The Retro site Archives - Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures

Room 222

Watching this old Room 222 preview made me wonder — was high school really like this in 1969, or was this Hollywood’s version of what they thought it should be?

The show premiered on ABC on September 17, 1969, and from what I found, the answer is a little of both.

The producers actually tried hard to make the school feel real. Writers were required to spend time in classrooms at Los Angeles High School and other area schools so they could pick up the clothing, slang, attitudes and atmosphere of a real big-city high school. Much of the series was filmed at Los Angeles High as well.

So the mini-skirts, Afros, racial mix, students questioning authority and discussions about Vietnam, race and changing social values weren’t simply dreamed up for television. Those things were happening.

But I also don’t think everybody watching at home saw their own high school reflected here. A suburban or small-town school could have looked very different, and Pete Dixon, played by Lloyd Haynes, was probably a little more patient and understanding than some of the teachers we remember!

The cast had some interesting backgrounds too. Denise Nicholas, who played Liz McIntyre, had actually worked in the Civil Rights Movement. Michael Constantine won an Emmy as Principal Kaufman and decades later became the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Karen Valentine also won an Emmy for the first season.

And here’s one I had completely forgotten — that wonderfully laid-back theme was written by Jerry Goldsmith. He used an unusual seven-beat rhythm for it, years before scoring movies such as The Omen, Patton and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

So maybe Room 222 wasn’t exactly everyone’s high-school experience, but it seems it was trying much harder to reflect real students and real issues than I ever realized.

For those of you who were actually in high school around 1969 — did your school look and feel anything like Room 222?

Gumby!

I think Gumby is one of those characters where several different generations can honestly say, “I grew up watching him.”

He actually goes all the way back to 1955, first appearing on Howdy Doody before getting his own NBC show. But what surprised me was how many little pieces of Art Clokey’s own life ended up in that simple green character. Gumby’s head was patterned after his father’s hairstyle in an old photograph, his big feet helped keep him standing during stop-motion filming, and Clokey chose green partly because he saw it as a color that didn’t represent any particular race.

Even the name has a story. Clokey’s father used the word “gumbo” for the clay-filled mud around Michigan farms, which eventually led to Gumbo, Gumba and little Gumby.

And Gumby almost came about accidentally. Clokey had made an experimental clay film called Gumbasia in 1953 after first working with clay professionally on a Budweiser commercial where he animated bites disappearing from a Swiss cheese sandwich. A producer saw Gumbasia and encouraged him to make clay characters for children’s television.

Then came another generation. College kids rediscovered Gumby, and in the early ’80s Eddie Murphy turned him into one of his memorable Saturday Night Live characters. That parody actually helped put the real Gumby back into the public eye.

So depending on your age, you might remember Gumby from the ’50s, the ’60s, reruns in the ’70s or his big ’80s comeback.

What era of Gumby do you remember watching?

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?

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”?

My Favorite Martian

When I think of My Favorite Martian, I really don’t remember watching it as a first-run show — I remember the repeats. After looking into it, I have a feeling I’m far from alone.

The show originally aired Sunday nights at 7:30 on CBS from 1963 through 1966, right after Lassie and immediately before The Ed Sullivan Show. And here’s something I never really thought about: at the same time over on NBC, it was going head-to-head with Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. That’s quite a Sunday night television lineup!

The opening I’m showing here is from 1965, when My Favorite Martian finally made the jump to color for its third and final season. The first 75 episodes were black-and-white, while only the last 32 were produced in color. Production also moved from Desilu to MGM that final year.

But here’s why so many of us may remember the show from later. Almost immediately after the CBS run ended, My Favorite Martian went into syndication. I found a 1967 television-industry advertisement promoting all 107 episodes to stations as “The Martian Strip,” with the show already running or being sold in major markets around the country.

So while Uncle Martin originally belonged to Sunday nights, reruns probably created a whole second generation of viewers who never really thought about when the show originally aired. I think I’m one of them.

And once that George Greeley theme starts, I’m right back there again!

Do you remember watching My Favorite Martian on Sunday nights, or like me, do you mostly remember it from the reruns?

The Monkees, Bugs Bunny and Kool-Aid

Talk about putting two things together that you wouldn’t expect — The Monkees and Bugs Bunny selling Kool-Aid!

But the first thing I noticed was that there are only three Monkees here. Peter Tork had already left the group in December 1968, leaving Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones and Michael Nesmith to carry on as a trio. By this point their NBC television series was over too, but that wasn’t the end of The Monkees on television.

In the fall of 1969, CBS brought the show back as Saturday morning reruns, and General Foods’ Kool-Aid was a sponsor. That explains a lot about why these commercials exist. The Monkees were suddenly being introduced to kids all over again, and Kool-Aid had three very recognizable spokesmen ready to go.

Bugs Bunny wasn’t new to Kool-Aid either. I found that the “Make Friends with Kool-Aid” campaign was already using Bugs several years earlier, so pairing him with The Monkees was really a combination of two existing advertising ideas.

There’s another interesting connection from this period. Their 1969 album The Monkees Present was also tied into a Kool-Aid promotion. The group was well past peak Monkeemania by then, Peter was gone and Michael Nesmith would soon leave too.

And for anyone wondering where the Kool-Aid Man is — he wasn’t the television star yet! That familiar walking pitcher didn’t make his big TV debut until 1975.

Looking back, this commercial is almost a snapshot of The Monkees right near the end of their original run.

Do you remember this commercial, or do you remember The Monkees more from their Saturday morning reruns?

The Bullwinkle Show

I think one of the reasons Rocky and Bullwinkle still holds up is that when we watched it as kids, we probably weren’t getting half the jokes! The kids got a flying squirrel, a goofy moose and Boris and Natasha constantly trying to cause trouble, while the adults were getting political satire, pop-culture references and some pretty clever wordplay.

The show actually started in 1959 as Rocky and His Friends before moving to NBC in 1961 and becoming The Bullwinkle Show. What surprised me was how much talent was packed into those voices. Bill Scott, who played Bullwinkle, was also the show’s head writer and co-producer. June Foray voiced both Rocky and Natasha, Paul Frees played Boris, and that great narrator’s voice belonged to William Conrad, who many of us later knew as Cannon.

Here’s another one I didn’t know: Bullwinkle’s name reportedly came from a real person, Clarence Bullwinkel, who owned a car dealership near Berkeley and was known by creator Alex Anderson.

And despite how simple the animation sometimes looked, that almost became part of the charm. A lot of the animation work was done in Mexico to keep production costs down, while the writing remained incredibly sharp.

I went back to these cartoons expecting pure childhood nostalgia, but they’re actually funnier when you’re old enough to understand what the writers were sneaking past us!