116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Time Machine: Mombo the Clown
Fred Petrick entertained Iowans for 70 years
The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
The late Fred Petrick was the subject of many Gazette stories about his role as Mombo the Clown, a part he started playing in 1961 for WMT-TV.
But few articles explain how he became a TV personality.
Petrick was curious about magic from an early age, and liked watching the vaudeville shows that came through Cedar Rapids in the 1920s. As a result, he became a skilled magician and member of the Cedar Rapids Magic Club. He and Max Hahn were comedy partners from the 1930s on.
High school, college
In 1924, Cedar Rapids had two high schools – Grant on the west side of the Cedar River and Washington on the east. The school board had encouraged athletes at Grant to switch to Washington, angering Grant parents. Fred Petrick, a Grant senior, was chosen to present a petition to the school board in September urging them to support Grant’s educational and athletic development.
Efforts began to expand the curriculum at Grant to more equally match that of Washington. But Fred Luberger, president of the school board, said the board did not feel justified in spending as much money for teachers or coaches for Grant’s 300 students as it did for the 1,000 students at Washington.
Later in his senior year, in April 1925, Petrick was chosen as the best orator from his school and went on to compete against speakers from nine other Iowa high schools. He caught the acting bug that year as well, playing a role in the senior class play, “A Snug Little Kingdom” by Mark Ambient.
Petrick went on to attend Coe College in 1926. He was a member of the Coe College Players in 1928 when he became president of the 144-member Cedar Rapids Center of the Drama League of America.
The auditorium of the new Shrine temple on A Avenue NE was filled for its first play performance Feb. 10, 1928. The Cedar Rapids chapter of DeMolay presented “Square Crooks.” Petrick’s portrayal of Eddie Ellison, in whose apartment the action takes place, was described as “outstanding” by The Gazette’s reviewer.
Community Players
The next year, David Turner and Catherine Hunt formed the Community Players.
Artists Marvin Cone and Grant Wood built sets for the drama group. The cast of the Players’ first production, A.A. Milne’s “Dover Road,” included Fred Petrick. It opened to an audience of 261 on the auditorium stage of the Killian Department Store.
The next play in February 1930 was a comedy, “The Queen’s Husband.” Among those listed on the play bill were Barbara Douglas, daughter of industrialist George B. Douglas, Edward McPartland, and Bob Soutter. Fred Petrick appeared in the role of the revolutionary Dr. Fellman.
In the wings, or more aptly, up a ladder, was Grant Wood, who was trying to have plaster fall when actor John Carey pulled a string backstage, according to The Gazette review of the play. The stunt went off perfectly.
Several of the troupe’s members gained national recognition, including Don DeFore, who became a Hollywood movie star.
World War II
The Community Players disbanded at the start of World War II, eventually resurrecting in 1948 as the Footlighters.
Not content to be without any theater, Petrick and fellow comedian Max Hahn helped form the open-air Barn Theater in 1942 in a barn on Petrick’s property, some 2 miles west of Cedar Rapids on Highway 149. The shoestring theater operated during the Depression by scavenging for lumber and props and relying on donations.
Patrons sat on folding chairs on a cindered driveway while the actors performed on a stage beside the barn.
In 1945, while Hahn worked as a printer at LeFebure Corp. and Petrick was a transit clerk for Quaker Oats, the pair performed for the Allied Industrial League Spring Frolic at the Memorial Coliseum.
Petrick became known for a much-lauded, side-splitting performance of Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s poem “Casey at the Bat” at the Camp Fire Girls Gypsy Jamboree in 1947.
It was so well-received, he was often asked to repeat it. He did so at an Elks Club event on Jan. 29, 1958, at the Roosevelt Hotel, where Milwaukee Braves Manager Fred Haney was expected to attend.
Mombo the Clown
Petrick in 1980 explained the origins of Mombo the Clown in a Gazette interview. The “Dr. Max Show” debuted on WMT-TV in 1960 with Hahn as Dr. Max. As he was talking to the kids live on air, there was a loud crash. Dr. Max covered it by saying, “Quiet out there, Mombo.”
Dr. Max continued to talk to “Mombo” off screen, and his young viewers responded by asking to see the character, so Petrick, as Mombo, joined the program in November 1961.
“Max and I had done a lot of theater work together previously,” Petrick said in 1980, “and he called me up and said, ‘It may only be one or two times, but the kids want to see Mombo so if you’ll just come. …’ – and those one or two times have now turned into almost 20 years.”
The “Dr. Max Show” was canceled in 1981, but Petrick as Mombo continued to perform for church, school and community groups. He was honored with the Community Appreciation Award in 1987.
In 1995, fellow members of St. Luke’s Clown Connection nominated Petrick for the Clown Hall of Fame in Delavan, Wis. He was named a Cedar Rapids Freedom Festival hero in 1995, and two years later, on his birthday, the Cedar Rapids City Council declared April 6 Fred Petrick Day.
Petrick’s daughters once recalled that it made them laugh when their dad talked about performing for “old folks.”
Petrick kept performing until his death at age 94 in 2001.
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