{"id":32101,"date":"2022-01-19T06:00:03","date_gmt":"2022-01-19T12:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.robertfeder.com\/?p=32101"},"modified":"2022-01-19T09:36:09","modified_gmt":"2022-01-19T15:36:09","slug":"bill-bj-jackson-1935-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/2022\/01\/19\/bill-bj-jackson-1935-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill 'BJ' Jackson 1935-2022"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Bill \"BJ\" Jackson<\/p><\/div>\n

As the creative genius behind such beloved children\u2019s shows as \"Cartoon Town\" (aka \u201cThe BJ and Dirty Dragon Show\u201d) and \u201cGigglesnort Hotel,\u201d Bill \"BJ\" Jackson will always hold a warm spot in the hearts of countless fans who grew up in Chicago in the \u201960s and \u201970s.<\/p>\n

Jackson died Monday at his home in Paso Robles, California, after a recent illness. He was 86.<\/p>\n

\"He was the most creative and versatile person ever in Chicago kids' TV and certainly one of the most creative people I have ever known myself,\" said Jim Engel, children's television curator at Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications.<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1965 Jackson came to Chicago to host \"Clown Alley\" and \"Here Comes Freckles\" for CBS-owned WBBM-Channel 2.<\/p>\n

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Dirty Dragon and Bill Jackson<\/p><\/div>\n

Three years later he joined independent UHF upstart WFLD-Channel 32, where he created \"Cartoon Town,\" presiding as mayor over a menagerie of puppets including Dirty Dragon, Weird and Wally Goodscout, Mother Plumtree, The Old Professor and The Blob. Later renamed \"The BJ and Dirty Dragon Show,\" it moved to former Tribune's WGN-Channel 9.<\/p>\n

Jackson then went on to create \u201cGigglesnort Hotel\" for ABC-owned WLS-Channel 7 in 1975. That show ran for three years.<\/p>\n

In each case Jackson summoned his artistic skills to populate programs with unique characters \"as fully developed and endearing as any comic strip or animated cartoon,\" Engel recalled.<\/p>\n

\"Everything on his shows were an extension of him, and we loved him. Loved his own hip persona and appearance, loved his ability to tell a story, loved his on-camera artistry, and loved his truly eccentric puppet characters \u2014 both their look and wild personalities.<\/p>\n

\"He created, designed and sculpted the puppet characters, voiced all of them, designed the sets, built props and also wrote the shows \u2014 running plot lines, gags, cliff-hanger serials, even songs,\" Engel said. \"He would be the first to say, 'I had help' \u2014 and he did \u2014 but even so, I don\u2019t think anybody in kids' TV wore more hats or wore them more successfully than Bill.\"<\/p>\n

Born Bill Ray Jackson in Unionville, Missouri, in 1935, he worked as a cartoonist and weatherman before joining the U.S. Army, where he was assigned to produce training films with a humorous twist for the Armed Forces Network in Hollywood. That's when his interest shifted to TV \u2014 specifically aimed at children \u2014 and he landed jobs in Iowa and Indiana before joining CBS 2 here.<\/p>\n

After leaving Chicago TV in 1978 Jackson moved west to join California Institute of the Arts, where he taught TV production until he retired in 1990.<\/p>\n

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Bill Jackson and Jim Engel<\/p><\/div>\n

Engel was instrumental in reviving interest in Jackson's work, drawing huge crowds to the Museum of Broadcast Communications for personal appearances and securing Jackson's induction in the Silver Circle of the Chicago\/Midwest chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 2005.<\/p>\n

\"It was my great joy to play the role of the catalyst that brought him out of retirement after he\u2019d been away from Chicago for so long \u2014 bringing him back into the much-deserved spotlight, showing him that he\u2019d indeed left an enormous legacy and putting him back in touch with his legions of fans,\" Engel said.<\/p>\n

All of Jackson's puppets and other memorabilia from his shows are on permanent display at the Museum of Broadcast Communications.<\/p>\n

Added Engel: \"He was a hero and an inspiration to me as a kid cartoonist, and meeting, working with and becoming his friend of three decades just proved that the man was everything offscreen that you loved about him on. We will all miss him, but we\u2019ve got a lot of great memories, and as he\u2019d say: 'We sure had fun, didn\u2019t we?'\u201d<\/p>\n

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Bill Jackson and friends<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the creative genius behind such beloved children\u2019s shows as \"Cartoon Town\" (aka \u201cThe BJ and Dirty Dragon Show\u201d) and \u201cGigglesnort Hotel,\u201d Bill \"BJ\" Jackson will always hold a warm spot in the hearts of countless fans who grew up in Chicago in the \u201960s and \u201970s. Jackson died Monday at his home in Paso... Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32101"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32101"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32128,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32101\/revisions\/32128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}