August 10, 2016

Remembering Dear Old Captain Noah

Memories of the lovable — and surprisingly salty — kids show host

By Shaun Brady

WHYY/still frame from "Philly's Favorite Kids Show Hosts"

Captain Noah delivers the birthday announcements in an Action News parody segment.

A bit of Philly’s childhood died Tuesday when W. Carter Merbreier — better known to the generations of local kids who woke up to the strains of “Sing a Rainbow” as Dear Old Captain Noah — passed away at 90.

For those born after the show ended its 27-year run in 1994, Merbreier and his wife Patricia (who died in 2011) were the hosts of “Captain Noah and His Magical Ark,” a local favorite that featured puppets, cartoons, storytelling, local interest segments and a show-ending parade of crayon-scrawled artwork sent in by viewers. Over the course of its run, the show provided audiences their first televised exposure to the Phillie Phanatic and a 9-year-old Jon Stewart and welcomed guests from Elvis Presley to Charles Barkley.

I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon with Mr. and Mrs. Noah in 2008 to interview them for a Philadelphia City Paper article on the occasion of the then-newly relocated Please Touch Museum unveiling an exhibition of the "Captain Noah" set. While the Merbreiers, it turned out, lived not on a Magical Ark but in a comfortable Gladwyne split-level, the house was still marked with the whimsy of a kiddie show set, with an upstairs hallway crowded by a carousel horse and a backyard garden animated by visual puns.

Souvenirs from the Merbreiers’ career shared space with shelves of antique spirit barrels that the Captain, a self-described “scotch man,” had collected over the years. As I quickly discovered, Merbreier was a saltier seaman than his alter ego. He cheerfully recalled playing pranks on organist and fellow local TV institution Larry Ferrari, from an overly suggestive encounter with a sausage-making demonstration at the Kutztown Folk Festival to his habit of inserting names like “I. Emma Phart” into the “Happy Birthday” scrolls that ran on screen while Ferrari played.

This wasn’t a case of a TV persona masking a totally different human being, however. By all accounts, Merbreier was universally beloved on and off the screen and believed wholeheartedly in the work that he did. When he took on the role of Captain Noah in 1967, Merbreier was a Lutheran minister at a North Philly parish who always regarded the show as an extension of his church work. He excoriated "Sesame Street" for Oscar the Grouch, saying, “To the kids I ministered to, rats come out of trash cans, not funny-looking monsters.”

You haven’t lived until you’ve heard Captain Noah use the phrase, 'It mauled my nut.'

Still, it was impossible to spend more than a few minutes in the Captain’s company before he took on the role of surrogate crusty grandpa. He could tearily recall his decades-old defrocking by a church that frowned upon his TV work one moment, then complain about the cameraman who helped Flower Show impresario Ed Lindemann up from a crashed scooter rather than capturing it on film the next. Merbreier was justifiably proud of all the charity work and appearances he made over the years but always quickly changed the subject to chuckle over the live cows that “poo-pooed and wee-weed all over the studio,” or to grimace about the bear cub that got a clawhold on his right testicle — you haven’t lived until you’ve heard Captain Noah use the phrase, “It mauled my nut.”

Back in ’08, Merbreier joked about being “held together with chewing gum, baling wire, batteries, my own blood vessels and pieces left over from pigs and calves,” a reference to a recent heart surgery. (“I’m not kosher any longer,” he laughed.) But he also expressed satisfaction that his legacy was assured by the Please Touch Museum’s enshrinement of his old stomping grounds.

“I hope that we’re the same as you remember us,” the Captain told me that day.

I and countless other lifelong fans will continue to remember Dear Old Captain Noah. Keep singing the rainbow.

Shaun Brady