"She has been taught the technique of teaching self-expression, creative thinking, coordination of large and small muscles, group learning and group living. "Miss Lois spent a week of intensive study in kindergarten activities, emphasizing games, educational programs and training in good manners for the preschoolers who will appear on 'Romper Room,' " wrote the Journal Star in a story about the new program's debut. WTVH shipped Ritt to Baltimore, where she learned how to run a romper room for television and debuted the show in August 1961. It was marketed in two ways: The Baltimore show could be sold and rebroadcast in other television markets, or local stations could purchase a franchise and broadcast the show using its own local hosts and its own local kids. The original "Romper Room" started in Baltimore in 1954. "And that was the beginning of some of the most fun I've ever had in my life," Ritt said. "He asked if I was familiar with 'Romper Room,' which I wasn't, and said they were planning on putting it on the air and would I be interested in an audition. "I was told the general manager would like to see me," Ritt said. The way Ritt remembers it, the station manager at WTVH Channel 19, the station that would become WHOI, was alerted that a young woman who was a new college graduate with an emphasis in theater was in the building applying for a job at the station. "That planted the idea in my head to go around and apply at Peoria's three TV stations." "I took a television course in college and remembered being fascinated by a studio we toured in the Quad Cities that was in some old house," she said. She sang and danced in Corn Stock Theatre productions when she was home from school.Īfter college, Ritt returned to Metamora to look for work. Mary's, Metamora Township High School and Marycrest College in Davenport, Iowa, where her main interests were theater and language arts. Lois Ritt was born Lois Gries in Metamora in the 1940s. "It was really quite a phenomenon in its time, and I had an unbelievably fun time doing it all those years." "People of a certain age just go crazy when you mention 'Romper Room,' " Ritt said. That sort-of-scary "Romper Room" jack-in-the-box. Mention "Romper Room" to a person born in the 1950s or 1960s – the golden age of the simple and sweetly innocent children's program – and you are likely to unleash a torrent of nostalgia and spark a sequence of instant memory icons. They called to the studio and were like, 'Are you guys awake in there?' " "Instead of just switching to another camera, it took the guys at the transmitter a couple of miles away to shut it down and turn the screen to black. "I didn't know what was going on, but they just stood there with their mouths open," said Lois Ritt, a Peoria resident and a "Romper Room" pioneer in central Illinois. There was Miss Lois on the floor, having just performed a Sleepingīeauty-like faint during Tell a Story Time on "Romper Room."īut her skirt hiked up in the fall, exposing a patch of thigh and a -gasp - pre-pantyhose-era garter belt that stunned the studio crew into cement-shoed immobility. This entry was posted in Then & Now, Women's History. To honor Barbara Plummer, the Museum Advisory Council of the Western Reserve Historical Society produced the following video, Miss Barbara: Reflections from the other side of the magic mirror, in September of 2005: Watch Video Here. Sadly, Miss Barbara passed away in March 2010. She worked with many Cleveland institutions, including Playhouse Square and the Western Reserve Historical Society. Children sat glued to their televisions hoping to hear their names called.Īlthough Romper Room stayed on the air until the 1990s in some places, Barbara Plummer left the show in 1971 and pursued her passion of giving back to the community. She would then call out, “I see Sarah, and Patty, and Whitney…”. When she held the mirror up to the camera, she could see children at home watching Romper Room. One of the most memorable parts of Miss Barbara’s show involved her Magic Mirror. However, Channel 5 hired her after one interview and, with no prior experience in acting or in television, she became “Miss Barbara” in 1958. Barbara Plummer, a housewife from Norwalk, answered an advertisement for a job as a television host, never thinking she would get the job. Romper Room came to Channel 5 in Cleveland in 1958. The program quickly became popular and was soon syndicated in local markets throughout the United States and beyond. Targeted at preschoolers, Romper Room aimed to teach children good manners, morality, and civic mindedness. In 1953, Bert and Nancy Claster of Baltimore created a television program called Romper Room. Most stations only broadcast shows for a few hours each day, and most programs were geared towards children or housewives. Television was in its infancy in the early 1950s.
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