Producer helped create Rogers’ ‘Neighborhood’
“It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor, would you be mine? Could you be mine?”
If you or your children grew up any time between 1968 and the current day, you are probably familiar with the opening theme song from television’s “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
It’s often a beautiful day in Cape May and a bit of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” was in our city last week when the former producer of the children’s television show, Margie Whitmer, visited.
How does one become part of an iconic, award-winning program? Whitmer was working in the local programming department at Pittsburgh’s public television station WQED as an associate producer on panel discussion programs.
She worked with Fred Rogers on a prime time special for parents that dealt with the anxiety a child may feel when they first attend school.
“Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” ceased producing new episodes in 1975 but Rogers resumed production in 1979 with theme weeks, she said. The program was seeking a freelance associate producer and hired Whitmer.
“I had spent time working with Fred on this other project, so I guess he got a glimpse of who I was and what I could and couldn’t do,” she said.
Whitmer had worked as an intern on the PBS children’s show “Zoom” and had hopes of becoming a third-grade teacher.
While a child watching “neighborhood” may have believed it was taped in Mister Rogers’ house, the program was a fairly complicated television production. Whitmer said the same sets of Mister Rogers’ house and the “Neighborhood of Make Believe” were used through the entire 31 seasons of the show.
Rogers would talk with a child development expert each week and translate those issues into scripts, she said.
The show was produced in three-week blocks, three times during the year, Whitmer said. During early summer, the staff would hold a production meeting and give Rogers five or six themes for future programs, she said.
“It’s interesting working for the person who is the creator, the puppeteer, the talent, the person who writes all the songs,” Whitmer said. “It’s his neighborhood.”
Rogers would write his scripts at his summer home in Nantucket, R.I., for the fall.
In the fall, the production staff would time the “Neighborhood of Make Believe” segments. Location segments, such as a visit to a sneaker factory or a firehouse, were shot and edited.
“We would send the scripts out to the actors as soon as we got them,” Whitmer said.
At times there was a new song that actors would have to learn, so that took a little bit of extra time when they arrived at the studio, she said. The programs were rehearsed at least once and then taped with a three-camera setup, according to Whitmer.
“After every take, Fred would sit down and we’d play it back and he would look at it and we would decide if we needed to do it again or if we could move on,” Whitmer said.
She said the set for the “Neighborhood of Make Believe” was brought into the studio and an entire week of segments was taped in a row. Rogers had a monitor inside King Friday’s castle, X the Owl’s tree, the Museum-Go-Round and other set pieces so he could view the scene as he did the puppeteering.
Large sets were created for Joe Negri’s Music Shop and Chef Brockett’s Bakery.
Whitmer applied Rogers’ makeup prior to the tapings.
“One of the wonderful gifts that I had in doing that is we could talk about what was happening that day in the studio while I put on his makeup,” she said. “That was like sacred time to me; after I walked out of that dressing room, my mind was 18 other places.”
Rogers was a perfectionist.
“It was like nothing is too good for the kids,” she said.
Whitmer said the puppet character on the show that may have been closest to Rogers’ personality was Daniel Striped Tiger.
“Shy, quiet, unassuming, a little insecure, all of those,” she said.
What viewers of “neighborhood” did not see was Rogers’ sense of humor. At the beginning of each show, he changed his shoes, and one day, the crew put smaller shoes on the set as a joke, giving Rogers a big laugh.
In 2019, Tom Hanks starred as Rogers in the movie, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” Whitmer appears in a scene in a Chinese restaurant along with Rogers’ wife, Joanne, and other members of the staff.
Hanks asked Whitmer if he was portraying Rogers accurately.
“Tom Hanks got the rhythm of how Fred talked very well,” she said.
Whitmer said Rogers was humble and did not flaunt his status as a well-known television personality.
“I think it was hard for him to accept how much people loved him; he never took advantage of his celebrity,” she said.
Following 9/11, Rogers taped a public service message thanking viewers for “whatever they do wherever they are, to bring joy and light and hope and faith and pardon and love to your neighbor and to yourself.”
Whitmer was a script consultant for the animated series “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” which has many elements of Rogers’ original program. Daniel Tiger now wears a sweater and sneakers like his creator.
Rogers died of stomach cancer in 2003 at the age of 73. “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” now streams 24 hours a day on the Pluto channel and episodes are available at misterrogers.org, PBSKids.org and on Amazon and Amazon Prime.