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Don McGonegle was one of the producers for Uncle Ernie as well as Captain Ernie! He wrote the following masterpiece.
Don Mc Gonegle 10/17/05
I started at WOC in 1953 during my sophomore year at St. Ambrose College and had a position on the production crew. Part of the night crew that started at 3pm to sign off, whatever time of night that happened to be. In 1953, I heard different accounts as to how many live shows that they were doing. You have to realize that we did not have any type of recording except for the Kinescope recording as video tape recording was not on the scene.
So basically, every thing that we did on the air was live from our studios, including the live commercials. The only other type of commercials that we had were film commercials. There has been a sort of a difference as to how you want to count as to if it were a live program or a live commercial but I do know that when I began, it seems to me that we were doing something of the sort of seventy-six live productions per week out of our studios.
Our studios were located at the same place that they are now, they were certainly in an entirely different building. They were in an old mansion, across the street, from the B. J. Palmer mansion. To accommodate television, they built a cinder block two story garage with offices over the studio portion itself with overhead garage doors at either end which allowed us to do drive thru commercials with cars and that type thing. Most of our productions came out of that studio. There was a smaller studio in the main mansion itself where we had our news, sports and weather sets and the kitchen set for the "today's cooking" show. The one and only control room for television was located also behind that small studio, upstairs. So basically, all of our directors worked blind except when we were doing news and sports. With anything coming out of the large studio, studio A, you couldn't see where the cameras were at or what was going on, you had to depend on the whims of the camera itself to let you see what was going on.
To further make the communication between the director and the crew more difficult, we also worked dumb in that we had no talk-back from the studio in our head-sets. The director communicated to us on a microphone on the podium in the control room. We had no way of talking back to the director. So that also presented a problem with production which we managed to get around.
In order to carry on all of those kinds of programs, some of those programs that I am talking about, included at night with the Billboard Honor Roll of Hits, which was an hour long musical presentation with singers and combos with George and Marge Meinert, Trip the Trio, Golden Opportunity as well as live commercial cut-ins. We also had the Herman Ziffren, the King of the Appliances who did live commercials as part of the Saturday night program. We had various live film programs that we did live film cut-ins on. We had the Musical Moods with Marjorie Meinert we also had Soiree with Sontag, all of these programs done live and it presented some real production problems.
During the daytime, when we came on at 3 o'clock, there were cowboy movies with a live host.
I went into the Army in 1954 and came back in 1956 on a production crew and then went into the newsroom in 1961 and came back into the production department in 1964.
Uncle Ernie was the first character that Ernie Mims did. How that whole thing came about was Ernie was hired to be a radio personality (he was at the time working) at WQUA radio. The man who hired him was our program director, for that particular time for both radio and television, a man by the name of Ray Guth.
One of the ways to get an announcer to make a little bit more money was to see that he got live commercials to do or some type of program. For every five commercials an announcer did when he was not on shift or for every program which he was a host or the main featured performer, (he would) receive talent fees. That is how they would be able to increase their paycheck above their base pay as a staff announcer.
So Ernie was hired with the idea that some kind of television program would be developed for him so he could get talent fees. At this particular time, I had always wanted to be a director but there were no openings as the staff was very very stable. I was able to convince Ray Guth that since I was working on the production crew on Sunday mornings, how about if I got to help develop, produce and direct a program for Ernie where he would be the host of cartoons. Ray Guth agreed and that is how I got into it. Ernie and I sat down and jointly put together the character of Uncle Ernie. We had a very small budget, I don't remember exactly what it was, but for costumes and preparations, it was probably $25 at that particular time.  Ernie went down to the Salvation Army, I believe, to their reclamation store and picked out some baggy old pants and a vest and a shirt and a janitor's type cap and away we went! That was his character! Working in preparation with Ray Guth for this show, he told me that the only guidelines that he was going to give me was that kids like cartoons because they are familiar, they do not like to be too awfully surprised, they do not like to be scared and their attention spans are not that great. So whatever you do in the form of live stuff, keep it short, keep it interesting and you will be able to keep the kids. That is what we took as our guidelines then in determining what we were going to do. I remember saying to Ernie "Well, what can you do." Ernie said "Well, I am a musician, I play the trumpet". Also, "I can do some cartooning." That is how the idea of working with the numbers came about. So, we opened up that first program with Ernie walking on the set, pushing a broom and with an aluminum step ladder and the drapes pulled back, showing the behind the scenes television. That was our approach. We also had as regular guest, every Sunday morning, Uncle Henry, who was Henry Reimers. Mr. Reimers was the entire staff for the humane society of Scott County. He would come on each week with some pet who needed to be adopted and he would also do a short talk with the kids about how do you take care of a dog, how do you take care of a cat, how do you feed them and clean them and train them and all of this and show that the emphasis was always on the pet itself. That turned out to be a very popular feature. We also had Gordon McClain, who was then the entrepreneur, owner and operator of McClain's animal farm in Coal Valley which later became Niabi Zoo. Gordon would come on each week with a different exotic type animal. He talked (on the show) to Ernie about it. It might be a monkey which climbed all over the studio or it might be a lion cub or whatever. He would talk about that particular animal and would be plugging "come on out to the McClain Animal Farm". That was one of the first times that you got a pretty good idea that Ernie was a good entertainer. Gordon invited Ernie to come on out to the wild animal farm on a Sunday and be a guest. Gordon was a wild animal trainer. He even got him to go into the lion's cage! I recall that Ernie was willing to go along with that. So I figured "this guy is certainly an entertainer!" Another thing that let me know early on that this was somebody with talent and somebody that the kids really liked is the return that we got on a promotion that the sales manager set. He said that somehow we have to be able to show something tangible to sponsors. That this is somebody that has an audience and has drawing power. He suggested, and we went through with it, sending in bottle caps. Not a particular brand of soda, or anything else, Ernie said "ol Uncle Ernie just likes bottle caps and he is a collector of bottle caps, so why don't you send me in your bottle caps." The idea was to see how many we could get. Well, I think that I was almost beheaded by the receptionist and the gal who did the mail count because they were inundated with envelopes! Big Envelopes, little envelopes, stuffed filled with bottle caps, some of them not all of them that clean. Kids must have gone thru the alleyways pickup up rusted out bottle caps. I never did get a final count but we had huge, huge boxes full of bottle caps! That told us then and there that we did have an audience and that they would respond to Ernie. The amount of postcards that went out (was another indicator). You could send in and ask for Ernie's postcard and it would go out. The one on the Captain Ernie website is the one which we sent out to kids! My next idea that told me that Ernie related very well to kids and I think that he has always said this, is that he is just a big kid at heart, himself, and I agree 100%. Contacted by Burlington, Iowa city officials, I won't say that this was Burlington River Boat Days, maybe it was the beginning of that particular festival that they have, he was asked to come on down and put on a show and this was some extra outside money. Ernie was not really sure what he was going to do besides doing the cartoons and some other things. I went along with him and I did not really have to do anything. They had a stage that was a flatbed truck and it was surrounded by kids all yelling "UNCLE ERNIE, UNCLE ERNIE!!!!". I was able to see how he was able to talk to the kids and he would get them up on the stage and do the cartoon numbers and so on, and it really really went well and they really related to him. I went back and told our salespeople that this guy has more talent and attention to kids in his little finger than any of the people that you have on right now doing the cartoon stuff. Ernie was definitely there. We also did some sight gags with Ernie and started to develop them to put them on the show. This was days of black and white television and we had really rudimentary almost stone age type television gear but it was amazing with what we were able to do with it. One of the gags that we were able to do was that I had Ernie flying on a magic carpet. We got an old throw rug and got it on a table, put it in front of a black background and we attached strings to the fringe on the carpet and so we were able to stretch it out. We had men on both ends of the carpet shaking the strings so that it looked like it was flapping in the breeze. We super-imposed him over another camera and we had that particular camera move all over the studio so he was flying all around the lights and on top of the curtain rails and all over the place in the studio. It turned out that the kids really loved it. One of our announcers called and said "O.K., I give up, how did you do that?!!! My kids are sitting here screaming in laughter about this!!!!" Another thing that we did was that we had Ernie trapped inside of a bottle. We had some mysterious spirit bugging Ernie. That was the premise for the whole gag. Again, we put him in front, on a table, draped in black with a black background and got a large five gallon clear glass jug and put that on another table and super-imposed Ernie into that jug and then did an echo-chamber into his micro-phone and he did a whole Sunday show trapped inside of the jug. At the very end, we had a hammer come out and break the jug and then we immediately went into the closing titles and the next Sunday, the kids were relieved to see that Uncle Ernie was back at his usual site. He also played the trumpet every so often and of course always did his numbers which were two to three cartoon drawings almost every Sunday. Another feature was that we had guest which we felt would be something that would really grab the attention of the kids. One of our very first guest was a Davenport motorcycle cop which was a new thing in the city of Davenport at the time (to have motorcycle policemen). So we had an officer come out on his motorcycle and Ernie was outside on a nice Sunday morning. The whole thrust was that this was a motorcycle, this is what is on a motorcycle and this is what a policeman does and the policeman is you friend. We had firemen on as well as baseball players. The baseball players came from whatever the local minor league affiliation was at the time and would talk about how to play baseball and how to have fun and here is how you grip the ball and to how to pitch. Again, the point was to have the segment short but entertaining and then the cartoons carried the brunt of everything.
In yet another one of the greatest updates of this website, Don McGonegle provides this incredible picture, one of only two known picture of Uncle Ernie to exist! As with The Showboat, the show would feature different segments dealing with something in the Quad Cities. In this picture, the Davenport Police Department has just started their new choppers beat. Here, the policeman poses for a picture in the old WOC studios parking lot while director Don McGonegle and Uncle Ernie discuss the segment circa 1961! The Dixie Belle made the transfer very well. As I recall, Vern Gielow was the captain then. Vern was very capable but did not relate to the kids that well. He succeeded Ken Wagner as Captain of the Dixie Belle. I might just digress here a bit, When Ken Wagner did this particular Dixie Belle routine, he had one of his daughters operate a hand puppet named Tommy the Cabin Boy. She would squat down on a little stool, down underneath, out of site of the pilot house. We had a monitor that we shoved up along one side. There was a hole cut out the side of the pilot house cabin where she could watch and Tommy would always perch on the ships wheel. She was able to monitor her movements and Ken would always be outside of the pilot house talking to Tommy. Of course, Captain Vern did not have that after Ken left. Don Warren succeeded Vern when he left and then Ernie succeeded Captain Don when he left for WHO to be the morning man there. So Ernie was then promoted from Uncle Ernie in the studio as janitor to Captain of the Dixie Belle. All of that particular time period happened while I was in the news department. When I moved from the news department back to the production department as a full fledged producer and director, Ernie and I were reunited. I am going to digress here for just a second. WOC had a long history of kids host from the time it went on the air in 1949. When I began working there, there was Comic-Cut-Ups with Ken Wagner and one of his daughters. His oldest daughter played a hand puppet which was a clown and Edith Glidden who was one of the directors of the time was the voice. Ken would do drawings and we had some really cheap bad cartoons and it was a 15 minute program.
 Special thanks to Tim Hollis, incredible historian and author of books including the stellar "Hi There, Boys and Girls!: America's Local Children's TV Programs"
 Eddie Forrest the Singing Sheriff
The cowboy show was first called Circle 5 Ranch because WOC signed on in 1949 on Channel 5, then when a boost in power was granted they had to change to Channel 6 to keep from infringing on the Channel 4 signal thus the name changed to Circle 6 Ranch. I came to work at WOC in September of 1953 and Walt Reno was already there as Cowboy Whitey. I went into the army in October of 1954 and returned in August of 1956 and Wes Holly had replaced Walt after he went to Des Moines. The above picture is of Wes Holly but the set is exactly like that used by Cowboy Ken and Cowboy Whitey. The potbelly stove was on a wheeled dolly and the stove pipe was rolled up seamless paper. The rest of the set consisted of pine benches and a couple bales of straw. The stove, benches and bales were also seen on a good number of other shows as set pieces.
Shown here on his 1950's show "Cartoon Cut Ups", Ken Wagner, the first Showboat captain!
Captain Ken, with full beard, now commanding the Showboat in the late 1950's before leaving to start another Dixie Belle on Minneapolis T.V.! Special thanks to WOC legendary engineer Jon Book.
Special thanks to WOC's Anita Sundin for this incredible picture of Captain Ken Wagner and Anita's children, Lynda and Rick.
Vern Gielow, the second captain with Tommy the Cabin Boy and Calliope the Turtle. Notice the original showboat railing, quite different than the classic railing from the Captain Ernie era. All three pictures property of KWQC and are used here for reference. Captain Vern, this time with Patti Paddlewheel. Notice the 1950's to the 1970's bridge taking place in Captain Vern's pictures. In the previous picture of Vern the cabin is painted from the original Captain Ken era. In the second picture, the pilot house has a new look, one which would take Captain Ernie into the next decade!
Captain Vern in 1961 again with Tommy and Calliope!  Ernie and I both believe that we should entertain, in addition to being a spot carrier. That is really what the sales department and the management wanted out of the cartoons. They wanted a thing in which they could plug in commercials that were geared toward kids. We had all kinds of cereals, we had hot cereals, we had cold cereals, we had potato chips, anything and everything that would appeal to a kid would be put on the Cartoon Showboat. We both felt very strongly that the kids needed to be entertained by more than just the cartoons and more than just the Three Stooges. We felt that that they needed other kinds of entertainment that would keep them amused and keep us amused as well rather than just simply doing it by the numbers every day. That is how the show kind of, I would say, degenerated into where you would go on and the host would say "o.k. kids, here is this cartoon" and come back and do a commercial and then introduce a film commercial, come back out of that and say "here is your next cartoon" then draw some cards out of the treasure chest and give away some prizes. We said "there has to be more out of life than this." I also had the very good fortune not only to have Ernie who loved to entertain the kids but a studio crew and one engineer for sure who was our technical director by the name of Gene McHenry. Gene had a great imagination and a willingness to be creative and to work hand in hand with me. We had people on the crew that absolutely knocked themselves out, not only to come up with ideas but also to carry them out. It was a very marvelous creative experience, I can guarantee you that. So Ernie and I said "You know, kids really do love slapstick" and Corny gags. Part of the proof of that was, when we would do something on part of the set where the Dixie Belle was and we would have the kids in the bleachers sitting in the large studio waiting for that segment to start, every time we did something, we could hear that studio go up for grabs through the studio walls. I mean that the kids went absolutely crazy laughing and going wild. So we knew yes, that really did appeal. Now, what were some of the things that we did, some of the skits. Let me tell you that I for one am not adverse to stealing ideas from other people. There was a period of time on one of the shows, the Adams Family, that they had The Thing which was a hand in a box. Well I came up with the idea that lets adopt that and use it on the Dixie Belle. We built a little character that was a ghost of the former captain of the Dixie Belle who had come back and was jealous and was bugging Captain Ernie something fierce. What we did was to rig up a cigar box that we cut the bottom out of and we put it on a stand on a rail which was the rail on the Dixie Belle pilot house and we had a drape that came out to hide one of the fellows that was actually the cameraman who would sit down there and would be able to reach up through the hole in the cigar box. We would introduce Ernie whenever we came out of a cartoon and there was the cigar box sitting there and Ernie was wondering "hmmm.. I wonder what that is?". He opened it and looked and nothing was in it. We would keep in the bottom of the picture the fact that the cigar box was still there. All of a sudden, this hand comes up out of the cigar box and grabs the lid and shuts it. Then the hand disappears. Ernie does a great double and triple take. He went back down and opened the box again, "hmm.. nothing there" and puts it down. The hand comes up again and pulls it shut. Well the hand began to do all sorts of things. I remember at the end of the show, we came up with the idea that the hand came up and motioned for Ernie to bend down closer and closer. Then the hand reached up, grabbed Ernie by the nose and pulled him face down into the box. We went quickly into the film strip of the Dixie Belle chugging away down the river. The hand also came up and hit him in the face with a powder puff of corn starch. It also would hit him with cream pies which were really pie tins filled with shaving cream. Ernie would always have to make sure to wear his glasses because the shaving cream would sting your eyes and so he had to have protection from his glasses. The kids absolutely went crazy when we hit him with the cream pies. We did it one time while we were in the other studio and the screams would go up with laughter when we did that. We also had this particular ghost bedeviling him. I went back and copied what we did with Uncle Ernie, we trapped him inside of a bottle, then we took him on another flight around the inside of the Dixie Belle. Then, the thing that I am probably most proud of and we were only able to do it because of Gene McHenry the engineer, I had seen Ernie Kovaks who was a marvelous, wonderfully talented creative user of the television medium. He did an entirely silent program one time. No words were spoken, it was entirely visual comedy. One of the things was a canted set. They actually built a set that was canted so that the chairs were tilted and the table was tilted and then they jacked up the camera so that it made everything look level. I talked to Gene and said I really wish that we could do that and he said that he thought he could do that with a prism. I said well where are you going to get that, he said well I have one at home. Gene adapted a holder for a prism to fit over the lens of a camera. Now this we have to pre-tape. One day we set aside a recording session to record our version of the canted set. What we did was put it in front of a set that had no lines on it so the lines would not tell and give it away. Then we took a table and tilted one end of it at an extreme angle. We took a brown lunch sack and in it we had a banana, an orange, we had a sandwich in a bag and we had a bag of potato chips. We stuck them on the bottom of the bag. With the prism we were able to twist the prism so that it leveled the table out in the background. Ernie was sitting at an angle himself on a chair at an angle as well. So everything looked level for the camera. He had the lunch sack in his hand and said "Well, I am down here in the galley and I am going to have my lunch." He made a script out of his own head, his own story line that he was really worried about this ghost of the captain that was after him but at least he was able to have lunch. He set the lunch bag down and the stick-em held it to the table. He set the banana down on the table and it just flew off the table! Ernie would do these double takes and really sold it and the same thing for the orange and that flew off the table. The same thing with the sandwich which flew off the table and the potato chips which flew off the table and he is just becoming more distraught as this happens. The final thing was he took out this thermos and said at least I can have this thermos of milk. We had to use milk so it would show up on the camera. Held the cup on the table so it wouldn't slide off. He poured it and it appeared that he was pouring it into the cup but it too flew off at a 45 degree angle over the top of the cup and down the table. He just collapsed face first on the table in utter frustration and it went black. I think that was the highlight, the thing that I enjoyed doing the most. I know that the kids really did love them because we could hear the reaction to any and all of the skits that we did. Looking at a picture of the Dixie Belle as it stands now in the Putnam Museum in 2005, there is a railing which was part of the stairwell from the old WOC studios, that was a later feature and it was there when I was directing the show as well. The very first railing was a metal pipe. I believe that Ivan Owens who finally retired after 47 years at WOC was the stage manager who built the Dixie Belle. Sandy's. The greatest drive-in in the Quad Cities and I do have to agree. It was definitely one of my favorites and one of the crew's favorite sponsors because they were the most generous. We had a lot of sponsors who would provide product to show during the commercial. Either they did not want to share it with anybody or they only sent just one item up to be on the show. Sandy's would send up bags full of food and would say "of course we can't take it back so have at it". So whenever their commercials were on, the crew ate well. My favorite was their fish sandwich. I think that they had the best fish I have ever had. They would send up milkshakes and hamburgers and french fries and the crew would just feast off of it. One of the crewmen would highlight it as to when the Sandy's commercials were on the log and one of the crewmen would be assigned to go over to the Sandy's street on 14th and Harrison and load up. I would have to tell them "come on guys, you can't eat anything until AFTER the commercials." If I am not mistaken, they just gave Ernie a facts sheet. Ernie would just ad-lib the commercials and obviously did a marvelous job. One of the most popular segments was with Sidney. This came after I left the station in 1966. I was very interested to see that the one who was behind the hand puppet Sidney was the son of Dr. Frogley, the renown chiropractor. That was an interesting thing too. The Palmer family who owned WOC always encourage WOC to hire Palmer Chiropractic students because they needed the money. Most of the production crew and especially when they started using non engineering people for their studio camera men as well were Palmer students. I think that I got a second hand education in chiropractic from working with those people and those were really some good and fun times. As I look at a picture of the Dixie Belle, in the Putnam museum and I have visited the attraction there as well, I am thinking about how sterile it looks compared to what it was like to work on that particular show and how much fun it was to work on that show. I think that was the reason why it was so successful is that those of us who were doing it really just had a lot of fun in doing it. I think that we were amusing ourselves as much as we were trying to be creative television artist or whatever. In the process, I think that we all thought like kids because we amused the heck out of the kids. I don't think that strikes me as a strange tie in to WOC. I am now living in the Arizona area and one of the programs that was extremely popular here years ago and is absolutely a cult feature is called the Wallace and Ladmo Show. It was a kids show. I don't think that they had cartoons, it was a live show and an attraction in and of itself. One of the people who appeared on the show doing different characters was a gentleman by the name of Pat McMahon. Pat got his start in broadcasting by appearing in Davenport, working at the old KFMA radio studios and then came to work for WOC and also was the host of a teenage dance show on Sunday afternoons on WOC. Pat got drafted and when he got out of the army, he came to the Phoenix area and became a regular featured star with Wallace and Ladmo who were two characters who put on kids shows and skits. They also had a live audience and had kids and one of the treasured things that you could get was a Wallace and Ladmo bag. If you had one of those, you had the top icon and you were the king in the neighborhood. All it was was a brown lunch bag filled with products from the show with candies an cereals and I don't know what all but to get a Wallace and Ladmo bag was the tops. I think that was something similar to what happened at WOC as well. I am not saying that the two were in any way connected but it just goes to show that a lot of people overlooked what a valuable, valuable vehicle that those kids shows were. Not only in product but also in building the very loyal audience base. I say to this day that KPHO Channel 5 in the Phoenix market to many natives in this area is Wallace and Ladmo . It was so popular that there is now a permanent exhibit in the Arizona state historical museum of the Wallace and Ladmo set. One of the gentlemen has now passed on but Wallace and Pat McMahon with all of his various characters are in the Broadcast Hall of Fame of Arizona. So again, a strange connection between with Pat being the bridge between WOC and the Valley of the Sun and how popular those shows were and to be able to be on that show just meant that your place in your little portion of society was absolutely made. I see also looking at the picture of the set that the big ol captain's steering wheel is gone. That was really something that was made by Ivan and coddled together but on the air it looked like a real steamboat pilot's wheel. All I can say is that looking back on it, it was a real pleasure to do the show. It was in big part due to that I was able to work with somebody like Ernie who was ready to do anything and had the talent to do a lot of stuff. It made it just that much more attractive to come up with ideas. How it just fell back into boredom, I do not know. I do feel proud of the fact that I was on the scene with Uncle Ernie and then for a while, and I think during one of its peak times, I had my hand in it again. I think that Ernie and I shared that particular bond for as long as we go. He is really a great guy and a wonderful entertainer and a wonderful guy to work with. What you see with Ernie is what you get, he is just himself.
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While Don McGonegle covered the beginning time period of Captain Ernie's Showboat, the Captain's first mate Sidney the Handpuppet represented the last remaining years of the Showboat. Sidney was actually played by the world renoun chiropractor Doctor Frogley's son, Craig. In one of the greatest updates to ever hit the Showboat website, it can now be revealed that Sidney IS ALIVE AND WELL!!!! Sidney was presumed to be lost along with every episode of the Showboat as well as much of the set. Unbelievably, Captain Ernie has not seen his best friend Sidney in what is now over three decades! Sidney and Craig were found in Utah of all places! OH SIDNEEEEEYYYYY (the Captain would say).. where have you been!?!!!!
Craig Frogley 10/21/05
I was a student at Palmer Chiropractic College in Davenport. I started at Palmer in June of 1972 and went to work almost right away at WOC. I came up with the idea while working as a cameraman on the set of the Showboat. I simply can not remember the first time Sidney appeared or how it was explained to the children who he was but I do believe that it was just basic dialogue at that moment which brought Sidney to life on the set.
Sidney was a hand puppet in which I ended up rigging wiring in order to move parts of his body such as his arms and head. I was not a ventriloquist so it was important to have this movement to help explain what he was saying. As Ernie has mentioned, he and I simply discussed whatever it was that we were going to talk about on the show and then we ad-libbed the entire segment. It became one of the most popular segments which included giving away an entire glass bottle case of Mountain Dew on every show!
I remember the kids on the risers and I was always looking for a way to get Sidney out of the pilot house and go over and interact with the kids rather than just having Sidney just sit there as an inanimate puppet.
I was the only one who ever played Sidney. Of course, being in college at the time, I was not always able to be there and if I was not there, Sidney did not appear. The ratings for the Showboat may have actually gone up during the period Sidney was on so perhaps this was because of the little spark that the little fellow brought to the show.
At one particular time, I was on a three week missions trip to France for the LDS church. When Sidney and I returned, Sidney appeared wearing a tiny beret, sporting a little mustache and had acquired a French accent! This was how we explained to the children viewers why he had not appeared during my absence. This is one of the most memorable segments between Sidney and Captain Ernie!
One day I do remember that we had finished the show and one of the little kids had kind of hung around, waiting for a ride or something. He saw Sidney at the steamboat and walked over to it. I was over at the camera, finishing up or whatever, and I saw him standing there looking at Sidney and was saying something to him. Of course Sidney was saying nothing in return. So I walked over and snuck my hand up Sidney's shirt. I asked the little boy why he had wandered over there and he said "I don't know, I just wanted to talk to Sidney." So I told him that Sidney was sleeping. I then moved Sidney's hand and said "Oh look, Sidney is waking up now!" I then ended up having a conversation through Sidney with the little boy. I was not a ventriloquist so I had to learn very quickly to not move my mouth while speaking! I like to think that was a great memory in his heart, even to this day. I know it was one of my favorite memories on the Showboat.
Sidney left the show at about the same time that the Showboat went off the air. I had reached a point to where I went to my boss and suggested that changes be made regarding certain things (not related to Sidney). He said "Well we are not going to make those changes" and so I chose to leave and went into business for myself and ended up finishing school that way. I graduated in June of 1975 which means that I probably started in business in June of 1974 which would be the same time period in which I left WOC. (Perhaps this is the reason the Showboat went off the air.. little Sidney left the show!).
All in all, what we have in our own lives is memories. I have great fond memories of my time on the Showboat and was glad to have been part of it. Sidney was my puppet to begin with and so when I left, I simply took him with me. He is still with me to this day and it is amazing that anyone besides me would remember him!
Dr. Frogley, Sidney will never be forgotten. To this day he is Captain Ernie's best friend and friend to everyone who grew up watching Captain Ernie during this magical time period.
10/25/05 .. RED ALERT!!!!!! In one of the greatest shocking moments of this website, Dr. Craig Frogley has provided pictures of Sidney!!!!! This is the FIRST TIME IN OVER THREE DECADES that Captain Ernie and his viewers have seen Sidney! Absolutely Unbelieveable!!!!! Sidney is alive and well and lives in Utah!
Sidney.. you look like you have not aged one year!!!!
Little Sidney, I see that you are still sporting your sharp French mustache and beret! You always were a fashion plate as your 1970's belt reveals!
C'est formidable, n'est pas!
Craig Frogley (Sidney)
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10/23/05 Don McGonegle's priceless recollection of Uncle and Captain Ernie brought back great memories for Ernie. Here are a few he shared.
Captain Ernie said that the initials on his Uncle Ernie cap were "S.E.I.C." which stand for Sanitary Engineer 1st (I) Class. This was a fancy politically correct spoofing way to say that he was the janitor of the station! The handwriting on the box in the promotional picture on this site of Uncle Ernie was his own. Ernie admits that it looks terrible but it fits with the character.
One of Ernie's most overwhelming moments was when he went to Savanna Army Depot for a special appearance. He arrived on the scene and it was raining, a total downpour. Anyone in the rain was just drenched. He looked to see how many showed up and it was the biggest crowd he had ever seen! Ernie said that he said to himself that "I am not worthy of this and I am not that good". He went up on the stage or whatever they had for him and greeted them and signed Captain Ernie cards for every last person who came. The importance of this recollection is the extent of his popularity and his impact. In the day when only three channels were available and cable television did not exist, there was no difference in the minds of the public between local and national star. That is true today as well but even more so then. Ernie earned the reception he received and most likely will never realize how many children's lives he touched, even to this day.
 Ernie Mimms signing autographs for what the newspaper stated was 1,000 children. In actuality it was much more than 1,000! One of Ernie's great recollections involved the McClain Animal Farm which today is Niabi Zoo in Coal Valley, Illinois and his son was there too, running around with a Captain Ernie cap on. They had a boaconstrictor and Ernie had it wrapped around himself. In a great gag, he went on and on during the segment acting as if he was losing his battle with the snake and struggled to say "its squeezing me.. somebody doooo something" like he was being squeezed to death. On yet another of the many appearances to the Farm, the attendants brought a monkey over for him to hold and it urinated on him. A kinder memory reveals that Ernie loves cats. At one point, during the Uncle Ernie years, he was given a tiger cub to hold during the show. This was just tremendous for Ernie personally and the cub was as big as a large dog and he was able to love it in his arms during the show. Uncle Henry from the Scott County Humane Society was a frequent guest on the Showboat and would appear with cats and dogs that would need to be adopted. Lines would form all day long after the show at the Society with parents and their children seeking the animal which had just appeared on the show. Of course the dog or cat had quickly been adopted and the familys were led to meet other animals which were equally in need of a home. Ernie reveals that nothing on Uncle Ernie nor on Captain Ernie was prepared, nothing was written and nothing was on the monitor to read. The only thing that was a constant was a director on the set hurrying you onward to the next segment of the program. In one particularly hilarious moment on the Showboat, Ernie was making his rounds on the risers, interviewing the children who were on the show. Ernie explains that one girl was on The Showboat that day with beautiful blonde curly hair. I came up to her during the segment where I interviewed kids on the risers and I said "Your hair is so pretty... it just falls nice and everything... how do you get it like that?" She said "it always looks like that every time I go potty". Another part of the Showboat which received a huge amount of viewer attention was the annual Christmas tree on the set. Children were encouraged to make a decoration and send it in. The decor was hung on the Christmas tree along with the child's name. The tree was shown every season on every show so kids would look for their very own name attached to the decoration! Captain Ernie reveals something that he is very suprised that Don McGonegle, his producer did not bring it up. That is the crew was always careful when there was a live microphone on the show. One particular time on the Showboat they didnt know that the microphone was on and Ernie was looking for something and said "where the h### is it?!". It went over live but to their relief they never received a phone call about it. Mr. Mims also reveals that some of the more famous people that were on the Showboat included.... John Raitt the famous broadway singer. The guys from the show "Route 66". They were ad-libbing on the show with the Captain and at one point Ernie told them "where have you guys been, you are late for the show!" To this they grabbed Captain Ernie like it was real and put him in an actual arm lock much to Ernie's dismay! Clue Gulligan was a serious actor. He made a special appearance one afternoon on the Showboat. Clue was such a serious actor that he scared Captain Ernie and so Captain Ernie ended up spoofing him as well in a skit! Another who was on the show was the lead actor from "The High Chaparral". A favorite Ernie story is that he once had a race jockey on the Showboat and Gene McHenry, who was the Showboat's engineer, built a go-kart for Ernie to race in. This go-kart looked like a replica of the Showboat. Captain Ernie got in it and ended up racing a local radio station KSTT disc jockey down a hill. The kart was more for looks on tv than anything and it did not go very fast but it was all for hilarious fun! Ernie also recalls one episode of Captain Ernie's Showboat when he managed to obtain a magic mirror like that from Romper Room. Romper Room at one time aired on WOC so this may have been the magic mirror. While on air he steped into his captain's pilot house and instead of calling out children's names, he recited the names of famous gangsters such as "I see Mugsy...."! Ernie is recognized not only throughout the WOC viewing area but in other parts of the world as well! When the baby-boomers who watched his show grew up, they spread out and sometimes he hears from them. Ernie recalls receiving fan mail from someone in the U.S. military who let him know that they really appreciated the great memories that were brought up while on duty when they ran across someone who grew up in this area as well. He was also recognized coming back from a trip to Ireland. While on the return plane, a rugged looking airline attendant asked Ernie if he was Mr. Mims. When Ernie told him that he was, the guy revealed that he had won a bike years ago from the Showboat's treasure chest & proceeded to refer to Ernie as Captain Ernie!
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12/14/05
More great memories from Don McGonegle regarding Captain/Uncle Ernie and 1950's/early 1960's children's programming on WOC!
Please don't feel that you are imposing on me when you ask me to talk about those good old days of live television. I should be thanking you for giving this old gray haired man the chance to talk about those exciting days, it was almost a crime that we got paid for all the fun we had. I started at WOC in September of 1953 when our studios were housed in a three-story mansion with an attached concrete block addition, which served as the main tv studio. We were doing something like 90 live shows a week, not counting live commercials, it was wild, frenetic and magic for a young college student who had stars in his eyes and dreams of network tv in his head.
There was one commercial product that I definitely remember but it was more in the era of Cowboy Whitey and Capn' Ken and that was the hot cereal Malt-O-Meal. I was then the floor director and had to cook the stuff in a double boiler on an electric hot plate in the studio and time it so it was done and spooned into a bowl just before we went live because the sponsor wanted steam to be rising from the bowl. This stuff had the consistency of wall paper paste with just about as much taste appeal... the show's hosts refused to take a bite because they weren't sure that their mouths wouldn't be glued shut plus it was just plain nasty. I then had to wash the double boiler and bowl and had to do that maybe five times a week during a commercial buy. I am not sure if the product was ever on Captain Ernie.
With Hostess Twinkies and Cup Cakes, we had to cut one open and then use a table knife to spread the filling around to make it look like there was a lot more than there really was. We would keep the cut open one until they were like rocks because once we got them looking good on camera we were loathe to mess with success. I know that there was another potato chip product which appeared on Uncle Ernie before Hiland and we also had some fruit flavored vitamin tablet commercial too. Sandy's was by far the best sponsor we had because we all feasted on those days and they were so generous with their product. Iowana Dairies was another sponsor, especially at the time of their impending Iowana wampum auctions but I don't know if they were still going at the time of Capn' Ernie or not.
I think that Uncle Ernie's first go around at the Burlington Riverboat Days was in the spring or early summer of 1960 because I was dating my wife at that time and we got married in 1961.
Jungle Jay, who was a competitor on WQAD Channel 8 did not really last that long as I recall. He came on when they signed on in the early 1960's but faded fast. Also, WQAD started out with a rash of live shows and lots of sound and fury. They were trying to blow WOC in particular and WHBF out of the water and financially over-extended themselves and did not attract all of the sponsors that they thought they would. The stories we all heard was that after a very short time paydays were scary times at Channel 8 because they were cutting payroll and you might be met at the door on your way out, handed your paycheck and told not to come back. Grandpa Happy was another story. That was Milt Boyd at Channel 4 and he was a kids show personality from the time they signed on in the 1950's thru the 50's. He gave our kids shows a real run and quite often had a bigger audience. He never was competition for Captain Ernie since he left the area the year before Ernie took over the Showboat.
Ed Jones was the director for the Capn' Ken, Capn' Don and for Ernie when he first took over that time slot. Ed was also the director for Eddie Forrest the singing Sheriff. I took over the Showboat from Ed when I left the news department and went back into the production department as a producer-director. Ed has a wealth of experience and memories of WOC. He was already there, working on the floor crew as a director in training when I was hired on. So he spent almost all of his broadcasting career right there at WOC and is one really great guy.
I think that I can take credit for the S.E.I.C. on Uncle Ernie's cap. It was drawn by Ken Wagner and I said it stood for Sanitary Engineer First (I) Class. Ernie was given, I think, $25 bucks from petty cash and told to go to the Salvation Army's reclamation store and outfit himself. That is where the cap, vest and pants came from, the cap tag was my creation.
Uncle Henry and his visits actually started on Uncle Ernie. That is how Henry became Uncle Henry and Ernie is correct about the response. Henry would be on Sunday morning and by the time he got back to the animal shelter down on West River Drive, there would be a line-up of people waiting to adopt an animal. Also, McClain's Wild Animal Farm, now Niabi Zoo, made its first appearances on Uncle Ernie. While Ernie might have been urinated on by a monkey, I beat him by being toilet paper for one. Its too long of a story to go into here.
The thing about open mic's and swear words happened a lot on all kinds of shows which is why I probably did not remember Ernie's incident. Sometimes we had audio console operators who were either slow on the switch or got distracted or threw the switch into "on the air" position instead of "audition" and this is how that would happen. Normally when you can not hear program audio in the studio, you would be afraid that a mic might be open. On programs like The Showboat, you would be rehearsing a commercial right after you went from the studio to a cartoon so folks got a little careless.
Ivan Owens worked at WOC for over 45 years and retired with the longest service in the station's history just a few years ago. He still drives the camera truck on the Bix races. He built it and Ken Wagner did all of the art work on it (the Showboat).
Next time you see Ernie tell him "Hey!" from his former old, old tv director! Best Wishes - Don McGonegle
UPDATE 05/13/06.. More priceless memories from Don McGonegle...
Don McGonegle said that Uncle Ernie was in black and white from the start to the end of the show. Captain Ernies Showboat, however, started out in black and white and switched to color in 1967. Broadcast color tape and slides and the national feed were in color but the studio shows were in black & white.
In black and white television you never wore white shirts, it was either silver grey or light blue due to the fact that white would burn on the screen. The same was true in the early years of color television. The Showboat set itself had no changes related to the change to color on WOC, however the makeup that the actors would wear did have to change as it was much more critical in color than it was in black and white.
On Uncle Ernie, Gordon McClain, who owned McClain's wild animal farm (which became Niabi Zoo), would bring over a wild animal each Sunday to be on the show.
That day, I was going to meet my bride-to-be's parents for the first time as their announced son-in-law. As a result, I was to drive to Marseilles, Illinois to see them.
Well, thankfully I did not have my jacket on, just a tie and shirt, because during the show a monkey decided to jump on my back.
It didn't really bother me. I was just looking at the monkey as he had his tail wrapped around my neck. However, one of the audio engineers said "Oh, no." I took a peek and said "oh, no" as well. Just then, the smell hit me.
This monkey was having a bit of a problem in his cage and decided to jump out and conveniently using my shirt as toilet paper. So there I sat in the control room, stripped to the waste with only my pants on.
St. John's Methodist church was just blocks away and I needed a new, clean shirt from home. I did not want to be seen on a Sunday morning (or any morning) like this and after the show I decided to sneak down the alleyway. Well, St. John's was just letting out and the people were crossing the alleyway to get to their cars and here I sat, barechested, as the people walked in front of my car. I was getting some strange, disapproving looks as they walked by. They must have thought that I had been out on an all night binge and was just getting home. Brutal.
01/09/05
Don McGonegle is not the only one who has great memories from the Showboat... WOC's very own Dave Coopman not only has some stories to tell of his own but provides this rare incredible picture of two of the Showboat Captains, Vern Gielow and Ernie Mims appearing side by side on WOC Radio!
This is the transcript from that show, the day Jim Fisher interviewed Vern and Ernie during the 70 years of WOC broacasting celebration. The interview was around ten minutes long and around three minutes was spent talking about the Cartoon Showboat.
Jim Fisher: Vern Gielow. joined WOC in 1954.
Fisher: Did you ever feel goofy standing there with a hat on your head? The steamboat that you stood in front of, did it make you think that you were on a steamboat?
Gielow: Well, Ernie, you remember when you were doing the kids show on television and Ray Guth, the general manager, would say you have ten seconds to introduce the cartoon. Do it in less if you can but keep it tight, the cartoons are the thing.
Don McGonegle has provided some great historical background to not only the cartoon shows, but to WOC as well... a fantastic read. Craig Frogley added reminiscence regarding Sidney from 1972-74. I'll fill in a little info from 1968-70.
I began working at WOC radio in the late spring of 1968 while attending St. Ambrose College. My main duty was to assist with the production of commercials. Ernie made mention of an "open mike" incident, but it was a different one that allowed me to move down to TV as an audio operator. It was at the close of one of the shows that the audio man screwed up and played the opening theme to the show instead of the closing. He opened the mike for the good Cap'n to bid goodbye, realized his mistake, closed the mike before Ernie got to say anything, played the correct closing and again opened Ernie's mike. But by then the start of Truth of Consequences hit the air Unfortunately Ernie said "What the H##& is going on" and it went out over the air. The audio man got fired, I'm sure Ernie was chided, and I got the chance to move down to TV.
Because of that incident, the engineering crew worked up a red "tally" light for the microphones. Whenever a microphone was open, a red light that had been mounted to the studio video monitor would illuminate. Viewers to KWQC-TV can still hear the relay that illuminates the light click whenever a mike is opened and the monitor is near that microphone.
In putting the show together, we may not have been as creative as the McGonegle era, but we utilized some of the technology that Don didn't have at his disposal. Through the use of chroma-key, we occasionally had Ernie rise up out of the treasure chest. Using the effects generator, we had him step out from behind a cartoon or appear in the bullseye at the end of a Warner Brothers cartoon to say "That's all, folks." Once in awhile we'd have the Dixie Belle spring a leak.
My big chance in front of a camera came about during a pie-in-the-face schtick. As a "deckhand," I wandered onto the Dixie Belle's bridge and told Ernie that I didn't think the pie gag was very funny. He reached into the treasure chest, extracted a pie, pushed it into my face and asked if I thought THAT was funny. Shaking my head "no," he stated that maybe THIS would be funny as three of the floor crew let me have it with five more pies. Since my face was covered in shaving cream (as well as the wheelhouse, the treasure chest, the sky and just about everything else on the set), I couldn't really breathe. I will always thank director Randy Williams for doing an extremely slow dissolve to the cartoon, getting off the shot just before I was to pass out. Obviously the kids loved it from the laughter coming from the other studio. I think the control room was pretty much up for grabs as well.
It always amazed me how well Ernie could work with the kids. He was totally at ease with them no matter what. He always took time to explain the set to the kids and as I remember, he was always at the studio or station door saying goodbye. As a kid show host, he was most gracious with them all.
After reading Don McGonegle's material, it was good to know that our crew wasn't the only one to dip into the goodies provided by the sponsors. Hostess Ding-Dongs and Ho-Ho's were always hoarded, as well as the Highland potato chips. Don... the other brand of potato chip was Chesty.
And as long as previous Channel 6 kid shows were mentioned, let's not forget Cactus Jim's Movie Matinee with Bob Allard. That show ran some of the best serials, one being "Tailspin Tommy."
For the life of me, I can't remember the tune that served as the theme song, even though I played it ten times a week for almost two years and three months. You're right about the horn blasts at the beginning of the show! I'll put some more thought to it or ask a few of the old timers to see if they remember it. Ed Zack, Ed Jones, or Bob Danico might remember.
The only famous star I can remember who came on the Showboat is one out of my childhood... Kirby Grant. He played Sky King on TV in the 50's. He did PR work for the Carson-Barnes Circus and it was in town when Kirby made his appearance. Not only did he hold a youthful looking age, as does Mims, but he was one of the warmest individuals I've ever met. He was genuinely interested in meeting each and every staff member on the floor or in the control room with a wide smile and a strong handshake. Plus the guy was thrilled that so many people remembered him from the Sky King program. He and Ernie had a great interview and I think he'll remember him. Grant later did some PR work for NASA and was on his way to one of the space launches when his car went off the road and he was killed.
Now that I think about it, Jim Fowler "might" have been on the show during my time period. Mims might remember that better than I.
And speaking of Uncle Ernie, I remember as a kid watching the show, that Mims would occasionally play his trumpet on the show. Ernie is an accomplished musician, having played with one of the Air Force bands and used to jam with Bill Allred at the Harbor Lights nightclub in Galesburg when Ernie worked at WQUB radio before coming to WQUA.
As an aside, I wrote a history of KSTT several years ago and am currently working on one for WQUA. Someday I might get all of the stations covered... then again, maybe these two are enough. I had a great time working at the WOC stations with many great people. I count them all as dear friends. It was a fun time in broadcasting that will never be the same due to large corporate ownership and emphasis on the bottom line. Keep up the great work. I think once word gets around, you'll find many more artifacts. And I'll put the word out, too.
Keep up the great work on this website!
Dave Coopman - Mr. Coopman is a WOC and St. Ambrose University Alumni, Historian, former President of the Rock Island Historical Society and author of "Someplace Special...KSTT".
03/08/06 Dave Coopman is not the only one who remembers Cactus Jim and Captain Ernie! Tracy Allard is Cactus Jim's daughter and wrote the following;
This brought back sooooo many memories! Thank you Don McGonegle for reminding me of so many people I knew way back in my early childhood. I not only was a child who watched the Captains of the Dixie Bell (I remember Ken Wagner the best), but I was often in the company of them. My dad was Bob Allard, aka Cactus Jim (picture attached, circa 1958 or 1959). Sadly, so many of the pioneers of programming in WOC's early days have gone to that great control room in the sky.
I couldn't stand Ray Guth, the station manager - until he gave me a doll. Then I though he'd hung the moon and was over at his house playing with his kids every chance I could. I was 4 or 5 when I got the doll, and I still have it. They didn't live but a few blocks away from my house in the Glen Armil area of Davenport. Ray had a huge model train layout in the basement and it was his. Children were not allowed to touch it. One time he let me throw the switch to start it up but touching the trains or even going near the layout when Ray wasn't around would result in you being banned from the basement.
I was called in to active duty several times when I was a child, making appearances on Cactus Jim. I was supposed to be his niece visiting from the city. My job was to sit quietly on a chair, dressed in poodle skirt with my hair in a pony tail - tres chic. The dog in the picture was our family pet and was also called into service. I think on the show he was called Digger and generally he would be sleeping on the floor beside my dad. That is until one of the camera men bounced a tennis ball. Then he was off like a shot to play. Cactus Jim would explain this sudden bolting by saying he was off chasing off a rabbit or something.
I also was on the air once with George Sontag. If I remember the story correctly, Marjorie Meinert was to sing and Ray Guth got it into his head that she needed someone to sing to. So he called my mother and told her to get me dressed in my Sunday best and down to the station. Oh and did I have a stuffed animal that looked vaguely real. So I was hauled out of bed, cleaned up and down to WOC I went. We were seated on a glider (one of those porch swing deals), George at the piano and she sang "Young at Heart" to me while I pet the pretend cat on my lap. At least it was made of white rabbit fur rather than pink fleece so I guess it looked vaguely real.
At one time my mother had tons of pictures and memorabilia from the early days. Unfortunately it was all lost when the closet where the boxes were stored flooded. She was able to salvage a few things, mostly from the time Daddy worked in Minneapolis in the mid 1960s, but not much from the WOC days. I wish I had more of it.
Thank you for your web page. I have very much enjoyed the trip down memory lane. Next time you see Ernie, tell him Bob Allard's daughter Tracy says hi.
Tracy Allard
Houston, TX
04/04/06 Don McGonegle chimes in with yet another incredible read regarding many topics including the origin of the Dixie Belle!
I enjoyed reading the comments from Bob Allard's daughter. I remember her and her sister as well as her mother Marie who was a wonderful warm person. A fellow floor crew member of mine by the name of Bill Kelly used to baby sit them whenever Bob and Marie were looking for a night out. I also had a terrific steak dinner that Marie fixed for Bill and I. Their home in Glen Armil was near the Guth's and another WOC staffer by the name of Dave Hauser who became the Chief Engineer of WOC for a period of time.
I worked on the floor crew when Bob did the Cactus Jim show. His set was a large, drywall flat that Ken Wagner painted on a front of a desert shack. There was a a plywood cactus cutout that sat in the foreground and a wicker rocker with an old orange crate beside it. Bob would walk on set from off camera with his opening line "Hi there Bucker-inos..." then sit down in the chair and introduce the cowboy serial episode for the day.
One day I held up a printed sign that said "Bob Your Fly Is Open!!!!" as he walked out (it wasn't). He quickly bent over, doubled up, sought refuge behind the cactus cut-out, then hobbled over to the rocker and sat down. He took a stealth like glance, saw it was not open, realized he'd been had, then broke up laughing.
Bob also did talk radio at night on WOC AM and replaced Bill Gress on TV doing "COMMENT" a brief editorial comment at the end of the 10 pm news before he went to Minneapolis. I even remember when he drove his black and red Ford Victoria convertible into the lot the first day he came to work at WOC from South Dakota. Please say hello to her. I am sure that she won't remember me but she might remember Bill Kelly.
Regarding the theme song to The Showboat, no, I do not remember what it was. I keep thinking it was some calliope version of "Here Comes The Showboat...". Part of the lyrics went "..chug, chugging along.." but I sure can't swear to it. Ed Jones, who is Jonsey the doorman at Circa 21 Dinner Theater might know as I think he was the original director of the Cartoon Showboat when Ken Wagner went on the air with it. He might have even picked out the theme music.
The opening film clip was shot, I think, by Ken Wagner (the first Showboat Captain). He had drawn a series of cartoon cells of a showboat that gave the illusion of the smoke stacks going up and down in time to the theme. Ken had been a commercial artist as well as owning a movie theater in Wilton Junction Iowa before being hired as the first artist and film buyer for WOC when it went on the air. As I mentioned before, Ivan Owens built the Dixie Belle. Incidentally it was originally in two parts, a large section and a smaller one which we would butt against each other and hold in place with a large eyebolt and hook. The first railing, as show in the early Captain Vern picture, was made of electrical conduit pipe painted green. The wooden railing in the picture with Ernie came from the staircasing of the old studio building before it was torn down when the current studio building was erected and replaced the pipe railing when the Dixie Belle "sailed" into its new docking area in the smaller of the two studios.
Ken also did all of the lettering and decoration detail on the Dixie Belle. Just exactly where he got the name, I don't really know. I don't think it was taken from any other tv station anywhere and I don't know if it might have been the name of a real riverboat steamer in history. I know that Ken used that same name when he took the job in Minneapolis. He also did all of the detail painting on the Treasure Chest and Ivan built the chest as well (as shown in the picture on this site).
I remember that it was either Ken or Vern Gielow who would sometimes at the end of the show yell out "Cast off the head line..." but quit saying that when getting a letter from a retired sailor who said that the only "head-line" he knew of on any ship or boat would be one waiting to get into the bathroom! "Bow-line" yes, "Head-line" NO! Now that is a bit of trivia you probably never heard of before!
I can't really think of any special stuff we did at Christmas time except one "special" that I came up with for Uncle Ernie with four other writers; Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They wrote the Christmas story, I edited music selections of Caroles performed by the Roger Shaw Chorale, then brought in the creche nativity scene from my mother's home along with pictures from a publication "Guideposts". Ernie read the script sitting by a Christmas tree with pauses for musical inserts and the camera operators would dolly in and out on the creche figures intersperced with dissolves in and out of the pictures. The cameras were always moving to give the illusion of actual motion. That, combined with the music and Ernie's sensitive oral interpretation of telling the Christmas Story to a child was very effective and moving. Even the cameramen and the control room crew were complimentary and when that happens you know you have done something. We repeated the whole thing, live of course, on Pat Sundine's show a few days later. Unfortunately, it was live and nothing remains of it.
I also remember when we had Dwight the Magician (who as a student at Palmer who owned a knock-out Santa outfit with wig and beard and made some pretty good change by delivering presents all Christmas Eve and Day) on as a guest on the Circle 6 Ranch with Cowboy Wes Holly. Circle 6 Ranch was the predecessor to the Dixie Belle. Like the children on the risers on the Showboat, we had guest on that show too. He would have the kids sit on his lap and have them tell Santa their wishes for Chirstmas. One little girl got so excited that she wet her pants while on Santa's lap. One time we got into a little trouble with some of the mommies in tv-land when one day the director kept switching close-ups on Dwight, making the Jolly Old Gentleman snap his head left and right. Well, several women called and said that their children were watching and got really upset that somebody was being mean to Santa.. ahh the days of live television!!!!!
I do remember Wes' lioness very well. I especially remember one Sunday morning when I came face to face with her while she was curled up under the studio grand piano (a bit disconcerting to say the least). Thankfully she was securely chained because I kept getting the feeling that she saw me as a prime rib dinner on the hoof!
I do hope that WOC of KWQC will do a reunion show. It would plan on attending and it would be a kick to see who would be there!
Keep up the good stuff on The Showboat website!
- Don McGonegle
05/20/06 Jon Book, legendary engineer at WOC, sat in on a conversation with Captain Ernie to fill in some details of The Showboat.
JON: I basically did all of the fill in jobs. When someone would go on vacation or when the college students who were employeed by WOC left the area during summer vacation, I would be an occasional fill-in when as fill times became available for some
crew members.
Before 3:30pm, we would bring the risers out. The night people would have to put the risers away after the show was over. We had to bring the risers out each and every time. Sometimes there were smaller groups and sometimes there would be larger. Summertime would be smaller groups because everyone was on vacation. Schooltime would bring in more kids because it gave them a place to go. Every once in a great while, the lights would get so hot, a child could not handle their lunch. So, we had to get out the red sawdust and clean up.
ERNIE: Remember when one of those huge lights would blow out? I would improvise and say "My, that is a mighty big cloud that is passing by!"
JON: I also was the person who would send out the prizes to the kids when they won them. I think it was Barb Davis that got the name of the card that you pulled out and she would give it to me and I would take the prize and wrap it up and send it out.
ERNIE: Yes, the treasure chest was for the gifts and the Seabag was for the Mountain Dew. The Seabag and Treasure Chest would fill up in a short period of time and I would go on the air and say "ok, we are going to dump these out and now is the time to send more in!" and we would start from scratch.
JON: It wouldn't take any time at all.... maybe a month at the most to fill it up and it was a really big treasure chest!
JON: I noticed in the picture of the set from the Putnam Museum, it is not complete because it does not have the funnel which you used to talk down into the boiler room.
ERNIE: I would say "I will see you down below because we have a guest coming up." Then next to the pilot house we had what we called the galley which was what was presented as "down below".
JON: The galley was a painted port hole on the wall! Also, on the pilot house, you had a little spring and a little square block with a hole in it and that was to toot the horn! That is missing from the set at the Putnam as well.
ERNIE: There were times that I would go below. I would shrink down like I was walking downstairs as we went into a commercial.
JON: The kids, when they were sitting on the risers before the show, they were all yacking away. As soon as we as soon as we turned on the studio lights, they were dead quiet in there. They weren't really willing to talk until you came by and said "what's your first name?" to each one. Sometimes when you had these kids on the show and you had the camera right on them, you would pan by with the camera and they didn't want to see what they look like on the monitor so they would turn their heads! Some of them would make a lot of faces but I do not remember them making any hand gestures.
JON: The day my kid was born, I commandeered the program log for WOC TV. On that day in 1974, it shows I Dream of Jeanie in The Showboat time slot. They were playing more commercial slots during Jeanie and I think that is the reason that they took your show off. They took your show off because there were more breaks to play advertisements and you were playing more cartoons which filled up the commercial time.
ERNIE: I thought that we had a lot of commercials! See, I thought that the reason was kids shows were falling by the wayside....
JON: You actually did not have that many. Well, the moms were complaining to the NAB because they thought that the Three Stooges were too violent. As I recall, mid early 60's, I suspect 62, I wrote into to Channel 6 programming
and was sent a letter stating that the violence was too much according to
parents who either called in or wrote in to the station. They decided to pull
the Stooges off the air.
ERNIE: Well, ya, you couldn't take off The Three Stooges!
06/09/2006 Showtime Pal, the happy-go-lucky clown played by Leone Bredbeck
made guest appearances on The Showboat a few times a year
and made kids become a star doing plays, etc at the local city parks.
The city provided the trailer and she came up with scripts for kids to reenact a
play or skit on a trailer. She co-founded the Davenport Junior Theater and was an icon in the community. - Jon Book - legendary WOC engineer
Great website and very accurate. It brought back some very pleasant memories. I had no idea Ernie did the show for so long.
I did the show a couple of times but remember very little about it. I was at WOC from ’64 through ’68, doing afternoon drive radio, noon TV weather and Saturday night weather. I even got to fill in for Don Wooten on HBF a couple of times. He was a great (bright) guy but I’ve lost track of him.
I remember Don McGonegle very well. Now I remember doing the UNCLE Ernie show too. The name Henry Reimers made it click. I remember once on the show, I hung from a ladder by my knees and they reversed the sweeps to make it appear I was upright. Then I poured a glass of water right side up but on the air, it looked like the water was pouring up. I did a lot of local TV up until about 15 years ago and I’ll bet it’s not nearly as much fun now.
I’ve attached some pictures of that era. One of which, you might be able to use. Somewhere there’s a shot I took of Ernie on his kid’s trike in his driveway but I’ll be darned if I can find it.
It was sure fun looking at your pages!
All the best,
Doug Dahlgren
Mr. Dahlgren provides the following incredibly rare clips of himself giving away the $120 jackpot and spinning solid gold music in the 1960's on WOC. Doug Dahlgren presenting the weather at noon on WOC. His stint at WOC launched him into a career which placed him in the Who's Who of the broadcasting industry. Special thanks to Mr. Dahlgren for all of the pictures including this one with a tremendous shot of the 1960's WOC weatherboard! WOC alumni and nationally renowned broadcaster Doug Dahlgren at the WOC master control! Thanks again to Mr. Dahlgren!
The Celebrity Lounge... I played there once or twice or thrice. I dont know if Doug was around at the time but there was a time when Harry James was at the Wells Fargo. A couple of musicians came down after the gig... James might have been there two or three nights... and they always liked to find local places where they could jam. So these guys were on stage with Tony Sotos, the owner, he played sax and his brother played in the band with him too, they were co-owners of the club. His brother played the bass guitar.
Smokey Stover happened to be sitting in at the same time. There were three trumpet players playing at the same time with each taking turns at solo. I was in the crowd cheering them on applauding. Smokey spotted me and motioned with his horn to come on up! Smokey was one of these guys who was nationally known. He lived here but he was world class type. He was in the category of Al Hurt or maybe even Louis Armstrong. He was a Dixie Player. He loved the style of trumpet I played which was progressive for its day. It was more modern in the Be-Bop vein. So extended his horn out to me while the other guys were playing. He said "Ernie... come on up here!" and he offered me his horn. I didn't know Smokey that well. I guess he had seen me at other places like the Hunters Club, etc. I can't recall him even ever acknowledging my playing.
I took him up on his offer and went up on stage and started blowing. These other guys, the Harry James guys, one walked off and then the others walked off. They just leaned back against the bar and were watching and shaking their heads and all. Later on I found out that they were asking "who in the world is this guy!?!!" "Why isn't he on the road, why isn't he playing with somebody?!" Tony was dying of laughter saying "He is a local d.j. and has a local kids show!"
When Smokey left, he had to take one of his trumpets with him and one of the trumpet players came up to me and handed me his horn and said "Here, blow mine! I want to hear you play some more!"
That was a magic moment.
That was what meant the most to me. Being recognized off camera as being a great jazz trumpet player. I loved that recognition because it was so much a part of me from my early days in my twenties in the air force band even to this day.
Doug, you remember correctly, we loved the big bands and those were the famous big bands that showed up. - Ernie
06/12/2006 ... More incredible images from Doug Dahlgren! Ernie Mimms at the WOC Radio Master Control.
Captain Ernie in the front driveway on his daughter Angela's bike. Captain Ernie - June 1971 - Special thanks to Doug Dahlgren
I use to be on the Captain Ernie Show all the time!
I was just a young girl, but knew my dad's job was stressful! The hours were long & swing shift weeks. I remember some years having to get up at 3 a.m. to celebrate Christmas before my Dad had to work.
It took many people to keep that place running. Many names are missing and have probably been forgotten. I remember an Al Otting, my middle name comes from his wife's name Joann. She was a teacher with a wonderful passion for kids and endless energy. She taught my 6th grade. I remember the WOC Christmas parties, and how beautiful my Mom always looked in her long sparkling gowns. I remember a basement of Televisions and TV tubes, my Dad would fix up TV's for others as a hobby.
Mom died in 1979 when I was 17, so if I recall my Dad retired in the early to mid 70's. Which would make him one of the early pioneers of WOC Broadcasting. He was a WOC Engineer for 27 years. He received a gold watch.
As far as stories from The Showboat, I have a couple you might find cute...
Mom said, I HAD to watch "The Captain Ernie Show" this one day.
I always watched it anyway!
During one of the segments on the show that day, my Dad appeared!
WOW! I was so excited!
MY DAD WAS ON TV WITH CAPTAIN ERNIE!
Then Ernie threw a pie in his face....!
I was so mad at Captain Ernie and started to cry!
Mom had no clue I would get so upset.
However, Ernie sent me a special message over the air
and I forgave him! :-) XOXO
My dad did not like monkeys.
Why?
One day Ernie had a monkey on The Showboat.
He had gotten loose and ran all through the studio.
The monkey climbed up my Dad dragging his
fanny and slinging DUNG everywhere! Settling on top of my dads bald head!
He was levied and swore Ernie made the monkey do it!
Henry turned green everytime it was ever brought up!
My dad swore for weeks you made the monkey do it! LOL!!
-
Sally
Ernie added - Sally, you might get a kick out of this - unfortunately I contributed to the stress of your dad, Hank Nicoll because he was riding on audio control during my show! I had a terrible habit of not riding on the same voice level. Everytime I got through a show, he would say #$)%! Mimms, I am always having to ride that pot (potentiameter). He would always have to ride that thing because during the show I was always yelling something like "HEY LOOK OVER THERE!!!" just trying to be natural. I used to fight with all of those guys telling them to use a boom mike and they wouldn't have to sit there and ride the controls.
You can't effect natural honesty and believability if everything is one level. I can't be humble just say "Oh look at that, there is a big explosion". You say "LOOK AT THAT.... ITS AN EXPLOSION!!!!". I would say something like "HEY LOOK AT THAT A BIG CATFISH!!!" and the needle would jump and he would have to back off of it or whatever he did.
I think that you, Sally, will be amused that we have that direct connection - that Captain Ernie remembers that unfortunately he contributed to Hank's stress because he could not maintain voice level while dad Hank was riding audio control!
He worked most all of the shows. He was in the control room and was always the audio guy. They would switch around sometimes but he was pretty much the regular audio guy and will always be considered a dear friend to me. - Ernie Mimms
If you have any memorabilia, pictures or stories of Captain Ernie, please email me!
Please click here to visit and sign
Captain Ernie's Guestbook!
Don't you wish that you could watch one of the original cartoons from Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat? Well, now you can! Click here to watch a couple of classic Looney Tunes cartoons and to see an advertisement for Captain Ernie's special appearance at the historic Fort Theater in downtown Rock Island, Illinois!
Here's a pic of two former Dixie Belle captains... Vern Gielow and Ernie Mims chatting on-air about their days at the station during a WOC radio anniversary celebration!
Ernie Mims: How come he got top billing!?!?!!
(Laughter)
Jim Fisher: because he was here in '54 Ernie!!!! (more laughter)
Vern Gielow: I always have had top billing over you Ernie!!! (more laughter)
Fisher: Captain Ernie.. 1960, '61 ?
Mims: 1960
Gielow: and I preceeded him as Captain by a good number of years (laughter)
Mims laughing: That's right! (laughter)
Gielow: So the rivalry continues! ... we had fun with the kids show
Mims: Ya, you can say that again.
Fisher: How did you guys end up being cartoon show hosts?
Gielow: I think it was because our general manager at that time probably couldn't figure out what to do with us! (Ernie laughs). It was Ray Guth and kids shows were exceptionally popular at that time and we ran the same cartoons, Ernie and I never deviated from the old library, I think that there were 158 Bugs Bunnys (most likely referring to Merry Melodies which included Bugs), there were the Three Stooges and I don't know how many of them, probably 60 or 70, because they were repeated often.
Mims: No, because I was goofy to begin with I think!... but Vern was a very sophisticated... you know .. maybe HE felt a bit strange.
Gielow: I will tell you, I am a morning type person and by the time the kids show started on the air, either 4 or 4:30pm (The Showboat occasionally moved to different time slots from year to year), that was the end of my day and I would frankly fall asleep during the cartoons because I am a morning person. I have always signed on radio stations and the kids show at the end of the day just killed me off. I would wake up and go draw cards out of the treasure chest for hostess twinkies or whatever we were giving away at the moment (Ernie - Ding Dongs)(Vern - Malt O'Meal)(Ernie - Hiland Potato Chips)
Mims: Yes, he always said that
Gielow: Right... and you and I were persona non grata as far as the show was concerned, all we were practically was the cement that held the whole thing together.
Mims: We had 45 to 50 kids a day (on the Showboat) and he (Guth) would say lets not spend too much time because we are dealing with the viewers, the audience out there and they get restless. Their attention span is not that good to begin with and the main product is the cartoon so don't spend that much time with them. It got to be frustrating when you had of the 45 maybe 20 or 30 of them were birthdays and you wanted to acknowledge each and every one of them so I had them holding their names up (on cards so the viewers at home could see them).
Gielow: One of the things that happened too, live time in an hour and one-half cartoon show might be 45 seconds live time, 50 seconds live time. That is all the live time we had.
Fisher: You are kidding, in and hour and one-half, you had less than a minute?!
Gielow: You could have, it just depended....
Commercial break was taken at this point and the topic did not return to the Showboat.
Leone Bredbeck
was on The Showboat on several occasions. We made some personal appearances together, fundraisers and things like that. I can't recall her exact routine but she would come on and play games, etc. She had a colorful wagon and kids would gather and she would have a puppet show as well. Leone was a very good talker and was very bubbley and always talking in a fast and high pitch voice. She was very likeable and everyone loved her. She was a very friendly person and it was always great to have her on the show. - Captain Ernie Mims
06/09/2006 WOC alumni Doug Dahlgren, local guy who made it big, who worked at stations in Iowa, Chicago, Miami and Indianapolis including WCFL Chicago, among others, shares a few pictures of himself during his run at WOC as well as a couple of pictures providing insight into Ernie's life as a musician during the 1960's.
Ernie and I had a blast together. He and I were both jazz freaks and we’d go to all the big band and jazz concerts at the Celebrity Club in Moline. We saw Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, Si Zentner, Woody Herman, Al Jerreau (h*ll, even Martin Denny).
Ernie Mimms with 1960's big band leader Si Zentner and Doug Dahlgren tearing it up with Jazz, Swing and The Big Mod Sound all night long some weekend in the mid 1960's Quad Cities.
From Ernie - 
06/09/2006 Sally Scholl is the daughter of Hank Nicoll who was an engineer at WOC and worked there for 27 years. Sally said;
Jon Book added - I remember that day very well. I was just coming in on that shift and was in the front lobby at WOC. That monkey ran toward me and jumped up on my leg. Obviously I was not expecting that. It was heavier than I was, half as tall as me and I was having difficulty standing!
