Ask a 7-year-old to name a clown and chances are he or she will say “Ronald McDonald,” but back in the 1960s and 1970s, Bozo was king.
“Bozo’s Big Top,” a TV show that ran seven days a week, starred Bozo and his sidekick, Mr. Whoodini. Only the youngest baby boomers remember Bozo today, and even fewer remember Mr. Whoodini.
Mr. Whoodini was played by Larry Johnson, an educator who taught in Livonia, Michigan. He’d gotten his start as a magician with his own show filmed at local station CKLW, based in Windsor, Michigan.
After his two-year run as Mr. Whoodini on his solo show “The Magic Shop,” station producers suggested he team up with Bozo, Larry Harmon, to become his sidekick. Johnson agreed and the two actors teamed up for “Bozo’s Big Top.”
“Bozo’s Big Top” ran for eight or nine years, and as their show went on, Bozo became big business. Harmon franchised the Bozo name in the mid-1960s, and for a while, nearly every city had its own Bozo. At its height, Johnson said there were at least 43 Bozos, with each city having their own local show.
While Johnson says he didn’t make “a ton of money” during his Mr. Whoodini years, he did make enough to get a business off the ground.
Offstage, Johnson worked at Whittier High School as the “activities administrator” where he sought out extracurricular presenters to give assemblies to the student body on a topic related to the curriculum. Finding quality “acts” was challenging.
“I was kind of unhappy with some of the programs that the school was bringing in. I figured I could do a better job,” Johnson said. So he created a school assembly program called “The Amazing World of Light” which demonstrated different types of light including lasers and holograms. At the end of the program, he would roll out a “black art cabin”—a black light diorama with special effects—all with a flare.
It was a hit.
“Within the state of Michigan, I sold 60 programs that first year,” Johnson recalled.
Its success proved his theory that children learn better when they’re having fun. “The best way to teach children is when they don’t know they’re learning,” he said.
“The Amazing World of Light” kindled the inspiration for Mobile Ed Productions, which formally started in 1979.
Today, the small Michigan-based company employs approximately 32 people and offers 28 different programs for schools. Mobile Ed “performers” give about 10,000 performances a year in approximately 3,500 schools across the country, Johnson said.
Johnson, who refers to the programs as “acts” and the presenters as “performers,” said the company tries to schedule appearances five days a week.
Keeping up with changing school curriculums is always a priority.
“Every year, we expand our programs and we add new effects,” Johnson said. “We try to provide things that schools can’t do on their own.”
The program offers a living planetarium at a cost of $35,000 and robots for their STEM Science Fair, which cost $10,000 each. Although the shows are expensive, Johnson said the program tries to make them affordable for schools without resources.
Most performers have been with the company for many years, Johnson said. Sometimes a costumed presenter or a live prop pops up at headquarters. Working at Mobile Ed is a lot of fun, he said.
“Some days we’ll have someone dressed as Benjamin Franklin running around saying ‘hi’ to everyone,” he recounts with a chuckle.
Performer Dick Buchholz has worked for Mobile Ed for 16 years. Based in Chicago, his animal act once featured an alligator. “Sometimes he’d come in and put an alligator on the floor,” Johnson said. “There’s nothing like having a 6-foot alligator wander into your office.”
At 73, Johnson said he’s way overdue for retirement. His son Ryan, 29, is the only of his four sons involved in the business.
