Sky King

it's... SKY KING! Neeeeeeooooooowww (plane diving behind announcer's voice) I saw this show when I was a kid - around 5 yrs. old. The shows were syndicated releases shown on my local station. It was around 1959 or 1960 and the series had debuted in 1951. I don't remember much about the shows, other than Sky King wore Western Wear, Penny had blonde hair and they flew around in a plane looking for lost people and stopping baddies from doing dastardly deeds.

I liked the plane, a Cessna T-50 named Songbird, but I was a little more impressed with jets at the time.

Sky was friendly and Penny was "Golly-gee-whiz." It was a good show as I remember it.

"Sky King" is one of the first television shows I remember watching, so it has great nostalgic value for me. I'd love to see it again, since it has been 50 years since I last watched the program!

I do remember the character "Penny," probably more than I remember "Sky King," although the name Kirby Grant (Sky King) was always remembered and I couldn't have told you who played Penny until I read the title page here at IMDb. I do recall Gloria Winters (Penny) has a wholesome, cute blonde. I've read some reviews that say she is annoying in this program, but I can't recall that.

A cowboy who flew airplanes - now that was a different angle for a storyline! This was an adventure program that was a favorite in our family, too, as my father always had interest in flying and eventually was able to buy a small plane - a Cessna, similar to the one Sky King flew!

I'd sure love to see some episodes of this again, although I don't know how they would look today. I am encouraged that some of these are available on DVD. One thing for sure: you can't beat the good messages that television shows brought to us families in the '50s, unlike the garbage you see today.

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.

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.