"There's an unnecessary coarsening of children's shows that feature characters that constantly pass wind, with mean-spirited, hostile relationships," Lewis once said. "I don't think that's what our children should be exposed to." As long Shari Lewis had a sock, there was an alternative.
Shari Lewis Dies at 65
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The simplest pleasures are often the ones that beguile a child, and who was more beguiling than Shari Lewis, a woman with a demure sock named Lamb Chop (and two other socks named Charlie Horse and Hush Puppy)? Now, that was high-concept. Shari Lewis, who died Sunday of cancer in Los Angeles, was loved by kids from the moment she and her knitted friends first appeared on "Captain Kangaroo" in the '50s until 1963, when puppet-based children's programming gave way to the comic psychedelics of cartoons. Those same kids loved her when she came back in 1992, this time to PBS, and they plopped their own children down to watch.