Super Circus was an American television program which aired live on Sunday afternoons from 5 to 6pm Eastern Time from 1949-1956 on ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

. The show originally was produced in Chicago, but production later moved to New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. The award-winning show featured circus and clown acts performing in front of a studio audience. Mary Hartline and Claude Kirchner were the hosts (Jerry Colonna succeeded Kirchner as "Ringmaster" in the final New York season), and Bruce Chase

Bruce Chase

Bruce Chase was an American composer and music arranger.-Early life and education:Robert Bruce Chase was born on March 22, 1912 in Muscatine, Iowa. His parents were locally prominent musicians; his father a violinist and his mother a piano teacher, and he began to play violin at a young age. By...

 conducted the band. Sponsors for the show including Kellogg's Corn Flakes, Mars, Inc. (Mars Bars, Snickers, 3 Musketeers) and Sweetheart Soap.

Hartline, known for her short skirts. white boots and long blonde hair, became one of television's first sex symbols, spawning merchandise such as dolls.

For at least the 1951 and 1952 seasons, each day Kirchner selected one child from the audience to stick his hand into a jar full of coins, attempting to pull out and keep as much money as possible. There were no one-dollar coins in the jar, but Kirchner always announced when he spotted a "fifty-cent piece" among the coins retrieved and the audience was prompted to cheer.

Episode status

A small number of episodes survive in film archives and private collections. Six episodes were released to DVD on October 28, 2008 by Alpha Video

Alpha Video

Alpha Video is an entertainment company, based near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that specializes in the manufacturing and marketing of public domain movies and TV shows on DVD...

.

See also

• Captain Video and His Video Rangers
• Howdy Doody
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• Ding Dong School
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  Ding Dong School, billed as "the Nursery school of the air", is a half-hour children's TV show which began on WNBQ-TV in Chicago, Illinois a few months before its four-year run on NBC ....
  
  
• The Magic Clown
  The Magic Clown
  The Magic Clown was a NBC TV series which ran from 1949 to 1954. The final NBC broadcast was on June 27, 1954. The show then moved to WABD where it stayed until 1958. After that, It was renamed "Bonomo, The Magic Clown" and was broadcast on WNTA from September 29, 1958 to July 24, 1959. The show...