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Kermit Schafer
Kermit Schafer
Kermit Schafer
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Kermit Schafer (March 24, 1914 – March 8, 1979) was an American writer and producer for radio and television in the 1950s and 1960s. He is best known for his collections of "bloopers"—the word Schafer popularized for mistakes and gaffes of radio and TV announcers and personalities.

Key Information

Early bloopers

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Bloopers came into prominence in 1931, when radio announcer Harry Von Zell mispronounced or said the name of the then-President of the United States, Herbert Hoover, as "Hoobert Heever" on the air, but Schafer's is believed to be the first attempt at collecting and presenting them. Other similar famous finds of Schafer's include ABC correspondent Joel Daly intoning, "The rumor that the President would veto the bill is reported to have come from a high White Horse souse",[1] and veteran radio host Paul Harvey breaking into uncontrollable laughter at a story about a pet poodle.

These were collected and released in LP audio collections such as Pardon My Blooper! and Your Slip is Showing, which were briefly popular in the 1960s. A movie version, Pardon My Blooper, was released in 1974. It made $1,473,000 at the box office.[2]

These led the way for such later TV shows as TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes hosted by Dick Clark. Schafer himself gained minor celebrity under the nickname "The Blooper Man".[3] Schafer also published a number of books, such as Kermit Schafer's Blunderful World of Bloopers (1973) and Bloopers, Bloopers, Bloopers (1984).[4]

Criticism and controversy

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Schafer has come under criticism from TV and radio historians who have noted his deceptive presentations in his albums. If Schafer could not obtain an actual audio recording of the event (as many of these bloopers occurred live and were not always transcribed onto recordings), he would simply hire actors and recreate the event—without offering any disclaimer. This led to some misrepresentations. For example, the blooper by Harry Von Zell described above was not recorded, so Schafer recreated it.[5]

Schafer is historically remembered for an unwittingly libelous dramatization of an incident that never happened. On his vinyl record Pardon My Blooper!, Volume 1, Schafer replicated the famous radio show host "Uncle Don" Carney, who broadcast on WOR in New York City to millions of children from 1928 to 1947. In Schafer's brief drama, Uncle Don mistakenly believes his microphone is off, then utters a contemptuous indecency.[6][7]

Legacy

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After Schafer's death on March 8, 1979, in Miami, Florida, shortly before his 65th birthday, his title of "Keeper of the Bloopers" passed to Dick Clark, who hosted and produced a long-running series of blooper specials (and a weekly program) beginning in the early 1980s. When Clark picked up the mantle, recordings of bloopers were far more easily obtainable, and in fact were often provided willingly by the producers of films and TV shows as a way of promoting their product.

Clark followed in Schafer's footsteps by releasing an album of bloopers from radio broadcasts. Clark's TV blooper shows always carried a dedication to "Kermit Schafer, Mr. Blooper", and the success of Clark's program led to the development of many imitators which continue to be broadcast as of 2008.[8]

Recordings

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Seven Pardon My Blooper albums were released in the late 1950s-early 1960s on Jubilee Records. The first, named Radio Bloopers, sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.[9] Schafer also issued blooper compilation albums for Kapp Records in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many of these recordings would be reissued in the 1970s by K-Tel Records. 1970s compilations were also issued on MCA Records; Best of the Bloopers in 1973, and a six-volume All Time Great Bloopers set to mark the 25th anniversary of the first blooper record in 1977. Volumes 5 & 6 contained some previously unreleased material.[citation needed]

He produced non-blooper comedy albums, among them Jubilee releases for Will Jordan and Peter Wood in the 1960s and Citizen's Bloopers, a spoof of the then-current CB craze in 1977. He edited a number of books transcribing bloopers, with some books covering certain themes such as bloopers from classified advertising and television broadcasts.[9]

References

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Kermit Schafer

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from Grokipedia
Kermit Schafer (March 24, 1914 – March 8, 1979) was an American radio and television producer and writer known for popularizing the concept of "bloopers"—purported humorous verbal mistakes and gaffes made on air by broadcasters and performers, though some in his collections were dramatizations or recreations. He compiled these incidents into record albums and books, defining a blooper as "slipping on a verbal banana peel" and emphasizing that his collections were intended to laugh with those who erred rather than at them. Schafer released his first blooper album in 1954, which sold more than a million copies, and over the following decades produced numerous albums and books featuring such material. His work, which began in the early 1950s and continued through the 1970s, helped establish blooper compilations as a popular form of comedy entertainment, though it faced criticism for including staged content presented as authentic. His legacy in American humor is notable but debated. He died on March 8, 1979, in Miami, Florida, at the age of 64.

Early life and background

Birth and early years

Kermit Schafer was born on March 24, 1914, in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, New York. He attended P.S. 103 in Brooklyn. Schafer began his career in broadcasting as a teenager, working as a page boy and radio producer while attending high school. He later maintained a theatrical office in the RKO Building in Radio City, New York, and handled exclusive radio rights to the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.

Early career in radio and television

Initial productions and roles

Kermit Schafer was a radio and television producer who produced programs before and after serving four years in the Air Force (likely during World War II). In the late 1940s, following his return to civilian life, he produced the short-lived Rube Goldberg's Picture Charade in 1948, a program based on the cartoonist's inventive style. In 1949, Schafer served as producer on Your Lucky Star, a television series where he received credit across multiple episodes. He also produced Quick on the Draw in 1950, a game show featuring cartoonist Bob Dunn creating sketches for celebrity panelists to identify, released under his Kermit Schafer Productions banner. These credits reflect Schafer's involvement in early television game and entertainment formats during the medium's post-war expansion. Schafer began collecting on-air verbal mistakes as a personal hobby earlier in his producing career, continuing the collection during his Air Force service and afterward.

Development of blooper collections

Origins and popularization of "bloopers"

Kermit Schafer began collecting verbal mistakes made by radio and television performers as a hobby while working as a producer in the industry. He continued amassing these "fluffs" during his four years of service in the Air Force and after returning to civilian life. The availability of high-quality tape recorders in the postwar era enabled him to expand his archive substantially, including by monitoring broadcasts continuously from his home in Central Valley, New York, and by gathering examples from station transcription libraries coast to coast dating back over the previous 25 years. Schafer became the first to apply the term "bloopers" to these on-air gaffes, a word that entered the American language and quickly became the standard descriptor for such incidents. He was soon recognized as the definitive authority on the subject, with his association to "bloopers" compared to Reverend Spooner's link to spoonerisms. This innovation reflected a career pivot from general radio and television production toward specializing in blooper material, as Schafer realized the broader public would find entertainment value in these mishaps similar to that enjoyed by his private circle. His initial efforts to share the collection publicly appeared in the early 1950s, with the publication of his first book Your Slip Is Showing in 1953 and the release of his first album Pardon My Blooper in 1954 on Jubilee Records. These releases marked the start of Schafer's widespread popularization of "bloopers" during the 1950s, when live broadcasting made such errors more frequent and noticeable. Schafer consistently presented his early collections as authentic, drawn exclusively from bona fide sources including transcriptions, kinescope sound tracks, off-the-air recordings, and tapes.

Major blooper audio releases

Key albums and series

Kermit Schafer's blooper collections found their primary expression through a series of audio albums that began in the mid-1950s and continued for over two decades. The flagship series, Pardon My Blooper!, launched with Volume 1 in 1954 on Jubilee Records; this initial release, also known as Radio Bloopers, featured narrated compilations of radio and television on-air errors. The album achieved commercial success. Additional volumes in the Pardon My Blooper! series followed on Jubilee, including Volume 4 in 1955 and Volume 6 in 1957, with further entries extending into the early 1960s and occasional reissues on other labels. Subsequent compilations expanded Schafer's catalog across different labels and formats. The Best Of… Bloopers – Radio And Television's Most Hilarious Boners appeared on Kapp Records in 1969, drawing from earlier material to present a curated selection of highlights. Kapp also issued related titles such as Blunderful World Of Bloopers Volume 1 and The Bloopy Awards Volume 1 in 1970. In the mid-1970s, K-Tel International released Super Bloopers Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 in 1974, alongside reissued Pardon My Blooper! compilations, capitalizing on television marketing and budget-label distribution. The later phase of Schafer's audio output included the All Time Great Bloopers series on MCA Records in 1977, encompassing Volumes 3 & 4 as well as Uncensored Volumes 5 & 6, effectively forming a six-volume set that repackaged and extended prior content. Throughout his career, these recordings were reissued and distributed across labels including Jubilee, Kapp, K-Tel, and MCA, reflecting sustained demand for his blooper format in the spoken-word comedy market. The albums collectively represented a significant body of work that popularized the blooper genre in recorded media.

Books and written blooper collections

Published works

Kermit Schafer published multiple books compiling collections of broadcasting bloopers—humorous on-air mistakes such as verbal slips, spoonerisms, malapropisms, Freudian slips, and embarrassing misreads—drawn from radio and television. These volumes present the material as short anecdotes, typically detailing the program or context, the individual involved, and the exact mistaken phrasing that led to unintended comedy. Many editions were dedicated to the professionals in broadcasting who endured these incidents, offering sympathy and reassurance that such errors are common across the industry. Kermit Schafer's Blunderful World of Bloopers, released in 1973, served as a treasury of broadcasting's most hilarious award-winning boners and was promoted as a 25th anniversary collection, featuring a foreword by Mike Douglas. Prize Bloopers appeared in a 1979 edition from Avenel Books, with a dedication paying tribute to the victims of bloopers in the hope of providing consolation and evidence that they are not alone, accompanied by a humorous twist on Alexander Pope's quote: "To err is human, To forgive, divine. — Alexander Pope" / "To forgive is human, To err, divine. — Kermit Schafer." Posthumously published in 1984 by Bell Publishing Co., Bloopers, Bloopers, Bloopers continued the format with further examples of broadcasting mishaps. These written works often complemented Schafer's audio blooper releases by transcribing or expanding upon similar material.

Film and later media projects

Theatrical adaptation

Kermit Schafer directed and produced the theatrical film Pardon My Blooper, released in 1974. The film was a compilation of bloopers—verbal slips and gaffes—from radio and television broadcasts, drawn from his books and albums and presented in a format similar to his audio series. The film marked Schafer's only known foray into theatrical cinema based on his blooper collections. It achieved modest commercial performance, with reported rentals of $1,473,000 in the United States and Canada.

Criticism and authenticity controversies

Recreations and disputed bloopers

Kermit Schafer's blooper collections have drawn criticism for frequently featuring staged re-creations rather than authentic broadcast recordings, often presented without disclaimers to suggest they were genuine outtakes. Much of the material relied on actors impersonating announcers or celebrities and fabricated audio based on secondhand or apocryphal accounts, particularly when original recordings were unavailable or the incidents were exaggerated legends. One of the most infamous examples is the Uncle Don Carney incident, in which the children's radio host was said to have muttered "There, that oughta hold the little bastards" after thinking his microphone was off, allegedly leading to his firing amid public outrage. Investigations have found no contemporaneous news reports, trade publications, or evidence from Carney's long career (1928–1954) to support the claim, and he was never penalized or removed from his program for such remarks. The story predated Carney as an urban legend attached to other children's hosts, but Schafer's staged re-creation on his early albums revived and permanently linked it to Carney, despite its fabricated nature. Another prominent disputed blooper is the "Hoobert Heever" spoonerism attributed to announcer Harry von Zell, who reportedly mispronounced Herbert Hoover's name while introducing the president. While von Zell did make a real mispronunciation during a scripted birthday tribute to Hoover, the widely circulated version—exaggerating it as occurring during a live presidential address—was a later re-creation produced by Schafer and presented as authentic. These cases highlight recurring concerns among broadcast historians about the authenticity of Schafer's collections, where re-creations of disputed or legendary incidents were common.

Death and legacy

Final years and influence

Kermit Schafer continued his prolific output of blooper compilations into the late 1970s, releasing titles such as All Time Great Bloopers Vol. 3 & 4 and All Time Great Bloopers Uncensored Vol. 5 & 6 through MCA Records in 1977. These albums reflected his ongoing commitment to curating and presenting on-air gaffes and broadcasting mishaps that had defined his career for over two decades. Schafer died on March 8, 1979, in Miami, Florida. Known as "Mr. Blooper," Schafer's pioneering work in collecting and commercializing bloopers established a lasting entertainment format that influenced subsequent media. In 1974, Schafer himself adapted the concept to film with the theatrical release Pardon My Blooper, distributed by K-Tel International. His success in audio and visual formats was followed by producer Dick Clark's involvement in television editions of the blooper concept, leading to long-running specials and the series TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes in the 1980s. Schafer's legacy endures as the originator who popularized bloopers as a comedic genre in audio recordings and contributed to its expansion into visual and televised formats.
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