Classic TV Archives - Page 4 of 5 - Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures

Organ Music Made Soap Operas So Dramatic

Soap operas got their name because the early daytime radio dramas were often sponsored by soap and household-product companies. The “opera” part came from the big emotions, dramatic turns, heartbreak, secrets, and cliffhangers. Basically, it was everyday life turned way up.

That old organ music became part of the soap-opera sound, especially in radio and early television. A live organist could underline a romantic moment, a shocking reveal, or that famous “tune in tomorrow” cliffhanger. One dramatic organ sting could make a raised eyebrow feel like a family emergency.

The Secret Storm was one of the long-running CBS daytime soaps. It aired from February 1, 1954, to February 8, 1974, and followed the Ames family through all the marriages, heartbreaks, secrets, and tragedies you’d expect from a classic soap. It was created by Roy Winsor, who also created Search for Tomorrow and Love of Life.

For a lot of us, that organ music is half the memory. You could be in the next room and still know somebody on TV had just gotten terrible news.

ABC Promotes Combat!

An hour after posting the intro, I thought it would be fitting to share this old ABC commercial for Combat!.

TV promos back then were simple, but they knew how to sell a show. A few dramatic scenes, serious narration, and suddenly you knew Tuesday night meant war drama, danger, and another mission with Sgt. Saunders and Lt. Hanley.

Combat! aired on ABC from 1962 to 1967 and followed a frontline American infantry squad during World War II. The show starred Vic Morrow and Rick Jason, with stories that often went beyond the usual good guys versus bad guys setup. It showed soldiers tired, scared, angry, loyal, and still trying to hold on to their humanity in the middle of war.

This promo is also a time capsule of how television used to treat war dramas. It was entertainment, yes, but it carried a seriousness that made it feel different. The Greatest Generation was still very much present in American life when this aired, and many viewers did not need the show to explain what sacrifice meant.

Posting this on Memorial Day feels right. Not because a TV show can fully capture what they went through, but because it reminds us how much World War II shaped the families, fathers, uncles, neighbors, and veterans many of us grew up around.

Remembering Combat! On Memorial Day

Since this is Memorial Day, I thought the intro to Combat! was worth sharing.

This was another one of those shows a lot of our dads watched. To a kid, it looked like an action show: soldiers, rifles, tanks, explosions, and that serious opening that told you this was not going to be a cartoon-style adventure.

But Combat! was different from a lot of TV war shows. It followed an American infantry squad fighting through Europe during World War II, and it often focused less on glory and more on fear, loss, duty, and the bond between men trying to survive. The series aired on ABC from 1962 to 1967, starring Vic Morrow as Sgt. Saunders and Rick Jason as Lt. Hanley. It ran for five seasons and 152 episodes, making it one of television’s longest-running World War II dramas.

Looking back, I can understand why Dad watched it. Many in that generation either served, knew someone who served, or grew up in the shadow of World War II. For kids, we saw the uniforms and action. For them, there was probably a lot more behind it.

On Memorial Day, Combat! is a reminder that the Greatest Generation was not made up of movie heroes. They were young men asked to do impossible things, many of whom never came home.

The Rat Patrol

The Rat Patrol was another one of those shows Dad loved to watch, and to a kid, it sure looked promising. Jeeps tearing across the desert, guns mounted in the back, bombs going off, aircraft overhead — it had all the ingredients that should have grabbed a young viewer right away.

But at that age, the dialogue went right over my head. I was there for the action, not the strategy. The show followed a small Allied commando unit during World War II, racing through the North African desert and taking on German forces in fast-moving missions. It was part war show, part adventure series, and part Saturday afternoon action movie squeezed into a half-hour.

The Rat Patrol aired from 1966 to 1968 and starred Christopher George as Sgt. Sam Troy. One of the more interesting cast members was Hans Gudegast, who played German Capt. Dietrich. Soap fans would later know him much better as Eric Braeden from The Young and the Restless.

The show was loosely inspired by real desert raiding units like the British SAS and the Long Range Desert Group, but Hollywood gave it a very American spin. That bothered some viewers overseas because the real North African desert raids were largely a British and Commonwealth story, while the TV version put American characters front and center. The BBC reportedly pulled the show after only a few episodes because of complaints about that Americanized version of the war.

Looking back, I can see why Dad liked it. It had action, military drama, and just enough grit to feel grown-up. For us kids, it was the jeeps and explosions that pulled us in, even if we didn’t always understand what they were talking about once the shooting stopped.

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.

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.

My Mother The Car

My Mother The Car is another show that kept parents explaining what is fake, even though we were seeing it with our own eyes! We had a talking horse with Mister Ed, a witch with Bewitched, a genie with I Dream of Jeannie, a Martian with My Favorite Martian, and then somehow NBC said, “What about your mother… but as a car?”

The show aired on NBC from 1965 to 1966 and only lasted one season with 30 episodes. It starred Jerry Van Dyke as Dave Crabtree, a man who buys an old 1928 Porter automobile and discovers that his late mother has been reincarnated as the car. She talks to him through the radio, because apparently in the 1960s even the afterlife had AM reception.

The voice of the mother was Ann Sothern, which gave the whole thing a little more class than the idea probably deserved. But that was 1960s television for you. If a show had a wild enough gimmick, somebody was willing to put it on the air and see if families would go along with it.

Of course, My Mother The Car became famous, but not exactly in the way anyone at NBC probably hoped. For years it was used as the punchline for bad TV, often showing up whenever people talked about the worst sitcoms ever made. But looking back now, there is something wonderfully ridiculous about it. It was silly, strange, and very 1965. You almost have to admire a show that went all-in on a talking mother-car and expected America to just ride along.

Did you ever watch My Mother The Car, or was this one of those shows you only heard people joke about later?

Jeff’s Collie

After posting about Lassie, many of you asked about Jeff’s Collie, which I was totally unfamiliar with, so please share your memories about this one! I don’t know if it wasn’t shown in our area or if somehow this got by me.

When Lassie first came to television in 1954, the boy was not Timmy. It was Jeff Miller, played by Tommy Rettig. Jeff lived on a farm with his widowed mother, Ellen Miller, played by Jan Clayton, and his grandfather, George “Gramps” Miller, played by George Cleveland. Those early years are often called Jeff’s Collie, especially in reruns and DVD releases.

That version ran from 1954 to 1957, covering the first several seasons of the show. The setup was still the same basic formula we all remember: a boy, a farm, a loyal collie, and some kind of trouble that Lassie had to fix before the episode ended. Jeff would get into scrapes, someone would need help, and Lassie would bark, run, and somehow explain the whole emergency better than most adults could.

The show changed after actor George Cleveland, who played Gramps, died in 1957. His death was written into the series, and the Miller family eventually left the farm. That opened the door for Timmy Martin, played by Jon Provost, to become Lassie’s new boy. From there, the show became the more famous Timmy and Lassie era.

So Jeff’s Collie is basically the “before Timmy” Lassie. Same famous dog, same wholesome adventure style, but with Tommy Rettig as Jeff instead of Jon Provost as Timmy. For people who watched the reruns, it could be confusing because one day Lassie belonged to Jeff, and another day she belonged to Timmy, and as kids we probably just accepted that Lassie had more family changes than most soap operas.

Summary:
Before Timmy became Lassie’s best-known TV companion, there was Jeff Miller in the early years of the series, often remembered as Jeff’s Collie. It was the original boy-and-his-dog era of Lassie, and somehow this one got by me, so I’d love to hear who remembers watching it.

Perry Mason’s theme reminds me of bedtime!

I’d hear that song from upstairs, and I’d sneak halfway down the stairs just to peek at Mom’s show. I remember asking why he was sitting there all alone in that big room, because I didn’t understand what a courtroom was or why everyone looked so serious. Mom still tried to explain it to me, even though I’m sure I was bugging her. All she wanted to do was relax and watch a little TV before her own bedtime.

As a kid, I could not understand why Mom watched such a boring show. There were no monsters, no cartoons, no spaceships, and nobody was falling down a well for Lassie to rescue. Just Raymond Burr sitting there as Perry Mason, calmly figuring out who really did it while everyone else in the courtroom waited for him to prove it.

The show originally ran on CBS from 1957 to 1966, with Raymond Burr as defense attorney Perry Mason, Barbara Hale as his secretary Della Street, William Hopper as private detective Paul Drake, and William Talman as district attorney Hamilton Burger. The famous theme was called “Park Avenue Beat” and was written by Fred Steiner. That opening music had a cool, jazzy, serious sound that basically told every kid in the house, “Fun time is over. The adults have taken over the TV.”

The funny part is, despite the show being around forever and becoming one of the most famous courtroom dramas in television history, I don’t think I’ve ever sat down and watched a single full episode. But I still remember that theme like it was yesterday. That was the sound of Mom’s TV time, the sound of being told to go back upstairs, and the sound of knowing bedtime was coming whether I liked it or not.

Lassie

Just hearing the opening whistle brings back a flood of childhood memories of Lassie.
As a kid, I vowed that one day I would get a collie and name her Lassie. Yeah, that never happened. I also didn’t get a dolphin and name it Flipper. But back then, Lassie made it seem like every problem could be solved with loyalty, courage, and a very smart dog who somehow always knew exactly where to go for help.
By 1959, Lassie was deep into the Timmy Martin years, with Jon Provost playing Timmy, June Lockhart as his mother, Ruth Martin, and Hugh Reilly as his father, Paul Martin. June Lockhart would later become another famous TV mom as Maureen Robinson on Lost in Space, but to me, she would always be Lassie and Timmy’s mom.
No matter how serious the problem was, everything seemed to get wrapped up neatly within the 22 minutes of the show. Someone could be lost, trapped, injured, or in danger, and somehow Lassie would bark, run, lead the adults to the right place, and make everything okay again.
And yes, Timmy actually did fall down a well, even though the old joke makes it sound like it happened every week. It happened in the 1960 episode “The Well,” where Timmy ends up trapped and, of course, Lassie has to get help. That one moment became the running gag everyone remembers: “What’s that, Lassie? Timmy fell down the well?”
Having a rough childhood, I always wished I had Timmy’s family. There was something comforting about that show, even if life was not really like anything we saw on TV. The Martins seemed steady, kind, and safe, and Lassie was always there watching over everyone. For a kid, that kind of world was easy to want.
Well, at least I have my cat Chassie, and yes, calling her reminds me of Lassie.