Speaker 1: Because of your extraordinary bravery and intelligence, you have earned
Speaker 1: the titles of Honorary Corporal Rusty and Honorary Private Rint Tintin.
Speaker 1: Ever since Rin Tin Tin, the superstar German shepherd who
Speaker 1: on screen rescued plenty of people and off screen, rescued
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers from bankruptcy in the nineteen twenties, dogs have
Speaker 1: played leading roles in Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Look there's Tuto, where do you come from from?
Speaker 1: Kansas's most courageous Cairn.
Speaker 2: Terrier Who's come to take us to dog?
Speaker 1: To the collie who seemed to save more people in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties than the polio vaccine did. To the
Speaker 1: Golden retriever who held court in the air Bud movies,
Speaker 1: Doots Don't played basketball?
Speaker 3: Was the matter?
Speaker 1: Gentlemen?
Speaker 3: Afraid your team might get beat by a dog?
Speaker 1: But I'm not sure any dog has ever played a
Speaker 1: role as multifaceted as the one played by the Jack
Speaker 1: Russell terrier, who starred in the nineteen nineties PBS television
Speaker 1: series Wishbone.
Speaker 2: Believe me it was.
Speaker 4: Nothing, Hey, whishbird, Let's have some meat.
Speaker 5: Look?
Speaker 6: Did I hear you say?
Speaker 7: Me?
Speaker 2: Love?
Speaker 1: That dog's real name was soccer now as Wishbone, he
Speaker 1: didn't just beg for treats.
Speaker 6: Soccer was a total action hero dog. Soccer was winning
Speaker 6: battles and getting knighted and solving mysteries.
Speaker 2: Look closely, the clues could be anywhere.
Speaker 1: No one is above suspicion. Wishbone, it turns out, had
Speaker 1: a rich fantasy life. In each episode, he imagined himself
Speaker 1: as the hero in a different work of classic literature.
Speaker 1: Viewers at home saw him leading a merry band of
Speaker 1: outlaws against the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Speaker 6: Robin Hood actual of us.
Speaker 1: So romancing like Shakespeare's Romeo.
Speaker 8: With Love's like wings, did I or perch these walls?
Speaker 1: And inspired by Jules Vern digging deep, going where no
Speaker 1: dog or man had gone before, proof.
Speaker 8: That we are on the right track, on one to
Speaker 8: the Sun, God of the Eye.
Speaker 1: For the show's target audience of six to eleven year olds,
Speaker 1: Soccer became a tween idol.
Speaker 3: I have pictures of people waiting in line two blocks
Speaker 3: long just to see this dog.
Speaker 2: What's the story, Wishbone? What's this?
Speaker 1: Your dreaming?
Speaker 9: Enough such?
Speaker 1: Today there's a whole pack of grown ups out there
Speaker 1: who were first winged on Mark Twain or the Legend
Speaker 1: of Faust, or the Greek epics through Wishbone.
Speaker 9: I remember, like on my tenth birthday, I think it
Speaker 9: was we were gonna go mini golfing and I insisted,
Speaker 9: but we had to stay home for Wishbone first, and as.
Speaker 1: A twenty five year old a mere puff myself, I
Speaker 1: got to write for Wishbone. I've told people that writing
Speaker 1: for the show was like an assignment from an English
Speaker 1: professor on assets.
Speaker 6: It totally was.
Speaker 1: So much went into this show to make it a hit,
Speaker 1: but none of it would have worked without the top dog.
Speaker 6: I think every movie star has eyes that tell stories,
Speaker 6: and Soccer had the most amazing dog eyes.
Speaker 7: He was a magic little creature man, he really was.
Speaker 7: He looked so good on camera.
Speaker 3: I shouldn't say this, so he wasn't the smartest dog
Speaker 3: I've ever turned, but he was so devoted once he
Speaker 3: learned it. He would walk on water for me. He
Speaker 3: just loved to be out with me working. To him,
Speaker 3: it wasn't work.
Speaker 1: From CBS Sunday Morning and iHeart I'm Morocca and this
Speaker 1: is mobituaries, This mobid Wishbone. June twenty sixth, two thousand
Speaker 1: and one. Death of a working dog. All right, So
Speaker 1: what was Wishbone about. Well, let's have some fans who
Speaker 1: grew up with the show explain.
Speaker 9: So it was called Wishbone, and it was this little dog,
Speaker 9: Jack Russell Terrier.
Speaker 8: Wishbone has a love for classic literature.
Speaker 1: And then he would like magically transport himself into stories.
Speaker 1: Wishbone is a children's television show that aired on PBS's
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, and it is the only.
Speaker 6: Reason why I ever passed in English class because I
Speaker 6: did not do the reading.
Speaker 1: Okay, now my turn. The show was about a dog
Speaker 1: named Wishbone who lived in a town called Oakdale. Wishbone
Speaker 1: would get into all sorts of adventures with his owner,
Speaker 1: a boy named Joe, and the other neighbor hood kids,
Speaker 1: and those adventures would remind Wishbone of stay with me
Speaker 1: here stories from classic literature. It could be a novel
Speaker 1: like Treasure Island, and epic poem like Homer's Odyssey in
Speaker 1: African folk tale like Anansi the Spider.
Speaker 2: Wishbone read a lot.
Speaker 1: He didn't waste time watching TV, just go with it,
Speaker 1: and so each episode alternated between Wishbone living his regular
Speaker 1: life in Oakdale and his fantasy life as the hero
Speaker 1: of classic literature. Twin plots thematically connected more about his
Speaker 1: fantasy life later. Basically, Wishbone the show was all about story,
Speaker 1: but the story of the dog who played Wishbone begins
Speaker 1: with an animal trainer named Jackie Captain. Hello Jackie, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's Moe.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodnessistant so long.
Speaker 2: It's been more than twenty five years.
Speaker 1: Jackie's been living off the grid way up in Haynes, Alaska.
Speaker 1: You're not easy to get a hold of.
Speaker 3: Well, that's the reason I came up here. No, I
Speaker 3: retired eight years ago. It's beautiful up here. Good fishing
Speaker 3: bears walked through my property.
Speaker 1: Do you think the bears know your background with animals
Speaker 1: and that they kind of respect it?
Speaker 3: Well, I've kind of told them, Look, we're on common
Speaker 3: ground here. You leave me alone, I'll leave you alone.
Speaker 1: Jackie actually began her career in motion pictures working with
Speaker 1: wild animals, including bears, but she learned much of what
Speaker 1: she knows about training dogs from famed Hollywood trainer Frank Ann.
Speaker 3: I went to work for him, and that was probably
Speaker 3: the best experience I had learning how to do dogs
Speaker 3: for motion picture.
Speaker 1: Frank Inn worked on Lassie, I Love Lucy. He trained
Speaker 1: Audrey Hepburn's orange tabby cat in Breakfast to Tiffany's. He
Speaker 1: wrangled all five hundred of the animals comprising LIMEE. Clampitt's
Speaker 1: cast of critters on the Beverly Hillbillies. Critters will new
Speaker 1: things for that girl, wouldn't do for nobody else. Here
Speaker 1: he is training the lovable mutt who's starred in the
Speaker 1: Benji movies.
Speaker 8: Come on, nudget, Benji, Please, come on, come on, nudget, nudget.
Speaker 1: Good kid, Look here, feet up, stay a spe And.
Speaker 3: He just was this larger than life character, big man
Speaker 3: with a big hand of our mustache and a captain's hat.
Speaker 3: And you just couldn't forget him if he ever saw
Speaker 3: him work a dog.
Speaker 1: Frank Inn helped Jackie launch her own career. She worked
Speaker 1: on the nineteen eighty three horror movie Kujojo about a
Speaker 1: rabbit Saint Bernard Kuser, which manner, and she helped Ethan
Speaker 1: Hawke bond with a surly wolfhound in White Fang.
Speaker 2: Just wanted to pet him.
Speaker 1: White Fang was shot up in Haines, Alaska. Jackie says
Speaker 1: she you then that one day she'd retire. There have
Speaker 1: you got any dogs up there.
Speaker 3: I only have one dog left, which is really weird
Speaker 3: for me. I have the Beverly Hills Chihuahua Rosa.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, and remember Rosa. There's nothing wrong with
Speaker 2: being different.
Speaker 1: Different.
Speaker 2: It is just a nice way of saying run.
Speaker 3: Yeah. She's twelve now, she only weighs three pounds.
Speaker 1: She's the Beverly Hills Chihuaba and she's living in Haines, Alaska,
Speaker 1: surrounded by grizzlies.
Speaker 2: How's that working out?
Speaker 3: Well, she doesn't go out much, I mean, because everything
Speaker 3: wants to get her, the eagles, I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: so she pretty much just stays in the cabin.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: But Jackie, I know you're retired, but this just screams
Speaker 1: out for a Beverly Hills Chihuaba sequel, I mean, escape
Speaker 1: to Alaska.
Speaker 3: I know it does, doesn't it. I like that idea.
Speaker 1: Jackie met the dog who would one day play Wishbone
Speaker 1: back in nineteen eighty eight in Connecticut when he was
Speaker 1: just a week old, and.
Speaker 3: I said, that is the cutest pubby I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Jackie took him home that very day and named him Soccer.
Speaker 1: But because of Soccer's markings, brown patches around his left
Speaker 1: eye and right ear. Casting directors thought he looked too
Speaker 1: much like the Little Rascals dog Pete. Pretty soon it
Speaker 1: seemed clear Soccer's acting career was going nowhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he didn't do much at all until he did
Speaker 3: Wishbone and he was six or seven.
Speaker 1: I think six or seven in dog years.
Speaker 2: You do the math.
Speaker 1: He was getting up there has been without ever having.
Speaker 3: Been my husband. And all my friends were like, really, Jaggy,
Speaker 3: why do you spend so much time training on this dog.
Speaker 3: I like this dog. He's my buddy. I don't care
Speaker 3: if he ever works. I like this dog. And they'd
Speaker 3: all laugh at man. I'm telling you, one day, this
Speaker 3: dog is going to get what he deserves.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety three, auditions for the lead role in
Speaker 1: Wishbone were announced, Butackie was tied up on another project.
Speaker 3: I was in Montana working on River Wild.
Speaker 1: And she wasn't particularly interested.
Speaker 3: I'm tied up on a feature movie.
Speaker 1: Here, you know, sidebar. I loved the River Wild, an
Speaker 1: action adventure starring a buff Meryl Streep opposite an evil
Speaker 1: Kevin Bacon.
Speaker 6: Woo woo woo.
Speaker 2: You the dog expended who right, now who, I think I'll.
Speaker 1: Go oh oo oo oo.
Speaker 2: The dog who.
Speaker 1: But the Wishbone team liked Soccer's look and prevailed on
Speaker 1: Jackie to bring him in for an audition, and Soccer
Speaker 1: wowed them.
Speaker 2: He wasn't just charming, he.
Speaker 5: Pulled off all of his tricks with the cool, confidence,
Speaker 5: even cockiness of a jung Claude van Dam. He sealed
Speaker 5: the deal with a backflip, which you can see in
Speaker 5: the show's opening credits. Now, Jackie could get Soccer to
Speaker 5: do a lot, but she couldn't make him.
Speaker 7: Actually, when I first was asked to audition to be
Speaker 7: the voice of Wishbone, I had no idea what the
Speaker 7: show was.
Speaker 1: That became the job of stand up comic and voiceover
Speaker 1: actor Larry Brantley.
Speaker 7: And I've done this my whole life with animals. I
Speaker 7: watch an animal and I think I know what they're thinking.
Speaker 7: I don't know why I think that, but I'm just
Speaker 7: I'm convinced I know what's going on in that tiny
Speaker 7: little head, and I'm pretty good at verbalizing it.
Speaker 1: Wishbone had his voice, and so in the summer of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, trainer Jackie Captain packed her bags and
Speaker 1: Soccer for the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, where Wishbone would
Speaker 1: be filmed. I know, Texas in the summer. It's not pretty.
Speaker 1: But any skepticism Jackie might have felt had melted away.
Speaker 1: She was now sold on the idea of the show.
Speaker 3: You know, this could be the last thing that I do,
Speaker 3: and it seems like it's important. It's educationalal for children,
Speaker 3: it'll get them to read again. And it would just
Speaker 3: hit me, it drew me, and it was like this
Speaker 3: little dog could really bring this alive. Of course, Soccer
Speaker 3: would never go with anybody else. He'd always been.
Speaker 2: With me, so you had to be there.
Speaker 10: Well.
Speaker 3: I mean, he was a great little dog, but he
Speaker 3: had a soft side to him. And if I wasn't there,
Speaker 3: I don't know that he would have danced the jig
Speaker 3: like he did.
Speaker 1: And in fact, he did dance jigs. I mean he
Speaker 1: did kind of every behavior.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 3: Oh, there was times when we do production meetings that
Speaker 3: I'd take really, folks in my head, he doesn't have thumbs.
Speaker 3: I don't know how he's going to shoot a bow
Speaker 3: and arrow. It was like, oh, my goodness, who wrote this?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: I was one of the people who wrote for Wishbone,
Speaker 1: and writing for this dog would end up being one
Speaker 1: of the most formative experiences of my life.
Speaker 2: Did you ever think you'd end up writing for a dog?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 6: I didn't, No, I did not.
Speaker 1: That's my friend Stephanie Simpson. She was Wishbone's supervising producer,
Speaker 1: story editor, and head writer.
Speaker 6: However, in the early days, when I was trying to
Speaker 6: figure out how to do it, I remembered that I
Speaker 6: had always made up dialogue and sort of monologues for
Speaker 6: our cat, and so in thinking about Wishbone, I don't know,
Speaker 6: it just seemed natural. Suddenly, I have to say, to
Speaker 6: write Wishbone someone's pet as having this very rich inner
Speaker 6: life that you were not aware of.
Speaker 1: Over my career, I've been fortunate to work for a
Speaker 1: few people who put everything they humanly could into making
Speaker 1: something good, who wouldn't let up until it was as
Speaker 1: right as it could be. But Stephanie has been singular
Speaker 1: in my life. She taught me more than anyone how
Speaker 1: to tell a story. If Soccer had Jackie, I had Stephanie.
Speaker 1: Sephanie had majored in Russian literature at Yale and earned
Speaker 1: a Masters in drama at Harvard. She was perfectly trained
Speaker 1: for this bizarre task. Of course, she couldn't do it alone.
Speaker 1: And that's when I got the call. At the time,
Speaker 1: I was in a production of South Pacific at New
Speaker 1: Jersey's paper Mill Playhouse.
Speaker 4: We got volleyball, any games we got.
Speaker 1: Stephanie brought me down to Dallas to interview with Wishbone
Speaker 1: executive producer Rick Duffield, who hired me as a staff writer.
Speaker 1: I began working with Stephanie in what felt like a
Speaker 1: storytelling boot camp. Now, as I explained earlier, each episode
Speaker 1: of the show connected a modern day storyline in the
Speaker 1: fictional town of Oakdale to a different work of classic literature.
Speaker 1: Here's Wishbone as Romeo in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
Speaker 2: Who is her mother?
Speaker 10: Her mother is the lady of the house?
Speaker 6: Oh, Lady of the Ooh is she a capulate?
Speaker 2: Who is that gentleman? His name is Romeo?
Speaker 1: Now in the contemporary plot line for that episode, one
Speaker 1: of the neighborhood kids, Samantha, falls in love with a
Speaker 1: beagle named Rosie at the local pound and wants to
Speaker 1: adopt her. Would you're dad that.
Speaker 2: You have a go if you sell this dog?
Speaker 4: He couldn't say no.
Speaker 6: The contemporary world was a way to show that there
Speaker 6: were themes and ideas in these in these great books
Speaker 6: that could be translated into a kid's life. So you
Speaker 6: could fall in love with the dog at the pound,
Speaker 6: and suddenly that could be the story of Romeo and Juliet.
Speaker 6: Now there wasn't going to be a suicide in the
Speaker 6: contemporary story as there is in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
Speaker 6: But there could be heartbreak. There could be a dog
Speaker 6: is adopted before you are able to adopt it.
Speaker 2: Sam. Sorry, I know how much you liked Rosie.
Speaker 6: And so you have to deal with some kind of loss.
Speaker 4: I'm glad she's okay.
Speaker 2: I mean, she really needed to get home.
Speaker 10: For me.
Speaker 6: The exciting thing was trying to match the thread to
Speaker 6: what I thought would capture a kid's imagination and also
Speaker 6: their hearts. What would they care the most about?
Speaker 1: And it never occurred to you that an episode should
Speaker 1: with all due respect, because I have nothing against Cliff's notes,
Speaker 1: and they pronounced Cliff's notes, and for somebody who has trouble.
Speaker 2: With essays, it's a lot of essays.
Speaker 1: But anyway, but because it could have been in other hands,
Speaker 1: it would have been Okay, we're going to do the
Speaker 1: totality of this book in the half hour.
Speaker 6: No, that never Actually, I never felt pressure to do that.
Speaker 6: What I felt pressure to do was to get someone
Speaker 6: to fall in love with the idea.
Speaker 2: Of the book. The idea of the book.
Speaker 6: The idea of the book, not the plot, the lot
Speaker 6: of the because there's only so many plots in the world.
Speaker 6: Plot really, to me, in a book is not the point.
Speaker 6: The point is how the author has taken a set
Speaker 6: of events and made them mean something different than they've
Speaker 6: ever met before because of who exactly is doing them
Speaker 6: and why they're doing them.
Speaker 1: If LeVar Burton's show Reading Rainbow was teaching kids how
Speaker 1: to read, Wishbone was showing kids why great books matter.
Speaker 6: And to me, it's not like the authors of these
Speaker 6: books never wrote them so that the books themselves would
Speaker 6: be kind of locked away from everyday people. I mean
Speaker 6: no offense to literature majors, but I think it would
Speaker 6: be very disappointing for Savantes to find out that only
Speaker 6: a small group of select students at a university we're
Speaker 6: reading don Quixote. That would be super sad for him.
Speaker 1: That's a work that's so sprawling, many ideas there.
Speaker 6: Its like so long to read it, mo, and I had,
Speaker 6: you know, maybe three days.
Speaker 1: Servante's's Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is about
Speaker 1: an idealistic man chasing the impossible dream of becoming a knight.
Speaker 1: In the Wishbone version, Joe chases a long shot of
Speaker 1: his own eighty.
Speaker 4: Six consecutive free throws in five minutes. That's all I
Speaker 4: need to hold the record for any kid. N there's sixteen.
Speaker 4: Then i'd be in the Encyclopedia of World Records.
Speaker 2: Do you really think it's possible.
Speaker 6: Sure, Joe was trying to make a certain number of
Speaker 6: baskets and he was having trouble. He would get nervous
Speaker 6: and choke. He imagined that his life would be amazing
Speaker 6: if he could just achieve this one great thing, and
Speaker 6: in the end he doesn't achieve it.
Speaker 4: You were great, but I didn't do the impossible.
Speaker 2: I'm not going down in history or anything.
Speaker 4: I'm not extraordinary. Hey, you don't have to perform impossible
Speaker 4: feats to be extraordinary.
Speaker 2: Just live your life. Life is an ongoing adventure.
Speaker 6: But it was the act of trying that matters.
Speaker 1: I've told people that writing for the show was like
Speaker 1: an assignment from an English professor on Assey.
Speaker 6: It totally was Yes, you are so right, that's a
Speaker 6: perfect way to describe it. And what's so funny mo
Speaker 6: is looking back on it, I realized how crazy it was,
Speaker 6: but at the time when we were doing it, I
Speaker 6: didn't think it was that crazy, and it didn't seem
Speaker 6: nuts until later.
Speaker 1: To pull this nutty premise off, we had to stick
Speaker 1: to some hard and fast rules. For example, yes, Wishbone talks,
Speaker 1: thanks to Larry Brantley, but human characters in Wishbone's life
Speaker 1: in Oakdale don't hear him. Only the lucky viewers hear
Speaker 1: what he's thinking. But when Wishbone is imagining himself as
Speaker 1: a character in a book, he's acting opposite human actors
Speaker 1: who can hear him.
Speaker 4: Mister Darcy, we should be a darling and escorted me
Speaker 4: to the punch bow.
Speaker 5: Yes, of course, excuse us, miss Mega the minute.
Speaker 6: Sorry.
Speaker 1: Part of what was so what was so well immediately
Speaker 1: funny was that in the fantasy sequences that Wishbone was
Speaker 1: treated as a human.
Speaker 6: I imagine really that Wishbone was a kid. It was
Speaker 6: a stand in for a kid who when they act
Speaker 6: out stories and they're the star of the movie or
Speaker 6: the comic book in their imaginations, or when they're playing
Speaker 6: it out with their friends, nobody stops and goes, well,
Speaker 6: you're a kid doing this. You're a kid, not a king.
Speaker 6: It's funnier that the dog just takes it for granted
Speaker 6: that he's doing it and this is his imagination, and
Speaker 6: everyone will treat him in his imagination the way he
Speaker 6: would expect to be treated.
Speaker 2: People love the show so much, you know.
Speaker 6: It makes me so happy. And one of my goals
Speaker 6: and one of the things I think I said to
Speaker 6: you and to the whole crew and we were starting,
Speaker 6: is we have an opportunity to be the first people
Speaker 6: to introduce these stories and images into a child's imagination.
Speaker 1: And I had to tell you also, Stephanie. You know,
Speaker 1: for all these years since the project, anything I've tried
Speaker 1: to do, I end up going back to wish Phone
Speaker 1: and what I learned from you and working on that,
Speaker 1: and you know, jack to make me grow well now,
Speaker 1: but Jackie, you know, talking about training wish Phone, I thought,
Speaker 1: I know, this is a weird way to put it,
Speaker 1: but it was like Stephanie trained me really because I
Speaker 1: came into it and you know it was I realized
Speaker 1: I didn't know what I was doing at first, and
Speaker 1: I am so grateful to you for I'm getting emotional,
Speaker 1: but I'm so grateful.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 7: Mo.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm I'm so grateful to hear you say that,
Speaker 6: because I was under a lot of pressure and it
Speaker 6: was difficult.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's scary, right, I don't think I don't know
Speaker 1: that you were scared. I was scared at first, and
Speaker 1: then you gave me, you gave me the courage to
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I think also that for me, I loved each of
Speaker 6: these books so much. This is going to sound corny,
Speaker 6: but for me, the joy of it, even though it
Speaker 6: was also scary. The thing that over helped me overcome
Speaker 6: any fear that I had was once I actually now
Speaker 6: I'm going to get emotional.
Speaker 10: Once I actually read the book and fell in love
Speaker 10: with it, it seemed like not an easy thing, but
Speaker 10: an important thing to transmit that to someone else, to
Speaker 10: share that with somebody else, And that was what helped
Speaker 10: me overcome the fear of doing it. Was actually the
Speaker 10: sheer love of the story and the belief that other
Speaker 10: people needed to fall in love with it too.
Speaker 1: There's that proverb it's always darkest before the dawn. That's
Speaker 1: certainly my experience with writing the darkness part. Stephanie taught
Speaker 1: me by example how important it is not to give
Speaker 1: up and how satisfying it is to come out the
Speaker 1: other side.
Speaker 2: Wish Mode is.
Speaker 1: Where I learned not to despair in creating something because
Speaker 1: it's like, oh my god, it's really looking dire right now,
Speaker 1: it's really looking dire. But this is the project where
Speaker 1: I learned that it's at that point that you just
Speaker 1: keep pushing through and.
Speaker 2: You're going to get there.
Speaker 6: That's where the leap will happen.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: I still remember how I felt finishing the first episode
Speaker 1: I wrote for Wishbone, based on HG. Wells's The Time.
Speaker 8: Machine System destination on Time on New In case of emergency,
Speaker 8: keep your heads and arms inside the vehicle, oh stop.
Speaker 1: I remember finishing, and I stayed up all night on
Speaker 1: New Year's Eve nineteen ninety four, and it was my
Speaker 1: best New Year's Eve ever finishing that script, and it
Speaker 1: kind of locking into place quite literally at dawn on
Speaker 1: New Year's Day nineteen ninety five, and that felt so
Speaker 1: and so I like my New Year's Eves to be
Speaker 1: promising and not frivolous to be.
Speaker 6: Epic creation moments of creations. I love it. I also
Speaker 6: think it's so fitting that you were writing the time
Speaker 6: Machine as the year turned over. That is kind of perfect.
Speaker 2: How will you remember Soccer? Oh?
Speaker 6: I will always remember Soccer as the dog who made
Speaker 6: what I imagined in my head even better than I
Speaker 6: had imagined it. I really will. I thought, how will
Speaker 6: this ever actually happen? How will we ever actually do this?
Speaker 6: And then once I saw Soccer on screen, I felt
Speaker 6: this relief that this was going to work and it
Speaker 6: was going to be even better than I thought it
Speaker 6: could be. And that's how I will remember Soccer and
Speaker 6: be grateful to Soccer always for that.
Speaker 2: Be grateful to him.
Speaker 6: I am grateful to him and his beautiful brown eyes.
Speaker 1: Wishbone wasn't just the best red dog on TV. He
Speaker 1: was also the best dressed. I mean, this dog was
Speaker 1: a total clothes horse. Just his hats alone. There was
Speaker 1: the top hat for when he played Doctor Jekyl and
Speaker 1: mister Hyde. The adorable straw hat he wore is Tom
Speaker 1: Sawyer the Bycocking. That's the name of that cute little
Speaker 1: hattie sported as Robinhood Wishbone. Superfans like Claire Conley vividly
Speaker 1: recall his costumes. There was an episode where it was
Speaker 1: The Tempest and he was aerial and had this sort
Speaker 1: of like flowy costume that was really cute that I
Speaker 1: liked a lot. Trust me, you'll want to look up
Speaker 1: Wishbone's Tempest to wardrobe. We're talking Liberachi level over the top.
Speaker 1: Costume designer Stephen Chewedadge and his team dressed an entire
Speaker 1: cast in a different period specific wardrobe each episode, head
Speaker 1: to toe or head to tail in the case of
Speaker 1: our star. Chewed Edge talked to Entertainment Tonight in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five.
Speaker 3: The challenge is sizing down human clothes and making them
Speaker 3: actually fit a dog.
Speaker 4: Dogs have a different anatomy than than humans, as is obvious, and.
Speaker 2: Of course too, we have to we have to make
Speaker 2: things that he will wear well.
Speaker 1: For Ivanhoe, he was wearing chain mail. Dogs don't wear
Speaker 1: chain mail ordinarily.
Speaker 3: Well, they don't wear pants either.
Speaker 1: That's soccer's trainer, Jackie Captain again, Mark Twain.
Speaker 3: Remember he had pants and we'd all laugh, you know,
Speaker 3: I'd never had him backflip with pants. Yeah, he kind
Speaker 3: of looked at me like, really, yeah, you can do it,
Speaker 3: It's okay. So that took a few days for him
Speaker 3: to get used to the pants.
Speaker 1: Of course, it wasn't just that backflip you saw on
Speaker 1: the opening credits. Soccer had to learn all sorts of
Speaker 1: new tricks and performed them in costume. Jackie trained him
Speaker 1: to belly crawl through the fog of war in the
Speaker 1: Red Patch of Courage episode, she trained him to pull
Speaker 1: the lever on the time machine.
Speaker 3: I think when we went there we had like fifteen behaviors,
Speaker 3: different tricks, and by the time we finished Wishbone, he
Speaker 3: had like forty tricks. I was like, how many tricks
Speaker 3: can one little dog store in his little brain? But
Speaker 3: he was so devoted once he learned it. He would
Speaker 3: walk on water for me.
Speaker 1: Well you say he'd walk on water for you. But
Speaker 1: to be fair, he didn't really like water, did he.
Speaker 3: No, he didn't.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's a bit I don't like water.
Speaker 2: Most of the water work.
Speaker 1: Including an epic scene from the Odyssey episode, was handled
Speaker 1: by a stunt dog named Phoebe Daily. Yes, there were
Speaker 1: other dogs.
Speaker 6: Phoebe was amazing, and Phoebe was fearless right, she was
Speaker 6: Hammler to Linda Hamilton, Phoebe could leap off of things,
Speaker 6: she could swim lap, she I think sat on a horse.
Speaker 1: At one point there was another stunt double. And I
Speaker 1: say this affectionately, but this dog had a face for radio.
Speaker 1: I mean, this was a dog that I remember looking
Speaker 1: a little Jimmy Duranty like. Is that a fair way
Speaker 1: of characterizing Slugger or my being unfair?
Speaker 3: Oh, Slugger, he was so cute. He's such a sweet dog.
Speaker 3: I forgot about Slugger.
Speaker 1: Sorry, Slugger, but rest assured. Soccer was in almost every scene.
Speaker 6: But what's interesting about the other dogs is that none
Speaker 6: of them were close up dogs. It was still Soccer
Speaker 6: who was the star. The wishbone, those markings, those eyes,
Speaker 6: and one other thing I can say about Soccer's acting
Speaker 6: was his ability to look focused. Soccer's look at the
Speaker 6: other actor appeared as if he really was taking in
Speaker 6: what they were saying.
Speaker 1: I remember on set after the director called action, often
Speaker 1: the only other voice you'd hear was Jackie's speaking directly
Speaker 1: to her dog.
Speaker 3: When I was just working him on the set, my
Speaker 3: voice would be just kind of normal. I rehearse him
Speaker 3: to something Gomark day. Good. But then when we were
Speaker 3: done and he did exactly what I wanted, I wanted
Speaker 3: him to know that that was correct, and I'd go
Speaker 3: good for you good, and you could see that he'd
Speaker 3: be like, yes, I get it, and that means a
Speaker 3: lot to them. Or when we were doing backflip, that's
Speaker 3: a really hard behavior, and I'd always go ready, ready,
Speaker 3: and that kind of geared him up to what we
Speaker 3: were doing.
Speaker 1: Ready flip. The show debuted on October ninth, nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: and soon developed a with all due respect to Kujo
Speaker 1: rapid following.
Speaker 8: As you know, Wishbone is the star of the mega.
Speaker 4: Popular, award winning children's show on PBS Design to introduce
Speaker 4: kids to literature.
Speaker 1: I give you once again the Wishbone super fans.
Speaker 2: What more could you ask for?
Speaker 1: It's the perfect kid show. You got a cute dog,
Speaker 1: you got education.
Speaker 9: I remember my first exposure to like William Shakespeare was
Speaker 9: from this frickin' dog. We were just very wishbun obsessed
Speaker 9: in my house.
Speaker 1: Growing up outside Albany, New York. Aaron McDonough was a
Speaker 1: loyal viewer.
Speaker 9: I remember going to the library with my mom and
Speaker 9: being big stack of books and Faust was in there,
Speaker 9: which was one of my favorite episodes. And you know
Speaker 9: in that one he sells his soul to the devil
Speaker 9: for a woman, and the librarian looked at me like
Speaker 9: dead in the faces. This is not appropriate for children.
Speaker 9: You cannot take out this book. And I was like
Speaker 9: it was on Wishbone.
Speaker 1: Wishbone won several Daytime Emmys, including for those dazzling costumes.
Speaker 1: The show also won a Peabody Award for Broadcast Storytelling Excellence. Wishbone,
Speaker 1: presented here by Dan Rather, a diminutive canine with a
Speaker 1: taste for classic literature, is the star of this next
Speaker 1: imaginative series. Soccer was now a bona fide star.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you couldn't take him anywhere. You couldn't take
Speaker 3: him to a public park, no way. I'd be traveling
Speaker 3: to an airport. I had to cover his credup for
Speaker 3: the towel so people didn't see his face because we
Speaker 3: wouldn't get through the airport.
Speaker 2: You're kidding.
Speaker 3: And I have pictures of people waiting in line two
Speaker 3: blocks long just to see this dog. Geez. I mean,
Speaker 3: it was just incredible just to see him.
Speaker 1: Larry Brantley, the voice of Wishbone, remembers one incident at
Speaker 1: the height of soccer celebrity. During a promotional trip to DC.
Speaker 1: Soccer stayed in one night while Larry and the other
Speaker 1: humans went out for dinner. When they came back, they
Speaker 1: found their hotel suite in disarray.
Speaker 7: He trashed it. He went after the comforter on the bed,
Speaker 7: tore that both the pillowcases and pillows gone. He crawled
Speaker 7: under the bed. You know that black matting that holds
Speaker 7: the box bring in all that's out just cluttered around
Speaker 7: the room like confetti. She was so upset, and I'm like, Jackie,
Speaker 7: this was his rockstar moment.
Speaker 1: So what happened after Wishbone ended? What did soccer do?
Speaker 3: He just ran the ranch and hung out with me,
Speaker 3: and you know, I just really felt like he gave
Speaker 3: me his heart. And I also didn't want him on
Speaker 3: film because he was so recognizable as Wishbone and everybody's
Speaker 3: going to see him and go, that's Wishbob. What's he
Speaker 3: doing that for? And I think he really deserved his
Speaker 3: time to retire because he did his job. He never
Speaker 3: let me down, he never quit me, And to me,
Speaker 3: that's the ultimate.
Speaker 1: Soccer died on June twenty sixth two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: He was thirteen.
Speaker 3: I don't think you ever get used to it. I've
Speaker 3: had dogs my whole life, and you never get used
Speaker 3: to losing one of them. People think, oh, she has
Speaker 3: a lot of dogs, that it's not hard for her. No,
Speaker 3: it's really hard. I missed him a lot. I still
Speaker 3: miss him.
Speaker 2: What kind of a reaction did his death get.
Speaker 3: I didn't really tell anybody for a year or so.
Speaker 3: I just you know, it's such a personal thing. He
Speaker 3: was a public dog on video, but he was still
Speaker 3: my private dog. He was my dog, and that's between
Speaker 3: me and him. And I didn't want people to see
Speaker 3: him when he got really old, and he couldn't hardly see.
Speaker 3: You know, everybody's going to get old. I wanted him
Speaker 3: to have dignity because he was such a pretty outgoing, happy,
Speaker 3: go lucky kind of guy. Yeah. I was sorry to
Speaker 3: see him go.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 3: I apologize for being so hard to get a hold
Speaker 3: of it. You know, when you retire, you become very irresponsible.
Speaker 2: Good for you.
Speaker 1: When I think of soccer now, I think of the
Speaker 1: former kids who still get excited when I tell them
Speaker 1: I wrote for the show. I think of the blazing
Speaker 1: heat of the Texas summer when we shot outside, and
Speaker 1: how jealous I was that Soccer had an air conditioned
Speaker 1: too he could rest in between takes. I kind of
Speaker 1: wanted to crawl in there with him. I think of
Speaker 1: how fortunate I was that my very first job in
Speaker 1: television was on a show where so much love went
Speaker 1: into the final product. And I think of Soccer's gorgeous face.
Speaker 1: Those eyes really did tell stories. Damn, he really was
Speaker 1: a good looking dog.
Speaker 4: It's this really cute show that I feel like too
Speaker 4: few people know about.
Speaker 1: At this point, the reason I have all these books
Speaker 1: is in my fault.
Speaker 3: It's this guy's fault.
Speaker 8: Why all the books? What happened?
Speaker 1: What's the story Wishbone?
Speaker 9: When it comes up that one of your adult friends
Speaker 9: also watched Wishbone, like, that's a conversation that can last
Speaker 9: another hour, you know.
Speaker 1: I certainly hope you enjoyed this Mobituary. May I ask
Speaker 1: you to please rate and review our podcast. You can
Speaker 1: also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at Morocca. Hear all new episodes
Speaker 1: of Mobituaries every Wednesday. Wherever you get your podcasts and
Speaker 1: check out Mobituary's Great Lives Worth Reliving the New York
Speaker 1: Times best selling book, now available in paperback and audiobook.
Speaker 1: It includes plenty of stories not in the podcast. This
Speaker 1: episode of Mobituaries was produced by Aaron Schrank. Our team
Speaker 1: of producers also includes Wilcom Martinez Caccero, and me Morocca.
Speaker 1: It was edited by Mara Walls and engineered by Josh Hahn,
Speaker 1: with fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our production company is
Speaker 1: Neon hum Media. Our archival producer at CBS is Jamie Benson.
Speaker 1: Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart. Indispensable support
Speaker 1: from Craig Schwagler, Dustin Gervai, Alan Pang, Reggie Bazil and
Speaker 1: everyone at CBS News Radio. Special thanks to Gideon Evans,
Speaker 1: Kate mccauliffe and Alberto Robina. Our senior producer is the
Speaker 1: Irrepressible Aaron Schrank. Executive producers for Mobituaries include Steve Razi's
Speaker 1: and Morocca. The series is created by Yours Truly and
Speaker 1: as always on dying gratitude to Rand Morrison and John
Speaker 1: carp for helping breathe life into Mobituaries.