Lamb Chop Celebrating 40th Year

Scroll back in time a bit, to an early 1960s suburb that looks a lot like one of those you see on “Nick at Nite.” In this one, a little boy sits in front of a black-and-white TV set, watching a petite young woman talking to a furry little creature named Lamb Chop.

Oh, the kid is sophisticated enough, even in such innocent times, to know that the lamb is really a big white sock with eyelashes and a mouth. And he knows the woman is probably doing the talking for both. But still, he’s impressed. “Pretty good show,” he thinks.

Now move forward in time and place, to a different suburb. Different television set, too - this one’s in color. Same woman and puppet, though, and same reaction from another little kid.

“Pretty good,” the child chortles. Then he slaps the now-grown-up Lamb Chop viewer on the back, making sure that a particularly funny scene in which Lamb Chop’s brother Hush Puppy is chased up a tree by a cat, is not overlooked.

It seems as though Lamb Chop has been making generations of children chuckle forever. And, in the short history of television, she just about has.

“We’re celebrating her 40th birthday this year,” says Shari Lewis, Lamb Chop’s alter-ego. “We put 40 candles on her cake. And did she have any special request? Yes, she said, ‘Get me a bigger cake.”’

Lamb Chop - 40? Could it be?

With her high-pitched voice (sort of a cross between a lamb and a little girl) and her long, false eye lashes, Lamb Chop always has been about six going on 30 or 40. Precocious and prepubescent, she fights with her brothers and is charmed by such stories as “Little Bunny Foo Foo” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb” (the latter being her favorite, of course).

But she is astute enough to tell Lewis to stop moving her lips when Lamb Chop talks, and delighted, according to Lewis, that after all these years in show business she finally gets top billing with “Lamb Chop’s Play-Along.”

And Lewis and Lamb Chop are still going strong, moving gracefully into the computer era with their first CD-ROM, “Lamb Chop Loves Music.”

“I’m so excited about that,” Lewis says, sounding, well, excited, as she speaks from her California vacation home. “We’ve just won the Emmy of CD-ROM and we’ve also won a Critic’s Choice award.”

But winning awards is old hat to Lewis and Lamb Chop. Since “Lamb Chop’s Play-Along” debuted on PBS in 1991 it has captured five Emmys, including four in a row for Lewis as outstanding performer. “The Shari Lewis Show,” which aired on NBC in the 1960s, won a Peabody Award.

What excites Lewis these days is the opportunity to bring music into children’s homes at a time when budget cuts are taking it out of schools.

In “Lamb Chop Loves Music,” children about 3 to 8 can enter a music store, sample dozens of different instruments and hear them played in various styles from jazz to rock to classical. Afterward they can put together a concert featuring their favorite musical style. It’s not quite like going to class and studying music, but maybe the closest thing.

For Lamb Chop and Lewis, the work never seems to stop. The two, along with puppets Hush Puppy and Charlie Horse, are on the road often, doing stage shows around the country. In 1993, Lamb Chop and Lewis even testified before Congress in support of bringing more quality children’s shows to television.

And there is “Lamb Chop’s Play-Along,” with 85 shows so far and more in the works.

The program offers not only music but stories, games, sketches and magic, much of it filmed outdoors, in a Beverly Hills, Calif., back yard Lewis says once belonged to actor Boris Karloff. Mallory Tarcher, daughter of Lewis and her husband, publisher Jeremy Tarcher, works on the show.

If it sounds all a bit hectic, Lewis notes that she is, after all, a native New Yorker and used to a frenetic pace.