DEL: The time with Ernie and I was a five minute segment. I remember this distinctly because the director would be giving hand signals, pointing out how much time was left for the bit. For years and years, every time we were together, it was in five minute segments. If it was a half hour show, we still needed five minutes.

DEL: I have been asked - were any of the skits planned out, did we rehearse them before show? Did Ernie and I get together and say o.k. you are going to do such and such and I will do this? No, no, whatever we did, we did, that's all. I would come out and do a (magicians) trick and then I would know how much time I had left and I would make a big balloon or small one depending on how many seconds was left and how many minutes. Two kids helped with the trick, I always used two kids. I would make a balloon animal and the size of the animal depended on how many minutes were left in the segment!

ERNIE: You made that many balloons during the show for the kids? We had forty-five to fifty kids on every show?! DEL: No, no... I was speaking of making balloons with just the two kids that I called off the risers to help me during the segment. ERNIE: By far my favorite balloon animal you did was the poodle. ERNIE: Rarely, in our appearances on tv or on the road did you ever pop a balloon. I can not recall any time that you ever popped a balloon! ERNIE: How long did you reign as Ronald? DEL: 27 years. ERNIE: WOW! DEL: It was a good gig!

ERNIE: and you did all kinds of different things beyond appearing on The Showboat, representing the company

DEL: Yes. It was a great job and fit right in with my other job and I got to do something that I love more than anything else and that is entertaining people and making them happy.

ERNIE: When we did our first act together, you were Norman the Clown (DEL played Norman when he was not Ronald).

DEL: Sometimes, yes, I was Norman

ERNIE: I thought that it was when you could not do something and represent the company at the same time.

DEL: Yes, yes, when I was playing at private parties, I was Norman the Clown. When I started, I was doing a show at Gloria Day Church in Rock Island for a Cub Scout thing as Norman the Clown. After the show this guy came up to me and said "Hi, I am Gary Swanson and glad to meet you. Are you doing another program shortly?" I said yes, I am doing another program next weekend and told him where and when and what time. He said "do you mind if I send someone to see your show?"

So I forgot all about that and after I did that other show, he came over and said "This is Bill Wicher, he flew in from Kansas City to see your show and he would like to talk to you." I said that I would like to talk to him too! He said "can we take you and your wife out to dinner tomorrow?" So we met at the brand new Sheridan in downtown Rock Island. They took us there for dinner and he wanted to know if I would go down to Kansas City for an audition. I looked at my wife and thought what is this all about? I figured it was probably an audition for maybe two or three jobs and then it would end so it was not worth it. At the time I had a daughter getting married and I was busy and I thought, no, I am not going to Kansas City for an audition.

He said, well I have already seen you perform and that's alright and they had a couple of things that they wanted me to do. They had me booked on your show (Captain Ernie's Showboat) for six weeks for a grand opening at Rockingham Road McDonalds. I was on the Captain Ernie Show for those six weeks and we promoted the grand opening for the five minute segments when I was there. When the date came....

ERNIE: Was it a daily thing?

DEL: Once a week.

ERNIE: That's what I thought.

DEL: It was not always on the same day. For a long time it was on Wednesdays and then it moved to Thursdays for a couple of years.

ERNIE: The kids (guest on the show, on the risers) would actually be booked on that particular day like a Wednesday because they knew that you would probably be there!

DEL: Anyway, I was supposed to do a show at 2pm (at Rockingham Road McDonalds in Davenport) and another one at 3pm. Everything was all set and I did the 2 o'clock show and they sat me down on a chair and the kids are coming across the stage and they were getting their balloon animals and (it was so popular) that I couldn't do another show because all of the kids were waiting in line to see Ronald! They had to call the cops to come down and everything and they had to direct traffic! At that point I said, wow, we have really got something with this Captain Ernie gig!

ERNIE: Well the exposure.. sure! Plus you were Ronald McDonald... that alone with the network spots and stuff. The kids did not differentiate between the national Ronald McDonald and you, you WERE the guy.

DEL: So this worked out for the company very very well. Asked them "how long do you want me to be on this Captain Ernie Show" (Del laughs) They said "We will tell you when to stop!" So that was it!

DEL: I think that was in 1969. I had cards to give away, Ernie personally gave them to each kid and every child received a hamburger with this free card.

ERNIE: I even went to Chicago once and graduated from Hamburger University where they trained trainees to become managers.

ERNIE: Art Linkletter had that show "Kids Say the Darndest Things" where a kid would say something funny such as something embarrassing to their parents. I was hoping this would happen so I could have something to point to and talk about but it just really never happened.

DEL: No, I do not recall anything being said by children out of the ordinarily funny either.

ERNIE: We had other segments on the show such as Henry Reimers who we called Uncle Henry (which was given to him on the Uncle Ernie show and it carried over to the Showboat!) from the Scott County Humane Society and he would bring animals onto the show. That was the thing that I enjoyed because Henry was not a diplomat. He would sit back and have a rough manner and say "Ya, I've got a cute puppy here" and I would say "yes, you have a cute puppy here". He would then say "yup, it is up for adoption." Of course, we were trying to get people in there (to the Humane Society to adopt an animal) and we did get them in there and he said "and if we don't find a home for this dog, he will be gassed." People would get upset! I had to pull him aside and say whatever you do, don't say that again! I will tell you, he was a good source for my business. I had a Siamese purebred cat and there was another male of the same kind. So when my cat got ready, we would bring that guy up and we will have litters, six or seven kittens. I would tell Uncle Henry, when we go on the air, ask me about my cat. He would say "so, how is your cat doing?" I would say "well, I will tell you Uncle Henry, she has a family. We have to find a home for these kittens. Viewers would call the station and the kittens were gone right away. To this day, I have people coming up to me saying that they have the offspring of my cat Ming! ERNIE: The great thing about you, Del, is that you can remember things that perhaps I have forgotten. DEL: Well, the two things that I remember most about you and I together are; number one, Muscatine. ERNIE: Yes, when we did the Hon Industries Christmas show and tricked the kids into drinking Mountain Dew out of the bottle using a baby bottle nipple. DEL: Yes, and the other is we were up in Iowa quite a ways and were coming home and we stopped by a tavern to get a sandwich. Someone spotted you and you said "this is Ronald McDonald with me". First thing you know there beers started lining up. We went to Northwest Iowa, I can not remember if it was appearing at a fair or what exactly it was. ERNIE: The station gave me free reign, if something came up they always said go, do it, no problem. You, however were the entertainer and I was the guy who played with the children, talk to them and hand out picture cards. DEL: It was a crying shame that the show ever stopped. ERNIE: Well, If you notice at that time period when they stopped the show, other shows were falling by the wayside. It seemed to me that it had something to do with the unfair advantage that we had regarding kids and our show and sponsors and product. DEL: It was a women's rights organization. The first thing they did was that you could not endorse a product. If you were on a commercial for 7up or Mountain Dew, for example, it couldn't be played during your program or an hour before or after. I know Fred Patrick who played Mombo on the Dr. Max show on station WMT in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Fred Patrick said that he could understand what they were saying because he would cut commercials at Christmas time for toys. He said that they never made a commercial at Christmas for a five or ten or twenty dollar toy, they would always be fifty or one hundred dollar toys and he did not think that was fair. I, however, do not think it was fair when they took us off the air as a result in 1974. ERNIE: I do not ever recall being asked to do a spot like that. DEL: You did do Mountain Dew. ERNIE: Yes, but I just gave it away (as a prize), I never said "This is a great drink, etc." I would just say o.k., we are going to dig into the sea bag now and... Charlie Brown you just won a case of Mountain Dew! Funny thing about Mountain Dew is it has more caffeine in it than anything so I always say that I contributed to a hyper society. ERNIE: It was a fun time, I enjoyed it. DEL: I did too. ERNIE: Nothing was rehearsed. ERNIE: All I know is, did you ever see what I was working from? It was just a sheet. It read; Ernie open show, Go to first cartoon, Ernie does the seabag, Go to second cartoon, Ernie does a bit with Ronald. ERNIE: Was I ever in your bits? DEL: Yes, you were. You were not a straightman to my clowning because there was not that much clowning going on, no slapstick during the bits. It was usually a magic trick. Ernie would introduce me and finish up with me. We would get two kids and I would do a trick with the two kids. It didn't really matter what the trick was. There is an old trick called Grandma's Necklace. It involves three spools on a couple of strings and you cover them with a handkerchief and this and that. Seven years is a long time to do a different show once a week every week. So I did that same trick over and over maybe a dozen times but I would tell a different story each time. The first time was Grandma's shoelace where two kids are pulling on it and they come off. The next time we did it, I took an old Ronald McDonald doll and took the head off of it and put a block on it and put a hole in it from ear to ear and called it my cousin, Blockhead McDonald. So I was telling a different story but it was the same trick. I told McDonald's hey listen, I am going to have some other stuff. They said buy whatever you want and send us the bill! So I ended up with a lot of stuff for the show that way. DEL: During the personal appearances, Ernie and I would come out on stage together. It was not just at Christmas time but all summer long. There were always company picnics which we were asked to attend. ERNIE: Sometimes it was a particular group's kids and other times it was a large group of people. DEL: It was an hour show when we appeared at these personal appearances. ERNIE: I don't know why McDonald's did not allow you to appear at private parties as Ronald (instead he had to appear as Norman). Unless they thought that it was somehow beneath your image as Ronald. DEL: I appeared at Riverboat days in Burlington and they gave me a list; You can't go in the beer tent, You can't go here, You can't do this, You can't do that and you can't in the food tent because they are not serving McDonald's food. They would say o.k. you are appearing at this place and you can go here and you can go there. So they had it pretty well tied up. ERNIE: When you were on The Showboat, you drove to the station, didn't you. DEL: I drove to the station, went downstairs, made up. ERNIE: I know that you can't drive with those floppy feet. DEL: When I was Norman the clown I drove with them! ERNIE: Don't you think that some of the kids got the connection. They heard your voice when you were not in make-up and they would say... that's Ronald McDonald. DEL: Well I don't know if that was it, but I have been in a restaurant before and someone will come up to me after hearing me and say "Hey weren't you Ronald McDonald?" ERNIE: I have something like that happen to me too, my voice always gives me away. DEL: Every year, Captain Ernie's Showboat would promote backyard carnivals for MDS. Not involved with The Showboat, there was another organization called Candle Lighters which was a support group for children with cancer. I took what I did to heart and I can remember doing a show when it was in the morning and then another one in the afternoon and I would go to McDonald's for lunch and I would always go to a hospital. As a result, I ended up going to a lot of kids homes who had cancer. I had a grandson who had cancer. Because of this organization, they would say hey, if you are in East Moline, so and so would like to see you. So I would get there and of course all the cousins and everyone else would arrive to see Ronald as well. I would go to the hospitals so often that the nurses knew me by name. ERNIE: You would go as Ronald? DEL: Yes. I would get a call and they would say Del, is Ronald going to be out in Davenport today? I would say "yes" and they would say "we have a little girl here and her mother and father are getting a divorce and they are fighting and the dad gets mad and jumps in the car and accidentally runs over their little girl in the driveway and breaks her leg in three places. She is here and she is not going to eat. If she doesn't eat then we have to put her on intravenous feeding and if we put her on that, it will take a long time to get her back off. I would say, ya, o.k., I will be there at noon. I would walk in with food and show her two shakes. "Do you want the chocolate or the strawberry?" Boom! "I want the strawberry". O.K., here is a sandwich and we would sit there and talk and eat. I felt really good about this. I was in South Dakota for a McDonald's grand opening and I went to a local hospital. ERNIE: You went that far out? DEL: It was outside of my region but here is a store that is opening and they don't have a local Ronald McDonald yet and the store would call corporate and corporate would call me and fly me up there. Anyway, I am in the hospital and I go in the room and there is a little boy. He is cutting his grandpa's grass. He stops to fill the lawnmower full of gas. He fills it and slops it all over then cranks it and becomes burned. Not seriously burned because they got the fire out right away but he is totally burned. He is laying in bed and he wont move because it hurts. If they can't snap him out of it, they are going to have to fly him to a burn center. So I am here and there in the hospital and the nurse came running up to me and said whatever you did, you walked by his room and the boy sat up and watched you. So, I went back into the room and blew up some balloons and did some magic and the boy did move around and we shook hands. It really makes you feel like you did something good. ERNIE: Were these hospital visits organized by the company? DEL: No, they were approved by the company but they came about on their own. It was like, I am still in make-up and why not stop here. The first one I did was at Cottage Hospital in Galesburg. They had a girl who was dying of cancer. They asked me to come as they had five or six kids in the hospital and I went and put on a little show and then I got a letter that came through McDonalds and the time of my visit was the last time that she ever saw her daughter smile. Its things like that which really hit me. DEL: I remember going to southern Illinois to a school in a little town. I used to do a safety first show and I was putting up the act, getting ready and I am already in costume as Ronald. So there was a little group of kids already there and someone asked me if they could sit and watch me. I said oh sure, that's alright. So I got talking to the teacher and they are disadvantaged, handicapped. This one boy can't talk. Whenever there were disadvantaged kids, after the show, I would go to their room at the school and make balloons and do tricks and have a little pretend mouse game. I tell a story about how when I was a kid I had a pet and did they have a pet too and I would take this handkerchief and roll it up and it would look like a little mouse. When they touch it, it would jump. I would tell them no, no... don't tickle it, just pet it because if you tickle it, it jumps! So I am asking that question "do you have a pet at home". They were saying oh, ya. I have a bird or fish or this and that and the little kid was sitting next to me who couldn't talk and I said "do you have a pet at home?" I see the teacher and she is getting all upset and I said to the boy "what have you got?" The little boy looked up to me and said "woof!". The first word he ever said. ERNIE: You came to my house one time! My youngest daughter Angela remembers that! DEL: Yes I did. I can't remember but maybe we had to go somewhere after the show but I do remember this, back when you lived by Northpark Mall. DEL: There never was a time when there was a bad storm or something which prevented me from appearing on The Showboat. As a matter of fact, there was not a time when kids could not appear on the show either. We were always there. I do remember, however, driving through a snowstorm to get to a school in East Galesburg only to find out when I got there that the school was closed and I was the only one there. DEL: I loved The Showboat and never missed it when I was booked to be on it. My wife told me "You could be sick as a dog when you left but 100% well when you returned from being on the show." I loved it that much. ERNIE: YA! That's medicine. ERNIE: I have mentioned at other times a whole group of famous people who were on The Showboat whom I interviewed. However, they probably were not in the same segment as you were so you never had a chance to meet them. Plus sometimes they were on tape. In many cases, we did this and video taped it and aired it on the show. DEL: It was live every other week. ERNIE: I know that Jimmy Dean was live and the guys from the show Route 66 were live. It was all shot on the set of the Dixie Belle and sometimes it was live and other times not. This was first on Kinescope and then switched to video tape. They saved nothing of the show and most likely taped it all over, something like what I do with my VCR. DEL: I was never on the show when Ernie was not there. If he was there, I was there that week. To the best of my knowledge, McDonald's was not a sponsor on the show before I arrived on the scene in 1969. ERNIE: We used to also have on the show Jim Cannon, who has Dentist unlimited... its called that now. He came on about once a month and he brought his charts. He would show kids how teeth decay and all that stuff and he would end it with "KIDS STAY AWAY FROM CR**, DON'T EAT JUNK FOOD OR IT WILL ROT YOUR TEETH OUT." I would say "Thanks Dr. Cannon. Oh by the way, all of our guest today will receive Ho Hos, Ding Dongs and a bottle of pop! ERNIE: I used to do Noon Edition at 12pm which was the news and weather. I was the weather guy and also interviewed people sometimes, wearing those silly red news-team jackets. I always thought that it was amusing that kids would see me at 12pm and say "now wait a minute". That guy there doing the weather, that's the guy from the Captain Ernie Show. Then they were unhappy with the pilot house on The Showboat. They would say "That is not a real boat!" and I would have to tell them, "no.... this is a t.v. boat! If you look up and down the river, you will see the real Dixie Belle going by!" That was a time period when there actually were a lot of boats on the river that looked similar to the Dixie Belle. I was watching the movie "Showboat" the other day and a guy yelled out on the movie "Here comes the Dixie Belle!" which may be the answer to where did the name and idea for the show came from. Mr. Kiefer is a master magician, entertainer and professional clown. He occasionally performs for business functions and large gatherings. If you would like to enquire in regard to his services, please email me and your message will be passed along. Please click here to visit and sign Captain Ernie's Guestbook! Click here to return to Captain Ernie's Showboat! Thoughts or comments or have pictures or stories....click here to email me! This website is not affiliated in any way to WOC, KWQC or McDonalds. This is a fan site dedicated to preserving the memory of Captain Ernie's Showboat during the 1960's and 1970's. Any images on this site are presumed to be copyrighted by the owners and are used here only for example under the fair use provisions.