Frank Avruch, 1928-2018, R.I.P.

It's been quite a while -- two months, actually -- since I've done one of my celebrity tribute posts. There are several reasons for that, although it's certainly not because no one of note has passed away during that time...

But I digress.

Boston television personality Frank Avruch recently died after a long battle with heart disease. He was eighty-nine.

Avruch was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, of Russian-Jewish background, and was closely associated with Boston's Channel 5, which was WHDH-TV until March 18th, 1972, and WCVB-TV after that.

A publicity photo of Frank Avruch in the 1960s.

(By the way, if you're unfamiliar with Frank, his last name is pronounced "Av-ROOSH." The name is a Hebrew name and was originally pronounced with that "ch" that sounds like someone is clearing their throat. He "softened" it when he decided to use his real name rather than "Frank Stevens," which he used at the very start of his broadcasting career.)

Frank Avruch's passing has made the national news due to his 1959-1970 stint as TV's Bozo the Clown. Bozo was a franchised character, meaning that many different TV stations across the country had their own actors playing Bozo, but Larry Harmon, who owned the rights to the character from 1956 on, syndicated the Boston Bozo program to TV markets which didn't have their own Bozo. Avruch also became UNICEF's international "ambassador" during the 1960s.

(By the way, if you ever hear or read that Larry Harmon created the character of Bozo -- a claim that Harmon himself often made -- that's just not true. Bozo was created in the 1940s by Alan W. Livingston for Capitol Records. Bozo was originally portrayed by Pinto Colvig, known for voicing Disney characters such as Pluto and Goofy, among others.)

Pinto Colvig as Bozo in 1948.

I've seen the following photo all over the internet, but I first saw it in a book called Four All the Years, which was released in 1983 to commemorate the 35th anniversary of Channel 4, WBZ-TV, a Boston television station which was an NBC affiliate during my youth. The caption for the photo erroneously states that Frank Avruch portrayed Bozo on Channel 4, but as you now know, he worked for Channel 5!

(For that matter, the inclusion of this photo in Four All the Years implies that all of the above Boston kiddie show hosts worked for Channel 4. Roughly half of them did. The rest worked for Channels 5 and 7. And by the way, to my knowledge, at least six of the eight people are no longer with us.)

 Frank Avruch at eighty years old.

Frank at left, Rex Trailer at right. Unfortunately, I can't identify the guy in the middle!

Growing up in the 1960s, roughly fifty miles from Boston, I watched Bozo's program as a child, of course, although I must admit that I had plenty of other interests and wasn't a huge fan of the clown.

I only became aware of Frank Avruch the man when he appeared in the early 1970s, sans makeup of course, as the host of WCVB-TV's late night program, The Great Entertainment, a weekend showcase for (mostly) film classics from the 1930s and 1940s. For seventeen years, Avruch served as sort of a local version of TCM's Robert Osborne. Before and after the film, Frank would provide all sorts of details about the film's cast, crew, and/or production history.

Every so often, for whatever reason, WCVB's The Great Entertainment would show a more recent, less-than-stellar film, like 1982's Zapped! starring such cinematic luminaries as Scott Baio and Willie Aames. On such occasions, Avruch was notably absent, to my amusement and delight.

I never saw anyone at WCVB-TV mention Frank's role of Bozo the Clown at the time. In fact, it wasn't until several years later that someone told me in conversation that he'd played that part years earlier. Surprised the hell out of me.

Frank also appeared on other WHDH-TV/WCVB-TV productions over the years, like Dateline: Boston, Good Day!, and the local segments of the annual Muscular Dystrophy Association's Labor Day Telethons.

So, you may or may not encounter an article or two or three about Frank, and if so, it'll no doubt focus on his Bozo work. And most of those articles will actually show Bozo photos with Frank Avruch himself in the role! (It's so hard to tell under all that makeup, and there are a lot of former Bozo actors out there!)

But whenever I think of Frank, it won't be of him portraying Bozo as much as "portraying" himself in his later appearances.

Having said that, I'm now going to relate a little personal tale involving myself and Frank Avruch, which does involve his role as Bozo.

A while back -- "a while" being defined as several years ago -- I discovered that Frank was selling items on eBay under the username "greatent." I discovered this relatively late, as I learned only recently. Evidently, he'd had an attic full of memorabilia which sold on eBay.

Anyway, I bid on not one, but two original postcards featuring Bozo, and won both, shown below. Each postcard featured the standard stamped signature of "Bozo" which were printed on such promotional items, but I immediately received an email from Frank, asking me how he should personally inscribe each card. I wrote back, answering him, as well as asking him if he would allow me to interview him sometime in the near future.

On a Post-It note (shown below) attached to one of the two postcards I received, he replied that he would be happy to be interviewed, and for me to contact him whenever I was ready.

As well as the above Post-It, I still have Frank's email and my reply, dated... 2006!!!

Need I tell you that "The Great Procrastinator," namely myself, never got around to setting up the interview?

Dummy.

Thanks for your time.