TV Memories Archives - Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures

McHale’s Navy

The show aired from 1962 to 1966 and starred Ernest Borgnine as Lt. Commander Quinton McHale, the skipper of PT-73. McHale and his crew were stationed in the South Pacific, where they were supposed to be fighting the war, but most episodes were really about schemes, shortcuts, gambling, trading, and staying one step ahead of their commanding officer.

The breakout comedy came from Tim Conway as the nervous and clumsy Ensign Parker, and Joe Flynn as Captain Binghamton, who was always trying to catch McHale and his men breaking the rules. The crew also included familiar faces like Carl Ballantine, Bob Hastings, and for a time, Gavin MacLeod, years before The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Love Boat.

What made McHale’s Navy work was that it had the setting of a war show, but the feel of a workplace comedy. McHale’s men were not polished heroes. They were lovable troublemakers who somehow got the job done when it mattered.

For a lot of viewers, it is remembered as one of those black-and-white sitcoms with fast jokes, big characters, and Tim Conway stealing scenes long before he became a legend on The Carol Burnett Show.

Did You Get Your Dodge Boys Shorts?

Phil Rizzuto pitched plenty of products in his day, but this Yankees/Dodge Boys spot is one of those commercials that could only come from its time.

Here’s “The Scooter,” a Yankees legend, selling a pair of gym shorts with the Yankees logo on one side and The Dodge Boys logo on the other. It is part baseball, part car-dealer promotion, and part early-’80s fashion statement.

But the real time capsule may be the ticket information. The ad tells fans they could get Yankees tickets at Yankee Stadium Gate 4, the Grand Central Station Ticketron booth, Ticketron computer outlets, Chargit phone reservations, AAA North Jersey Auto Club offices, or by mail to Yankee Stadium.

How many of those can you still use today? Basically one, and even that one has changed. You can still buy Yankees tickets at the current Yankee Stadium box office if tickets are available, but the old Gate 4 setup, Ticketron booths, Chargit phone ordering, AAA ticket outlets, and mailing a check feel like another world now.

Today it is mostly apps, websites, barcodes, and mobile tickets. Back then, you might have gone to Grand Central, called a number, walked into an AAA office, or mailed away for seats. Holy cow, what a different way to go to a ballgame.

Tokin’ With Lawrence Welk

Only on The Lawrence Welk Show could “One Toke Over the Line” somehow become a “modern spiritual.”

In 1971, Gail Farrell and Dick Dale performed the Brewer & Shipley song on the show, giving it the clean-cut Welk treatment. The funny part came afterward, when Lawrence Welk referred to it as a modern spiritual, apparently not realizing the “toke” in the title was not exactly Sunday-morning church material.

It does not seem like someone deliberately pulled one over on Welk. It was probably more of a perfect generational misunderstanding: a hit song with the word “Jesus” in the chorus made it onto one of TV’s cleanest shows, and everyone smiled through it like it belonged there.

That is what makes the clip so unforgettable. It is a perfect little time capsule of early 1970s television, where a song with counterculture roots could be polished up, dressed up, and served with champagne bubbles.

Rocky and Bullwinkle

Rocky and Bullwinkle was one of those cartoons that worked on two levels. Kids saw a flying squirrel, a goofy moose, spies, fairy tales, and silly adventures. Adults heard the puns, political jokes, Cold War humor, and smart little digs that went right over a lot of kids’ heads.

The show began in 1959 as Rocky and His Friends on ABC, then moved to NBC in 1961 as The Bullwinkle Show. Rocky was Rocket J. Squirrel, the brave flying squirrel, and Bullwinkle J. Moose was his well-meaning but not always brilliant best friend from Frostbite Falls, Minnesota. The show originally ran until 1964, with reruns continuing for years, including ABC Sunday mornings into the early 1970s.

What made it different was the variety-show style. You did not just get Rocky and Bullwinkle fighting Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale. You also got Fractured Fairy Tales, Peabody’s Improbable History with Mr. Peabody and Sherman, Aesop and Son, Dudley Do-Right, Bullwinkle’s Corner, and all those cliffhanger endings with ridiculous titles.

The animation was not fancy, even for its time, but the writing was the real star. Jay Ward and Bill Scott leaned into wordplay, satire, narrator jokes, and absurd situations. That is why Rocky and Bullwinkle still feels different from a lot of old cartoons. It was funny for kids, but it was also sneaky smart for the adults in the room. UCLA’s Hammer Museum called the series a “rare gem” and credited its wit to the Jay Ward team, including Bill Scott, June Foray, and the show’s writers and animators.

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.

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.

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?