The Most Important Person

The little jingle has been in my head for 30+ years along with that green "turkey" character. All I could remember was the first line of the opening song, the green character, and the animation at the end when the hairy thing slides down the rope and the other characters are at the bottom of the credits. Now that I have a young child, I was inspired to see what I could find on the Internet. Not much.

I was pleased to see some comments here on IMDb and thrilled when I found 3 episodes on somebody's web site. The dejavu was nearly overwhelming when the clip started to play. The images in the opening sequence came to me like some LSD flash-back. Wow! Further research only turned up a single 16mm reel of one episode on ebay (I think I'll buy it).

These were such positive and happy children's shorts. I wish we had more of this on TV today.

The Most Important Person cartoons were a big part of my childhood in Chicagoland. They would be shown afternoons on WFLD Channel 32 in between Spiderman episodes or Brady Bunches or whatnot. There were also educational shorts called "Snippets," but those are another story.

Only a couple of TMIPs really stand out. The most memorable was the "Whoops! You Made A Mistake" one, which kids would sing at school all the time. It was a mixture of animation and some live-action film. The animation depicted a kid screwing something up like a kid knocking down a tower of blocks that he had built. Lyrics were like:

I was building up a building Higher than the highest one I'd ever built before And then it happened Yes it happened And I felt so bad 'cause I'd really tried And I felt so bad that I cried and cried...

Whoops! You made a mistake that's all Making mistakes is never fun Whoops! You made a mistake that's all Mistakes can happen to anyone

And so on... The next was a girl setting a table and spilled some milk, etc.

The next one you might remember was a little inner city kid who couldn't get his parents to pay attention to him. His mom is busy in the kitchen, his dad is just reading the paper, and won't even look down at him. What kid can't relate to that? So he ends up sadly sulking in his room, singing a song called "I'm Lonely."

I'm lonely, I want someone to play with me etc.

Eventually a bird comes to his window.

There is only one more episode I really remember, a cartoon girl singing about friendship. A friend is someone to talk to... etc.

The theme song of the show itself was pretty memorable, and there was one cartoon animal creature who looked like a big green turkey or something. He sometimes introduced the scenes, maybe.

The most important person in the whole wide world is YOU, c'mon we'll show you!

I worked for Sutherland Learning Associates when these films were made -- often editing the audio tracks (since visual editing on animation is minimal). John Sutherland is only the director of record (he owned the company). Dan Weisburd directed the audio recording (and did the voice of the big green bird) as well as writing the scripts. Various professional animation directors did the actual directing (think Chuck Jones's job). The most talented contributor was Elaine Simone (Mrs. D. Weisburd) who wrote all the songs (not to mention the wonderful music for another Sutherland series: 36 6-minute animated films for "Project Bilingual," intended for Mexican American kids in kindergarten and first grade. More than 30 years later, I can still sing several of her songs, word for word. --Jim Stinson