Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Come on over a minute. I just had some ideas that

I'd been thinking about for quite a while,

about modulation.

It seems to me that there are

different themes in life.

And one of my main jobs, it seems to me,

is to help through the mass media, for children...

To help children through some of the difficult modulations of life.

Because it's easy, for instance, to go from C

to F.

But there are some modulations that aren't so easy.

For instance, to go from F, to F-sharp,

you've got to weave through all sorts of things.

And it seems to me if you've got somebody to help you,

as you weave... Maybe this is just too philosophical?

Maybe I'm trying to combine things

that can't be combined, but it makes sense to me.

Fourteen years ago, a television program for children,

made its inauspicious debut on Station WQED in Pittsburgh.

It's host, Fred Rogers,

an ordained minister with an abiding interest in children,

and an equally abiding belief hat they deserve more from television.

It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood.

A beautiful day for a neighbor.

Would you be mine? Could you be mine?

It's a neighborly day in this beauty Would...

A neighborly day for a beauty.

Would you be mine? Could you be mine?

I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you.

I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you.

So, let's make the most of this beautiful day.

Since we're together we might as well say.

Would you be mine? Could you be mine?

Won't you be my neighbor?

Won't you please, won't you please?

Please, won't you be my neighbor.

Mr. Rogers? FRED: Yes.

Where do you live? I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Did you want to... Pardon me?

They are gathered in this television studio

with Fred Rogers,

an adult who cares just about them.

His reward is the love of millions of children.

I want to tell you something. What would you like to tell me?

I like you. I like you, my dear.

Thank you very much for telling me that.

We had a director that once said to me,

"If you take all of the elements that make good television,"

"and do the exact opposite, you have Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. "

Low production values, simple set, unlikely star.

Yet, it worked...

because he was saying something really important.

Love is at the root of everything.

All learning, all parenting,

all relationships.

Love or the lack of it.

And what we see and hear

on the screen is part of who we become.

He had a singular vision of kindness and love,

but a question that I think of a lot in terms of Fred is

whether his attempt to influence America

succeeded or not.

I was all set to go to the seminary to become a minister,

but I went home my senior year for a vacation

and I saw this new thing called television.

And I saw people throwing pies in each other's faces.

"And I thought," This could be a wonderful tool.

"Why is it being used this way?"

So I said to my parents, "I don't think I'll go to seminary right away."

"I think maybe I'll go into television."

And they said, "Wait, but you've never even seen it."

Station WQED is located in the heart of Pittsburgh.

His father told him about this new station,

that was coming along here.

It was going to be called... It was called Educational Television.

Nobody wanted to do a children's program.

I said, "Well, we need a children's program."

And I said, "Well, I'll produce it and play some music in the background.

"We'll get some free films and, Josie, you can introduce them."

And then we discovered the awful fact

that when you got free film,

it was often brittle and it would break.

And if you were on the air live, you had to do something.

Somebody had given me this little tiger puppet.

I pushed it through in the clock and said,

"Hi, Josie, it's 5:02 and Columbus discovered America in 1492,"

and then just went right back in.

And that's how the puppetry began. We never expected to use puppets.

There's so much of it was

the necessity being the mother of that invention.

My friend, Daniel Striped Tiger.

How do you do? How do you do?

The interesting thing was Dad remembered

being 6 and 7 and 8 and 9 years old.

That inner child never really went away.

I had every imaginable childhood disease, even scarlet fever.

Whenever I was quarantined.

I would be in bed a lot.

I would put up my knees, and they would be mountains covered with the sheet.

I'd have all these little figures moving around

and I'd make them talk.

I had to make up a lot of my own fun.

Take that.

What's the matter?

Over time Fred became unsatisfied with The Children's Corner.

He thought that it was simple and slapstick.

And he said he really wanted to concentrate on the seminary,

so he wanted to stop for a while.

His ordination was as an evangelist for television.

It was pretty way out there for the Presbyterian Church.

With television,

Fred wanted to focus on the very young.

What do you think it is?

A lion! A lion, great!

Back in the 1950s,

there was a school of people

at the University of Pittsburgh,

looking at early childhood education.

They felt that physicians needed a training ground.

So that, they had a sense of where human behavior

was coming from the very beginning.

Dr. Benjamin Spock was part of it.

Berry Brazelton, the famous pediatrician, was a part of it.

Erik Erikson, the extraordinary psychologist,

was a part of it,

and Fred's part of that group.

He became part of the group as a student of Margaret McFarland.

Fred, I think to the child,

the television program between you and the child is a real relationship.

For him to say, "The feelings of a young child "

"are every bit as powerful as our adult feelings..."

He was radical. I know everyone says that, but he was radical.

I've always felt that.

I didn't need to put on a funny hat,

or jump through the hoop

to have a relationship with the child.

So, I went to visit a new nursery school.

I had never met these children before.

And I walked in

and there was a long stare from most of them.

And one little boy by the name of Thatcher spoke first.

And all he said was,

"My doggy's ear came off in the automatic washer."

And there was silence, just complete silence.

It was as if, "This is your test, Mr. Rogers."

"Are you still in touch with childhood?"

And so I said,

"Sometimes that happens to toys, doesn't it?"

"Their ears come off or their legs come off,"

"but that never happens to us."

"Our ears don't come off. Our noses don't come off."

"Our arms don't come off."

Thatcher's eyes were getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and he said,

"And our legs don't come off."

And I said, "No, they don't."

And, immediately, all of the other children

started asking questions and poignant questions!

It was just as if, you know, "We shall now open the door."

"You have passed the test. You may come in."

And what he wanted to do

was to take all of that he learned in television work,

add to that the sense of ministry,

and the child development background.

It became Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.

A neighborhood was a place where at times

that you felt worried, scared, unsafe,

would take care of you, would provide understanding, safety.

That's what the neighborhood was for Fred.

Television has the chance

of building a real community

out of an entire country.

The neighborhood is not a fantasy place

where all these different people got together

and everything was happily ever after.

When you have diverse people together with their different opinions,

you have conflict. And that's what happens in the neighborhood.

You have conflict, real conflict.

Halt, trolley!

Give me your name, rank, and serial number.

"King Friday the 13th

"establishes border guard."

"King Against Change."

The parallels between what is happening in the real world

and what is happening inside the neighborhood

are uncanny and undeniable.

In 1968, the country is at war.

He can go on fighting longer than we can.

Frightened, meow, frightened, meow.

There's nothing to be frightened about

until somebody starts shooting, Henrietta.

Meow-meow, start shooting, meow!

That was the first time he knew that

he was producing something for a national audience.

King Friday was really irritated that people were changing things.

So, his reaction as the authority was to build a wall.

Oh, it's very sharp It's very sharp.

Oh, my, barbed wire is very sharp.

Remember our battle cry, Edgar?

Down with the changers!

Down with the changers Down with the changers.