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| You Can with Beakman and Jax logo. |
While answering George Lucas’ fan mail at Lucasfilm, Jok Church became enamored
with the way children bravely asked anything at all in their letters. He was
inspired to write about real questions from real kids and conceived of the
comic strip You
Can With Beakman (later
adding “and Jax” with the introduction of that character).
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| U Can With Beakman and Jax comic strip by Jok Church. |
Beakman Place, named for the street in New York City, was a spiky blue-haired
man with a tie and a pocket full of tools and a strong desire to learn. He
wasn’t a scientist, just an ordinary guy intrigued by the world at large. Later
joined by his sister Jax, Beakman strove to prove what he’d read about in books
in a text-heavy one panel comic strip demonstrating a simple experiment that
could be attempted by readers. This was similar to the methodology in which Church
would select which letters to answer when they arrived, by finding ones about
subjects he didn’t know and wanted to learn about himself. The original strips
were done digitally on a Mac before Church
eventually upgraded to the Adobe
Illustrator series of programs.
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| The first Beakman book. |
The strip first appeared in the Marin
Independent Journal on July 14th, 1991, offered to
them for free. Distributed by Universal Press
Syndicate, the strip had grown to reach 52 million readers in 13 countries.
With its success and being collected and reprinted in book
form, Church was approached by Columbia
Pictures with the idea of turning the strip into a television show.
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| Paul Zaloom as Beakman. |
Beakman’s
World began on The Learning Channel (TLC)
and national syndication before moving to CBS
Saturday mornings in its second season. It followed eccentric scientist Beakman
(Paul Zaloom) as he answered several letters out of the thousands they received
weekly from his viewers about various scientific concepts. In his cluttered and
zany lab, he would conduct simple experiments that children could perform at
home with everyday household items to demonstrate the principles in question. Beakman
would also issue a “Beakman Challenge,” whereby he’d challenge his costars to
perform a deceptively simple feat using science.
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| The lab assistants: Alanna Ubach, Eliza Schneider and Senta Moses. |
Although
not utilizing the Jax character in order to simplify the show with a single
host, three female assistants who would aid Beakman’s experiments were utilized.
In season 1, Josie was played by Alanna Ubach until she left to pursue a movie
career. Seasons 2 and 3 had Liza, played by Eliza Schneider. Despite not being
as well-liked as Josie by fans, Liza had the longest tenure on the show.
Schneider eventually left to perform in the one-woman show USA 911 before beginning a voice over career, notably as Mrs.
Cartman on South Park. The final
assistant was Phoebe, played by Senta Moses.
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| Mark Ritts as Lester the rat. |
Also
assisting, albeit begrudgingly, was the lab’s resident rat and frequent guinea
pig Lester (Mark Ritts, who also doubled as Herb the penguin’s puppeteer). Lester
wasn’t actually a rat, however. Two running gags in the show declared that he
was both an actor whose agent landed him a bum gig and that his rat suit was a
lifestyle choice. In the pilot episode, Lester was originally a puppet and was
supposed to remain that way for the series until it was decided at the last
minute to make the character an actor in a suit.
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| Don and Herb at the South Pole watching Beakman's World. |
Each episode usually began and ended
with two puppet penguins Don (Bert Berdis) and Herb (Alan Barzman), named after
the legendary Mr. Wizard (aka Don Herbert), tuning into
the show in the South Pole. The TV would explode, leading to Beakman in his lab
where would lay down a fast fact before the title sequence. The series’ theme
was composed by Mark Mothersbaugh, known from
the new wave group Devo. The unseen
cameraman “Ray,” played by prop-master Ron Jancula’s hands, would often hand
Beakman various items from off-camera. A “viewing screen,” known as the
Boguscope, would be employed to show crude animations to illustrate something
being explained.
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| Comin' at ya! Josie and Lester read a viewer question in the series' trademarked tight shots. |
Besides
Beakman, Zaloom would typically play multiple characters; from various famous
scientists and historical figures to his other frequent characters, fry cook
Art Burn and Professor I.M. Boring (seen in segments reminiscent of black and
white film reel clips). Ritts also occasionally appeared outside of his rat
suit as other minor characters. The show relied heavily on comedy and manic
pacing, as well as keeping the cast and experiments in tight shots most of the
time to form a kind of intimacy with the viewer. During its run, the series was
nominated for and won multiple awards, including Daytime
Emmys and Parent’s
Choice Awards. Despite the critical acclaim and praise for the series, CBS
was not achieving the ratings they desired—played in large part to the timeslot
given to Beakman often resulting in the show being pre-empted for sports
or special news broadcasts—and sought to overhaul their Saturday morning
line-up with a more cartoon-intensive format.
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| Zaloom as Beakman in 2014. |
Although the series wrapped in 1997,
the comic strip that inspired it continued until 2016 following the death of
Church. Zaloom maintains the rights to use the Beakman character to perform at
live events for children and continues to do so around the world in a show
called Beakman Live! There was also a traveling exhibit called Beakman’s World On Tour started in 1998
that visited science halls across America. In 2016, Zaloom appeared as Beakman in an episode of the web
series Captain
Disillusion, which was filmed and acted in a style similar to an episode
of Beakman’s World.
