Diver Dan | tvdays

DIVER DAN SHOWS

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) 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.

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01 Hard Water

02 Goldie The Goldfish

03 Talking Fish

04 Skippers Gold

05 Treasure Ship

06 Sawfish Rescue

07 Shell O Phone

08 The Octopus

09 Murder Ink

10 Bottomless Pit

11 Teetering Rock

12 Barons Capture

13 An Unusual Treasure

14 Triggers Revenge

15 An Unusual Fish

16 The Verdict

17 Horaces Dilemma

18 The Trap

19 The Trap Is Sprung

20 Riddle Of The Hermit Crab

21 Sargasso Sea

22 Lost In The Sargasso Sea

23 Current Flow

24 The Storm

25 Goldies Heroism

26 Dynamite

27 Ghost Is Clear

28 Captain Barney

29 Lost City

30 Secret Of The Throne

31 Crawling Danger

32 The Strange Fish

33 The Bomb

34 The Bubbling Pit

35 The Volcano

36 Depth Charge

37 School Daze

38 Strange Vines

3 9Savage Seaweed

40 The Magnet

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.

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, which also included Felix the Cat. In Chicago during the 1960s, Diver Dan was regularly shown on the WGN-TV show "Ray Rayner and His Friends" even though Rayner would frequently read on-air letters from children requesting that he get other cartoons