Bozo the Clown

Vance DeBar Colvig, later known as "Pinto" and the original Bozo the Clown, was born in Jacksonville on September 11, 1892, the youngest of seven children of Judge William and Helen Colvig. Nicknamed by school friends for his freckles, he grew up in a home filled with music and laughter, learned to play the clarinet, and at age 12 went with Judge Colvig to Portland for the Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition, where he played a squeaky clarinet in oversized clothes, white makeup, and a clown face on the Midway and was told he looked like a real Bozo. He worked in the circus and in vaudeville in summers and while attending Oregon Agricultural College, where he became known for clever cartoons in the student publication and for "chalk talk" monologues. In later years he continued circus work and cartooning in various west coast locations, including Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco. In 1916 he married Margaret Bourke Slavin in Portland, OR. In 1930 he signed a contract with Walt Disney and worked on story lines, co-wrote songs, and provided the original voice for animated characters such as Goofy and Pluto, as well as other characters including the munchkins in the Wizard of Oz, Bluto in Popeye, and Maxwell the automobile on the Jack Benny Show. In 1946 Capitol Records created the Bozo the Clown character for its children's record library and hired him to portray the first original character, and the first television series, "Bozo's Circus," aired on KTTV-Channel 11 in Los Angeles in 1949. His time as Bozo ended in 1956 when Larry Harmon formed a partnership and bought the licensing rights to Bozo. Colvig died of lung cancer at age 75 on October 3, 1967.

Jacksonville, Oregon · United States