1960's Archives - Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures

Room 222

Watching this old Room 222 preview made me wonder — was high school really like this in 1969, or was this Hollywood’s version of what they thought it should be?

The show premiered on ABC on September 17, 1969, and from what I found, the answer is a little of both.

The producers actually tried hard to make the school feel real. Writers were required to spend time in classrooms at Los Angeles High School and other area schools so they could pick up the clothing, slang, attitudes and atmosphere of a real big-city high school. Much of the series was filmed at Los Angeles High as well.

So the mini-skirts, Afros, racial mix, students questioning authority and discussions about Vietnam, race and changing social values weren’t simply dreamed up for television. Those things were happening.

But I also don’t think everybody watching at home saw their own high school reflected here. A suburban or small-town school could have looked very different, and Pete Dixon, played by Lloyd Haynes, was probably a little more patient and understanding than some of the teachers we remember!

The cast had some interesting backgrounds too. Denise Nicholas, who played Liz McIntyre, had actually worked in the Civil Rights Movement. Michael Constantine won an Emmy as Principal Kaufman and decades later became the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Karen Valentine also won an Emmy for the first season.

And here’s one I had completely forgotten — that wonderfully laid-back theme was written by Jerry Goldsmith. He used an unusual seven-beat rhythm for it, years before scoring movies such as The Omen, Patton and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

So maybe Room 222 wasn’t exactly everyone’s high-school experience, but it seems it was trying much harder to reflect real students and real issues than I ever realized.

For those of you who were actually in high school around 1969 — did your school look and feel anything like Room 222?

Gumby!

I think Gumby is one of those characters where several different generations can honestly say, “I grew up watching him.”

He actually goes all the way back to 1955, first appearing on Howdy Doody before getting his own NBC show. But what surprised me was how many little pieces of Art Clokey’s own life ended up in that simple green character. Gumby’s head was patterned after his father’s hairstyle in an old photograph, his big feet helped keep him standing during stop-motion filming, and Clokey chose green partly because he saw it as a color that didn’t represent any particular race.

Even the name has a story. Clokey’s father used the word “gumbo” for the clay-filled mud around Michigan farms, which eventually led to Gumbo, Gumba and little Gumby.

And Gumby almost came about accidentally. Clokey had made an experimental clay film called Gumbasia in 1953 after first working with clay professionally on a Budweiser commercial where he animated bites disappearing from a Swiss cheese sandwich. A producer saw Gumbasia and encouraged him to make clay characters for children’s television.

Then came another generation. College kids rediscovered Gumby, and in the early ’80s Eddie Murphy turned him into one of his memorable Saturday Night Live characters. That parody actually helped put the real Gumby back into the public eye.

So depending on your age, you might remember Gumby from the ’50s, the ’60s, reruns in the ’70s or his big ’80s comeback.

What era of Gumby do you remember watching?

Wally Gator: The Cartoon We May Not Have Watched the Same Way

I definitely remember Wally Gator, but here’s something I never really thought about — depending on where we grew up, we may not all have watched him the same way.

Wally debuted in 1962, but he wasn’t originally created as a regular network half-hour show. His cartoons were part of a syndicated package with Touché Turtle and Dum Dum and Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har. Local television stations could package those cartoons differently. Chicago’s WGN, for example, actually ran the half hour under the name Wally Gator, while New York’s WPIX used the cartoons in a locally hosted program called Cartoon Zoo.

That may explain why some of us remember Wally almost as his own show while others remember seeing him mixed in with other Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

And that voice wasn’t accidental either. Daws Butler based Wally’s voice on comedian Ed Wynn, who many of us would recognize as the Mad Hatter from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. Mr. Twiddle was Don Messick, several years before he became the original voice of Scooby-Doo.

Wally only produced 52 original shorts, but like so many Hanna-Barbera characters, the reruns gave him a much longer life than that original 1962–63 production run. He even came back with Yogi and the gang in the 1970s and returned again decades later in Jellystone!

For a cartoon that originally lasted only about a year, Wally Gator sure seemed to be on television forever!

Do you remember Wally as his own show, or do you remember him mixed in with Touché Turtle and Lippy the Lion?

Jiffy Pop — Was It More Fun to Make Than Eat?

It’s Friday night, and this one brings back that whole feeling of the weekend finally being here. Maybe there was a movie coming on TV, maybe we were allowed to stay up a little later, and somehow popcorn just seemed to belong with Friday night. And if somebody pulled out a Jiffy Pop, making the popcorn became part of the entertainment. Standing at the stove, shaking that pan back and forth and watching the foil slowly puff up was almost as much fun as eating what was inside.

There was popcorn, and then there was Jiffy Pop, where half the entertainment was watching that aluminum foil grow into a giant silver ball.

Looking this one up, I found that Jiffy Pop goes all the way back to 1959, but it wasn’t actually the first popcorn sold this way. A product called E-Z Pop had been around since 1954, and its manufacturer eventually sued Jiffy Pop’s makers for patent infringement. The case went all the way to a federal appeals court, where Jiffy Pop won in 1963 partly because its foil expanded differently.

The magician connection in these 1970s commercials wasn’t just advertising make-believe either. Harry Blackstone Jr. was a genuine professional magician, and in 1976 Jiffy Pop was promoting the product as “the magic treat.” Blackstone came from quite a magic family — his father was The Great Blackstone, one of America’s best-known illusionists and a contemporary of Harry Houdini.

Harry Jr. went on to become a major star himself. He was twice named Magician of the Year by the Magic Castle, took his show to Broadway in 1980 and later donated his family’s famous floating-light-bulb illusion to the Smithsonian.

And Jiffy Pop certainly outlasted these commercials. It even had a memorable role in the opening of Scream in 1996.

Best of all, Jiffy Pop is still being made today. Some products really don’t need much improving — watching that foil balloon get bigger was the whole experience!

Since it’s Friday night, this seems like the perfect one to ask:

What memories does Jiffy Pop bring back for you — family movie nights, staying up late watching TV, or trying not to burn the bottom?

Muriel Cigars — Edie Adams Made “Hey Big Spender” Her Own

Here’s one where the commercial spokeswoman may have become better remembered than the product.

Edie Adams spent an incredible 19 years selling Muriel cigars on television, and the Television Academy says Muriel’s sales increased more than tenfold during the years her commercials ran.

This spot uses “Hey, Big Spender” from the Broadway musical Sweet Charity, but with one perfect advertising change: instead of “spend a little time with me,” Edie sings “spend a little dime with me” because a Muriel Corona cost ten cents.

And apparently that little change caused quite a stir. I found that Universal filed suit in 1968 trying to stop the cigar company from using the Big Spender parody in its advertising.

Edie herself had quite a résumé. She was Juilliard-trained, won a Tony Award for Li’l Abner, appeared in movies including The Apartment and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and was married to television comedy pioneer Ernie Kovacs.

Here’s the part I really didn’t know: she never smoked. Adams later said the Muriel cigars never even touched her lips, and she devised a special ring to hold one convincingly for the commercials.

She also did something television historians owe her a lot for. After Kovacs died, Edie fought to locate and preserve his old programs at a time when networks were routinely erasing or throwing television recordings away. More than 1,200 items from the Kovacs-Adams collection eventually went to the Library of Congress.

Not bad for someone many people simply remember as “the Muriel cigar lady.”

Do you remember Edie Adams herself, or is it “Hey, Big Spender” that immediately brings these commercials back?

The Courtship of Eddie’s Father — “People Let Me Tell You ’Bout My Best Friend”

I think all you have to say is The Courtship of Eddie’s Father and a lot of us immediately hear Harry Nilsson singing “People let me tell you ’bout my best friend.” It may be one of those cases where the theme song has lasted just as long in our memories as the show itself.

The series premiered in 1969 and ran for three seasons on ABC, always on Wednesday nights, although ABC moved the time around. Bill Bixby played widowed father Tom Corbett and six-year-old Brandon Cruz was Eddie, the little matchmaker who figured Dad needed some help finding a new wife.

Something I didn’t know was that the story had already been a 1963 movie with Glenn Ford and Ron Howard, which itself came from a 1961 novel.

The relationship between Bixby and Cruz apparently wasn’t just television magic either. Cruz has said they spent weekends and vacations together away from the set, going to places like Palm Springs, Big Bear and the beach. He remembered Bixby bringing stability to his life and said Bixby deliberately didn’t want him learning how to “act” too much because he wanted Eddie’s reactions to stay natural.

Then there’s Mrs. Livingston, played by Miyoshi Umeki. I never realized as a kid that I was watching an Oscar winner. Umeki had made history with Sayonara as the first Asian performer to win an acting Academy Award, and Eddie’s Father ended up being her final regular acting job.

And whatever happened to little Eddie? Here’s one I certainly wouldn’t have predicted — Brandon Cruz became a punk rocker, singing with Dr. Know and later performing as lead singer for the Dead Kennedys. From “Best Friend” to punk rock is quite a trip!

The show only gave us 73 episodes, but between Bixby, Eddie, Mrs. Livingston and that wonderful Nilsson theme, it left a pretty big memory behind.

Do you remember watching it Wednesday nights, or did you discover Eddie and his father later in reruns?

Handi-Wrap Won Me Over One School Sandwich at a Time

I remember this Handi-Wrap commercial, but what it really brings back is a debate we used to have in our house — Handi-Wrap or wax paper for my school sandwiches?

At my young age, I already had a pretty strong opinion! Wax paper never seemed to really seal the sandwich. By lunchtime the edges of the bread would already be starting to harden, and that was all the proof I needed that we should be using Handi-Wrap.

Apparently I had fallen right into Dow’s marketing plan.

When Handi-Wrap arrived around 1960, Dow went straight after wax paper. I found an original ad in the Science History Institute collection promising that a 100-foot roll would wrap 100 sandwiches while selling at wax-paper prices. The advertising specifically pushed Handi-Wrap for lunchboxes and claimed sandwiches could stay fresh even when made the night before.

A few years later Dow even created a “Lunch Box Go-Together” store promotion built around Handi-Wrap, so getting Mom to switch the kids’ sandwiches from wax paper to plastic was clearly a big part of the strategy.

And there actually was something behind what I was noticing. Wax paper provides a moisture barrier, but folding can crack or interrupt that barrier, while plastic film can surround the sandwich much more completely.

So I’d like to think I helped convince Mom that Handi-Wrap was the better choice.

Of course, there was one thing stronger than my argument in our house: if the wax paper was on sale, I probably wasn’t winning that week!

Funny how something as ordinary as what Mom wrapped your school sandwich in can become a memory more than 50 years later.

Which did your house use for school lunches — Handi-Wrap, wax paper, aluminum foil, or eventually those wonderful little sandwich bags?

Peabody and Sherman

Peabody and Sherman were one of those great little pieces of Rocky and Bullwinkle that managed to sneak some history in between all the jokes. Officially called Peabody’s Improbable History, the series followed the unbelievably intelligent Mr. Peabody and his adopted boy Sherman as they traveled through time using the WABAC Machine.

What surprised me is just how many of these they made — 91 separate adventures, most only about four-and-a-half minutes long. Bill Scott supplied Peabody’s voice, and he was also the voice of Bullwinkle and Dudley Do-Right. Sherman was voiced by Walter Tetley, who was already 44 years old when the series debuted in 1959, despite sounding completely believable as a young boy.

The supporting voices were just as impressive. Paul Frees, better known around the Bullwinkle universe as Boris Badenov, handled many of the historical characters, while June Foray turned up in numerous female roles.

And then there was that wonderful WABAC Machine. The name became so closely associated with traveling into the past that decades later the Internet Archive borrowed the idea for its own Wayback Machine.

The history was usually twisted, the situations were ridiculous, and Peabody somehow always managed to finish everything off with a terrible pun. That’s probably exactly why we remember them so well.

My Favorite Martian

When I think of My Favorite Martian, I really don’t remember watching it as a first-run show — I remember the repeats. After looking into it, I have a feeling I’m far from alone.

The show originally aired Sunday nights at 7:30 on CBS from 1963 through 1966, right after Lassie and immediately before The Ed Sullivan Show. And here’s something I never really thought about: at the same time over on NBC, it was going head-to-head with Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. That’s quite a Sunday night television lineup!

The opening I’m showing here is from 1965, when My Favorite Martian finally made the jump to color for its third and final season. The first 75 episodes were black-and-white, while only the last 32 were produced in color. Production also moved from Desilu to MGM that final year.

But here’s why so many of us may remember the show from later. Almost immediately after the CBS run ended, My Favorite Martian went into syndication. I found a 1967 television-industry advertisement promoting all 107 episodes to stations as “The Martian Strip,” with the show already running or being sold in major markets around the country.

So while Uncle Martin originally belonged to Sunday nights, reruns probably created a whole second generation of viewers who never really thought about when the show originally aired. I think I’m one of them.

And once that George Greeley theme starts, I’m right back there again!

Do you remember watching My Favorite Martian on Sunday nights, or like me, do you mostly remember it from the reruns?

The Monkees, Bugs Bunny and Kool-Aid

Talk about putting two things together that you wouldn’t expect — The Monkees and Bugs Bunny selling Kool-Aid!

But the first thing I noticed was that there are only three Monkees here. Peter Tork had already left the group in December 1968, leaving Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones and Michael Nesmith to carry on as a trio. By this point their NBC television series was over too, but that wasn’t the end of The Monkees on television.

In the fall of 1969, CBS brought the show back as Saturday morning reruns, and General Foods’ Kool-Aid was a sponsor. That explains a lot about why these commercials exist. The Monkees were suddenly being introduced to kids all over again, and Kool-Aid had three very recognizable spokesmen ready to go.

Bugs Bunny wasn’t new to Kool-Aid either. I found that the “Make Friends with Kool-Aid” campaign was already using Bugs several years earlier, so pairing him with The Monkees was really a combination of two existing advertising ideas.

There’s another interesting connection from this period. Their 1969 album The Monkees Present was also tied into a Kool-Aid promotion. The group was well past peak Monkeemania by then, Peter was gone and Michael Nesmith would soon leave too.

And for anyone wondering where the Kool-Aid Man is — he wasn’t the television star yet! That familiar walking pitcher didn’t make his big TV debut until 1975.

Looking back, this commercial is almost a snapshot of The Monkees right near the end of their original run.

Do you remember this commercial, or do you remember The Monkees more from their Saturday morning reruns?