Roy Brown

Roy Thomas Brown (8 July 1932 – 22 January 2001) was an American television personality, puppeteer, clown and artist known for playing "Cooky the Cook" (also Cooky the Clown) on Chicago's Bozo's Circus.

Early years

Roy Brown was born in Tucson, Arizona but had lived in the Chicago area since he was a boy. His mother was an artist with an at-home studio, which gave him the opportunity to also become interested in art. Brown graduated from Chicago's Austin High School; when he entered the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, Brown intended to become a cartoonist.

Brown's first puppet contribution to the show made his debut on Christmas Day, 1953. Christmas Goose, the nephew of Garfield, was the first puppet cast member outside of Garfield Goose. A capuchin monkey named Geronimo had joined the cast on Thanksgiving Day as a butler. During the time he was working on the Garfield Goose show, Brown also created puppets and performed them for another WGN-TV children's show called Quiet Riot. One of Brown's creations for this show was a rabbit named Romberg; when Quiet Riot was cancelled, Brown brought Romberg Rabbit to Frazier Thomas, who liked the puppet so much, he asked Brown to make him part of the Garfield Goose cast.

Brown created all of the puppet characters shown here with Frazier Thomas and Garfield Goose: Romberg Rabbit, Beauregard Burnside III, Mackintosh Mouse, and Chris Goose. The show was originally called Garfield Goose and Friend, as it started out with just Thomas and his goose puppet. Because the cast of characters had grown, Thomas decided to change the name of his program to Garfield Goose and Friends with the addition of Romberg Rabbit. Brown's next creation for the program was a sleepy bloodhound called Beauregard Burnside III, who came to full attention when "hotdogs, hamburgers, spaghetti and meatballs" was said into his ear. Macintosh Mouse came to the show to work in the castle mailroom.

In 1961, Thomas began hosting a weekly series called Family Classics where he served as the host, introducing classic movies which were suitable for family viewing. Brown was also the art director for this program, taking Thomas' designs for the set and turning them into a warm study, complete with a Brown oil painting of Garfield Goose. The portrait and set are part of the exhibits at the Museum of Broadcast Communications.

When Ray Rayner started his programs Ray Rayner and His Friends and the Dick Tracy Show on WGN-TV, Brown was hired as art director, creating a dog puppet called Tracer for the Tracy show. He also did puppetry on Rayner's morning show for a character called Cuddly Dudley, a large, orange dog created by WGN-TV's owner, the Chicago Tribune, as a promotional item. When Rayner joined the "Bozo's Circus" cast as country clown Oliver O. Oliver, Brown designed and built the noses for the character. Brown, who had no previous on-camera experience, created the Cooky character as an initial tongue-in-cheek reference to the food at the station's cafeteria.

The viewer reaction was positive, but Brown was not the only person who wanted to replace Sandy. Dick Lubbers, a WGN-TV floor manager, also auditioned for the role as Monty Melvin. Until Lubbers left the station about a year later, Brown and Lubbers appeared on the show on alternating days. Lubbers' leaving meant the job finally belonged to Roy Brown. When Rayner, who also starred as Oliver O. Oliver on Bozo's Circus, left the show in 1971, Cooky became Bozo's main foil until his retirement in 1994. Fellow cast member Marshall Brodien, who played Wizzo the Wizard on the show, teamed up with Brown in 1973 for an act they brought to the Kane County and DuPage County fairs each summer for twenty-one years. Brodien also retired from the program in 1994.

The tradition on Bozo's Circus from its start was that at the end of the program, Bozo would lead the audience out of the television studio in a Grand March, complete with baton and music. In 1987, a viewer petition gathered 10,000 names for Brown's Cooky character to lead the Grand March, and Brown was given the honors for a day. Although Brown's Cooky outlasted Bob Bell's 24 years as Bozo by a year, Cooky's appearances during his final year were from previous shows due to health problems. He was elected into the International Clown Hall of Fame the next year; it was not until three years later that his colleague, Bob Bell, joined him. His health forced Brown to retire in 1994. Upon his retirement, he donated some of his costumes and clown-related material to the International Clown Hall of Fame. Brown was able to be a part of the 35th anniversary Bozo's Circus program in 1996 and also to take part in "An Evening With Roy Brown", presented by the Museum of Broadcast Communications. Brown made his final appearance on the show on 26 August 2000. He died in 2001 of congestive heart failure. He was survived by his second wife, Mary Lu, four sons, three stepsons, and three step-grandchildren. His interment was at Memory Gardens Cemetery in Arlington Heights, Illinois. One of Brown's Cooky costumes is part of the collection of the Museum of Broadcast Communications' Bozo's Circus collection.

In 2005, the Museum of Broadcast Communications awarded WGN-TV's Studio 1 a plaque to commemorate the forty years of children's television broadcast from the studio. Garfield Goose and Friends is on the plaque along with Ray Rayner and Friends and Bozo's Circus. Roy Brown was an important part of all three of the shows; his work delighted three generations of young Chicagoans.