Bertie the Bunyip

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Bertie the Bunyip (~1960) Bertie the Bunyip.png
Bertie the Bunyip (~1960)

Bertie the Bunyip was the lead puppet character on the popular American children's television series The Bertie the Bunyip Show [1] which aired on KYW-TV (known as WPTZ until 1956, then WRCV-TV from 1956-1965) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which ran from 1954 to 1966. [2] He was portrayed as a brown-colored character with the ears of a kangaroo and a duck-bill-type snout. For children he was cute and friendly, getting into harmless situations.

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Created by Australian born and raised ventriloquist Lee Dexter (1904-1991), [3] Bertie was a bunyip (a mythological Australian creature), described by Dexter as "a cross between a bunny, a collie dog and a duck billed platypus."

Bertie's enemy was an aristocratic fox by the name of Sir Guy de Guy (who bore a resemblance to Pinocchio's "Honest John"), and his friends included Nixie the Pixie, Humphrey the white rabbit, Winnie the Witch, Poochie the Pup and those terrible twos Fussy and Gussy.

A newspaper article published shortly after his death featured an interview with Lee Dexter, who noted that Sir Guy was named after the ubiquitous TV Guide - but this turned out to be just another bogus attempt to cash in on the notoriety of Dexter's puppets, and there was a protracted struggle for ownership of the puppets. Dexter suffered from Alzheimer's Disease in his later years and was confined to a nursing home in southern New Jersey; he was unable to shed any light on his puppets including who should get them.

Further reading

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References

  1. (retrieved March 18, 2014)
  2. "The Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia". Archived from the original on 2013-07-31. Retrieved 2006-09-10. (retrieved May 4, 2017)
  3. Hollis, Tim (2001). Hi There, Boys and Girls! America's Local Children's TV Programs. University Press of Mississippi. p. 239. ISBN   1-57806-395-7 . Retrieved 2 March 2024.