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Puppeteer Burr Tilstrom first began creating his Kuklapolitan Players in the 1930's, with his bald-headed, high-voiced puppet Kukla, and they appeared on television as early as 1939. They first went on the air locally in 1947, one of the earliest children’s' entertainment shows on television, and on November 29, 1948, KUKLA, FRAN & OLLIE began a 20-year+ run on network television that made them as popular with adults as they were with children. Owing a little bit to the Punch and Judy Shows of the eighteenth century, KUKLA, FRAN & OLLIE featured Kukla the puppet and his foil, Oliver J. Dragon, a good-natured friend with a single buck-tooth, and Fran Allison, who was the den mother to Tolstoy’s menagerie characters, which included Fletcher Rabbit, Beulah the Witch, Madame Ooglepuss, and Dolores Dragon. In the first episode, Kukla and Ollie decided to shoot their own television commercials with a camera that they assemble themselves, but the machine runs backwards. In the second show, Kukla, Mercedes, Madame Ooglepuss, and Fran compare photographs and memories of Europe from their own travels and the pages of LIFE magazine. The shows include on-air plugs to sponsors Tide and Drene shampoo, and ads for "the Tide Miracle" as well as LIFE magazine.

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