Distinctly Montana Magazine

60 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R 2 0 2 4 Froggy Doo and his puppet cohorts. Happy Herb would look directly into the camera and ask his young viewers at home to send jelly- beans to the station because that's what frogs used for money. Frog- gy Doo's admirers responded in a big way, mailing in thousands of jellybeans along with their drawings and letters. The lumpy envelopes jammed the post office's sorting machine to the point where extra employees were hired to hand-cancel the mail until the gummed-up gizmo could be replaced. Froggy Doo, all 22 inches of him from the tip of his red sneakers to the giant eyeballs atop his balsa wood head, was the most famous personality in Billings. The show was even renamed Froggy Doo and Happy Herb, to give the star top billing. McAllister had no problem with that. "The frog was nine-tenths of the show!" he said with a laugh. The station big- wigs certainly knew a good thing when they had it—the show went from weekly to daily. Thousands of Billings kids plopped down on the rug every afternoon to catch the show, en- thralled by Herb's magic tricks, Froggy Doo's mangling of nursery rhymes in the Fractured Fairy Tales segment, and the exploits of the show's other characters like ventriloquist's dum- my C.T. Woodley and B.J. Crow. His amphibian sidekick's appeal wasn't hard to figure out, said McAllister. "Froggy Doo was a scamp, and he did things that all the children wanted to do but couldn't. And he'd get away with it." One morning in October, 1966, McAllister ar- rived at the studio on Coburn Hill near Sacrifice Cliff, to discover that Froggy Doo was missing. "I went to get him for the TV show for that day, and he was gone. We hunted all over for him. I thought maybe I'd left him at home in my art studio or somewhere." The frog was nowhere to be found. The show limped along for several episodes without its star, pla- cating Froggy's fans with half-baked excuses about him having an accident or otherwise being indisposed. Soon enough, Herb's most unthinkable suspicions were confirmed with the delivery of a ransom note: Froggy Doo had been kidnapped. "A couple days later we get the letter in the mail saying they want 150 bucks and a roll of quarters, and I'd have him back," said McAllister. Word quickly spread about the stolen frog. Many of the younger viewers believed Froggy was real, and it seemed to anyone under the age of 12 that they'd had their best friend taken away. The thieves had also made off with several thousand dollars' worth of electronic equipment from the studio, but it was Froggy Doo's ab- duction that grabbed the head- lines. Jane McAllister (no relation) grew up in a Billings family that had the misfortune of being the only McAllisters listed in the phone book. She remembers the panic that gripped the grade school set as kids desperately tried to reach Happy Herb. "When Froggy Doo was 'frog-napped' we had loads of hysterical kids call- ing our house. Sometimes my brother would imitate Froggy Doo's voice and tell the kids he was okay, he was just taking a vacation." Herb and the TV station refused to pay the ransom, even after a young man claiming to be one of the kidnappers fol- lowed up the ransom note with a phone call demanding the cash. The curious re- quest for a roll of quarters led authorities to believe they were dealing with a cou- ple of young pinball fiends. Because the ransom note had been sent through the mail—a federal offense—the FBI became involved. They conducted interviews, chased down leads, and working along- side the Sheriff's Department to follow up every clue. The story gained traction, even getting a mention on the Huntley Brinkley Report, a nationally televised news program. Despite all the attention and the thorough efforts of law enforcement agencies, no suspects were ever found. But Froggy Doo was. According to McAllister, a youngster riding his horse in the countryside near Billings came upon the marionette, which had been torn to pieces and scattered along a fence. The head was found nearby, dangling from a fencepost. Froggy Doo was gathered up and returned to McAllister, who was relieved when a pair of deputies carried his mutilated friend into the studio. "They had him on a little stretcher," he said, chuckling at the memory. "He was covered up with a blanket." While in retrospect he can find some humor in the story, WHILE IN RETROSPECT HE CAN FIND SOME HUMOR IN THE STORY, MCALLISTER STILL REMEMBERS THE ANGUISH CAUSED BY THE DISAPPEARANCE AND DESTRUCTION OF HIS TV PARTNER. Henry Winkler as Happy Herb McAllister alongside Froggy Doo in A Plumm Summer

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