The original "Romper Room" started in Baltimore in 1954. "And that was the beginning of some of the most fun I've ever had in my life," Ritt said. "He asked if I was familiar with 'Romper Room,' which I wasn't, and said they were planning on putting it on the air and would I be interested in an audition. "I was told the general manager would like to see me," Ritt said. The way Ritt remembers it, the station manager at WTVH Channel 19, the station that would become WHOI, was alerted that a young woman who was a new college graduate with an emphasis in theater was in the building applying for a job at the station. "That planted the idea in my head to go around and apply at Peoria's three TV stations." "I took a television course in college and remembered being fascinated by a studio we toured in the Quad Cities that was in some old house," she said. She sang and danced in Corn Stock Theatre productions when she was home from school.Īfter college, Ritt returned to Metamora to look for work. Mary's, Metamora Township High School and Marycrest College in Davenport, Iowa, where her main interests were theater and language arts. Lois Ritt was born Lois Gries in Metamora in the 1940s. "It was really quite a phenomenon in its time, and I had an unbelievably fun time doing it all those years." "People of a certain age just go crazy when you mention 'Romper Room,' " Ritt said. That sort-of-scary "Romper Room" jack-in-the-box. Mention "Romper Room" to a person born in the 1950s or 1960s – the golden age of the simple and sweetly innocent children's program – and you are likely to unleash a torrent of nostalgia and spark a sequence of instant memory icons. They called to the studio and were like, 'Are you guys awake in there?' " "Instead of just switching to another camera, it took the guys at the transmitter a couple of miles away to shut it down and turn the screen to black. "I didn't know what was going on, but they just stood there with their mouths open," said Lois Ritt, a Peoria resident and a "Romper Room" pioneer in central Illinois. It was almost better than finding a dime under your pillow left by the Tooth Fairy.There was Miss Lois on the floor, having just performed a Sleepingīeauty-like faint during Tell a Story Time on "Romper Room."īut her skirt hiked up in the fall, exposing a patch of thigh and a -gasp - pre-pantyhose-era garter belt that stunned the studio crew into cement-shoed immobility. Magic Mirror, tell me today, have all my friends had fun at play?” That’s when the name calling started. And at the end of each show, there was the payoff: It was like kid crack and we sat there hypnotized - or walking on tin cans with strings attached to them to copy the fancy plastic shoe toys they hyped on the show, or bending and stretching and reaching for the stars or anything else that magnificent woman told us to do. Heck no, our parents originated the Electronic Babysitting System … and it was Romper Room. And Miss Mary Ann had the same name as my Mom, so I thought it was the grooviest thing ever.īack in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s most parents didn’t send the moms to work just to make money to pay for daycare. Apparently Romper Room was broadcast in all the US major markets, and even other countries (a damn franchise, can you believe it?!), but as a kid, I thought our Romper Room filmed in Oakland was the only magical Romper Room in the world. As a little kid I wanted to be on Romper Room about as much as I want to be on Wheel of Fortune now - which is a lot. There was a whole mess of little DO BEE’s on Romper Room each day romping around the sound stage. A DON’T BEE didn’t mind their parents and probably had to eat mush every day. We learned that from the big crazy bee on Romper Room. Good Romper Room DO BEE’s had manners and curtsied and all that crap. Or maybe it was because I wasn’t a good DO BEE. Why did she not see me? Did she only see children with common names? Why did my name have to be so damn exotic?!! Of course, by the time I got to the 8th grade there were three other Lisa’s in my class, so I don’t know what was so fancy about my name that Miss Mary Ann couldn’t see me. I would wait by that TV every day to hear my name, but all I ever heard was, “I see Sharon and Michael and Susie and Bobby … ” blah, blah, blah. She hosted a local TV show called “Romper Room” and at the end of each show she would look into her Magic Mirror where she could see wonderful children in their homes and would call them by name! Her name was Miss Mary Ann and she was smart and pretty and all the little children in the land loved her. When I was a little kid, there was a magical lady who appeared on TV every weekday morning.
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