TV Archives
Jack Webb's TV Creations I Remember JFK did an article on Dragnet back in 2007, but it really didn't pay enough homage to the man behind the show, Jack Webb. With that, today's offering will attempt to give credit where credit is due, to the creative genius that accompanied one of the most familiar...
Mel Brooks Everybody loves to laugh. And growing up a Boomer, one of my most consistent sources of laughter was Mel Brooks. Melvin Kaminsky was born in 1928 Brooklyn to a father descended from German Jews and a mother whose lineage was Russian Jews. He was a sickly child who soon discovered...
The Super Bowl One of the coolest things about being a Boomer is that we can recall the very roots of the game which brings the USA to a stop every February, as the entire country takes time off (whether formally or informally) to observe two teams play for the championship of the...
Dialing for Dollars Oh Lord? Won't you buy me a color TV? Dialing for Dollars is trying to find me! Janis immortalized a local TV phenomenon with her very last recording, "Mercedes Benz." Indeed, this writer may have completely forgotten about the home-grown giveaway program if not for that lyric, memorized many years...
Steve Allen Growing up Boomers, there were familiar faces on TV that kept showing up time after time that were as comfortable as a well-worn pair of slippers. They would move from series to series, and we sort of took it for granted that we would always have them. Sadly, that's not...
The Famous Mr. Ed One memory that we Boomers have indelibly burned into our collective psyches is a theme song about a talking horse. We also have the sound of a baritone voice saying "Willlburrrr!" The horse is, of course, the famous Mr. Ed. And it was very few black and white TV's of...
Bobby Fischer and the Match of the Century Many of us Boomers grew up with chess sets in the house. Many of these were cheap plastic jobs imported from Japan. Some of us had prestigious cast or carved versions. But odds are that all of us, when sitting down to take on one of our youthful opponents, fancied...
Westerns on TV Roy Rogers is riding tonight Returning to our silver screen! Comic book characters never grow old Evergreen heroes whose stories are told Oh the great sequined cowboy Who sings of the plains Of roundups, and rustlers, and home on the range! Turn on the TV Shut out the Light...
Jerry Lewis and His Telethon The year was 1952. Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin were the stars of The Colgate Comedy Hour. A staff member asked Jerry to help out with a local four-hour telethon to raise funds for research into muscular dystrophy which was broadcast on WABD-TV, a New York station. Jerry responded to...
A Little Town Called Mayberry Some of our memories as Boomers are so universal that we take them for granted. Practically all of us had TV's in our households, or if not, we still had regular access to them. And the odds are overwhelming that 99.99% of us are familiar with a little town in...
The Most Stunning TV Ever Made: the Philco Predicta My subjects for columns are frequently decided upon by pure gut feeling. If it feels right, write about it! I'm a subscriber to Charles Phoenix's Slide of the Week, and I recommend you do so too. Last week, I received a slide that featured a TV that I'd known about,...
Why Does This TV Show Look...Different? When I was a kid, I noticed something about TV very early in the game: my mom's "stories," as she called the soap operas she watched on weekday afternoons, had a different look to them than other shows like Leave It to Beaver or Bonanza. The look is hard to...
Peanuts Charles Monroe Schulz was born on November 26, 1922 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His uncle, possibly in an act of prescience, gave him the nickname "Sparky," after Barney Google's Horse Spark Plug. Charles grew up loving to draw. Once, he drew a picture of his dog Spike, who relished eating nails...
The Beverly Hillbillies There are only a few memories that are common to practically every Boomer kid. Examples: we all got the smallpox vaccination. We all were blown away by man's first moonwalk. And I'm pretty sure that we have all watched The Beverly Hillbillies. The show actually spawned a genre that I...
Elvis Makes a Triumphant Comeback Regular readers of I Remember JFK know where I stand on the subject of Elvis. He had as much performing talent as any one individual who was ever born, but unfortunately, he also had the naiveté to put his trust in a manipulative individual who saw nothing but dollar signs...
Tiny Tim The date he was born was April 12, 1932. His parents were a Lebanese man and a Jewish woman. When he was five years old, his father brought home an old wind-up gramophone and a record of Henry Burr singing "Beautiful Ohio." Later, more old records were obtained. Young Herbert...
An American Family: the Birth of Reality TV The year was 1971. The typical American family was the Brady Bunch. So said one side of Hollywood. I beg to differ, said the other side. The typical American family is going through a divorce, and has a flamboyantly gay son who likes to go drag racing every now and...
Family Bands, Real and Fictional What a wild, strange trip was music of the 60's. On the one hand, we had Jim Morrison disrobing on a Florida stage in a drug-induced mania. On the other, we had a squeaky-clean family, complete with mom singing harmony, appearing on Sullivan and charting a couple of #2 hits....
The Twilight Zone It is a special work of art indeed that is defined as timeless. Example: Botticelli's The Birth of Venus is a great work. However, it's da Vinci's Mona Lisa that continues to capture one's attention, as that mysterious, enigmatic smile forces us to try to deduce what was behind it....
WWII Dramas All Over the TV Screen There were a lot of WWII veterans in the US during the 60's. Our fathers (and some of our mothers) who served in the war were now in their 30's and 40's. They were likely the single biggest demographic group out there, and the TV networks wanted their business. WWII...
The Munsters Vs. The Addams Family Television took a macabre twist in 1964. It began with two series that sprang out of the gate on the same week in September, beginning a frantic two-year run which ended with both shows closing up shop within a month of each other in the spring of 1966.However, that didn't...
Woodsy Owl It is with great trepidation that I present today's I Remember JFK memory to you. You see, according to the legalese that I encountered in researching this particular piece of our pasts, I may be going away for a long, long time. Read on. Woodsy Owl made his debut in...
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The Full-Service Gas Station:
I grew up with dad preferring an Apco gas station in my hometown. He would pull in, the attendant would greet him by name, fill the car, wipe the windshield, check the tire pressures, and hand me a sucker. It was a little ritual I always looked forward to. In...
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