“Yoo hoo, it’s me, my name is Pinky Lee” he sang, as he danced his odd little sideways shuffle back and forth across the stage. His coat and trousers were too big – and too short – and his hat was too small. All were checkered. Maybe his shoes were checkered too. I can’t quite remember. He was doing his best to entertain, but I was not amused. He struck me as spooky and vaguely irritating, which is the way I’ve always felt about clowns of any stripe (or check). Nevertheless, I watched.
It was the early 1950’s. Television was still a novelty and even a test pattern could be compelling viewing in those days. I watched The Pinky Lee Show for no better reason than that.
Pinky had a near perfect record of banality – except for one show, which I still think about to this day.
On that one show, Pinky had an unusual guest: a Sioux Indian of obvious antiquity.
The old fellow was decked out in fringed leather & feathered war bonnet, complete with beaded moccasins. But, the really fascinating part of his appearance was his skin. It was crisscrossed with wrinkles, cracked, dry, and more weather-beaten than a WW-I aviator’s jacket. All with good cause I soon learned, for this particular Lakota was nearly twice as old as a WW-I aviator’s jacket.
By and by, Pinky revealed that his ancient guest had participated in Custer’s Last Stand. Although, since he had been only 10 or 12 years old at the time, his warrior role had been limited to riding about the battlefield, pumping arrows into the dying wounded of the 7th Cavalry. This served dual propose, being both good introductory training in manslaughter as well as a sort of merciful mop-up operation. Even as he was finishing his work the squaws were advancing with butcher knives. (Actually, Pinky didn’t mention the part played by the squaws. He probably didn’t even know about it. It wasn’t until many years later that I learned about the mutilation of the bodies).
The old Indian mostly just stood there, smiling and looking grand. Pinky did the telling of the tale. And he told it in the same bubbly, gee-wiz voice he used for all his patter. If you didn’t understand the meaning of the words you might have supposed they were describing some kind of high-spirited, boyish adventure rather than multiple homicide.
So I sat there, in the middle of the 20th century, watching a guy in a goofy checkered outfit chit-chatting with an elderly Indian, about a bloody massacre that had taken place in the previous century – during which massacre that same Indian, while only a child, had proudly contributed to the carnage.
I wasn’t old enough then to be certain sure about what was normal and what wasn’t, but it did seem to me that this morally neutral mixture of bloody mayhem, living history, and happy talk was pretty strange. Maybe I was wrong. In many ways it was weirdly prescient of much that would follow. It was the beginning of a new norm.
It was television.
Pincus Leff
a.k.a. Pinky Lee