Louis version of the show on KTVI Channel 2 left to adopt a child. Incredibly, a "Romper Room" job opened up there when the host of the St. Louis in 1962 when her husband took a job there. Ritt, who married and became Lois Witzig, moved to St. The program lasted into the 1970s on local television. Miss Lois lasted only one year in Peoria and was followed by a succession of "Romper Room" teachers at the station. "I always believed that any host of the show who liked to see her own face on television was not a successful one and was not in it for the children." In one photograph from the time, a sign suggested to the children to "Do Bee a Minder" and "Don't Bee a Disobeyer." The children in the photograph each appear to be a different blend of bemused, bored, engaged, distracted and terrified. The floor was plastic tile squares, the backdrop a curtain. They all sat in front of a bookshelf stocked with books, crafts and toys.
Miss Lois ran the show from behind a short desk in the middle of two even shorter desks where the students sat, three on a side, the boys with their buzz cuts and the girls with their fancy Sunday school hairdos barely rising above the table tops. The set in the WTVH studio in Creve Coeur was primitive by 21st century standards. I was aware of that and tried to include the unusual names like Hermione and Sylvester." "Grown-ups who remember the show tell me they were scarred for life because they never heard Miss Lois say their name. "I see Tommy and Susie and Bart and Tiffany," Miss Lois would say, some names ad-libbed, others by written requests culled from the stacks of daily mail. Magic Mirror tell me today, did all my friends have fun at play?" "Romper bomper stomper boo, tell me, tell me, tell me do. Most memorably, each show ended with Magic Mirror, when Miss Lois would peer through a mirror-less hand mirror, stare straight at the camera and recite the same incantation to a group of mesmerized preschoolers in the days before Elmo, Dora and SpongeBob. Segments included Bend and Stretch, Tell a Story, Do Bee and Don't Bee, and typically included some craft project and a snack time. Six preschoolers made up the classroom each week - three were holdovers from the following week and would "graduate" from "Romper Room" on Friday's program. The 30-minute program on Channel 19 was taped a day in advance and was not live as it was in many other cities across the United States. "Not exactly sure what that means," Ritt said. That report raises one question: Group living? Good habits in health, safety and all forms of endeavor are particularly expressed." "She has been taught the technique of teaching self-expression, creative thinking, coordination of large and small muscles, group learning and group living. "Miss Lois spent a week of intensive study in kindergarten activities, emphasizing games, educational programs and training in good manners for the preschoolers who will appear on 'Romper Room,' " wrote the Journal Star in a story about the new program's debut.
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WTVH shipped Ritt to Baltimore, where she learned how to run a romper room for television and debuted the show in August 1961. It was marketed in two ways: The Baltimore show could be sold and rebroadcast in other television markets, or local stations could purchase a franchise and broadcast the show using its own local hosts and its own local kids. The original "Romper Room" started in Baltimore in 1954. "And that was the beginning of some of the most fun I've ever had in my life," Ritt said. "He asked if I was familiar with 'Romper Room,' which I wasn't, and said they were planning on putting it on the air and would I be interested in an audition. "I was told the general manager would like to see me," Ritt said.
The way Ritt remembers it, the station manager at WTVH Channel 19, the station that would become WHOI, was alerted that a young woman who was a new college graduate with an emphasis in theater was in the building applying for a job at the station.
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"That planted the idea in my head to go around and apply at Peoria's three TV stations." "I took a television course in college and remembered being fascinated by a studio we toured in the Quad Cities that was in some old house," she said. She sang and danced in Corn Stock Theatre productions when she was home from school.Īfter college, Ritt returned to Metamora to look for work. Mary's, Metamora Township High School and Marycrest College in Davenport, Iowa, where her main interests were theater and language arts. Lois Ritt was born Lois Gries in Metamora in the 1940s.
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