Filed under: TV Royalty, Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
I was never big on clowns when I was a kid. Except for one that is, Bozo.
Larry Harmon wasn’t the only person to play Bozo The Clown, but he is the person most identified with the role. A man named Pinto Colvig was the first Bozo The Clown in the mid-1940s on several children’s records, and then Harmon was hired to play Bozo in the mid-50s and eventually got the licensing rights to the character and arranged for various people to play the clown on TV in different markets, including Willard Scott in Washington, D.C., Frank Avruch in Boston, and Bob Bell in Chicago. The last show aired on WGN in 2001, and Harmon was involved in a controversy in 2004 when the International Clown Hall of Fame took down Harmon’s plaque and recognized Colvig as Bozo. But Harmon never claimed to have created the character, just that he made him what he became.
Harmon died of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles at age 83.
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