Sky King

My mother told me about this show, and she told me she would watch it religiously every Saturday morning. She was starting to think she dreamed it up, because no one she talked to remembered it. So I did a search, and found some episodes on tape, and gave it to her birthday. She watched two of them that very day, and loved them!

With Kirby Grant as the Sky King, and Gloria Winters Penny, and all the rest, from what I saw, it is a great show! Yes, it is simple, as most shows from the early fifties, but it taught right from wrong, and that's what is missing from most shows today. It might be interesting to see what a remake of this show would look like.

I can remember watching Sky King as a kid, too. Saturday morning seemed to be filled with shows of this type... Captain Gallant & Tales of Texas Rangers come to mind. I became curious about Sky King because my daughter, now a freshman in college, is pursuing her dream to become a commercial pilot. And of course I remember Penny being Sky's niece; and yes, she must have been pretty; but I remember little else. It seems to me that Penny had her own plane... is this right? And if so, did it have a name as well? It also seems to me that her character would have been considered "ahead of her time". I don't know if shows of this simplicity would "fly well" today.

I too grew up watching this show. Recently (April 0f 2006) I was in Central Florida and saw Sky King and Fury on a local channel. The plots are thinner than I remembered, much like the Rifleman. As I watch those shows now I realize how the writers took 3 minutes of plot and made a full 30 minute program from it. Even though it was simple and thin, it was so interesting to observe the memories it brought back.

I think this show made me want to be a pilot as a child. I never pursued flying, but as I was watching the show recently, I realized that was the beginning of my dreaming of someday being a pilot.

Thank God for the Internet and the ability to easily research anything from the comfort of your couch! It was good to see the bird flying again!

Sky King came roaring into American living rooms every Saturday with action and adventure. The stories were well written for juvenile television fare. The cast usually consisted of minor character actors. Sky was played with gusto by Kirby Grant who was an ace pilot in real life. His niece, Penny, was portrayed by Gloria Winters who tended to overact but exuded a winning personality that everyone loved.

This was my wife's favorite TV show when she was a child. We recently watched several episodes on DVD and were surprised at how well the shows have held up over the past fifty years. They are still entertaining, action-packed with good aerial photography for the time period. One with an ecological angle was "The Wild Man" featuring Jethro Beaudine's (Max Baer, Jr.) uncle, Buddy Baer, a mountain of a man, standing 6'5" tall. In this episode, he is falsely accused of trying to kill a driver for a logging company and stealing the payroll. It's up to Sky and Penny to prove his innocence. The loggers are out to shoot him because he has been trying to sabotage their work in order to save the homes of the woodland creatures. Penny, as usual, plays an active role in helping her Uncle Sky.

Though it was a nice play on words the character Sky King did not get his moniker from his reliance on air travel, it was simply short for Schuyler. Nevertheless it's a great handle and suggestive of all kinds of romantic fantasies about air travel.

The last name King was also an interesting choice. One of the largest, if not the largest cattle ranches ever was the King Ranch of Texas. If people thought Sky was one of those Kings, so much the better. And I don't think the King Ranch minded the free publicity.

The title role in this modern western was played by Kirby Grant who also had played him on radio. He was the owner of a considerable spread, but the main thing with Grant was that he was up to date with the times. He had a private plane that he named the Songbird which he used to both oversee his ranch and help deal with bad guys who couldn't ride horses fast enough to get away from Sky King and the Songbird. As you can imagine, the law had need of Sky and his plane and Sky was only too willing to help out a sheriff in need.

Sky lived on the ranch with niece Penny {Gloria Winters} and nephew Clipper {Ron Haggerty}. These two headstrong youths got themselves in jams and half the plots of the shows were Uncle Sky using the Songbird to get them out of a jackpot.

Kirby Grant who broke into film as a singer and not a bad one found his niche on radio playing heroic Sky King. The show transitioned smoothly to television and was a big hit with the kids including this kid.

Ironically enough Kirby Grant's death was a postscript to the Challenger disaster. Long retired and living in Florida he saw the Challenger blow up and then died in a car accident on the way home. Probably the horror of what he saw unnerved as it did everyone else who witnessed it live or on television. So a man whose fame was as a fictional air hero died after witnessing one of the great air disasters of the last century.

Sky King was a nice family show and I'm surprised no one has thought to revive it.