Screaming Yellow Theater (Svengoolie) - "Wilderness Road" - The Don Knotts Song & Bedtime Poem (Closing, 1973)

Here's another segment from Screaming Yellow Theater - the original Svengoolie, which aired on WFLD Channel 32 from 1970-1973. Svengoolie was played by Jerry G. Bishop. By this point, if the clapboard is of any indication, the SYT title had been eschewed in favor of Svengoolie.

This closing segment is from Show #59 (according to the clapboard). However, there is no recording date.

This segment starts off with Svengoolie in his upright crypt, "tuning" his rubber chicken and then singing a few bars of "The Don Knotts Song" whose first line is a play on that of the theme song of the 1952 film "High Noon" ("Don Knotts forsake me" = "Do Not Forsake Me") before he is jeered. Sven next announces the next movie as "Elwood," the story of a rabbit whose friend is an imaginary James Stewart. Next he intends to read the bedtime poem, but an offscreen "Julia Child" of "The Fresh Chef" (a takeoff of her 1963-1973 series The French Chef) intends to cook a shrimp recipe where the "shrimp" is Mickey Rooney. A disgusted Sven then says good night, and Stan Freberg's "Good night, everybody"/"Hooray for Hollywood" fanfare (from the first episode of his 1957 CBS Radio show) is played. Sven then emerges from his crypt with a phone receiver saying "It's for you," with the speaker section spurting water.

Directed by Phil Doty.

This aired on local Chicago TV sometime in early 1973.

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