I recently learned of the passing of Chuck Bowen, the subject of this column. He had an extraordinary career in the Columbus area and, here again is the amazing true story of Flako the Clown.
This story you are about to read took many years to live and several to write.
In 2017, Alabama-based potato chip maker Golden Flake announced it was being bought out by Utz, a company out of Pennsylvania.
In May 2018, I noted here in the Tribune about the disappearance of the Golden Flake mascot from the back of the chip bags in a column titled “The Disappearing Clown”:
The back of every Golden Flake bag has featured a clown throwing a potato chip bag into a trash can, saying “don’t litter.”
I always wondered about the identity of this clown. Who is he, and how did he get to appear on every Golden Flake bag?
Recently, I asked Larry, our Golden Flake representative, about the clown, which is being phased out on newer bags of Golden Flake products.
He said the clown has always been there and used to have a TV show in Birmingham. Interested, I started looking up Birmingham TV personalities like Country Boy Eddie to see if they once portrayed this clown. But no one knew who he was.
Moving ahead to July 2019, I began receiving phone calls from a man who claimed to be the real Flako the Clown – the name of the Golden Flake mascot.
He left messages asking me to call him back; the people in my house found it funny, as I suppose they should, that I was getting telephone calls from a retired clown.
What I found out was very interesting, and really beyond the scope of this editorial page – it’s really a story more deserving of a full feature in a Tallapoosa Publishers magazine, but for now, this space will have to do. The gentleman who was contacting me is a well-known writer, teacher, administrator, and businessman in Georgia who just happened to see my little story in the Tallassee Tribune.
The man’s real name is Chuck Bowen. Speaking with him led to some of the most enlightening phone calls I’ve ever experienced. He also sends packages with some of his wonderfully enjoyable essays and articles that have been published regionally. And that doesn’t even include an appearance on America’s Got Talent in 2018.
Mr. Bowen has had a most interesting career trajectory. After graduating with a teaching certificate in 1949, he was an educator and school administrator in Georgia during the 1950s including a stint pulling double duty as a principal and eighth grade teacher earning $119 per month.
Then, after serving as the Master of Ceremonies for a Phenix City beauty pageant, the call came to work with renowned news-talk station WBML-AM 900 in Warner Robins, Georgia. From there, he heard about a job at WTVM-TV 9 in Columbus and applied – and spent the 1960s employed at WTVM as a news anchor, reporter, and personality.
One of the more fascinating facets of early television was the interchangeability of the on-camera jobs. Even at the big networks, a tough hard-news interviewer like Mike Wallace could also be seen hosting game shows and doing commercials during other dayparts. The same was true at local stations, where a news, sports, or weather personality also hosted children’s programming or talk shows.
“Romper Room” is an example of a program concept that was imitated with different hosts at local stations across the country; similarly, Bozo the Clown was licensed to TV stations everywhere. There was a Birmingham Bozo on WBRC-TV 6, for example, as well as the more famous Bozo on WGN-TV 9 out of Chicago.
So, being a TV clown was nothing new. There was no real coulrophobia, or fear of evil clowns, in those days – a clown was there for laughs, to take the pie in the face, to juggle or perform magic tricks, or be sprayed with seltzer.
Bowen says that as a news man, he handled everything from “rip-and-read” Associated Press wire stories to covering local news as a reporter, in addition to doing advertisements and serving as a booth announcer.
At WTVM, he did it all – including appearing as Flako the Clown on the Golden Flake show.
Mr. Bowen remembered how Channel 9 approached him with the job. “Wanna be a clown?” they asked. His answer: “Sure! More money!”
You see, Mr. Bowen and his wife, Syd, had already made a career out of dressing up and performing with a traveling troupe; Syd and Chuck had enough adventures as a performing couple to fill a thousand movie reels, but that’s another story – the end result was, if anyone was prepared for the demands of a TV clown, Chuck Bowen was ready.
“You couldn’t make a mistake,” Bowen said of live television in the 1960s. And as a trusted Columbus media personality, Bowen thrilled to his new role on behalf of the potato chip company.
“Save your bags and add up your points,” Flako would say to the kids near the conclusion of his broadcast. Viewers could win prizes like toys and games, even bicycles, if they sent in the points on the back of the Golden Flake bags.
“Clowns have always been a part of entertainment, since the earliest circus,” Mr. Bowen said, when I mentioned the modern-day evil clown persona featured in books and films featuring characters such as Pennywise and the Joker. “Time changes everything. How could you imagine a mascot better than a clown?”
And, boys and girls, that is Chuck Bowen, the proud real-life Flako the Clown, on the back of your Golden Flake chip bag, throwing his trash into a barrel that says, “don’t litter.” Save your bags and add up your points!
Michael Bird is an assistant professor of music at Faulkner University and radio host on 580 WACQ & FM 98.5 who also enjoys Golden Flake products from Super Foods. Don’t litter!
