Wolf Files: Bozo Finally Unmasked

May 25, 2004 -- — As a journalist for 17 years, I've had to address a lot of fools. But I expect I'll never speak to as many at once as I will this Friday, when I help induct the original Bozo into the International Clown Hall of Fame.

Clowns from around the world are piling into little cars and pedaling tricycles to Milwaukee, and I'll be joining them (via airplane) to honor Pinto Colvig as the first in a long line of TV Bozos — a proud group that includes Chicago's Bob Bell and NBC's Willard Scott.

Colvig, who passed away in 1967, led an incredible life. A circus clown turned newspaper cartoonist, he was one of Walt Disney's original cartoon stars, originating the voices of Goofy, Grumpy and Sleepy, among others, and co-writing classics like "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"

Colvig's also credited as Bluto from Popeye cartoons; a Munchkin voice in the Wizard of Oz; and hundreds of other characters.

But in life or death, Colvig was never honored for perhaps his greatest achievement — bringing Bozo to life — first on a series of children's records in 1946, and then, three years later, on a live TV show in Los Angeles.

Only after a bit of a controversy — in which The Wolf Files helped show how one clown seemed to repeatedly take credit for Bozo — did this event take place.

That other clown, Larry Harmon, owns the rights to Bozo, and he has reasserted his claim on his Web site that Capitol Records picked him to star in the first filmed TV pilot — a claim that the record executive who wrote and produced Bozo still flatly denies.

"I can't believe Larry Harmon says we'd ever hire him to star in anything," says Alan W. Livingston, the executive.

"Harmon is very good at marketing. He sold Bozo shows all over the country. But I suppose he never got over the fact that he's really not much of a clown."

Harmon, 78, failed to return two phone calls.

Now, as I head to Milwaukee, it's time to remember an amazing career that started in 1905, when Colvig's father took him to a state fair in Portland, Ore., and a day later, the 12-year-old boy was in white face, playing a squeaky clarinet in a circus band.