On ebay by upnorthmemories

Jingles picture found on flickr by tb00t

Picture of Oopsy from detroitradioflashbacks.net

Picture of Wixie found at http://member.newsguy.com/~apeweek

Here's something else you might find of interest about at this Detroit's WXYZ page.

http://www.detroitkidshow.com/Marv_Welch.htm

Here are a couple of backstage shots I took in 1953 at Wixie Wonderland.

I also worked on another show when it started at WXYZ which you don't have on your website. See photos below of Me & My friend. He's also on the same website as Wixie Wonderland.

http://www.detroitkidshow.com/soupys_on.htm

Lytle Hoover

Picture of Ricky the Clown found on clownalley.net

In WJRT Photos - Rae Deane Gerkowski was her real name. The Lion Puppet's name was "Montgomery Lion" and the puppeteer & writer/creator of the show was Frank Deal. Frank was a staff performer/announcer and Weatherman for WJRT.

Rae Deane was not related to Frank Cady. She was the daughter of Raymond Gerkowski, Conductor of the Flint Symphony Orchestra. Also at WJRT was the Saturday Late Night show "Theater of Thrills" starring Christopher Coffin.(PHOTOS ATTACHED) The crew worked up a Haunted Castle where he lived and showed old not so "Horror Movies" The castle was first created with a couple of Columns Scenery and a rear projection screen, using castle photos from books checked out of the Flint Library. Later an old cheap coffin was bought for him to sleep in and arise like Dracula in the movies. Later we moved to the Station Garage and built a castle set. Being by the garage door we would go outside and build an outdoor graveyard "backlot" set, where Chris could appear along with a horse drawn hearse.

Long before electronic special effects were developed, our engineering developed a video recording technique so we could mix live and recorded video, so we could have Chris vanish at the end of his segments.

Christopher Coffin was played by Reed Pasternak aka Reed Farrell on-air; Advertising Agency Manager & TV actor for many different commercials appearing on the T.O.T. show. Not wanting to be recognized from being in the commercials, he developed Chris Coffin's costume using the beard, sunglasses, & black hat. He sat in a wheelchair to change his height. Using his deep scary voice no one ever realized he was both people.

Franky was a local man who did a professional Frankenstein make-up job, then came in one Saturday night; so we put him on the air. Several viewers, who wrote in fan letters, would do this and show up to see if we would use them. We CC always read fan mail on the air. They made up scarry poems and stories. We stopped doing this when we realized that several "witch" fans writing in were actually practicing witches, writing in REAL fan letters!

Lytle Hoover
Cherry Hill, NJ
one of the former WJRT Directors of Rae Deane, Mr. Magic, T.O.T, etc.

Grand Rapids Public Library