Tippy Top

Tippy-Top originally aired December 17, 1961 (Season 10, Episode 13) on the General Electric Theater anthology TV series which ran from 1953 to 1962. Starring Red Buttons as the imaginary friend of Ron Howard, it made for an unusual and entertaining episode. Both the story and the songs were written by Sidney Michaels and Mark Sandrich Jr, who would later team up for the Broadway musical Ben Franklin in Paris. Tippy-Top also utilized the talents of well-known musical arranger Conrad Salinger and choreographer Miriam Nelson. Sherman Marks directed. At the time this was made there was a consensus among many mental health experts that children with imaginary friends were lacking something in their lives which created the need to create such friends. Psychological counseling was a common recommendation for the condition. This would be in line with the attitude displayed by the character Bob in the episode, played by Frank Aletter. These days the view of kids with pretend friends has shifted more in the direction of the character Meryle, played by Joan O'Brien. For the current thinking on the topic, see the following two links: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/growing-friendships/201301/imaginary-friends http://www.aboutourkids.org/articles/when_your_child039s_new_friend_imaginary The unusual Tippy-Top episode received an even more unusual resurrection in 1995 when the HBO series Dream On included clips from it as part of their Try Not to Remember episode (Season 6, Episode 1). This time around the Red Buttons character was perceived as sleazy, but pretend friends have gotten worse raps in films; at least Tippy wasn't portrayed as a homicidal maniac as was the pretend friend in the 2005 horror flick Hide and Seek!

Director

General Electric Theater