Remembering Bob Ross, the host of 'The Joy of Painting'

The Google homepage honors public television legend Bob Ross, who would have celebrated his 70th birthday today.?

By Matthew Shaer / October 29, 2012

The Google doodle today depicts Bob Ross, the host of "The Joy of Painting."

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The Google homepage today depicts a big-haired painter with a squirrel on his shoulder, a brush in his hand, and a look of bemused happiness on his face. The painter, of course, is Bob Ross, the resolutely earnest public television personality, who would have celebrated his 70th birthday today. From 1983 until 1994 ? a total of 403 episodes in all ? Ross hosted "The Joy of Painting," an unabashedly low-budget how-to guide.

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Ross's official Facebook page calls "The Joy of Painting" "the most popular art show" on TV. And maybe it was (no statistics are provided). But for many of us, it was simply?the mellifluous soundtrack ? as the Monitor's Molly Driscoll notes, Ross's voice had an?infamously?soporific?effect ? to a 1980s childhood. To others, it was the program starring the dude who kindly?fed?a baby squirrel with the world's smallest milk bottle.

As?Steven Zeitchik of the Los Angeles Times notes today, Ross was more than a painter. He was icon, an innovator, a figure of genuine cult celebrity.

"You'd watch Ross quietly at home, half-admiringly and half-ironically, thinking you were one of the few," Zeitchik writes. "Meanwhile, millions of people around the country were doing the same. Long before there was viral video, Ross was going viral."

Robert Ross was born in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1942, and raised in Orlando.

He attended Orlando High School, and at the age of 19, he signed on with the Air Force. He was immediately dispatched to Alaska. "I was the guy who makes you scrub the latrine, the guy who makes you make your bed, the guy who screams at you for being late to work," he later said of his time in the Air Force. "The job requires you to be a mean, tough person. And I was fed up with it."?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/XF6R0Ht_AwA/Remembering-Bob-Ross-the-host-of-The-Joy-of-Painting

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