classic television Archives - Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures

WATCH JOE NAMATH GET CREAMED!

Only in the 1970s could a shaving cream commercial turn something as ordinary as shaving into entertainment!

And who better to star in it than Broadway Joe Namath?

By this time, Joe had already guaranteed a victory over the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III and then delivered. He was one of the biggest personalities in football, and his fame extended well beyond the playing field.

Then Noxzema came along and made getting creamed part of the act!
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What really makes this commercial memorable is that catchy jingle. The music has a funky, almost theatrical sound, with a singer enthusiastically encouraging us to let Noxzema cream our faces so our razors wouldn’t.

I did some digging and found that an advertising-music retrospective identifies an uncredited studio singer behind the famous Namath jingle, although I couldn’t establish the singer’s name for this particular recording.
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And the advertising worked well enough that Noxzema continued running Joe Namath commercials for more than three years.

According to the advertising agency’s historical account, they received surprisingly few complaints about the suggestive humor.

Another interesting thing is how many commercials Joe made over the years. In 1974, he even appeared in an advertisement for Beautymist pantyhose, wearing a pair himself!

That’s how big Broadway Joe had become. He could sell shaving cream, pantyhose and just about anything else advertisers put in front of him.

And more than 50 years later, we’re still watching him get creamed.

Do you remember these Noxzema commercials?

#JoeNamath #BroadwayJoe #Noxzema #NewYorkJets #SuperBowlIII #1970sCommercials #VintageCommercials #RetroCommercials #AdvertisingJingles #ClassicAdvertising #1970sNostalgia #VintageTelevision #TheRetroSite

CBS Halloween Nights—Charlie Brown, Garfield & No Apps!

Another thing about the good ole days was that you could always count on CBS to bring you It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown like clockwork. And you didn’t have to download apps just to see one special! You checked the TV listings, turned on the television, and made sure you were there when it started.
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This old CBS promo brings back that anticipation: Garfield’s Halloween Adventure and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown together for a night of Halloween cartoons. Garfield and Odie went looking for candy and wound up facing ghost pirates, while Linus waited patiently in his pumpkin patch and Charlie Brown kept getting rocks!
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The Great Pumpkin first aired on October 27, 1966—60 years ago this Halloween season. Garfield’s Halloween Adventure arrived on October 30, 1985, paired with Charlie Brown on CBS. That was a pretty good reason to get your homework finished early.
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The music helped make these specials stick with us, too. Vince Guaraldi gave the Peanuts gang that unmistakable jazz sound, while Lou Rawls sang “This Is the Night” and “Scaredy Cat” for Garfield. Those cartoons had some serious musical talent behind them.
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And Garfield’s adventure could get surprisingly spooky. That old man telling the story of the pirates, the ticking clock, and those ghosts arriving were a lot more unsettling than you might expect from a cat usually concerned with lasagna!
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There was something special about knowing other families were watching at the same time. The commercials, the previews, the rush to get back before the show started—it was all part of the evening.
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Did you watch both of these on CBS? And did Garfield’s ghost pirates scare you?
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#ItsTheGreatPumpkinCharlieBrown #GarfieldsHalloweenAdventure #CharlieBrown #Garfield #Snoopy #HalloweenNostalgia #ClassicTV #80sNostalgia #TheRetroSite

Scarecrow- When Disney Scared Me!

I’ll never forget this episode. It was right after Jason and the Argonauts in the theatre—and now TV wasn’t even safe for me!

Most people thought of Disney as talking animals, happy songs, and safe Sunday-night entertainment. Then this guy showed up.

The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh was actually Dr. Christopher Syn—a respected vicar by day and a masked smuggler by night.

That frightening mask was made from an ordinary dishcloth, with thicker artificial straws added because real straw didn’t photograph properly. But it was the laugh that got me.

The show aired as a three-part story on three consecutive Sunday nights: February 9, 16, and 23, 1964.

After Jason and the Argonauts, I thought television was supposed to be safe. Then Disney sent the Scarecrow riding out of the darkness.

Do you remember The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh?

#TheRetroSite #ScarecrowOfRomneyMarsh #DisneyHistory #ClassicTV #RetroTV #PatrickMcGoohan #1960sTV #HalloweenTV #Nostalgia

She Was a Witch Before Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!

Before she became the oldest Brady daughter, Maureen McCormick was causing trouble for Darrin Stephens! In Bewitched’s 1965 Halloween episode “Trick or Treat,” she played Endora disguised as a little girl. That innocent face? Don’t fall for it.
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And she was already selling us toys! Maureen appeared in Barbie and Chatty Cathy commercials before The Brady Bunch. One Chatty Cathy ad even featured her future TV sister, Eve Plumb. Marcia and Jan—before they were Marcia and Jan!
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It’s funny watching these old commercials now and recognizing faces we’d soon know so well. We thought we were watching the dolls!
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Did you recognize Maureen on Bewitched? And do you remember those Barbie and Chatty Cathy commercials?

The Three Stooges Go to Work for Dickies—1969

I vaguely remember this commercial starring the Three Stooges. At the time, I had no idea what Dickies workwear was, but as a kid, it sure had a funny name—fitting for the Three Stooges!
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This commercial premiered on ABC on May 31, 1969, with Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Joe DeRita turning a construction site into the kind of workplace you’d probably want to keep your distance from. If you’re selling clothes that can take a beating, hiring these three makes pretty good sense!
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That’s Curly Joe, who joined the team in 1958. Many of us knew the earlier Stooges from television reruns, so seeing different faces in the third spot could get confusing. Those reruns gave the boys a whole new audience of kids after their long run making movie shorts.
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Dickies was already an established company by then, having started in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1922. The name that made me laugh actually came from founding partner E. E. “Colonel” Dickie. Their famous 874 work pants debuted in 1967, just two years before this commercial.
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There’s something a little bittersweet about watching it now. In January 1970, Larry suffered a stroke while filming Kook’s Tour, effectively bringing this version of the team’s performing career to an end.
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I might not have remembered what they were selling, but I remembered the Stooges—and that funny name. Do you remember this commercial, and who was your favorite Stooge?
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DO THE FONZIE — WHEN HAPPY DAYS GAVE THE FONZ HIS OWN DANCE

I had forgotten that Happy Days actually gave Fonzie his own dance.
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This is from the 1979 episode “Stolen Melodies,” and the setup is pure Happy Days. Leather Tuscadero, played by real-life rocker Suzi Quatro, has written a song called “Moonlight Love.” After auditioning for the television show National Sok Hop, the song suddenly turns up credited to another group.
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Naturally, Fonzie isn’t going to let that slide.
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He shows up at the TV studio, confronts the people involved and eventually takes over the microphone himself. Instead of letting the other band introduce its new dance, Fonzie brings out Leather and announces a brand-new one:
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“Do the Fonzie.”
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And then the Fonz actually has to dance.
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The song was written especially for the show by Jim Dunne and performed by Suzi Quatro. The dancing was choreographed by Shirley Kirkes, so somebody really did have the job of figuring out exactly how Fonzie should dance without making the coolest guy on television look completely ridiculous.
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Quatro was already a successful rock singer and bass player when she joined Happy Days as Leather Tuscadero. She later recalled that she was touring Japan when the show called her back to audition for the role.
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By this point Fonzie had become such a pop-culture phenomenon that Happy Days could invent an entire dance around him and it somehow made perfect sense.
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And just about a year later, one of Henry Winkler’s famous Fonzie leather jackets went into the Smithsonian.
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Do you remember “Do the Fonzie” — and would you have tried this dance at a sock hop?

Gomer Pyle Sings — The Voice Nobody Expected

Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. was mandatory viewing in our house. My dad was a Marine sergeant, so there was no missing it.

Like everyone else, I knew Gomer for the “Shazam!”, the “Goooolly!”, and the way he could drive Sergeant Carter absolutely crazy. That was the Gomer we expected every week.

What I didn’t expect was that voice.

The first time I remember hearing Jim Nabors really sing, everybody in our house stopped and paid attention. That huge baritone just didn’t seem possible coming from the same guy we knew as Gomer Pyle.

What I learned later is that television audiences had actually heard Nabors sing before Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. even premiered. He showed off that voice on The Andy Griffith Show in 1964, and by 1965 Columbia Records had released his first album, Shazam!

By 1967, the show was fully embracing Jim Nabors the singer, including his powerful performance of “The Impossible Dream.”

That contrast is what made him so memorable to me. One minute he was making us laugh, and the next he could stop the room with that voice.

I still remember everyone in our house listening — including my Marine-sergeant dad.

Do you remember the first time you heard Gomer Pyle sing?

“WHAT IS THIS, SOME SORT OF PEYTON PLACE?”

This was a little before my time, but I certainly remember my parents and other adults saying, “What is this, some sort of Peyton Place?”

For years I understood what they meant even if I didn’t really know why they were saying it.

Take a look at this 1964-65 opening to Peyton Place. A church steeple. Bells ringing. A peaceful little New England town. Then that wonderfully serious voice announces, “This is the continuing story of Peyton Place.”

Everything looks so respectable.

And that was the joke.

Behind those neat houses and small-town manners were affairs, family secrets, violence, alcoholism, mental breakdowns and murder. Peyton Place became so culturally famous that the name itself turned into shorthand for a seemingly respectable place where everybody had something going on behind closed doors. New Hampshire Magazine notes that “Peyton Place” had already become a synonym for scandal after Grace Metalious’ hugely successful 1956 novel.

The television version arrived on ABC on September 15, 1964, starring Dorothy Malone, Mia Farrow, Ryan O’Neal, Barbara Parkins and Ed Nelson. It was revolutionary television — a continuing prime-time story airing not once but twice each week. It became so popular that ABC eventually bumped it up to three nights a week.

And here’s something I never knew about this opening. The announcer is Dick Tufeld. One year later, television audiences would know that same voice as the Robot on Lost in Space — yes, the man behind “Danger, Will Robinson!”

Even the music has history. The theme was composed by Franz Waxman, who had also scored the 1957 Peyton Place movie.

The series lasted until June 2, 1969, producing an incredible 514 episodes.

But I think its greatest legacy may be that the show’s name escaped television entirely.

For a whole generation, you didn’t need to explain the gossip, secrets or drama.

You just called the place “Peyton Place.”

Do you remember your parents saying that — and did you know what they meant even if you’d never watched the show?

THE NIGHT MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL WAS BORN — SEPTEMBER 21, 1970

Can you imagine the NFL without Monday Night Football?

On September 21, 1970, America sat down for the first regular-season broadcast of ABC’s brand-new Monday Night Football — the New York Jets against the Cleveland Browns.

Now here’s something I didn’t realize: NFL teams had played occasional Monday games before this. CBS and NBC had even experimented with a few Monday-night telecasts during the 1960s. But this was different. This was the beginning of a weekly national television institution.

And ABC didn’t treat it like an ordinary Sunday football game moved to Monday.

Producer Roone Arledge wanted a show. He roughly doubled the usual number of cameras, emphasized instant replay and graphics, and put three personalities in the booth: Keith Jackson, Howard Cosell and former Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith. Frank Gifford, who many of us associate with that classic booth, wouldn’t replace Jackson until 1971.

Then there was the game itself.

A huge 85,703 people packed Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Cleveland jumped out to a 14-0 lead, Homer Jones returned the second-half kickoff 94 yards for a touchdown, and Joe Namath kept fighting back. The Jets actually outgained Cleveland 454 yards to 221.

But with New York trailing 24-21 late in the game, Cleveland’s Billy Andrews intercepted Namath and ran it back 25 yards for the touchdown that sealed a 31-21 Browns victory.

And listen to the music on those early broadcasts. The famous MNF music most of us recognize wasn’t there yet. The original theme was “Score,” written by Charles Fox, with that wonderfully funky Hammond-organ sound of 1970. “Heavy Action” didn’t arrive until years later.

What ABC created that night went far beyond football. Monday night became an event. You knew the voices, you knew the personalities, and if you were a kid, you probably tried negotiating just how much of the game you were allowed to stay awake for.

Were you watching Monday Night Football in those early years — and who do you remember most: Cosell, Meredith, Jackson or Gifford?

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?