online community focused on sharing and reminiscing about video, audio, and images that stir our memories of the past – old television, theme songs, commercials, print advertisements, the sights and sounds you remember
Here’s Lucy kept Lucille Ball on Monday night TV with the same kind of physical comedy, celebrity guest stars, and family-style chaos that made her a television legend. This time, Lucy Carter was a widow working for her brother-in-law Harry, played by Gale Gordon, while her real-life children Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr. played her kids.
The show had that familiar Lucy formula: a simple situation gets out of control, Lucy gets into trouble, Harry gets frustrated, and somehow the whole thing turns into comedy. It also became known for big guest stars, including classic Hollywood and TV names, which made each episode feel like a little variety-show surprise.
For fans, Here’s Lucy was not just another sitcom. It was Lucille Ball proving she could still carry a hit show after I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show, while bringing her own family into the act.
Before Robert Stack showed up in Airplane! as Rex Kramer, he was dead serious as Eliot Ness in The Untouchables.
The show aired on ABC from 1959 to 1963 and gave TV viewers a gritty trip back to Prohibition-era Chicago. Stack played Ness as the calm, tough, incorruptible federal agent leading his team against gangsters, bootleggers, and mob bosses.
It had tommy guns, raids, speakeasies, gangland hits, and that hard-boiled narration from Walter Winchell that made every episode feel like a crime file being opened.
And here’s a fun connection: Leslie Nielsen, who later co-starred with Stack in Airplane!, also guest-starred on The Untouchables in the episode “Three Thousand Suspects.” So before they helped make deadpan comedy history, they were both part of this very serious crime-drama world.
Looking back, The Untouchables helped shape the TV crime drama: sharp suits, mob danger, straight-faced lawmen, and the kind of dramatic seriousness that made Airplane! even funnier years later.
CBS Cartoon Theatre was a short-lived CBS cartoon showcase from 1956, best remembered today because it was hosted by a young Dick Van Dyke before The Dick Van Dyke Show made him a household name.
CBS had bought the Terrytoons library in the mid-1950s, which gave them characters like Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, Gandy Goose, and other theatrical cartoons they could repackage for television. CBS Cartoon Theatre was basically a way to put those cartoons on TV with a friendly live-action host wrapping around them. IMDb describes it as a CBS summer replacement show built around the newly acquired Terrytoons cartoons.
What makes it interesting is that CBS tried it in prime time, not just Saturday morning. A TV-history write-up says the show debuted on June 13, 1956, airing in the early evening in some markets, with Dick Van Dyke hosting.
Looking back, it feels like a bridge between old theatrical cartoons and the Saturday morning cartoon era. These weren’t originally made as “TV cartoons.” They were movie-theater shorts being recycled for a new generation sitting in the living room.
The fun part is seeing Dick Van Dyke in that early host role. CBS apparently had him under contract and was still figuring out what to do with him. A few years later, of course, everyone knew exactly what to do with him.
Love, American Style was one of those shows that could only have come from that late ’60s and early ’70s TV era. It aired on ABC from 1969 to 1974 and was built as a romantic-comedy anthology, with different short stories each week about dating, marriage, misunderstandings, and all the funny little disasters that came with love.
The format was the secret. Since every episode had new stories, the show could bring in all kinds of guest stars: older stars people already knew, TV regulars between shows, comedians, singers, and young actors just starting out. It was a perfect landing place for performers whose biggest days may have cooled off, because they didn’t have to carry a whole series. They could pop in for one funny segment, remind viewers they were still around, and get a little prime-time shine again.
It also helped launch or boost newer names. Future stars like Diane Keaton, Sally Struthers, Albert Brooks, and Harrison Ford appeared on the show, and one segment later became the starting point for Happy Days.
That was the charm of Love, American Style. You never knew who would show up. One week it might be a familiar face from older TV or movies, the next week someone who would become famous later. It was light, colorful, a little cheeky for its time, and full of that ABC Friday night energy.
For a lot of actors, it wasn’t just another guest spot. It was a way to stay visible, stay working, and remind America, “Hey, you remember me.”
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.
Did she ever call your name? Oh, the simple joys of Romper Room. That Magic Mirror had every kid sitting at home waiting, hoping Miss Nancy would say their name before the show ended. And if she did, you felt like you had just made national television from the living room floor.
I told you my father was a Marine, so we grew up in Virginia or North Carolina so we watched Miss Nancy on WBAL. But I never realized back then that there wasn’t just one “Miss Nancy.” Romper Room was franchised and syndicated, meaning different cities often had their own local hostesses using the same basic format.
The original Romper Room began in Baltimore in the early 1950s and was created by Bert and Nancy Claster, with Nancy Claster becoming the first well-known “Miss Nancy.” It was aimed at preschool children and felt like a TV nursery school, with songs, games, stories, manners, and those famous lessons about being a “Do Bee” instead of a “Don’t Bee.”
And then came the part we all remember: “Romper, bomper, stomper boo…” Miss Nancy would look through the Magic Mirror and start naming children she supposedly saw watching at home. We knew she probably couldn’t really see us, but at that age you weren’t taking chances. You sat there quietly, behaved like a Do Bee, and waited for your name.
That is what made the show work. She treated the camera like another child in the room, so the kids watching at home felt included too. It was simple television: a teacher, a few children, a Jack-in-the-box, a magic mirror, and lessons about being polite.
No explosions, no superheroes, no fast cuts (ok, maybe a clown in the Jack-in-the-box). Just Miss Nancy asking if we had fun at play.
And yes, I still remember waiting for my name. Did she ever call yours?
