Vintage 1950s Corky the Clown Bottle Cap 🤡 St. Louis Cork-Lined Soda Cap

Every St. Louis Kid Knew This Face 🤡 A Vintage 1950s Corky the Clown Cork-Lined Bottle Cap, St. James Productions, St. Louis, Missouri

Size: 1 1/4"

A happy clown in white gloves tipping a flower-trimmed straw boater over the name CORKY, on red and blue stripes. Around the skirt in blue: BOTTLED UNDER THE AUTHORITY ST. JAMES PRODUCTIONS, INC., ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, with a small WHs mark, and inside is the original composition cork liner. These were never crimped onto a bottle.

📺 Corky on Channel 5

Corky was St. Louis television. Clif St. James was a freelance announcer at KSD-TV, Channel 5, and the station's weatherman, and from 1954 to 1980 he put on the greasepaint and played Corky the Clown for the kids. The show was live and mostly made up on the spot - outlined, but never scripted - and it was one of the highest-rated local children's shows in the country; folks say the waiting list for tickets to sit in the studio audience ran three years. On February 12, 1966, Corky's Colorama became the first locally produced program broadcast in color in St. Louis. Clif St. James died in December 2016 at 91, and a whole lot of grown-up St. Louis kids still talk about him.

🥤 Corky soda

That skirt tells you how it worked: the name belonged to St. James Productions, Inc., the company behind the character, and a local bottler filled the bottles under its authority - a TV clown with his own soda.

🧢 WHs

The little WHs on the skirt is the mark of W. H. Hutchinson & Sons of Chicago, one of the American crown makers, listed by the Crowncap Collectors Society. Cork liners like this one were the standard until plastic took over, and with Corky on the air from 1954, the cork fits the show's 1950s start.

🤡 About these

Every one I have is unused, 1 1/4 inches, with its cork. It's a must for anybody who grew up in St. Louis in the '50s, '60s or '70s, a cap collector, or a shadow box of local TV history. The supply is finite - nobody's bottling Corky soda anymore, and once these last unused caps are gone, they'll be very difficult to acquire.