Shark Bytes

Good thing for Andy that Claudine developed her firearms fixation after they'd split....

Andy DID dance with Marie Osmond on her 18th birthday. It was televised on the Donny and Marie show. Next time get your facts straight, please!

I was around 4 years old when I remember watching this show. I was madly in love with Andy Williams. Couldn't wait for it to come on. One night he sang a song called Natalie. I was sure he was singing to me. I went crazy. My mother got such a kick out of it she wrote to the show. I received a photo of Andy and the "bear" signed "To Natalie from Andy and "friend". On a future episode he dedicated the same same song "to a special little girl" and sang it again for me. I remember being over the moon about it! I still have the photo hanging up in my home. One of my fondest childhood memories.

I only watched Williams' show the last few years, when it was moved to Saturday nights, but I remember liking it. I don't actually remember the bear joke, but I remember a wonderful bit involving Debbie Reynolds and a staircase that stopped about 50 feet up in the air (she finally just slid off the balcony and took her chances). A few moments later, Williams announced "And we'll be digging Debbie in just a moment. As soon as we dig her out of the floor."

The thing that I always loved about this show was Andy's habit of collaborating with other artists from completely different genres of music. I fondly remember the episodes when he performed with the Doors, the Velvet Underground, the MC3 and Deep Purple. Some fantastic stuff!

It was Andy's risk-taking that kept me as a viewer from week to week. Challenging himself to go beyond the self-imposed boundaries of his chosen genre...he took chances and tried to be progressive.

The night he decided to challenge Janis Joplin to a sing-off was probably his tour-de-force. Hearing him sing 'Try', and then Joplin sing 'Moon River', and then finally seeing the two of them come together to sing the VU's 'White Light/White Heat' was such a wild trip....it still burns brightly in my memory.

Andy Williams was (still is) a truly adventuresome soul.

I just want to know what ever happened to Andy and Claudine's children. I remember their names were Noelle, Christian and Bobby. What are they doing now and do they have children of their own?

I never watched the show yet it remains in my memory due to one horrific night in a hospital waiting room. I dont even remember why I was there, I was about 12 years old at the time. There was a little boy maybe 5 or 6 who insisted on watching "The Andy Williams Show" because he wanted to see the bear that ate cookies. The adults in the room wanted to watch a football game, but gave in to the kid because he put up such a fuss. As soon as the show began, and Williams started singing, the child started running around wildly not paying the least attention to the show. A lady got up and said "Look, sonny, you sit down now! If you get up again I'm going to change the channel! Then she asked him "How do you like them apples?" He looked at her defiantly and said dryly "What apples???!" Then she turned to me and said "Why dont you make your little brother behave?" My mouth fell open and I was so embarrased because I had never seen the kid before in my life. Just one of those memories, and at last a place to get it off my chest. Thanks!

Moon river......... lets see, 1971, i think i was 12, preteen, which is probably why i remember this show. Now my parents laughed at williams. My dad was in the music business in the fifties as a song writer , singer with a few small hits but always remained largely unknown, therefore he was pretty contemptuous of anyone who WAS FAMOUS lol.. and hed make fun of andy's skin, really mean i thought. Anyway, secretly i loved him. i thought he had this really sweet side, and it was obvious he remained in love with his killer former wife claudette who always looked drugged out to me, ( another reason to think it was cool) I remember the bear thing vaguely but didnt think it was funny and i dont remember it being geared for the younger crowd because at that time being almost thirteen i thought EVERYTHING NORMALLY revolved around teens. There were a few shows i remember liking with my parents, this, ed sullivan, and of course laugh in were three that stand out. Par for the course in my over dramatic life, andy and his love life gone horribly wrong, always touched my melodramatic heart. moooonnn rivvverrrr you and i

In 1970, to try and appeal to the youth audience, the show changed its format to something kind of goofy. (The ongoing shtick with the bear, for example.) It won over a lot of teen viewers - this one, for example - but alienated a lot of its adult audience. Before I go on: to the poster who had the comment about the Claudine Longet ski tournament where she kept shooting the skiers. That was a sketch on a 1976 episode of Saturday Night Live. It made reference to how Longet had accidentally shot her then-boyfriend, skier Spider Savich. Typical SNL poor taste, of course... Up to the 1969 season "The Andy Williams Show" was a veriety show aimed at the kind of people who listened to Andy's music: adults. I am sorry to say this, but the reason I think the show jumped was because, in 1970-71, they revamped the format to try and bring in the teen and young adult audience. I am sorry to say it because I was one of the teen viewers who was won over by the change in format, and I'd watch the show religiously. Frankly I always like Janos Prohaska as the bear. (A favorite line: Tommy Smothers telling Andy, "And tell your fascist pinko bear to shut up!") It was a shame Prohaska and his son Bill were killed in the early 1970s on the site of a TV special. That same year, there was a commercial in which Lawrence Welk appeared in a Nehru jacket and a Beatle wig (circa 1965 or so) doing the twist as the announcer sneered, "For the wildest, rip-roaringest, psyche-diddly-delic show on television, watch... The Lawrence Welk Show???" Some of Welk's women came over, chided him, took off the wig and jacket and gave him his old suit back. Then Welk announced, "We're NOT going to change our format, folks, and 'at's a promise!" I am pretty sure that was a reaction to the way Williams' show did such an about-face its final season. Welk's show continued for a couple more decades; Williams' bowed out that year. So much for targeting the youth audience...

How funny someone actually remembered the bear that wanted cookies all of the time! There’s very little else I too can remember except that routine (I was in first grade and since I believe this show was on Saturday my parents “let me” stay up to watch it) What stuck in my head was one random time the bear came on singing “Twinkle twinkle, little star; I wish you were a cookie jar…!” Which I thought was so funny at the time. I don’t think I recall much else other than the whole show having a “Pat Boone/Lawrence Welk-ish” flavor to it in wholesome skits and music. Also, if the ones on in the sixties featured Andy’s ex Claudine Longet (pre-Spyder shooting scandal) doing songs that would DEFINITELY have knocked me out as I can’t listen to ANYTHING she sung in her recording days without falling in to a deep sleep…! Better than Sominex (and weren’t they a sponsor??).

To the above poster, "I'm a DOCTOR Jim, NOT A BRICKLAYER!" (It's a "Horta" joke.) I also like the Bear gag as a kid. How could I not? I was only 4 when this thing was cancelled, and I had no idea until now that it was on as long as it was. The only thing about the Bear gag that I remember is that Andy would not only tell him he couldn't have a cookie, but would add "Not now! Not ever! NEVER!" which remains a catch phrase amongst my family members even to this very day. Why did you abandon us Andy?

To the previous poster: I remember The Bear, a nicely surrealist complement to Andy's comfortable cardigans. Sweating inside The Bear's suit was a talented fellow named Janos Prohaska, who specialized in designing, wearing, and acting in all manner of exotic costumes during the 1960s: a gorilla on "Gilligan's Island" and Mother Horta on "Star Trek," to name but two.

See, there was this guy in a bear suit, who'd come out and interrupt Andy just as he was ready to break into a chorus of "Love Story", and ask for a cookie. And Andy would get all mad for being interrupted, and say, "no! you can't have a cookie", and the bear would sadly wander back offstage. No, I'm not dreaming this, it was really a running gag. Not sure who played the bear, maybe it was that one Osmond brother with the hearing disability. How many other shows today would benefit by being regularly interrupted by a guy in a bear suit asking for a cookie? I'd really like to see Bryant Gumbel incorporate that into his morning show.

I barely remember my parents watching this show, and I tried to watch it with them. Obviously, most of it was boring for a child.....but I remember waiting for the little gimmick they'd do as they went to the commercials. In it, Andy would turn into a cardboard cutout that kept falling and rising back up (they ran the ***** back and forth, obviously). This was a laugh riot for a kid, now it's another representation of bizarre '60s humor. Were they making a commentary on Andy's personality? And how in the world do you expect to keep the same audience by replacing an easy listening personality with a temporary summertime show hosted by Ray Stevens? The programming strategies of TV execs never fail to amuse me.....and make me scratch my head at the same time.

He gave the Osmond Brothers their very first national exposure and Marie made her on camera debut on his show at age four. Andy asked her if he could dance with her when she was eighteen (which got a huge laugh from the studio audience) yet when they had a HUGE 18th Birthday Special for Marie on 'Donny and Marie' Andy was NOWHERE to be found! I don't know what kind of differences he may have had with the Osmonds BUT couldn't they have at least set those aside to have him dance with 18-year-old Marie JUST for that day- especially considering that if he hadn't put them on his show, they likely would have never gotten out of the dinner club circuit and might be selling cars instead?