The Happy Pirates

When lunchtime started in my Chicago school, it was time to dash home (six blocks east down Irving Place, past Kedsie, to Troy Street) to watch this show at Noon.

Great fun but most memorable for the daily Crusader Rabbit episode!! Miss one episode and you had to do some imagining when you caught the next episode--the stories were often baffling--just enough dialog to get you to the next outrageous joke or pun. Prepared many of us for the late 50s when Crusader and Rags morphed into Rocky and Bullwinkle!

The live action part of the show was also inspired madness, deliciously bad jokes and slapstick, plus fun songs by Two Ton Baker.

Favorite dialog:

Captain to parrot: Hey, Squawky, have you seen Bubbles?

(Bubbles was the porpoise handpuppet.)

Parrot: Awwwk! Bubbles went fishing with Moby!

"Yo-ho-ho, yo-ho-ho, we're the Happy Pirates!

We love to sing and dance and play - We never worry - always gay!

Shiver me timbers! Yo-ho-ho-ho-ho!

Shiver me timbers; it's time to start the show! (Yes, it is time to start the show! Ohhh ...) Yo-ho-ho, yo-ho-ho - we're the Happy Pirates!

We love to sing and dance and play; We never worry - always gay!"

This was a great hour of fun and music, a lot of it original, with Dick "Two-Ton" Baker as the Captain at the keyboard of the spinet and Art Hern as Moby. It drew a lot of adult viewers with its great mature humor and music, one main reason that it's remembered so fondly today.