Apes" while he was also acting on "Bewitched".

Evans had an extremely varied career, starring in everything from "Bewitched" to "Planet of the Apes" to the early 60s teleplay of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" to "Androcles & The Lion" and (shudder!) Rosemary's Baby" (look...yet another link!). He worked more than once with Charlton Heston as well, co-starring with him in the forgettable "The War Lord". Also, while he was doing "Bewitched", he was head of the venerable "Old Vic" theatre company in Great Britain. He, like most of the cast of the show, is no longer with us, having exited this mortal coil 15 years after his "wife", Agnes Moorehead. What a waste!

Answer: The Twilight Zone

She was in the episode "Two" along with Charles Bronson, of all people, playing what looked like the last woman on Earth after a devastating war. The union of these two was inevitable, considering that Bronson was playing what was more than likely the last man alive.

We lost the elfin, very pretty Ms. Montgomery to colorectal cancer in 1995, at the too-young age of 62.

Answer: "The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis", as Chatsworth Osborne Jr.

Steve Franken was an actor who showed up in an awful lot of vehicles, both TV and movie. He was in a show about three medical students living together called "Tom, Dick and Mary" right after "Dobie" was woefully cancelled; played the mischievious relative of Sam's in "Bewitched" and played a technician in the classic sci-fi thriller "WestWorld".

He's turned up in numerous shows and films since, as well.

Answer: "Amos & Andy", as George "Kingfish" Stevens

"Kingfish" had to be one of the best realized black comedy characters ever! He was an inept, funny schemer who murdered the king's English but had you in stiches as he tried to pull a fast one on just about every other character on the show. His wife, Sapphire, has become synonymous with contrary black womanhood.

Answer: You're In The Picture

This show, which lasted exactly two months, was a summer replacement show for Jackie Gleason's own regular show. In it, celebrity panel members would stick their heads through a carnival-type poster that portrayed a scene or person, and they would have to guess what type of picture they were part of. Gleason felt honor-bound to apologize to the studio and TV audiences for what he felt was an incredible bomb.

Answer: True

Yep! Called "Calvin and The Colonel" it was, believe it or not, actually created by the same two men responisible for "Amos & Andy", and the parallels were obvious: There was Colonel Montgomery J. Klaxon, a fox, who was obviously supposed to be Kingfish, and Calvin Burnside, a bear, who was the double of Andy Hogg Brown from the live action show.

The Colonel even had a Sapphire-type wife! This show lasted exactly one year, but if memory serves me correctly, it wasn't a full year.