Burr Tillstrom was the creator and only puppeteer on the show, which premiered as the hour-long Junior Jamboree locally on WBKB in Chicago, Illinois, on October 13, 1947.

The program was renamed Kukla, Fran and Ollie (KFO) and transferred to WNBQ (the predecessor of Chicago's WMAQ-TV) on November 29, 1948.

[citation needed] The puppet cast included "Kukla",[3] the earnest leader of the troupe; "Ollie", or "Oliver J. Dragon", a roguish one-toothed dragon (who would slam his flat chin on the stage in frustration or roll on his back to be endearing); Madame Ooglepuss, a retired opera diva; Buelah Witch, a brash, madcap witch; Fletcher Rabbit, the troupe's mailman and resident fussbudget (who worked at the Easter Bunny's Egg Plant during the Easter season); Cecil Bill, the troupe's union stagehand who spoke in an unintelligible "tooie talk"; Colonel Crackie, a Southern gentleman; Doloras Dragon, Ollie's younger cousin; Mercedes, a bratty grade schooler, Ollie's mother Olivia, and a number of others.

[4] The series' music was written and performed by Jack Fascinato, who first accompanied the troupe on solo piano and later conducted the show's small orchestra.

Fans became so attached to the show that, when it was cut back to 15 minutes in November 1951, letters of outrage poured into NBC and The New York Times.

During that time, KFO was a hugely successful show that counted Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Tallulah Bankhead, Ben Grauer, Milton Caniff and Adlai Stevenson among its many adult fans.

[10] The show had sponsors like Life magazine, RCA, Nabisco and Ford Motor Co., who surely weren't trying to reach children.

[14] After the original series ended in 1957, Tillstrom continued to search for a place for the Kuklapolitans, doing a daily five-minute show for NBC, and even appearing on Broadway.

In this context, their conversations were restricted to a brief introduction, commercial segues and a summary of the film, and could only provide a hint of what had made KFO so popular.

[citation needed] The first publicly announced network broadcast of a program using the NTSC "compatible color" system was an episode of Kukla, Fran and Ollie on August 30, 1953.

[17] On the same day, August 11, 2009, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp to honor Kukla, Fran and Ollie.

[18] On February 24, 2020, the Kukla, Fran and Ollie YouTube channel started posting digital transfers of KFO kinescopes on a regular schedule, beginning with the earliest surviving episode.