Hal Fryar (AKA Harlow Hickenlooper) (1927 – 2017)

Crown Hill Cemetery tour guide Tom Davis writes about Hal Fryar: “Hal made the music of children’s laughter. I know because I was one of those kids. Growing up in faraway Terre Haute, I would have missed out except for one thing. We spent almost every Saturday in Greencastle so that my parents could help in my grandparents’ flower shop. That meant that my older brother and I were joined by three cousins as the little black and white TV, the one that went staticky whenever a Ford drove by down the street, was tuned to Harlow Hickenlooper’s antics and the Three Stooges shorts.”

Born in nearby Franklin, Indiana, Fryar graduated from Arsenal Tech High School in Indianapolis. He then earned a bachelor’s degree in speech from Indiana University in 1950. Even before earning the degree, he had started his broadcasting career as a radio announcer, writer and emcee. But it is for his TV career that he is best-known, especially as the host of the children’s program that ran Saturday mornings on WFBM, Channel 6, from 1960-1972. In addition to running Three Stooges shorts, his character, Harlow Hickenlooper (the last name was borrowed from an actual longtime Iowa Senator, Burke Hickenlooper), did in-studio slapstick, inevitably ending with a cream pie in the face. (They switched to shaving cream after discovering that using actual whipped cream, which was oily, led to costly dry-cleaning bills.)

Dressed in his striped jacket and caved-in straw hat, nothing went right for poor Harlow, no matter how hard he tried. But still he sang silly songs with his guitar playing buddy, Curley Myers, especially his special version of Happy Birthday.

Fryar also appeared as the outlaw Johnny Ringo in the 1965 Three Stooges feature film, The Outlaws is Coming. From 1990 to 1995, he appeared as “Grandpa Harlow” on a children’s TV program on the local PBS affiliate. After leaving the airwaves, he continued to make live appearances, doing standup comedy in retirement homes, primarily in Florida, where he himself lived his retirement years. He was inducted into the Indiana Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame in 2008.

Watch a WFYI-produced short documentary about Hal Fryar. There is a lengthy documentary as well.