Local Legends presents

Dusty's Treehouse!

It's probably been awhile since you've scrambled up to Dusty's Treehouse but everyone's still here waiting for you.

You do remember the oldest and loudest member of Dusty's little group. Maxine the Crow is more than a little selfish and vain, a bossy self-proclaimed expert with tons of energy. Maxine wants to be a movie queen, is highly incorrigible, a little on the lazy side, independent, highly creative, a bit incompetent except when it comes to hare-brained schemes that seem to get everybody else in trouble.

And then there is the cute little blue squirrel named Scooter. Scooter really loves baseball, recess, and sometimes even his little brother. Just like any typical eight to nine year old, Scooter is mischievous but willing to learn from his mistakes.

Wide-eyed innocence and unquenchable curiosity rounds out our little group in the form of a 4-year-old spider named Stanley. Stanley the Spider is everybody's little brother. An inquisitive redhead, wearing three pairs of tennis shoes on his six feet, he once informed Dusty that he had heard all about policemen. "Policemen are scary," Stanley reported. Of course, Dusty set him straight via a filmed trip in a police helicopter to see how the officers help people in trouble. And then there's Dusty himself. Dusty and his pals visited us atop an old oak tree in a comfortable clubhouse. When he wasn't busy conversing with the treehouse menagerie, he was taking us on filmed trips to bakeries to see how bread is made. Dusty must have been a captain of "in-dust-tree" since we always had plenty of field trips to various plants and factories to see how a variety of things were made. We also learned a lot of different crafts up in the clubhouse, learning how to construct things like party hats or a picture-box theatre. Children's fables like Hans Christian Andersen's "Princess and the Pea" and the story of the acorn that became a great oak were enacted using shadow puppets along with an occasional original musical. Dusty discussed everything with his pals, from microwave ovens, antique banks, and the history of clocks, to what happens to a letter once it is dropped in a mailbox.

	Dusty was an involved, caring friend and guardian for the puppet characters in his treehouse, always ready to help them untangle life's problems. No problem was too difficult to work out, no curiosity too far out to be explored. Dusty's Treehouse was created, co-produced, and hosted by Stu Rosen as Dusty. Tony Urbano was the talented puppeteer who gave life to Maxine, Scooter and Stanley and also designed, sculpted and painted all the marionettes, collaborating with Rosen in the development of the three principal characters. Dusty's Treehouse enjoyed major market success as a local Los Angeles series for over a decade and five years of simultaneous syndication before the show's introduction on cable television. Originally an offshoot of "Dusty's Attic" (KCET,1966-1967) a twenty-two week local Los Angeles PBS program that began October 5, 1966. Staged in a cluttered garret, Stu Rosen related stories from a magical book to a shoe named Scuffy and a lamp called Shady Lady, a pair of puppets operated by Jan MacAlister. The most elaborate series produced locally at KNXT, videotaped on the outlet's most expensive set, Dusty's Treehouse was an exchange program for several summers starting May 22, 1971, on the CBS O&O stations. One of the most honored of local series, Dusty's Treehouse received 8 Emmy Awards, 6 of them consecutively 1970 through 1976 and 1980. It was also a recipient of the 1973 George Foster Peabody Award and 1979 Ohio State Award for its contribution to educational programming. Selected from the programs, fifty-two of the best episodes were syndicated in 1975 and shown for twenty-six weeks in barter syndication in 1976. Starting in 1980, Dusty's Treehouse was shown on Nickelodeon.
Stu Rosen in the mid 1980s.

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