Emmy-winning actor Ed Asner, who starred as Lou Grant on both sitcom “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and hourlong drama “Lou Grant” before a late-career rejuvenation through his poignant voicework in 2009 animated film “Up,” has died. He was 91. https://t.co/bxLVnr6plm
Emmy-winning actor Ed Asner, who starred as Lou Grant on both sitcom “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and hourlong drama “Lou Grant” before a late-career rejuvenation through his poignant voicework in 2009 animated film “Up,” has died. He was 91. https://t.co/bxLVnr6plm
Legendary Hammond B3 keyboardist Michael Finnigan is dead from kidney cancer. Played the Hammond on Jimi Hendrix Electric Lady Land, Taj Mahal, Stephan Stills, and on and on.
Willard Scott RIP longtime Today show weatherman. Original Bozo the Clown, and inventor and first Ronald McDonald clown burger joint clown. He was 87 good long life to a good man.
Willard Scott
The origin of Ronald McDonald involves Willard Scott (at the time, a local radio personality who also played Bozo the Clown on WRC-TV in Washington, D.C., from 1959 until 1962), who performed using the moniker "Ronald McDonald, the Hamburger-Happy Clown" in 1963 on three separate television spots. These were the first three television ads featuring the character.[3]
Scott, who went on to become NBC-TV's Today Show weatherman, claims to have created Ronald McDonald according to the following excerpt from his book Joy of Living:
At the time, Bozo was the hottest children's show on the air. You could probably have sent Pluto the Dog or Dumbo the Elephant over and it would have been equally as successful. But I was there, and I was Bozo ... There was something about the combination of hamburgers and Bozo that was irresistible to kids ... That's why when Bozo went off the air a few years later, the local McDonald's people asked me to come up with a new character to take Bozo's place. So, I sat down and created Ronald McDonald.[3]
At the time, Scott was working for Oscar Goldstein, the Washington, DC, area McDonald's franchisee, and numerous sources describe Scott's role as only playing the part of Ronald McDonald, while giving credit for the creation of the mascot to Goldstein and his ad agency. [Reply]
