Sonny Fox of Wonderama at James Madison High School Brooklyn, NY 4/29/17 PART I

Описание: The Sonny Fox Show at James Madison High School Sonia Lerner Auditorium 4/29/17. Sonny is a James Madison Alumnus and joins a very long list of distinguished Madison Alumni. This includes no less than five Noble Prize winners which put this NYC public school at #3 in the world for graduating future Nobel laureates.

Independent television network Metromedia (born from the former DuMont Network) hired Fox to host Wonderama on its New York flagship station, WABD (soon to become WNEW-TV), succeeding the team of Bill Britten and Doris Faye. Hiring Fox ended what some called the "musical-hosts syndrome" that Wonderama had for its first few years. The show had been created as well as originally hosted by actor-comedian Sandy Becker, who became a New York children's program star in his own right. Fox became Wonderama's sole host for eight years, until August 1967.

Suave, witty, and congenial, Fox juggled the slapstick and the serious, turning the marathon Wonderama (during Fox's tenure the show ran four hours Sunday mornings) into a weekly academy at which anything could happen and often did; whether Shakespearean dramatizations, guest celebrities, magic demonstrations (customarily by legendary magician James "The Amazing" Randi), art instruction, spelling bees, learning games, or other elements.[citation needed]

Fox was deft at turning a potential haphazard hodgepodge into a seamless whole, and he was consistent in never talking down to his young guests or viewers, treating them with legitimate respect and tolerance. The result was that Wonderama was rarely if ever known to have bored either the children who appeared on the show (the segments showing the weekly 25 or 30 children waving cross-armed, leading in and out of commercial breaks, were as much a signature as Fox himself) or those who watched it.

For a few years, it seemed Fox owned children's weekend television in the New York metropolitan area. In the same year he joined Wonderama, he reached back to the "color war" team competitions he knew as a child in summer camp to create and host Just For Fun, a two-and-a-half hour Saturday morning show involving two teams of kids in blue and gold jumpsuits to compete in contests ranging from the mildly athletic to the wildly bizarre. One mainstay was the Treasure Chest competition where one contestant from each team would be placed in front of a locked chest and 1,000 keys. When the winner found the key to open his or her chest, a siren would sound, and whatever was happening at the time (be it cartoon, commercial, skit, or whatever else) was interrupted. The winner would stand with arms outstretched and a towering pile of board games and toys would be placed in his or her arms.

A year later, Fox hosted ABC's first original Saturday morning program, On Your Mark, a game show in which children ages 9 through 13 answered questions about various professions. On Your Mark lasted one season, but the lively Just For Fun lasted until 1965.

Fox has since become an Emmy award-winning producer of his Broadway Songwriters Series, has his own website, and has a "Wonderama with Sonny Fox" Facebook group hosted by Randy Bucknoff, who is both administrator of the group and of Fox's website.

Fox (at 90 years of age) recently[when?] met with President Obama in Washington D.C. at an event in the Israeli Embassy.[1]