The Charlie Horse Music Pizza

Cast

• Wezley Morris as Junior
• Chancz Perry as Takeout
• Gordon Robertson as Fingers
• Dom DeLuise as Cookie

Premise

The series takes place around a pizzeria on the beach. Alongside the original cast of Lamb Chop, Hush Puppy, Charlie Horse, and Lewis, Charlie Horse Music Pizza introduced five new characters: Take Out, a big anthropomorphized dim-witted orangutan who makes deliveries on roller skates (played by Chancz Perry); Fingers, a giant, sassy purple raccoon that lives in the dumpster behind the pizzeria (played by Gordon Robertson); Cookie, the soft-hearted opera loving cook (played by Dom DeLuise), Junior, a cool teenager who works at the pizzeria part time and plays the tuba for his high school marching band (played by Wezley Morris), and Holly, a young girl in a wheelchair (played by Chantal Strand).

Episodes

Season 1 (1998)

Season 2 (1999)

Cancellation

When Lamb Chop's Play-Along! ended, Shari and her husband Jeremy created The Charlie Horse Music Pizza to teach children about music after talking about what kids loved the most. Because a third of elementary schools were cutting music class from their curriculum at the time, Shari and Jeremy felt that they should introduce kids to music through the show. After Shari was diagnosed with inoperable uterine cancer, the show was put on hold on June 18, 1998, while she underwent chemotherapy at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. She died from viral pneumonia on August 2, 1998. After her death, The Charlie Horse Music Pizza was cancelled. The last episode of The Charlie Horse Music Pizza aired on January 17, 1999, on what would have been her 66th birthday.

Awards

|- | 2000 | Shari Lewis for playing "Host" (posthumous award; accepted by Mallory Tarcher Lewis) | Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in a Children's Series |

References

References

1. Seaman, Debbie. (May 3, 1998). "Signoff; Shari Lewis's Jazzy New Pals (Published 1998)". The New York Times.
2. Levy, Claudia. (August 4, 1998). "Shari Lewis, Television Puppeteer, Dies at 65".
3. Kogan, Rick. (4 August 1998). "Puppeteer Shari Lewis, 65, Creator, Voice of Lamb Chop".
4. Oliver, Myrna. (4 August 1998). "Puppeteer Shari Lewis Dies".
5. Edelstein, Andy. (January 20, 1999). "Shari Lewis' Farewell / Ch. 13 to broadcast late puppeteer's last".