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Performer Spread 'Wisdom' Of Bozo

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The Associated Press

Published: July 4, 2008

LOS ANGELES - LOS ANGELES - Larry Harmon, 83, who turned the character Bozo the Clown into a show business staple that delighted children for more than a half-century, died Thursday in Los Angeles of congestive heart failure.

Although not the original Bozo, Harmon portrayed the popular clown in countless appearances and, as an entrepreneur, he licensed the character to others, particularly dozens of television stations across the country. The stations in turn hired actors to be their local Bozos.

"You might say, in a way, I was cloning BTC (Bozo the Clown) before anybody else out there got around to cloning DNA," Harmon said in 1996.

"Bozo is a combination of the wonderful wisdom of the adult and the childlike ways in all of us," he said.

Pinto Colvig, who also provided the voice for Walt Disney's Goofy, originated Bozo the Clown when Capitol Records introduced a series of children's records in 1946. Harmon would later meet his alter ego while answering a casting call to make personal appearances as a clown to promote the records.

He got that job and eventually bought the rights to Bozo. Along the way, he embellished Bozo's distinctive look: the orange-tufted hair, the bulbous nose, the outlandish red, white and blue costume.

"I felt if I could plant my size 83AAA shoes on this planet, people would never be able to forget those footprints," he said.

The business - combining animation, licensing of the character and personal appearances - made millions, as Harmon trained more than 200 Bozos over the years to represent him in local markets.

The Chicago version of Bozo ran on WGN-TV in Chicago for 40 years and was seen in many other cities after cable television transformed WGN into a superstation.

Bozo - portrayed in Chicago for many years by Bob Bell - was so popular that the waiting list for tickets eventually stretched to a decade, prompting the station to stop taking reservations for 10 years.

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