Eugene Norman Yulish (June 9, 1931 – January 19, 2020), known as Gene London, was an American television personality and fashion designer.
Also known as The Gene London Show,[2] the program aired on WCAU Channel 10 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1959 to 1977, and had a broadcast reach throughout a significant portion of the Midatlantic region of the United States.
[7] Initially raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Eugene Yulish and his brothers, Stanley, Morton and Charles,[8] moved with their parents to Miami Beach, Florida, where his father, a grocer, opened one of the first supermarkets.
[9] With their father kept busy with the operation of his new store and their mother occupied with multiple charitable and social obligations, the boys saw little of their parents, but instead found enjoyment in their own pursuits.
[9] An imaginative child, London recalled, "Alone in my room when all the other kids were playing ball, I'd tell myself the story, acting out all the parts, including Snow White standing by the side of the well singing, 'I'm Wishing'."
His early career included stints as a counselor at Summerdale Day Camp, just outside Philadelphia, where he taught arts and crafts and puppetry; occasional work on NBC-TV's Hi Mom!
It was there that he changed his name to Gene London, had cosmetic surgery to fix a bump on his nose and a cracked front tooth, and became a puppeteer on Herb Sheldon's kids' TV shows on WABD-TV.
Depicted as a dull place, the store was made more exciting by London, an accomplished artist and storyteller who used a large drawing pad to illustrate key scenes and characters from the tall tales he told children as they sat around him on the set.
London subsequently introduced a new imaginary site for the program—a haunted house known as Quigley Mansion that was located next door to the general store and accessible via a secret tunnel.
Filmed in color on location at the Camelback Ski Lodge in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains and at Valley Forge Chapel, the program featured London's narration of "Why the Chimes Rang" and a performance of class Christmas carols by Philadelphia's Schola Cantorum of St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Church.
[16] Recognized as a highly successful television performer by the 1970s, London taught a course at The New School for Social Research in New York City "on the genius of Walt Disney," according to newspaper reports of his career.