Fox, Sonny

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose we’ve lostSonny Fox, Whose ‘Wonderama’ Mixed Fun and Learning, Dies at 95He was not a comic or a clown, just a smart and genial TV host who for almost a decade spoke to children, not at them. He died of Covid pneumonia.Sonny Fox in an undated photo. “Wonderama,” the popular New York children’s TV show he hosted from 1959 to 1967, was a dazzling mixture of cartoons, games and many other elements.Credit…BettmannJan. 30, 2021, 5:18 p.m. ETSonny Fox, who as the host of the children’s television show “Wonderama” presided over a four-hour combination of fun and learning on Sunday mornings from 1959 to 1967, died on Jan. 24 in Encino, Calif. He was 95.The cause was Covid pneumonia, his son Dana said.Mr. Fox was a veteran of television when he was hired for “Wonderama” by the New York station WNEW-TV (now WNYW). He had hosted a live local educational program in St. Louis and “Let’s Take a Trip,” on CBS, on which he took two youngsters on a field trip each week.In 1956, CBS named Mr. Fox the M.C. of “The $64,000 Challenge,” but he was fired a few months after accidentally giving a contestant an answer. He was not embroiled in the scandal that emerged two years later when it was discovered that several quiz shows, including “Challenge,” had been rigged by their producers.No such problems existed at “Wonderama,” where Mr. Fox’s mission was to tack away from the silly show it had become under previous hosts. But he was too serious at first, focusing on subjects like space exploration. Ratings began to fall.“I became so ponderously educational that the kids who had been watching turtle races” — under the previous hosts — “had no idea what I was doing,” he said in a Television Academy interview in 2008.The show, which was taped before an audience of about 50 youngsters, soon found its footing. It became a dazzling mixture of cartoons, spelling bees, games like “Simon Says,” joke-telling (by the children), contests, dramatizations of Shakespeare plays and magic. In 1964, the show held a mock Republican convention. Mr. Fox also interviewed newsmakers like Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and opened the floor to questions from the children.“Do you think all the money that we’ve been spending on this nation’s space program should be spent on this or on poverty bills and such?” an earnest boy with glasses asked Senator Kennedy in 1965.“We can make the space effort,” Mr. Kennedy said, adding that both could be done: “If there’s ever an unknown, man will search the unknown.”Mr. Fox was not a comic performer like Chuck McCann, Sandy Becker or Soupy Sales — stars of their own daytime children’s shows on WNEW at the time — and did not wear funny costumes. He was a smart and genial host who wore a suit and tie.He viewed the children in the studio not as passive observers of “Wonderama” but as integral to it, whether they were trying to stump him with a riddle or delivering news segments.Mr. Fox with two members of the “Wonderama” audience in 1961. He viewed the children in the studio not as passive observers of the show but as integral to it, Credit…Wagner International PhotosHe said Mr. Becker and Mr. Sales resented his popularity because he was not a performer.“I did nothing, apparently!” he told the online Observer in 2017. “That’s the contrast: For them, the kids were the audience; for me, the kids were the show.”The popularity of “Wonderama” meant children waited years for tickets to tapings at its studio on East 67th Street in Manhattan. Mr. Fox’s mother, Gertrude (Goldberg) Fox, sent him notes each Monday insisting that tickets be set aside for certain children.The Coronavirus Outbreak More