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DIVER DAN   1960                               TV SERIAL   bw Children's Adventure

Resource from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diver_Dan  

For the character on the Australian television series SeaChange, see Daniel Della Bosca.
 
Cover from Alpha Video's 2006 DVD release of Diver Dan.Diver Dan was a series of 104 seven-minute live-action shorts made for children's television.
Made by Brian Cartoons, it was syndicated (mainly to NBC affiliates)[1] and distributed by ITC Entertainment. The shows were sometimes re-edited into
 half-hour (including commercials) blocks by local stations.

The series featured the adventures of a diver in an old-fashioned diving suit who talked to the passing fish. The series was filmed in live action
with puppet fish; the underwater effect was achieved by shooting through an aquarium.

Diver Dan debuted in 1960, the brainchild of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania cartoonist J. Anthony (John) Ferlaine, as a spinoff of his comic strip, Fish Tales.
Ferlaine, who worked as an art director at Philadelphia's CBS affiliate WCAU-TV, produced two Fish Tales live-action marionette pilots. When CBS did not pick
up the show, Ferlaine and promoter Martin Young partnered with Philadelphia producer Louis W. Kellman, who with his staff produced local TV spots and film shorts,
and filmed NFL football games. They produced the shorts over nine months, and syndicated them.[2]

In New York City, Diver Dan shorts ran as part of Felix & Diver Dan, a 30-minute children's show airing from January 4, 1960, to August 31, 1962,
and which also included Felix the Cat.[3]

STARRING
Allen Swift as the voices of the many puppets, the unseen Captain, and the narrator.
Frank Freda as Diver Dan. The actor and writer lives in Manhattan.
Suzanne Turner as Miss Minerva, the beautiful mermaid queen, who referred to Diver Dan only as "The Diver" and shyly kept away from his sight.

The characters included Diver Dan and Miss Minerva, the Captain (heard but not seen), and a puppet cast including the villainous Baron Barracuda,
his henchman Trigger (a trigger fish), Finley Haddock, Doc Sturgeon, Georgie Porgy, Gabby the Clam, Gill Espy, Glow Fish, Goldie the Goldfish
(who spoke only in peeps and squeaks), Hermit Crab, Sam the Sawfish, Scout Fish, Sea Biscuit the Seahorse and Skipper Kipper.

One of the running gags in the series was for Trigger to refer to the Baron as "Boss", at which the Baron would get angry and say some variation of,
"Call me Baron, you idiot!" — to which Trigger would reply, "Okay, Baron you idiot".

Baron Barracuda wore a monocle in one eye, and spoke in a vaguely European accent; he sounded like a Bela Lugosi "Dracula" imitation.
Trigger always had an apparently unlit cigarette jutting from the side of his mouth and sounded a bit like "Ed Norton" from The Honeymooners.

The series was not immune to ethnic stereotypes: One of the undersea characters was Scout Fish, who carried a tomahawk and always spoke in
pidgin-Indian dialect. He occasionally used his tomahawk to extricate Diver Dan from seaweed (in the Sargasso Sea), fishing nets, or some nefarious trap.