1970's Archives - Page 3 of 23 - Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures

THE JERRY LEWIS TELETHON — A LABOR DAY TRADITION

For a lot of us, Labor Day weekend wasn’t complete without the Jerry Lewis Telethon. You could turn it on Sunday night, go to bed, wake up Monday morning, and somehow Jerry was still there — surrounded by ringing phones, celebrities, Ed McMahon and that famous tote board.

The Labor Day telethon began in 1966 and eventually became a huge national television event. Over the years, stars including Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Johnny Cash, Cher, Michael Jackson, Johnny Carson and Robin Williams stopped by. John Lennon and Yoko Ono even appeared in 1972, with Lennon performing “Imagine.”

But the moment almost everyone remembers came in 1976. Frank Sinatra surprised Jerry by bringing Dean Martin onto the stage. The former comedy partners had gone their separate ways 20 years earlier, and Jerry clearly had no idea Dean was coming out. Watching his face when Dean walks onto that stage is still one of those great live-TV moments.

And if you watched all the way to the end, you knew what was coming — an exhausted and emotional Jerry singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

For me, that song always seemed to signal that Labor Day was ending… and so was another summer.

Do you remember watching the Jerry Lewis Telethon? Who do you remember seeing on it?

Happy Meals

Here’s a commercial showing the beginning of something that eventually became such a normal part of childhood that it’s hard to imagine McDonald’s without the Happy Meal.

This commercial is from 1979, the year McDonald’s took the Happy Meal nationwide. But here’s something that confused me at first: the Happy Meal actually dates to both 1977 and 1979.

McDonald’s was already test-marketing Happy Meals in selected cities beginning in 1977, and the company even filed the HAPPY MEAL trademark that year. Those early tests gave McDonald’s time to refine the meal, the packaging and the prizes.

Then in June 1979, the Happy Meal officially went national with the colorful Circus Wagon boxes. That’s why 1979 is usually considered its official birthday.

And those first boxes weren’t tied to Disney, a movie or the latest cartoon. Inside you got a hamburger or cheeseburger, fries, a drink and McDonaldland cookies, along with prizes like an ID bracelet, Doodler ruler or McPuzzle Lock.

I also didn’t realize how complicated the “who invented the Happy Meal?” story was. Advertising executive Bob Bernstein said the activity-covered box was inspired by watching his son read cereal boxes at breakfast. But in Guatemala, McDonald’s operator Yolanda Fernández de Cofiño had already created a smaller children’s meal called the Menú Ronald, complete with a gift.

And McDonald’s wasn’t even the first burger chain to try the idea. Burger Chef introduced its Funmeal in 1973 and later sued McDonald’s over the similarities.

What amazes me is how quickly it all took off. By the end of 1979, McDonald’s was already doing movie tie-ins, and from there the toy became almost as important as the food.

Do you remember your first Happy Meal — and were you more excited about the hamburger or the toy?

Before Taxi, Judd Hirsch Was Selling Us Listerine

Take another look at the young radio DJ in this commercial. That’s Judd Hirsch, years before Taxi, Ordinary People and the long career we know him for today.

This spot appears to be from around 1970, when Hirsch was still trying to establish himself as an actor and doing commercials to make a living. What I didn’t know was that before acting, he had earned a degree in physics and actually worked as an engineer. A few years after this commercial, his career began taking off, and by 1978 he was Alex Rieger on Taxi, eventually winning two Emmys for the role.

But the other star here may really be Listerine’s advertising.

Most companies tried desperately to convince us their products tasted good. Listerine basically said the opposite. Its famous campaign was “The taste people hate twice a day.” In other words, yes, it tastes awful — but that must mean it works!

And boy did we believe that.

Listerine had actually been around since 1879, originally developed as an antiseptic rather than an everyday mouthwash. By the 1920s, advertising helped make the word “halitosis” part of the American vocabulary and convinced generations that bad breath could ruin everything from a date to a marriage.

Looking back, I think the burning sensation became part of Listerine’s identity. You swished it around, tried desperately to make it the full 30 seconds, and then came up gasping for air!

And sitting there in this old commercial is a young Judd Hirsch, probably with no idea that millions of us would someday know him as one of television’s most familiar faces.

Did you recognize Judd Hirsch right away — and be honest, how long could you actually keep old-fashioned Listerine in your mouth?

Remember Holmes & Yo-Yo? ABC’s Short-Lived Robot Cop Sitcom

Here’s one of those shows where you mention the title and somebody immediately says, “I remember that!” — even though Holmes & Yo-Yo barely lasted three months during its original run.

It premiered on ABC in September 1976, with Richard B. Shull playing accident-prone detective Alexander Holmes and John Schuck as his new partner, Gregory “Yo-Yo” Yoyonovich. The catch was that Yo-Yo wasn’t really a cop at all — he was an experimental android programmed for police work. ABC put it on Saturday nights at 8:00, opposite The Jeffersons and Emergency!, which certainly wasn’t an easy place for a new comedy to survive.

Only 11 episodes aired before ABC pulled it in December 1976. Two more were sitting on the shelf and finally turned up the following August, bringing the complete series to just 13 episodes.

There was actually a surprising amount of talent behind this little show. Executive producer Leonard Stern had worked on Get Smart and McMillan & Wife — and was also one of the guys who invented Mad Libs. The theme came from Dick Halligan of Blood, Sweat & Tears, John Astin directed two episodes, and a young John Landis even received a story credit before Animal House made him famous.

TV Guide later put Holmes & Yo-Yo at #33 on its list of the 50 worst television shows, but I’m not sure that tells the entire story. Half a century later, people are still asking, “Does anybody else remember that show with the robot cop?”

Do you remember actually watching Holmes & Yo-Yo, or is this one of those shows where you mainly remember the opening and the idea behind it?

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?

Who Ya Gunna Call? Dustbuster!

I think the Dustbuster was one of those products that seemed to suddenly appear and then before long everybody knew exactly what it was. No dragging out the big vacuum, no cord and no bag — just grab it off the wall, suck up the crumbs and put it back.

This commercial is from 1980, right near the beginning of the Dustbuster craze, but I never realized how interesting the story behind it was.

Black & Decker introduced the Dustbuster in 1979, and there really is a NASA connection — just not quite the story that “NASA invented the Dustbuster.” Black & Decker was already making cordless tools before Apollo, but its work developing a battery-powered drill for NASA helped the company improve motor efficiency and cordless technology. That lunar drill was actually used on the Moon beginning with Apollo 15 in 1971.

The Dustbuster itself almost came from a failure. Black & Decker had sold a cordless multi-tool system that included a little vacuum attachment called the Spot Vac. The overall product didn’t do particularly well, but the vacuum gave the company another idea.

Designer Carroll Gantz completely rethought it. He gave the Dustbuster that distinctive shape based partly on a dustpan, changed Black & Decker’s familiar tool colors to an almond beige that wouldn’t look out of place in the kitchen, and created the wall-mounted charger — the “home base” featured in this commercial.

Black & Decker originally projected sales in the tens of thousands. Instead, more than a million were sold, and by 1985 about 10 million Dustbusters had been sold. Competitors rushed out their own versions and Black & Decker wound up fighting patent battles over the design.

And maybe the biggest sign of its success is that “Dustbuster” became the word many of us used for almost any little handheld vacuum, whether Black & Decker made it or not.

All that history just to clean up a few crumbs!

Did your family have an original Dustbuster hanging on the wall?

Remember Junior Jumble?

Remember Junior Jumble? This was one of those little newspaper features that could keep you busy almost as long as the comics!

Jumble itself dates all the way back to 1954, when the word game originally appeared as Scramble. Henri Arnold and Bob Lee later took over, and a kid-friendly Junior Jumble followed. The idea was simple: unscramble the words, take the letters from the circled boxes, then use the cartoon clue to figure out the final joke.

This particular one is especially neat because it’s from July 4, 1976 — the Bicentennial. Naturally, George Washington was the subject, with the final answer playing off the old legend that Washington could never tell a lie.

I also love the way they hid the answer at the bottom. Instead of simply turning the newspaper upside down, you had to hold it up to a mirror to read it. I have to admit, looking up those answers so many times as a kid is probably how I taught myself to read backwards!

And Jumble didn’t disappear with the newspapers of our childhood. It’s still being published today, with the children’s version now known as Jumble for Kids.

How many of you used to grab a pencil and try to solve Junior Jumble before looking at the answer?

Cathy Rigby Built Quite a Career After the Olympics

This old Cathy Rigby Stayfree commercial brings back a completely different Cathy Rigby memory for me.

Back in the 1990s, I worked as a Communications Specialist at Caldor’s corporate headquarters in Norwalk. We were opening a new store in Pennsylvania and Cathy Rigby was there to meet customers and sign autographs. What I remember most about her personally was how soft-spoken and very polite she was. Nothing flashy at all, and that stuck with me.

Most of us remember Cathy first as the young American gymnast who became one of the faces of the sport. She competed in the 1968 and 1972 Olympics, but something I had forgotten is that her most historic medal didn’t come at the Olympics. In 1970, she won silver on the balance beam at the World Championships, becoming the first American gymnast ever to win a World Championships medal.

After retiring from competition, she did something a lot of famous athletes struggle to do — she kept finding ways to turn that recognition into a long career.

There were the Stayfree commercials, which became one of her best-known endorsement campaigns. She also spent 18 years covering gymnastics for ABC Sports, did other television and fitness work, and then built a whole second career on stage.

And that second career became huge. Rigby began playing Peter Pan in the 1970s and returned to the role for decades, eventually earning a Tony nomination in 1991. She and her husband also moved into producing through McCoy Rigby Entertainment.

Then there’s Caldor itself, another memory for a lot of us. The chain was founded in 1951 by Carl and Dorothy Bennett, and even the name came from them — CAL from Carl and DOR from Dorothy. By the time I worked there, it had grown into one of the Northeast’s best-known discount chains.

So for me, this commercial connects three different things: a familiar face from television, a remarkable post-Olympic career, and my own memory of meeting Cathy Rigby years later through Caldor.

Do you remember her most from gymnastics, the Stayfree commercials, Peter Pan, or somewhere else?

Did You Walk A Mile For A Camel?

If you grew up watching television in the 1950s or ’60s, cigarette commercials weren’t unusual or something that jumped out at you — everybody saw them. Camel, Winston, Marlboro, Salem and the rest were mixed right in with the cereal, cars and laundry detergent.

And Camel was certainly no little brand. It was introduced by R.J. Reynolds in 1913, became the company’s first nationally marketed cigarette and within four years was America’s number-one seller.

The commercial I’m showing comes from Camel’s revival of one of advertising’s most famous lines: “I’d Walk a Mile for a Camel.” What surprised me is how old that slogan actually was. Smithsonian records show it appearing in Camel advertising back in the 1920s, and Reynolds brought the idea back again near the end of the 1960s.

There’s also a future TV connection. Geoffrey Scott, who later played Mark Jennings on Dynasty, became one of the faces of the “Walk a Mile” Camel campaign. Scott made nearly 100 commercials during his career and also wound up doing ads for Old Spice and even portraying a Marlboro Man.

Then everything changed. Federal law ended cigarette advertising on American radio and television after January 1, 1971.

Do you remember the Camel commercials themselves, or mostly just the line “I’d Walk a Mile for a Camel”?