Howdy Doody, NBC's popular cowboy puppet (TIME, April 5), had his huge audience of kids worried. Howdy had disappeared.
A month ago, when NBC refused to give him a raise, Frank Paris, Howdy's builder and manipulator, huffed out of the studio with Puppet Howdy under his arm. For awhile, the program's fate dangled by a marionette string. But M.C. Bob Smith still owned Howdy's name and voice, and NBC still had Smith. So, while a West Coast puppetmaker hurriedly whittled a new $2,000 marionette, harried Announcer Smith fenced with his young audience and concocted...
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