Son of Chucko : Randy Runyon, whose father entertained children as the birthday clown on TV in the ‘50s and ‘60s, is filling some mighty big shoes.

Yes, Chucko the Birthday Clown--not seen on local TV since 1965--is alive and clowning, right down to the spinning merry-go-round hat, fluffy Elizabethan collar, red-and-white stripes, snow-white gloves, arching blue eyebrows, and rhinestone-tipped nose. There’s just one difference. This isn’t quite the same Chucko. It’s . . .

Son of Chucko.

“When I retired,” said Chuck Runyon, the original Chucko, reached at his home in Williams, Ore., “I says, ‘OK, now let’s turn everything over to Randy.’ He’s got a fantastic background. He’s a lot more talented than I was as a clown, because he juggles, he does the unicycle and all these other things too. And when I see him sing the Chucko song, or lip-sync, it’s like looking in the mirror! I’m very proud. He just does a beautiful job, and we’re so thrilled that the name is carrying on, and the tradition of the birthday clown is carried on.”

Indeed, since 1984, Chuck’s son, Randy Runyon--onetime Jeepers the Clown with the Circus Vargas and onetime “Chucko Jr.” in the Santa Claus Lane Parade in Hollywood--has donned the Chucko makeup and his father’s original costumes full time, entertaining birthday boys and girls, corporate picnickers, school kids . . .

“I had it built-in,” said Randy, relaxing in the living room of his Canyon Country home. “I was raised with it. I studied my dad real closely all my life. My first professional appearance was at 6 years old in the Santa Claus Lane Parade--an exact replica of the Chucko character. From that I just got the bug.”

The significance of all this is likely to be lost on those who did not grow up in Los Angeles. A little background:

Every kid who lived in Southern California in the ‘50s and early ‘60s knew of Chucko the Birthday Clown. His song refrain, “I’m Chucko! I’m Chucko, I’m Chucko the Birthday Clown!” echoed merrily in their heads. Many of these kids, on their birthdays, appeared as guests on “Chucko the Birthday Clown” on KABC from 1954 to 1962, and KTTV from 1962 to 1965. Imagine a TV show so popular that the guest waiting list was five years long. Well, Chucko’s was--but then, those were the glory days of TV kiddie shows, when guys like Engineer Bill, Sheriff John, Skipper Frank, Captain Jett, Walker Edmiston, Bozo the Clown and Webster Webfoot ruled the roost.

“We were a fraternity of kid-show do-gooders,” said Engineer Bill Stulla, reached at home in Westlake. “We had a wonderful, long-term relationship with children, and I think that kept us young. Those were golden years, at least in my mind. I think it is just magnificent that Randy Runyon is carrying on the Chucko name, and I wish him all the luck in the world.”

The Chucko saga began when Charles (Chuck) Runyon and wife Mildred--real do-it-yourself types--started a door-to-door birthday party service in Long Beach in the early ‘50s. Together, they towed a portable merry-go-round behind a Buick Roadmaster (the “Merry-Gobile”) to kids’ parties.

One night, after a parent had commented, “All you need is a clown,” Mildred sat Chuck down in the bathroom, painted his face, and voila! Chucko was born. (The “o” was added in the grand tradition of paying tribute to Joseph (Joey) Grimaldi, considered to be the father of modern clowning, by pulling the “o” out of Joey.) In 1954, Chucko auditioned for a kids’ show on KABC with 27 other clowns, and to his shock, got the job. The concept was, as Mildred put it, “if Christmas has Santa Claus, and Halloween has a witch, and Easter a bunny, why shouldn’t kids’ birthdays have a clown?”

Chucko the clown was a bona fide Los Angeles celebrity. He danced in the Santa Claus Lane Parade every year (a vivid and inspiring memory for Randy); he appeared at supermarkets with thousands of cheering kids almost every weekend. He was the kind of clown who made sure that all the children had a good time when they played games on his show--even the children who didn’t win.

He was also the kind of clown who went to the Lincoln Heights police station on Christmas Eve to find out which families had a parent in jail, then went out with a police escort to deliver toys to those families.

One day in 1965, KTTV asked Chucko to stop doing his live show for kids and become a videotaped cartoon host. Runyon, who will be 70 in August, said no, the kids were everything, and he retired. He eventually went to Oregon and did shows on cable TV for children with learning disabilities. He remained in L.A. only as a memory, another bit of beloved TV lore for a few million kids.

Until now.

Randy Runyon has, since the mid-’80s, been doing essentially what his dad did before he had a TV show. With wife Joanie (his clown sidekick, Miss Direction), 37-year-old Runyon has become Chucko the Birthday Clown for large private parties, company picnics and occasional TV commercials. And like his dad, Randy is becoming an important childhood memory for thousands of kids, with appearances at about 25 picnics a year.

Aside from stints in real estate and telemarketing--jobs that some might insist are made for clowns--Runyon has pretty much always been into the greasepaint. When he was just 1 year old, his dad and clown legend Jan Natarno (Gogo the Clown) tied a ribbon on his head and pronounced him King of the Clowns. It’s his earliest memory.

“So I’m a little baby gooing and gawing at these two clowns,” Runyon recalled in a soft, low voice, “and they put a ribbon around my head--just playing for the camera, but it kind of set something in my mind that I was going to do that.”

In the mid-1960s, after serving as Chucko Jr. in the Santa Claus Lane Parade (he still has the costume), he served an apprenticeship of sorts at the long-defunct Jungleland amusement park in Thousand Oaks--learning juggling, unicycling and circus acumen in general from the likes of fabled tiger tamer Mabel Stark. In 1972, he joined the Miller-Johnson Circus (now Circus Vargas) and went on the road as Jeepers the Clown, a cowboy figure. He also did everything from tumbling acts to raising the tents, drumming and playing ringmaster during the next eight years of touring the United States and Europe. His first appearances as Chucko (senior) came in 1968 and 1972--right here in the Valley.

“It was the San Fernando Valley Fair in ’68 at Devonshire Downs. Did it on a little dog and pony act. I was 14 years old,” said Randy, smiling at the recollection. “You know, the Chucko makeup was designed for television; it’s fine-line, it’s very delicate, with the hat. So I had designed this cowboy clown called Jeepers, and I did that for Vargas. But when we got back here to L.A. on a Vargas tour in ‘72, at the San Fernando Valley Fairgrounds, they said, ‘Hey, we’re in L.A., do Chucko!’ And they hit me with the lights, our special guest, Chucko the Clown. It was another one of those Adrenalin rushes, and that’s the stuff that keeps you going.”

Still he felt unprepared to assume the Chucko skullcap. After all, his dad was still putting on the clown white once in a while for Oregon TV and special events. After leaving the circus in the late ‘70s, Randy Runyon tried living as a “townie” (circus talk for non-circus folk) and doing telemarketing. (“In the classifieds, it’s the only thing I qualify for. There’s no heading for ‘clowns.’ ”)

For a while, he toured the country with a magic act, then finally settled back in the Valley and began working the home birthday party circus as Jeepers. Chucko was still on his mind, but, as second wife Joanie puts it, “He didn’t want to do it unless he did it right.”

“It just didn’t seem right for me to get out the old Chucko wardrobe and drive out in my old beater--La Bamba, as we called it,” chuckled Randy. “It just didn’t mix. Jeepers could get away with it. My dad was a professional. I was not sure enough of myself.” His eight-year marriage had just ended.

“I just came out of a divorce, the circus--starting to be a townie, getting myself together, and then I had to put all the pieces together and bring it up to working condition,” he said of the Chucko character. “The wardrobe, the voice. . . . “

The Chucko story is also the story of several women: Mildred who invented Chucko and gave her husband the confidence to be a clown; Chuck’s late mother, known as “Mammy,” who lovingly designed and sewed all the Chucko wardrobe; Mammy’s sister, 84-year-old Annabelle Barrick, who now repairs all the Chucko costumes her sister made; and Randy’s wife, Joanie, who gave him the final “you can do it” push--and who reluctantly agreed to become his clown partner, Miss Direction.

“I fought it,” she said laughing. “I didn’t want to be the schlep. . . . Then I found out I really enjoyed the kids. That was my claim to fame before I met Randy--being mom. Well, my kids were grown up and didn’t need me as much. So when I saw the family atmosphere where I could get back into being with kids again, even if they were not my own, it was great.”

But most of all, this is the story of Randy--who is now legally Chucko the Clown, since his father signed over rights to the character, said his mother. Randy so believes that kids are still delighted with the myth of the clown that he goes to great lengths to preserve the illusion. (“That’s why I don’t wear a watch. If you look at your watch, it’s a man’s watch, not a clown’s.”)

Indeed, Randy smokes, Chucko doesn’t; Randy eats, the clown doesn’t. In a recent Taco Bell commercial, Chucko refused to chow down. “Once they heard why, they understood. So I just did a thing with the taco, and gave the high sign--like it’s good, and that was fine. But in some cases, when I’m auditioning or whatever, and I explain, ‘I can’t do that,’ they say, ‘OK, fine, next!’

“I’ve turned down a lot of parts that had a clown do a walk-on with a cigarette in his mouth or something like that, and I just won’t do it. It’s like Santa Claus. It’s just like that stuffed doll that kids have. I work to maintain that image.”

All of which begs the question of TV. Yes, Chucko does commercials, has appeared on the NBC soap “Santa Barbara,” and yes, that was the Birthday Clown dancing up a storm on the “Arsenio Hall Show” last year after Arsenio announced that because President Bush is in good health, Dan Quayle is still vice president. Randy makes no bones about it--he would like to see Chucko return to TV, with birthday parties for kids, but he is afraid TV no longer has room for such warm, simple programming.

But up in Williams, Ore., there’s an old retired clown who disagrees.

“Definitely there’s room for a Chucko show!” said Chuck Runyon, who now spends his time raising quail, ducks, pheasants and peacocks with his wife on Chucko’s Bird Farm. “Pee-wee Herman projected the love, he took it back, he paid attention to the child. He didn’t put them down, he only built them up. And Mister Rogers--there’s a great amount of love from this man. And that proves the point! I’d like to see a trial television show to prove that it is wanted, needed, desired. Parents who watched when they were kids they would tell their child, ‘Hey, here’s a show you’re gonna like.’ And they will, I know they will! Because kids love clowns! It would prove to the big, as we call ‘em, Madison Avenue time buyers in New York that television has a heart! Kids love clowns!”