Art Linkletter died yesterday at the age of 97. I am just barely old enough to have known this entertainner/TV host in his heyday. Art's show "House Party" was on in the daytime, and when I was 7 I remember watching in the summer when school was out -- the show's last season, 1969. I think what got me to watch was that this smiling older man named Art was paying attention to little kids like me.
Of course, I noticed that the adults in the audience would laugh at the cute things the little kids would say. But I liked Linkletter's questions, and he seemed impressed with some of the answers. Some of the kids' answers I, too laughed at. And some of the answers I thought I would have said, or something like it.
Apparently Art and his wife of 74 years had five children, and one of them, Jack Linkletter, also went into show business, most notably hosting the Miss Universe pageant for a time. Art and Jack loved to reveal how it was that a conversation between little Jack and his dad started Art on the whole idea of interviewing children.
It was the evening after Jack's first day of kindergarten. He wandered into his father's work room, where he saw his father saying different things over and over again into his microphone. Jack asked what dad was doing. "I'm just practicing my radio voice," said Art. "Come over here, and I'll interview you." Art was interested in what Jack thought of this newfangled thing called "school" (there being no preschools back then).
"Jack, what did you do today?" The son spoke near dad's microphone -- and he was being recorded. "I went to school for the first time," he answered.
"How did you like it?" "I'm not going back." "Why aren't you going back."
"Because I can't read, I can't write, and they won't let me talk." Art laughed. He loved that answer, and he played the exchange with Jack on his "Who's Dancing Tonight?" Sunday-night interview radio show. The response? Well, as you might have guessed -- "Mail came in from all over Northern California," said Linkletter, "saying what a wonderful thing it is to hear a little boy talking to his daddy, and it struck me," he went on, "that there were no interviews with children as children (back then); they were always professional children -- trained, coached, and written for." In other words, all the spontaneity -- and surprising wisdom -- of talking with children had been ignored before Art's discovery. From then on Art interviewed many, many children on radio and TV -- and loved it.
