hBozo the Clown dies

hBozo the Clown dies

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Larry Harmon, who turned the character Bozo the Clown into a show business staple that delighted children for more than a half-century, died Thursday of congestive heart failure. He was 83.

His publicist, Jerry Digney, told The Associated Press he died at his home.

Although not the original Bozo, Harmon portrayed the popular clown in countless appearances and, as an entrepreneur, he licensed the character to others, particularly dozens of television stations around the country. The stations in turn hired actors to be their local Bozos.

“You might say, in a way, I was cloning BTC [Bozo the Clown] before anybody else out there got around to cloning DNA,” Harmon told the AP in a 1996 interview.

“Bozo is a combination of the wonderful wisdom of the adult and the childlike ways in all of us,” Harmon said.

Pinto Colvig, who also provided the voice for Walt Disney’s Goofy, originated Bozo the Clown when Capitol Records introduced a series of children’s records in 1946. Harmon would later meet his alter ego while answering a casting call to make personal appearances as a clown to promote the records.

He got that job and eventually bought the rights to Bozo.

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