The Magic Garden (TV series)
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The Magic Garden was a 30-minute children's show which aired Mondays through Thursdays on New York City's WPIX Channel 11 from September 1972 to March 1984. It was also syndicated nationally for part of its run.
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[edit] Plot
The show featured two women, Carole Demas and Paula Janis, who punctuated each episode with several acoustic songs. The pair first met while they were teenage students at Brooklyn's Midwood High School, and later became New York City school teachers.
There was one main recurring character: a mischievous pink squirrel puppet named Sherlock. A colorful and happy puppet bird named Flapper was a later addition to the inhabitants of the magic garden.
The characters spent all of their time within the Magic Garden, a colorful if static setting whose primary locations were "The Magic Tree," a tree swing, and a barn. Carole and Paula also interacted with a giggling bed of flowers known as "The Chuckle Patch" that grew beneath the Magic Tree. The Chuckle Patch flowers grew leaves that had mild jokes on one side of the leaf and the punch line on the other side.
A typical show included songs, games, jokes, stories (regularly acted out using costumes and props from "The Story Box"), and life lessons for their viewers. The hostesses would regularly express personal greetings to members of their young television audience, saying "hello ___, hello ___" and inserting various first names. The viewers would listen anxiously, hoping that Carole and Paula would mention them!
[edit] Theme Music
The theme song to the show itself still inspires considerable nostalgia among the show's fans:
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- This is the garden of make-believe,
- A magical garden of make-believe,
- Where flowers chuckle and birds play tricks,
- And a magic tree grows lollipop sticks!
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- Here in the garden what we say and do,
- We'd like you to join us and do it too.
- Can you crow like a rooster (cock-a-doodle-doo!)
- And clap your hand and stamp your shoe?
- It's a funny place but it's surely true
- That we'd like to share it all with you!
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- If you sing for me (La la la la la la!), I'll sing for you (Loo loo loo loo loo loo!)
- If you cry for me (Boo hoo hoo hoo!), I'll cry for you (Boo hoo hoo hoo!)
- If you scream for me (Aaaahhh!), I'll scream for you (Woooooh!).
- If you laugh for me (Hee hee hee hee hee hee!), I'll laugh for you (Hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo!)
- So come on in without a fuss,
- 'Cause the magical garden is waiting for us!
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- It's nice to say hello! (Hello! Hello!)
- It's nice to say hello! Hello, and how are you?
- It's nice to shake your hand! (Shake hands! Shake hands!)
- It's nice to shake your hand, shake hands and how do you do?
- I'm fine, me too. We're fine and how are you?
- I'm fine (me too!) We're fine, and how are you?
The Storybox had a short theme song as well, which included the refrain, "You don't need a key, so follow me, There are no locks on story box, on story box, on story box!"
Every Magic Garden episode ended with Demas' and Janis' closing song:
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- See ya (see ya!)
- Hope you had a real good time...(da-dum!)
- Hope you have a good good morning, to ya
- Hope we get to see ya again!
- (Da-dum! Na-nana-na-nana-nah)
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- See ya, (See ya!)
- Glad that you could stay a while...(da-dum!)
- Hope you have a good good morning, to ya...
The song would play as the camera slowly panned back from Carole and Paula (on the swings, Paula on guitar) and moved out of the magic garden. The goodbye theme would fade out as the gates slowly closed on the magic garden and ended the episode.
[edit] Show Run
A total of 52 half-hour episodes and a one hour holiday special were produced, meeting the FCC requirements set forth in the Children's Television Act of that time. Three record albums were also released, one of which received a Grammy nomination. Additionally, the program received a citation from the Children's Television Workshop for its creative efforts.
On Thanksgiving Day in 2002, a special hosted by Paula and Carole aired, reminiscing about the show. Afterwards, two episodes were rerun for the first time in 18 years.
[edit] In Popular Culture
The Magic Garden was spoofed in the Robot Chicken episode Slaughterhouse on the Prairie with Paula Janas voiced by Eden Espinosa, Carole Demas voiced by Robin Tunney, and Sherlock the Squirrel and Storybox voiced by Seth Green. When Paula and Carole prepare to tell a story from the Bible, the spirit of the Storybox incinerates them because they're homosexuals (the Robot Chicken rendition of Paula and Carole, that is), which parodies the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark. After Paula and Carole's remains were sucked into the Storybox, Sherlock quoted that he hated biblical stories.
