Howdy Doody
From TeeVeePedia, the Internet TV Encyclopedia.
Howdy Doody was one of the early stars of children's television. His eponymous show, The Howdy Doody Show, was a huge hit with the 3 to 10-year-old set, as hunderds of thousands of youngsters each day would park themselves in front of their black and white televison sets, mesmerized and singing the show's theme song in grand unison: "It's Howdy Doody Time! It's Howdy Doody Time!"
But off-screen, Doody was much different than his lovable on-screen persona. His downtime was filled with booze, pills, and loose women. In later years Doody could barely pull himself together for taping, and on more than one occasion other actors on the show would have to "pull his strings" in order to get him to perform.
Doody's low point came in the mid-70s, when his show was cancelled due to competition from shows starring foam-rubber-based performers such as Sesame Street for the younger set, while older kids turned to the trippy drug-induced fare of Sid and Marty Krofft. Dejected, Doody's life turned into a non-stop haze of mind-altered states, until one night at a Hollywood party he got into an altercation with the Muppet Rowlf the Dog, wounding the beloved canine pianist with a bullet to the leg.
A deal with prosecutors kept Doody out of prison, and soon after he checked himself into The Faith Ford Clinic where he successfully detoxed. With most of his fortune gone, Doody moved into an old actor's home and quietly lived out the rest of his life, finally passing away in 1998.
