Adventure Time

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This article is about the television show. For the animated short on Nickelodeon, see Adventure Time (cartoon)

Adventure Time was a local children's television show on WTAE TV-4 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from 1959 to 1975. It was hosted by the late Paul Shannon, with guitarist Joe Negri and puppeteer Jim Martin. Martin later became a puppeteer for Sesame Street.

[edit] Series background

Paul Shannon introduced cartoon segments by lowering a "magic sword" and reciting the phrase, "Down goes the curtain, and back up again for . . ." whatever was the feature. Old Three Stooges shorts were shown as well as the cartoons Kimba the White Lion and Rocky and Bullwinkle. The show also featured Paul Shannon's alter ego, Nosmo King, a man who stalked about the studio in a slouch hat and overcoat, and who never spoke. The studio audience was composed of children's groups such as Cub Scout packs and Girl Scout troops. Paul regularly featured a "Picture Gallery" on his show. He would pretend to "play" a player piano and scroll photos of his young listeners that had been sent in to the station.

A high point of the show came each Christmas season, when Paul Shannon loaded children's letters to Santa Claus into a rocket, and launched it to the North Pole. Santa later opened the letters and read them on the air. Martin's main character in the series was Jeffie. The puppet was lost at one point in production, and Negri claims Martin reacted "like [Jeffie] was kidnapped."

In his book, Moe Howard of the Three Stooges credited Paul Shannon with sparking renewed interest in the Stooges and Paul appeared in one of the Stooges' full-length features, The Outlaws Is Coming, as Wild Bill Hickok.

Shannon's alter-ego Nosmo King reportedly got his name from a "No Smoking" sign.