'Engineer Bill' Stulla, 97; host of hit children's show in TV's Golden Age
William "Engineer Bill" Stulla, an early Los Angeles children's television show host who inspired a generation of Southern California baby boomers to drink their milk with his signature "Red Light, Green Light" game, has died. He was 97.
Stulla died in his sleep Tuesday evening at his longtime home in Westlake Village, his daughter, Kathryn Stulla Mackensen, said Thursday.
As the genial host of "Cartoon Express," which ran weekdays at 6:30 p.m. on Channel 9 (then KHJ-TV) in Los Angeles, Stulla was a television fixture from 1954 to 1966. The show earned him two Emmy Awards.
Seated behind a model train layout, Stulla wore a blue-striped engineer's cap and overalls, a red kerchief and his trademark horn-rim glasses.
Between cartoons, he would chat with his in-studio guests -- a boy and a girl from local schools -- read from a get-well list of young viewers who were sick, and talk to his audience about breaking bad habits such as not eating everything on their plates.
He'd give them a week to break each bad habit. And to illustrate how tough that could be, Little Mo, the Bad Habit Buster -- a model train with a determined face painted on the engine -- would be shown chugging up a steep incline and huffing, "I hope I can, I hope I can."
But the highlight of the show for young viewers came when Engineer Bill and his two guests played "Red Light, Green Light." The game, with his audience joining in at home, was simple:
As Stulla and his two guests sat with their milk glasses poised, an off-screen announcer, usually "Freight Train" Wayne Thomas, would cry out, "Green Light" -- the signal to start drinking.
When Thomas abruptly yelled "Red Light,' they had to immediately stop drinking. The goal of the game was to finish the glass of milk without drinking on the red light.
That wasn't as easy as it sounds: Wayne might substitute "Green Eyes" or "Green Grass" for "Green Light" and "Red Car" or "Red Pants" for "Red Light."
"The guys in the studio calling the signal would try to [foul] me up as best they could," Stulla told The Times in 2002, "and they did it fairly often and I'd have to say, 'Oh, I'm sorry,' " as he dabbed his wet face with a napkin.
If the two children played the game perfectly, they would get a clang on a locomotive bell; if they goofed up, they got the lead bell (a dull metallic thud caused by hitting a section of pipe with a piece of wood).
