NARRATOR: From his chill
demeanor to his signature look, Bob Ross remains an icon to
this day inspiring boardgames, contributing to many a hilarious
meme and last minute Halloween costumes. But did you know Bob Ross
wasn't always a low key, go-with-the-flow type of bro? BOB ROSS: There is a
happy evergreen tree. NARRATOR: Today we're exploring
the enigma that is Bob Ross. But before we do, how
about you leave us some happy tree comments and
subscribe to the Weird History Channel? All right, let's take a look
at some fluffy little clouds. Bob Ross did not have
naturally curly hair. Yeah, that's right. Bursting your bubble right
there at the top of this piece. That famous silhouette
was not born from a desire to serve looks along with
his painting lessons, but rather because
Bob Ross was broke. As anybody who lives in
Los Angeles can tell you, the first thing to go when
your budget needs tightening is personal grooming. Bob figured he could save
money on hair maintenance by cutting his own
hair just the one time and perming the life out of it. Better to utilize
his cheddar on things like squirrel food, denim
shirts, or hot tea with lemon. Unfortunately for Bob, he
hated this cost-effective look. Bob wanted desperately
to get rid of the perm and change his hair back to
its natural Vanilla Ice-esque flattop, but he'd
inadvertently created a signature look that his
corporate overlords were insistent on keeping. It was in the logo, after
all, and you can't very well change a logo. For his uniform Bob wanted to
maintain a timeless look, which by his definition meant button
down shirts and blue jeans-- a look that remains popular to
this day with retired TV talk show hosts and famous
pop star couples alike. Ahead of the curve
as always, our Bob. But Bob was used to maintaining
strict uniform and hair standards, since our boy was
in the military for 20 years. That's right. Sweet and mild
mannered Bob Ross was a commanding and authoritative
sergeant in the United States Air Force for 20 years. Before he picked
up a paintbrush, he picked up his bags and
settled into the Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, surrounded
by the most well-adjusted of trees and mountain ranges
that would go on to influence a great deal of his art. As a Sergeant in
the Air Force, Bob wasn't a soft-spoken,
gentle man. It may surprise you to learn he
was a bit of a hard-nosed boss, often demanding the
cleanest of toilets and the most made of beds of
his Air Force fellow compadres. SERGEANT: You will not laugh! You will not cry! You will learn by the number! NARRATOR: Of his time in the
military, Ross had this to say. "I was the guy who made you
scrub the taurine, the guy who made you make your bed,
the guy who screams at you for being late to work. The job requires you to
be a mean, tough person, and I was fed up with it. I promised myself if I
ever got away from it, it wasn't going to
be that way anymore. Bob, of course, followed
through on this promise and seemingly never raised
his voice above a mild whisper as soon as he retired in 1981. He spent his downtime
at the airbase painting the rich landscapes surrounding
the base that he'd sell as a way to make extra income. Was Bob Ross always poor? We're lucky as a society
that the trees in Alaska appear to be "good
vibes only", or else we may never have known
what a happy tree was. After Bob retired from
the military in 1981, he did what most retirees do
and moved back to Florida. What a cliche! It was here that
Bob started to study his infamous wet-on-wet
painting technique under the watchful eye of
teacher and mentor, Bill Alexander. BILL ALEXANDER: I hand
over now that mighty brush you a mighty man,
and that is Bob Ross. Congratulate you. BOB ROSS: Thank you
very much, Bill. NARRATOR: But just like
Kanye West, in reality, their relationship
soon got real dicey. Season two of FX's
"Feud", would love to get their hands
on the great painting show on public television
drama of the 80s because, boy, there was drama. You see, before there was Bob's
show, "The Joy of Painting", the arts and crafts TV
space was occupied solely by "The Magic of Painting"
hosted by Bill Alexander, also on PBS. The two developed a
rivalry after Bob Ross's "Joy of Painting" became a
smash hit, while most of us have never heard of Bill
Alexander and his "Magic of Oil Painting". BILL ALEXANDER: I like
to find it like this. NARRATOR: While Alexander's
show was popular, it wasn't nearly as
popular as Ross's and didn't have the monetary
value of Ross's program despite being basically
the same thing. BILL ALEXANDER:
Maybe here far away is one happy little birch tree. NARRATOR: Alexander said he
felt betrayed by "Bross". Ross, ever the
nice dude, declined to comment about
his former mentor because, "Now he is
a major competitor." Such a sweetheart. Alex even went as
far back as to claim to have invented wet-on-wet
despite it being attributed in art as far back as the
15th century, including to a semi-famous
artist you might have heard of called Claude Monet. "The Joy of Painting" stayed
on public television airwaves for a jaw-dropping 31 seasons. Because of this, Bob Ross
painted a ton of paintings. For every show, he made three
copies of all his work-- the one that was
actually painted on the air, a copy
for reference he kept on the ground
nearby whilst painting, and finally, another that was
completed after shooting that would appear in
his how-to books. Oh, did you not think
Bob Ross was an empire? Because he was
kind of an empire-- between the show, his art
supplies, and his art courses. In fact, like "The
Magic of Painting", "The Joy of Painting" was
mainly a space for Bob to sell his art supplies. BOB ROSS: Liquid white
is a thin oil-base coat. NARRATOR: He was even
a traveling salesman for Alex's Paint Supplies
before being discovered by a woman named
Annette Kowalski, who attended one of his
lessons and thought he should be doing this solo. She's basically the
Yoko Ono of PBS. She also put her money where
her mouth was, however, investing all of her life
savings into Bob Ross's career. I guess we can emphatically say,
"That was a good bet, Annette." However, it's a
good thing Bob Ross, Inc. was a multi-million
dollar company because Bob Ross was a
glorified volunteer for PBS, who did not pay him for hosting
his wildly popular television show. Ross, instead, used
this platform to sell the Ross-branded paint supplies
and painting classes taught by artist trained in his
signature wet-on-wet method, almost as if he did
this simply for-- the joy of painting. Ross did more than donate his
time for "The Joy of Painting". He also donated his paintings
from "The Joy of Painting". Ross would donate his
completed paintings to PBS stations across the
country who, in turn, would sell them to make a
hefty buck or two, never profiting personally
from his own paintings and always spreading the wealth. How is this man not knighted? I mean, honestly. How much wealth? Well, nobody knows for sure. It's hard to say how much
our humble Bob Ross-created paintings are worth to this day. One of the most prolific
painters of modern times, and his art has been priced
at various amounts of cash throughout the years. Because he made three paintings
a show times 31 seasons, it's estimated Bob painted
30,000 pieces of work before his death at age 52. 30,000 paintings are precisely
one wall art section of IKEA. Previous auctions have set Ross
pieces at $600.00 and $1000.00 respectively. Those pieces didn't sell. Another piece of his work
titled "Northern Lights" was set at $6,000.00 and
also, sadly, did not sell. It's starting to make
sense why Bob Ross always seemed to be cutting
financial corners. With no public
record of his sales, it's impossible to guess how
much they might be worth. The answer is,
obviously, priceless. One question we can
answer without scrounging through records is how many
happy trees our humble artist painted. According to the statistic-heavy
website FiveThirtyEight, who did an analysis of Bob's
work, "There were," and no surprise here, "a
ton of very happy trees." BOB ROSS: I do love
to paint trees. NARRATOR: 91 percent
of Ross's work contained at least
one happy tree. BOB ROSS: These little son
of a guns hide in your brush, and you just have
to push them out. NARRATOR: A full
breakdown of his work over the years on
"The Joy of Painting" put trees at the
top of his list, followed by clouds,
mountains, grass, and lakes. Viewers noticed he rarely
featured evidence of people in his art work,
with the exception of the occasional well-lit
cabin or smoking chimney. Even then, that's an
assumption that a family is enjoying a quiet
night at home, enjoying a meal by the
fire and not, as I assume, a haunted cabin full
of chilly ghosts. Ninety percent of his
audience didn't actually paint along with Bob. They skipped the opportunity
to frantically gather the proper art supplies
and colors to paint along with their hero, Bob
Ross, choosing instead to fall asleep. Kind of like how today,
we would actually bake along with the baking
contests on "The Great British Bake Off". Or we do, and that's why
our cabins are on fire. Most people were not
amateur artists trying to learn from him in real time. They just wanted
to sit back, relax, and kick it with a chill dude
painting a serene lake or two. It was cathartic to
many people and relaxing to hear Bob's soft-spoken
mannerisms and positive outlook on life. "The majority of our
audience does not paint, has no desire to paint,
will never paint, " Ross told the Orlando
Sentinel in 1990. They watch it strictly
for entertainment value or for relaxation. We've gotten letters
from people who say they sleep better
when the show is on. They often received up
to 200 fan letters a day, and many of them
were to thank him for being the Ambien
in their lives they didn't know they needed. We all have letters to
write to the creators of the final season of "Game
of Thrones" now, don't we? Bob developed real
human relationships with some of his more
frequent letter writers, contacting fans to check in if
they hadn't written in a while and even sending paintings
to fans whose stories touched him and inspired him. I mean, how amazing
was this guy? Just don't ask Bill Alexander,
who is dead, so never mind. Bob wasn't just a friend
of the humans, though. He also was a huge
advocate for the welfare of our furry friends, too. He kept animals in
his shirt pockets while filming "The
Joy of Painting". Sure, but when I bring my
cat in a bag to grocery shop, it's weird. Viewers especially got to know
Peapod, an epileptic squirrel, that, yes, the full name was
Peapod the Pocket Squirrel. And, yes, it lived in a
basement while not being filmed. That squirrel would have
made a killing on Twitch. Ross bottle-fed Peapod the
Pocket Squirrel on the air, and it's a mystery as to why
Pixar hasn't bought the life rights to Peapod because,
man, that does sound adorable. Ross would also frequently
bring his friend Diana Schaffer, affectionately
referred to as "the bird lady" by Ross because she would,
well, bring in birds. Diana cared for rescue
animals, including hoot the owl, who also made
an appearance on the show. Little Bob Ross also
used to keep squirrels as a pet as a child,
and if you ever tried to calmly
approach a squirrel, you can imagine the
stillness and chill demeanor it would take to
gain a squirrel's trust. But that's not how he,
somehow, lost a finger. Bob Ross was missing a part
of his left index finger. Ross's dad was a carpenter,
and he lost his finger in a woodworking accident as
a kid while operating a saw. See? Bob Ross was a beast. You can be forgiven for
never noticing this before, since Bob held the paint
palette with his left hand that kept the missing index
finger out of view. It would be impossible to see. Also, this just proves
my theory that humans don't need index fingers. Bob Ross created tens of
thousands of pieces of art we should treasure dearly. He created a whole persona
of being a relaxed, artsy man with a beautiful craft he just
wanted to share with the world. He just wanted
people to be happy. He just wanted to spark joy so
you wouldn't throw him away. We'll leave you with
this quote that sums him up better than we can. "I got a letter from
somebody here a while back, and they said, 'Bob, everything
in your world seems to be happy.' That's for sure. That's why I paint. It's because I can create
the kind of world I want, and I can make this world
as happy as I want it. Shoot. If you want bad stuff,
watch the news." BOB ROSS: With that, I'm going
to wish you happy painting, and God bless, my friend. I'll see you next show. NARRATOR: What do you think? Do you like happy trees? Let us know in the comments
below, and while you're at it, check out some of
these other videos from our "Weird History".
