The Blind History Lady Presents; Don Mahoney, Television Star

By Peggy Chong

He wanted to be a singing cowboy on the big screen. He became the cowboy on the little screen throughout Texas in the early 1950s and became a childhood staple for more than two decades. Yet very few knew he was blind for more than a decade! Even after Don came out about his blindness, Don worked hard to minimize who knew. A career that span four decades, Don lived his dream of becoming an entertainer, loved by all. Read how he used simple tricks to get around in strange cities, studios and airports. Learn how he made his fortune and fame. What an actor, to hide his blindness for a decade from even his television employers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peggy Chong
• Release date: Sep 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370538126

Peggy Chong

Peggy Chong is a long-time researcher and Historical author of many articles on the blind in the United States. She has written for publications that include The Braille Monitor, Dialogue Magazine, Future Reflections, The Minnesota Bulletin and the Iowa History Journal. In her growing series, The Blind Lady Presents, she introduces to sighted and blind alike, the many average blind persons in the United States who had to overcome not-so-average barriers to lead a normal life, support their families and succeed. She recounts all they had to do to become chemists, newspaper editors, plumbers, barbers, piano tuners, boat builders, teachers, lawyers, politicians and so much more.

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The Blind History Lady Presents;

Don Mahoney, Television Star

By Peggy Chong

Distributed by Smashwords

Copyright 2016

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Don Mahoney's Early Life

The 1940's

Blindness In Show Business

Family and Stardom

Shows and Jeanna

Opportunities Given and Taken

The Don Mahoney Marketing Beyond Television

Reflections and Conclusions

Other Blind Maloney Siblings

End Notes

Don Mahoney

Introduction

Before Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, Children across the United States like myself grew up watching national kiddie show entertainer Captain Kangaroo (1955-1984) in the mornings on CBS. He had his side kick Mr. Green Jeans and the many puppets; Bunny Rabbit that always made the carrots fall down on the captain's head, Mr. Moose and the ping pong balls that fell down on the captain's head again. This happened almost every day, day after day, and we loved watching it, day after day.

Before there were the national children's programming, there were the local kiddie heroes who, in the late 1940's and early 1950's wanted to be on the very, very new medium, Television. On the local scene, almost every community with a local TV station had a kiddie show. In Honolulu there were Checkers and Pogo on KGMB, (1967-1986) and Captain Honolulu on KITV, (1959-1968). Fargo North Dakota had Captain Jim on KXJB. Minneapolis Minnesota had Captain Clancy and Company with several different shows over the years 1959-1977 and Nurse Carmon on Carmon's Cottage WCCO channel 4(1966-1977). There was Dave Lee on WTCN (1960's) in the afternoon who had a puppet that pulled the little girl's ponytails or braids as Dave and Pete the Penguin puppet went through the bleachers of children attending the daily afternoon show to say their names. If a child had a birthday, not only did they get the goodie bag from Dave with the treats and coupons to local attractions, but a special present, a toy!

Then there was my favorite, Casey Jones and Roundhouse Rodney on WTCN TV, channel 11 in Minneapolis/St. Paul (1953-1972). Every noon, Casey would ride in on locomotive engine 2156, hop down from his train and head to the clubhouse in the railyard. For twenty years, Roger Awsumb played the railroad engineer, Casey Jones. There were three shows a day, in the mornings, lunch and after school. His sidekick was Roundhouse Rodney (Lynn Dwyer). Roundhouse also played the character Grandma Lumpit who had her own show in the afternoons. Grandma always had her words to live by that she read from her dusty book while sitting in her rocking chair in her boarding house. Actually, Grandma Lumpit's advice was much more humorous as an adult than as a child.

These shows were most unsophisticated and the tempo much slower compared to the kids programming of today. So much was a double entendre, providing entertainment for the mother's watching the show as well.

Casey's television shows were broadcast from the second and third floor studios of the Calhoun Beach Club Hotel in Minneapolis on West Lake street, just across the street from Lake Calhoun. For years, the program had hardly a budget. Skits that required a prop were often made from whatever was handy such as a lid from a trashcan when a shield was needed for a roman soldier.

Almost every show had a sketch were Casey, Roundhouse or puppets would lip-sink to a novelty song, dressed in costume with an exaggerated performance. Songs like, I Love Onions, Walking in my Winter Underwear, Loving You Has Made Me Bananas, Catch a Falling Star" and so much more found the kiddie show hosts dressed in funny attire and makeup. Roger Miller songs were a favorite. One regular puppet was Oswald, who I and my friends thought was a rather scary finger puppet, Yet, we always watched Oswald talk to Casey.

Little was scripted in those days. Casey would get on and tell us about upcoming things in the city that would be fun to do. In the summer the Muscular Dystrophy (MD) Foundation would ask the kids to hold an MD carnival. Casey would tell all of us about it, get us to send for the packet of information and then have many of the kids who were going to host a carnival in their back yard, come onto his show, tell what they were doing, or how much they had raised. What a plug for MD! One wonders how much Casey got for promoting the carnivals.

Back in those days, the Kids TV show hosts often pitched their sponsor's products to the kids, either in the goody bags or in the case of Casey Jones and so many, they told the kids to eat brand X cereal, peanut butter, bread, treats like Hostess Twinkies who brought their products to Casey's lunch. The host told the audience of the wonderful new toys they may want for Christmas.

An organization called, Action for Children's Television trying to stop the commercials to children by Children's TV show hosts pounded in the nail that closed the coffin for Casey and so many other local Kiddie programming actors across the country. Other factors that contributed to the decline in local television kiddie programming included lunch programs at the child's home school so children were not going home for lunch any more. Programs with younger characters, bigger budgets and more sophisticated sets such as Sesame Street were becoming popular and syndicated across the country.

Growing up as a child with a visual impairment, I never thought I could ever be a TV star like Roundhouse Rodney. That was not one of the occupations a blind person could do, as far as I knew.

Now I have learned of Don Mahoney, a blind man who hosted a kiddie show for almost 30 years in the Houston Texas area. In many news articles, Don and his side kick Jeanna Clair were listed as the poor man's Roy Rogers and Dale Evans of Texas. For more than 30 years Don and Jeanna entertained the children of the southwest over television and personal appearances.

When reading of all that Don did to promote himself, I had to go back and remind myself what TV was like back then. TV stars were not paid like they are today. Some would only get a few dollars a week for