In Pirro & the Alarm Clock (1949) puppeteer Pat Patterson is shown right off the bat gazing into an open drawer, calling for Pirro to wake up.

Pirro won't awaken until Pat sets off an alarm clock, which causes the marionette to fall out of the chest-of-drawer, cling for his very life, & struggle on the lip of the drawer.

The marionette is a clown with striped clown outfit, mute, given behaviors more childlike than clownlike. Pat gives Pirro (thereby the children viewing the film) a lesson on the nature of clocks & how to tell time.

Pirro helps unroll a big sheet of paper onto the floor so Pat can do drawings while explaining clocks. The marionette is charming enough & well operated, but as primarily an educational film, it does get rather dull for adult viewing.

The director is credited as the "visual educational consultant" at San Francisco University. Perhaps a very young child, even one who already knows such basics about clocks & telling time, would get a thrill out of seeing the childlike clown learning something new to him. But I suspect any kid who had already outgrown Barney the dinosaur would have by then long outgrown Pirro as well.

Other educationally designed films in this series, each under ten minutes, all issued in 1949, include Hello Pirro in which Pirro learns about mirrors; followed by Piro & the Telephone, Pirro & the Phonograph, Pirro & the Lamp, Pirro & the Magnet, PIrro & the Scale, Pirro & the Vaccum Cleaner, & Pirro & the Blackboard, each with the repetitious format suited to pre-kindergarten.

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