1960s TV Archives - Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures

Who Remembers “The New People”?

I remember The New People, but oddly enough I remember the sound of the show more than I remember the stories. There was this strange little segue or transition sound they used between scenes that somehow stuck with me all these years. Hearing it again instantly brought the show back.

The New People premiered on ABC in September 1969 with a very late-’60s premise: a group of college students survives a plane crash on a deserted South Pacific island that had been prepared for an atomic test. The island came complete with buildings, supplies and even nuclear-test mannequins, giving the young survivors everything they needed to try building a new society from scratch.

There were some impressive names behind it. Aaron Spelling helped create the series, and Rod Serling wrote the original pilot. ABC also gave the show an unusual 45-minute time slot and paired it with The Music Scene in an effort to attract younger viewers.

The series only lasted 17 episodes, airing from September 1969 to January 1970, but it had some interesting future stars pass through. Richard Dreyfuss, Billy Dee Williams, Tyne Daly, Susan Howard and A Martinez all appeared during its short run.

The regular cast never produced a huge breakout star, although Tiffany Bolling went on to become a familiar face in cult films and television.

And then there’s that sound.

Does anybody else remember The New People — and do you remember that strange little transition sound too?

T.H.E. Cat

T.H.E. Cat was a 1966–67 NBC action series starring Robert Loggia as Thomas Hewitt Edward Cat, a former circus aerialist and cat burglar who now worked as a bodyguard.

The show fit right into the mid-’60s wave of stylish spy and crime shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E., I Spy, Batman, and The Green Hornet, but it had a darker, jazzier feel. Cat used stealth, acrobatics, and street smarts instead of gadgets, operating out of a nightclub called Casa del Gato.

NBC aired it Friday nights after The Man from U.N.C.L.E., hoping to keep that cool adventure audience watching. It only lasted 26 episodes, but for those who remember it, T.H.E. Cat remains one of those sharp, moody little shows that felt different from the usual TV heroes of the time.

Before Bond, Roger Moore Was The Saint

I was about 10 years old when this intro ran, and it was my favorite. The moment that halo appeared and the theme music kicked in, it had me. It was simple, but it worked. The little stick figure with the halo was genius, and the music was cool, haunting, and instantly recognizable. In a way, The Saint taught a whole lesson in how much you could do with very little. A line drawing, a halo, and the right piece of music could stay in your head for decades.

The show itself had already been successful overseas before American network viewers got it. Roger Moore played Simon Templar from 1962 to 1969, long before he became James Bond. The character was not exactly a detective, not exactly a spy, and not exactly a crook. He was more of a charming modern-day Robin Hood type who often worked outside the rules to help people who could not get justice the usual way.

In the United States, The Saint first found an audience through syndication before NBC picked up the color episodes for network television. NBC did not air every episode, but the American exposure helped make Roger Moore a familiar face here. The show had style, mystery, travel, danger, and a lead character who always seemed one step ahead of everyone else.

The intro may be what many people remember first. That halo over Simon Templar’s head, the stick-figure Saint logo, and Edwin Astley’s theme created one of those openings that did not need a lot of explanation. It was classy, clever, and just a little mysterious.

Looking back, The Saint feels like one of those shows that bridged the gap between old-fashioned adventure stories and the cool spy craze of the 1960s. It had the suits, the cars, the international flavor, the beautiful locations, and that smooth Roger Moore confidence. And for a kid watching at home, sometimes all it took was that halo and that music to know something cool was about to happen.

As The World Turns

As The World Turns. This post will never go viral, but if someone remembers their mom or grandma watching this, it is well worth the effort for the post!

As the World Turns was a long-running CBS daytime soap opera that aired from 1956 to 2010, centered mainly around the lives, loves, scandals, and struggles of families in the fictional town of Oakdale, Illinois. At its heart was the Hughes family, with stories built around romance, marriage, betrayal, illness, family conflict, and the everyday drama that made soap operas part of the afternoon routine for generations. It was slower and more character-driven than some later soaps, which helped make it feel like viewers were checking in on people they knew every day.

Before the Lawyers Got Involved

As a kid, I always wondered why adults were leaving blasting caps around often enough that they had to hire Willie Mays to make a commercial about it.

This old PSA is such a strange piece of TV history. One minute you were watching cartoons or cereal commercials, and the next minute one of the greatest baseball players of all time was looking into the camera warning you not to touch explosives.

It feels like it came from that era before everything had ten warning labels, sealed packaging, and a legal department reviewing every word. The message was simple: if you find a blasting cap, do not pick it up. Tell a policeman, a fireman, or an adult.

Looking back, it is funny how many safety lessons were delivered to kids through television. Fire safety, seat belts, strangers, drugs, littering, and apparently, random blasting caps.

Only back then could Willie Mays interrupt your Saturday morning to warn you about explosives.

Do you remember this PSA?

Who Remembers The Galloping Gourmet?

Before cooking shows became calm, polished, and perfect, there was Graham Kerr, The Galloping Gourmet. He didn’t just walk onto the set, he practically burst in, full of energy, jokes, charm, and enough butter and wine to make every 1970s kitchen feel fancy. His show became a hit in the late 1960s and early 1970s, long before Food Network made TV chefs everyday celebrities.

In this clip, he’s doing what we would now call a kitchen “hack,” showing how to clarify butter with the help of a Dixie Cup, which also happened to be the advertiser. Back then, that kind of thing didn’t feel like a forced product placement. It was just part of the show, part cooking lesson, part commercial, and all entertainment. And somehow, Graham Kerr made even melted butter seem like a performance.

Did Tiny Tim Tiptoe Into Your Living Room?

Tiny Tim took “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” and turned it into one of the most unforgettable TV moments of the late 1960s.

With his ukulele, long hair, nervous smile, and high falsetto voice, he came across like someone from another planet. His big break came on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, and before long he was showing up on shows like The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

The public didn’t quite know what to do with him. Some people laughed, some were fascinated, and some thought he was just plain strange. But Tiny Tim was completely sincere. He loved old songs and performed them in a way nobody else could.

And whether you loved him or thought he was weird, once you heard “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” you never forgot it.

The Patty Duke Show

The Patty Duke Show is another one of those shows that reminds us not to believe everything we see on TV. I remember not believing my mom when she told me Patty Duke played both roles, Patty Lane and her “identical cousin” Cathy Lane. Maybe I couldn’t read the credits yet, but to a kid, it sure looked like two different girls.

The show ran on ABC from 1963 to 1966 and starred Patty Duke as both cousins. Patty Lane was the fun, typical American teenager from Brooklyn Heights, while Cathy Lane was the more refined, well-traveled cousin from Scotland. The whole joke of the show was that they looked exactly alike but acted completely different.

What made it even more fun was how they pulled off those split-screen and double-exposure tricks back then. Years later, when I became a video producer, I had a whole new appreciation for it. Anytime I could recreate one of those effects myself, I was pretty proud of it. Back then, it looked like TV magic, and in a lot of ways, it really was.

There’s no need to fear, Underdog is here!

I’ll never forget when my mom pointed out during an episode of Hollywood Squares that Wally Cox was the voice of Underdog. Oh, the world was so complicated back then, so many thanks to our moms who had the patience and love to guide us through the important stuff, like cartoon trivia.

Underdog debuted in 1964 and gave us Shoeshine Boy, the mild-mannered little dog who became a rhyming superhero whenever trouble showed up. With Sweet Polly Purebred usually in danger and villains like Simon Bar Sinister causing trouble, Underdog would come flying in with that famous line that still sticks in our heads all these years later.

There’s no need to fear, Underdog is here!

Wonderful World Of Disney!

Oh, the magical opening for The Wonderful World of Disney and the wonderful world of color! This was the time when we got our first color TV, and we would sing this whenever a TV show was in color. Growing up, we didn’t have much money on Dad’s salary as a Marine, but we had one of the first color TVs on the market. What a hero he was bringing this big 21-inch console into our home! Between our toys and TV, we were all set.

We always looked forward to Sundays with The Wonderful World Of Disney to wrap up our weekend. Then came that sad little realization: the show was ending, bedtime was coming, and school was waiting for us the next morning.

The Disney anthology show first began on ABC in 1954 as Walt Disney’s Disneyland. It later became Walt Disney Presents, then moved to NBC in 1961 as Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, which was a perfect title for the era when color TV still felt like magic. By 1969, it became The Wonderful World of Disney, the name so many of us remember. Over the years it moved between ABC, NBC, and CBS, with different titles including The Disney Sunday Movie and The Magical World of Disney. The series has continued in different forms and special presentations for decades, making it one of the longest-running prime-time programs in American television history.

For a lot of us, it wasn’t just a TV show. It was part of the Sunday night routine, that last bit of weekend magic before Monday morning came knocking.