New documentary invites fans to come and re-meet ‘The Letter People’

Ask a member of Generation X if they remember The Letter People and, invariably, they’ll sing you a song. The PBS show’s theme has lived rent-free in many forty- to fifty-somethings’ heads for decades, with the four-line ditty (“Come and meet the Letter People/ Come and visit the family/Words are made of Letter People/A-B-C-D, follow me”) conveying a folksy, simplistic charm.

And the series was charming, too. Though it was only in production from 1974 to 1976, coming out of KETC in St. Louis (now Nine PBS) with the help of the Council of Great City Schools and New Dimensions in Education Inc., The Letter People’s 60 15-minute episodes stayed in circulation on PBS stations until late 1994.

With NDE’s Ruth Lerner serving as editorial supervisor and Ian J. Pratt acting as curriculum consultant along with KETC’s Tom McDonough acting as the series’ writer-director, the show taught thousands of children across the country to read — whether independently or in tandem with a corresponding in-school learning system — airing on over 105 stations across the country.

A bare-bones, puppet-based show where characters like Mr. T, with his “tall teeth,” and Mr. M, with his “munching mouth,” taught kids basic phonics, The Letter People was the televisual companion to Alpha One and Alpha Time. Developed by two teachers from New York, Elayne Reiss-Weimann and Rita Friedman, in the mid- to late ’60s, the Alpha One and Alpha Time learning systems were used in over 37,000 schools (slightly less than half of all elementary schools in America at the time) and employed the Letter People to teach kindergarteners through second-graders how to read and write. Each letter had a distinct personality and look, which educators found helped kids pay attention to the lessons. 

That was certainly the case for Jason Collum, a 50-something filmmaker and teacher who lives in Racine, Wis. Introduced to the Letter People in his kindergarten class in 1978, Collum fell so in love with the program that now, 40-plus years later, he’s made a documentary about the phenomenon. Everything I Need To Know I Learned From The Letter People, to be released on DVD and Blu-ray this September, details not just the rise and success of the program at large but also the impact of its lessons on fans as felt even years later. (Collum says he also intends to have the documentary on streaming services and PBS affiliates but hasn’t started shopping it around yet.) 

“When I was in kindergarten, the Letter People helped me learn to read but also how to be a good human being,” Collum says. “I switched schools when I went to first grade, but I would go back to my old teacher’s classroom and wash chalkboards. As I got into my teens, I would help the students who were struggling by pulling them aside to do one-on-ones, and often that involved the Letter People. So I would blow the [inflatable letter dolls] up, and I would put out all the materials to present each letter’s lesson, and when the year came to a close, I was the one who would pack everything safely. And that’s how I fell in love.” 

Though Collum spent much of his adult life involved in horror filmmaking, writing and directing projects like the scream-queen documentary Something to Scream About and the queer horror film October Moon, he kept the legacy of the Letter People alive in his mind, collecting remnants of the program that popped up on eBay and chatting with others he found who also loved the series.

“Whenever I’d speak to people my age about the Letter People, they’d always react with wide eyes and an almost ridiculous level of excitement,” Collum says. “They’d talk about them like they were talking about old friends from school, like they were talking about living human creatures. It became fascinating to me that so many people still carried it with them, because how many programs do most people really remember from grade school? No one knows what math system they were taught, but these people all remembered the Letter People inside and out. So that’s when I decided to make the documentary.” 

Though he initially conceived the doc as a short “remember this?” type video for YouTube, Collum discovered while doing research that one of the program’s creators, Elayne Reiss-Weimann, was still alive and living in Florida. “I flew down there to interview her, and she said, ‘You should talk to this person’ or ‘You should talk to that person,’ and so I did,” Collum says. “Along the way, I learned so much more about the behind-the-scenes history of the show and of the educational program that the film went from being a little 20-minute short to what’s now a 2-hour, 40-minute look” at the genesis and legacy of the program.

While a good chunk of the documentary is about the history of Alpha One and Alpha Time, Everything I Need To Know I Learned From The Letter People does dive into the development and run of the PBS series. “The film goes into the sexism that Elayne had to deal with because the PBS people wanted her to host the TV show in the ’70s, but they wanted her to lose weight and redo her hair,” Collum says, “and it goes into how, in the original program, only the vowels were girls and all the other characters were boys. There was a lot of turmoil behind the scenes, getting that program off the ground, and it wasn’t a hit right out of the gate. But by the late ’70s, they were in Time Magazine and on multiple new programs and TV talk shows.” 

Collum says that he didn’t grow up with the TV series, which didn’t air on the PBS affiliate near his hometown in Wisconsin, but that he’s heard from countless fans who were deeply affected by its content. “They talk about it with great love,” he says. “It doesn’t matter that it [looked] cheap. They still talk about it with the same reverence that they use to talk about Sesame Street.”

With the PBS series going off the air in 1994, the widespread success of the Letter People seemed to peter out around that time as well. The program’s then-owners attempted a relaunch with more “modern” characters, like Mr. D, who went from being made of “delicious donuts” to loving to dance in an attempt to teach kids to make healthy choices.

It didn’t really go anywhere, and now, Collum says, the company that owns the Letter People, Frog Street, seems to be simply sitting on the intellectual property, despite the myriad of bootleg Letter People t-shirts and art in the marketplace. Indeed, there still seems to be a lot of public love for the program in general, with Collum’s documentary trailer garnering over 2 million views on Facebook in just 10 days and original Letter People inflatables going for over $100 on eBay. 

Collum says he thinks the fondness that people feel for the Letter People today stems from the feeling of safety it conveyed amid the political and economic turmoil of the late ’60s and ’70s. Even now, as a kindergarten teacher, he sees the comfort the characters can bring kids. 

“A lot of my students come to school stressed out, but I’ll see them go up to a Letter Person doll and put their head on them to rest, or I’ll see them go up and whisper personal things to the inflatable,” Collum says. “I think that people forget that kids are kids, and the Letter People are a good reminder that learning can and should be fun.”