What was then is very relevant to what is now

Before SCTV, SNL & Mad TV, before radio and TV itself, the popular entertainment medium, aside from movies and music, was vaudeville comedy stage revues. As the radio networks (CBS, NBC, Mutual, Westinghouse) needed more than just music and news, vaudevillian stars and their acts were recruited for comedy monologues, sketches and sitcoms. The next move was television in it's infancy. Live sketch comedy goes back to the dawn of television (1948-52): fledgling show pioneers were Sid Caesar (with great support from cast members Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and Howie Morris), Ernie Kovacs, Red Skelton and Milton Berle (dubbed "Mr.Television" and "Uncle Miltie"). Get this: Berle hosted the syndicated Bowling For Dollars for one season and Gleason hosted a quiz show that lasted one broadcast (see our Trivia Quiz for details. While there were those vaudevillians who lasted a decade on TV, notably Berle, Jack Benny, Bob Hope, George Burns & Gracie Allen, Skelton's characterizations on all three networks, others, such as Ed Wynn, George Gobel, Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis and Donald O'Connor, lasted only a few years.

Long before "The Fonz" there was "The Schnoz," Jimmy Durante, with his trademark Inka Dinka Doo, who hosted his own musical variety shows on CBS and later NBC. Dinah "See The USA In Your Chevrolet" Shore did likewise as summer fillers, eventually winding up with a pre-Oprah style syndicated daytime talk show. Other 50's-60's hosts of the now extinct musical variety shows: Liberace, Perry Como, Andy Williams (his Christmas show still runs on ABC every Yule).

Stars & Their Technical Ingenuity Advancements in television production in the 50's are credited to Lucille Ball (filming before a live audience), Desi Arnaz (three to five camera synched production), Ernie Kovacs (granddaddy of special effect) and Jackie Gleason (the Eletronicam system combining film and kinescope into one camera unit). Word has it that Les Paul, the celebrated guitarist who pioneered multiple track audio recording and Bing Crosby planted the seed at Ampex Electronics for recording video and audio on magnetic tape ...videotape recording.

Of course our beloved Jackie Gleason used to say about classic TV comedy, "When it's funny, it's funny and that's what makes a show endearing as a classic forever after" Many of today's successful TV show producers stated they studied the masters of yesteryear.an When it's good television, it's good television no matter how dim the picture or low the resolution. Jackie Gleason, Lucille Ball and her then husband Desi Arnaz, came up with ingenious, creative innovations, would pave the way for future TV sitcoms. Also rans included Father Knows Best (Robert Young, Jane Eyatt, Elinor Donahue, Billy Gray, Lauren Chapan), The Bob Cummmings Show (co-starring Ann B. Davis), My Little Margie (Gale Storm, Charles Farrel) Oh Sussana (Gale Storm, Zazu Pitts), I Married Joan (Joan Davis, Jim Backus), Our Miss Brooks (Eve Arden), Mr. Peepers (Wally Cos), The Dennis Day Shoe (co-starring Cliff Arquette), The Life If Riley (see trivia quiz for original Riley, second longer running series: William Bendix, Marjorie Reynolds, Lugene Sanders, Wesley Morgan, Tom D'andrea), The Goldbergs (Gertrude Berg, Harold J. Stone), December Bride (Spring Byington), Meet Millie (Elena Verdugo, Florence Hallop, Marvin Kaplan), (The Many Loves Of) Dobie Gillis (Dwayne Hickman, Bob Denver, Tuesday Weld), The Dick Van Dykd Show (co-starring Mary Tyler Moore, Morey Amsterdam, Rosemarie, Carl Eeiner, it's creator),.

A noteworthy B&W idol mentions: While Shelley Fabares was a teen queen on The Donna Reed ShowThe Patty Duke Show that was written around a teenage girl, actually two, both played by Patty Duke (later, the suicidal pill popping starlet in Valley Of The Dolls). Patty played a bouncy, vivacious teen and a live-in twin cousin (hey, anything's possible even on early TV) who was the exact opposite - conservatively demure. Also in the cast: William Schallert (also a player on Dobie Gillis and Jean Byron. Of course, Ricky Nelson (OK, Rick Nelson now) was the girl's hearthrob on Ozzie & Harriet (with real life dad & mom as dad and mom), attempts to make Ronnie Burns with real life parents on(Burns & Allen and Dwayne Hickman Dobie Gillis girl swooners failed. Oh well, there was always lovable Maynard G. Krebs (Dobie, who would go on to become lovable Gilligan.

Noteworthy, but tragic: Honeymooners resurgence. In it's original form,as a standalone sitcom or sketches on Gleason's variety shows, The (original) Honeymooners episodes were endeared and today held as classics, in many major markets run as twelve hour marathons on New Years Eve. In the mid 1966, Jackie resurrected the sitcom as The Jackie Gleason Show presents The Honeymooners", hour musicals taped in Miami Beach. Audrey Meadows and Joyce Randolph could not relocate from New York. Shiela Mac Rae was the new Alice, Jane Kean the new Trixie and it just didn't work. In the mid 70's, Jackie regrouped the original cast and gave it a go on ABC, less the what was latter day considered politically incorrect fisting and "Pow, right in the kisser," or "To the moon, Alice," and the smacks on Norton's shoulder. After three hour runs, ABC pulled the plug on the legendary bus driver, sewer worker and wives. The kinescope episodes of The Honeymooners from 1954 to 1959 remain the loved classics. BTW: did you know Audrey Meadows was not the first to play Alice Kramden. And did you know Jackie played a blue collar worker dad on a sitcom, the role later played by another comedic actor? Find out who was the first to play Alice and what was Jackie's first 1949 CBS sitcom role in our Trivia Quiz. Of course, Jackie had success with his Honeymoonerless American Scene Magazine (1962-65) with his characterizations of The Poor Soul, Reginald Van Gleason III (often with former Marx Brothers movies character actress Margaret Du Mont), Charlie Bracken, The Loud Mouth (with Art Carney whom he bothered at a diner), Joe the Bartender (with Frank Fontaine a/k/a Crazy Guggenheim.

Noteworthy: The DuMont Television Network launched The Honeymooners and the career of Jackie Gleason, DuMont also KO'd the venerable Uncle Miltie on Tuesday nights with not another comedian, but a Catholic Bishop, Exc. Fulton J. Sheen.
For the fascinating history of the innovations and downfalls of The DuMont Television Network and it's founder, click here.. The story of the "forgotten network"is an eye opening overview of the brutal competitiveness of and governmental bias toward the broadcast industry even at it's inception.

Another struggle of survival in the business of broadcasting was within the "minority" (race) oppressive 1950's, Black principal roles were portrayed by white stage minstrel (blackface) comics as Amos and Andy. A second black theme sitcom, , starred noted black film actress Ethel Waters as a maid. It would take Norman Lear, in the 70's, to bring network television prominence to Afro-American based situation comedies.

There would be no weekly comedy sketch show series hosted by a woman until many years later when a young female supporting cast member from The Gary Moore Show and on a failed sitcom Stanley starring Buddy Hackett, the femme talent named Carol Burnett finally got her own showcase on CBS with cast members Harvey Korman, Lyle Wagoner, Vickie Lawrence and Tim Conway. The long awaited success and chemistry became legendary. Entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan became the rigid but endearing presenter of entertainers, opera singers to acrobats, dancers to sword throwers, lion tamers to puppet mouse Topogigo Sunday nights on CBS. When rock and roll proved it was here to stay, poker faced Sullivan challenged teen favorite Dick Clark (ABC) for booking Elvis and The Beatles, who never appeared on either Clark's American Bandstand or Saturday Night stage show (see teen dance and variety shows below). Sullivan even allowed so/so R&R one hit wonders such as "The Sparkletones" (Black Slacks) share his stage with the likes of Renata Tibaldi and Alan King. There was also Your Hit Parade on which four vocalist regulars sang the top ten tunes for the week. Who were the crooners? See our Trivia Quiz/

Hard to categorize was NBC's Colegate Comedy Hour brcause some weeks it was more musical than comical. The weekly fare had rotating hosts which included Eddie Cantor, the team of Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, Bud Abbot and Lou Costello, the latter having also their own weekly syndicated half hour show. The Colegate endeavor, which failed miserably in the Nielsons, except for Martin & Lewis weeks, was more like Sullivan's show because it had an array of song and dance musical guests including Danny Kaye, Kay Starr and ol' blue eyes himself, Frank Sinatra; but even the Chairman of the Board couldn't dig this one out of the ratings cellar. It would have been funnier if Don Rickles were around TV screens, then, in the late 50's, to heckle Sinatra ("Hey Frank, make yourself at home...hit somebody" was one of Rickles' most famous barbs to blue eyes years later on the The Deab Nartin Show)

Producer Don Fedderson had no ratings problem with The Millionaire. No, not a quiz show, but a weekly series drama in which Michael Anthony, played by Marvin Miller, gave away a million smackers to some poor soul at the benevolence of the unseen, but heard billionaire, John Beresford Tipton, who was just curious about human nature and how sudden wealth could change it. Viewers were also intrigued and the show ran for several seasons in the late 1950's and early 60's on CBS. (Most of the recipients were better off without the mysterious windfall).



50's Kiddie TV Delights: Notable children;s shows: Bob Smith's Howdy Doody, with Clarabelle The Clown (Bob Keeshan, later Lew Anderson (pictured page top) Burr Tilstrom's Kukla Fran & Ollie,, Pinky Lee (pictured left), who collapsed while dancing frenetically during a live broadcast, Winky Dink, Fearless Fosdick (marionettes), Shari Lewis & Lambchop, Paul Winchell & Jerry Mahoney; these kidvid shows were on the networks, while local stations concocted ultra-low budget cartoon shows, such as Newark New Jersey's (Junior Frolics) had hosts like "Uncle" Fred Sayles (discussed on the blog below) narrating silent screen cartoons (Farmer Brown a/k/a Farmer Grey, KoKo The Clown, et al) over instrumental records. There was notably also Chicago's kidvid, Burt Tillstrom's Kukla, Fran & Ollie (Fran Allyson interacted with named pupper clown and dragon as well as Witch Hazel, Mme. Oglepuss and Tooey (who could only say tooey ta tooey ta tooey). Chicago was also the home of Miss Fraces' Ding Dong School (also discussed in the blog). and one of the hundred's of TV's Bozos (the Clown)

First Animated Cartoons in syndication: Rocky & Bullwinkle, Gumby, Underdog, Superman were the favorites. Curiously, Bullwinkle with villains Boris Badeniff and Natasha, had overtones of cold war propaganda, a la Animal Farm. but "Moose and Squirrel" was a weekly syndicated series. Major market independent TV stations had cartoon blocks of Felix The Cat, Looney Toons,(Bugs, Daffy, Tweety, et al); Allied Artist Toons; Little LuLu, Betty Boop, among others. 50'S non-animated-animal series faves doggies Lassie (debut 1954 with Tommy Rettig, June Lockhart, Jon Provost, syndicated), Rin Tin Tin (orig, 30s-40's movies, then ABC in 1954 starring Lee Aaker); horsies My Friend Flicka (40's movie turned to TV 1954 with Roddy Mc Dowall, Preston Foster. a syndie), Mr Ed (the talking horse, of course, of course, with Alan Young, Connie Hines, early 60's on CBS). There was also Cleo, the talking dog, on The People's Choice sitcom starring Jackie Cooper as Socrates Miller and Patricia Breslin as fiance Mandy Peopkes, her huge papa played by John Stephenson, Mary Jane Crost the voice of Cleo, which ran on NBC 1954-58.

Mr. Wizard: The Unsung Hero Of 50's Educational Kidvid Before public television, parents turned to an unassuming TV personality, Don Herbert, who, to children and elementary school teachers, was affectionately known as Mr. Wixard who today would be teaching us all about DTV, but in those analog only days, he would demonstrate gravity, static electricity, rocket propulsion and other fascinating science basics. Don was a general science and English major at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (then it was La Crosse State Normal College) who was interested in drama. His career as an actor was interrupted by World War II when he enlisted in the United States Army as a Private. Herbert later joined the United States Army Air Forces, took pilot training, and became a B-24 bomber pilot who flew combat missions with the Fifteenth Air Force, flying out of a base in Italy. When Herbert was discharged in 1945, he was a Captain and had earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters. After the war, Herbert worked at a radio station in Chicago, then formulated Mr. Wizard and a general science experiments show that had a lad or lass assist him in a TV studio fashioned lab. Herbert debuted the show on Chicago NBC station WNBQ, aon March 3, 1951. The televised experiments, many of which seemed impossible at first, would be taught to young viewers. Well over five hundred episodes were televised on the entire NBC network before it was canceled in 1965 (replaced by adventure cartoons to sell sugary cereal and drinks, this more significant to network advertisers and programmers. Now you know why PBS became sorely needed to inspire kids minds in the latter 60's).

Yes, NBC had a late night talk show debuting with Fred Allen, then Jack Paar The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson followed. followed. ABC had the venerable Joe Franklin. Merv Griffin, who vied with Carson to host The Tonight Show on NBC, found success in syndication with co-host Arthur Treacher. Dick Cavett found a talk show home later on ABC after Franklin was relegated to Memory Lane on then New York station channel 9, later licensed to Secaucus, NJ after station owners RKO-General got in dutch with the FCC.

Poignant early TV evening news anchors included Edward R. Murrow and John Cameron Swayze ("Hop-scotching the world for headlines!") Morning guys were Dave Garroway, (pictured left, who prolifically signed off with "Peace"). Robert Q. Lewis, Arthur Godfrey, among others (these after stations decided to go on the air at 9AM rather than 5PM, see "remember when..." below). Independent stations, strapped financially, aired armed forces advertorials provided by the Army,Navy and Marines...along with Three Stooges, Laurel & Hardy and Little Rascals film shorts. Interesting clips of early television commercials can be found included with our Oldies Television Trivia Quiz,link below our channel selector. Were there infomercials back in the early days of television? There was Star Nail, Jon Gnagy Learn To Draw Kits, Leg Magique, Jack La Lane Super Juicer The independent stations relied on moldie oldie theatre cartoons and the schlocky but loveable Bela Lugosi (click here to see clips) schlockploitation movies, the cheapie, quickie ones other than his signature Dracula, churn outs like Chandu that were still endearing to viewers who didn't care for westerns or Championship Bowling from Syosset.

Sports without ESPN: Baseball legends like Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson (left) Pee Wee Reese, Joe Di Maggio or Yogi Berra were not seen nationwide as they played ball in the early days of television, games were carried on local stations where the games were played. Ditto football.Tennis, hockey and golf were not considered hot sports events in the early 50's when air time was at a premium. The networks began broadcasting World Series and Super Bowls, other games remained locally broadcast. Boxing and wrestling films were shown late night on weekends, bowling was relegated to the weekend afternoons when a station had no baseball. After Milton Berle's ratings declined on NBC in the mid 60's, the network loaned him to the syndicated Bowling For Dollars The thinking was to turn tenpin into a game show and since Groucho Marx's sardonic wisecracking gained popularity on his quiz show, maybe Berle could do likewise and popularize TV bowling. Of course it didn't work. Berle was awkward, not familiar with the sport. The most celebrated early TV baseball announcers were Mel Allen (pictured above) and Red Barber.

Enter The Medics There was the never fail medical drama that began with Medic (Richard Boone as "Konrad Steiner, Doctor of Medicine"). It's the grandaddy of all medical shows and could hold up today with E/R or Chicago Hope (see our ch. 45). Created by James E. Moser, Medic was carefully researched, well written and an Emmy Award Winner back in the mid 50's. More melodramatic was Janet Dean, Registered Nurse. with Ella Raines as the dutiful sometimes hospital, sometimes visiting RN. Then came...

The inopposite docs: Who can forget the boyish, mild-mannered "Dr. Kildare" (Richard Chamberlain) and the obnoxious Dr. Ben Casey (Vince Edwards).
The Simile Docs Ben Casey is grandfather to and, Hugh Laurie admits, inspiration for Fox's top rated medical drama House, Marcus Welby, MD (Robert Young), Medical Center and Jack Webb's Emergency. (One of our viewers got one up on us by submitting Breaking Point, the forgotten TV medic show that sort of a psychiatry version of Ben Casey starring Paul Richards which ran on ABC in 1963 after Vince Edwards hung up his stethoscope. Today, E/R, Gray;s Anatomy ...on and on ...people always were and are fascinated by medical melodrama). General Hospital is the long running daytime medical serial...soap opera The Daytime soap operas (so called, given the name by predominant advertisers) go back also to 1930's radio and 1950's television: The Secret Storm, The Edge Of Night, The Guiding Light to name only a few of many. If you weren't there, you would be surprised, maybe even be amazed, by how much the golden age of television really has inspired today's vast videodrome (homage to Debbie Harry for the term.)

Dancing With The Stars became an instant smash hit when it premiered 2006 on ABC, but in the fifties Arthur Murray Dance Party, which also featured dance contests with luminaries, got big ratings. Dance studio mogul Arthur Murray gave viewers dance lessoms, but his personable wife, Kathryn, hosted the long running summer replacement series.

Howdy, Podner! Annie Oakley (Gail Davis), Hopalong Cassidy (William Boyd), Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and The Lone Ranger (Clayton Moore), among others, began the weekly western TV series craze in the early 1950's. By the latter part of that century, prime time top rating oaters emerged, including Gunsmoe (James Arness), Maverick (James Garner), The Rifleman (Chuck Connors), Bat Masterson, (Gene Barry) The Virginia( James Drury), Have Gun, Will Travel (Richard Boone as Palladin)., Ponderosa Ranch honcho Hoss Cartwright (Lorne Greene) and sons (Michael Landon, Dan Blocker, Pernell Roberts would take TV westerns to a new height with Bonanza. When the Emmy award winning series ended in the mid 1950's, horses, podners and varmints faded from the video screen as regular first run network TV offerings.Happy Trails.

The Evolution Of Television. In 1923, the iconoscope, a crude but functional form of the CRT Cathode Ray ("Picture") Tube, laid the path for today's big screens and digital pictures. (There was also the mechanical scanner patented in the same year). By the mid 1930's, experimental TV stations operated as the "red" and "blue"network, which blossomed into Du Mont (named after Allen B. Du Mont), CBS, NBC and later ABC. Our Oldies Television Trivia Quiz has historic information about videotech pioneers Vladimir Zworkyn and Phil Farnsworth.

Once Upon A Time, In The Beginning....
...When programs were frequently interrupted by a "Please Stand By-Technical Difficulties" sign,
...When TV stations didn't go on the air until 5PM and went off the air at midnight
...When there was 20+ hot vacuum tubes the size of a ketchup bottle inside the TV that too often burned out
...When a white dot stayed in the center of the picture tube for minutes after the TV was turned off
...When TV sets had focus, horizontal hold, vertical hold and rotary channel selector knobs
...When pseudo-color TV was simulated by placing a tri-tinted plastic sheet over the screen
...When "instant on" tube TV sets caught fire and had to be recalled.

Earliest television receivers ("TV sets" as then called) used vacuum tubes and the cathode ray ("picture") tubes were round, Cabinet front screen cutout bezels were usually squared, cutting off top and bottom of the transmitted picture (studio camera operators sometimes, not always, compensated). Eventually, RCA developed the square picture tubes and the NTSC picture ratio standard was set into place. Picture screen sizes began with 10" diagonal, then edged up to 21" by the early 60's. Console TV's boasted large 12" speakers and television-radio (FM/AM)-phonograph (record players, usually automatic changers), average price tag $500, were very popular. There are interesting facts about Vladimir Zworkyn and Phil Farnsworth, the pioneers of television in our trivia quiz.

What was the DuMont Television Network (the "forgotten network")? For the fascinating history of the innovations and downfalls of The DuMont Television Network and it's founder, click here.

Sci-Fi & TV While Flash Gordon's enemy Ming the Merciless was watching his nemesis on a "Televisor," the aforemention men of science (Farnsworth, Zworkyn. et a;) were perfecting the once dream of transmitting an image over the wireless medium that Marconio (and others) made into reality. In the 1950's, television sci-fi was ablaze with Rod Serling's Twilight Zone and mimicker One Step Beyond which showcased Gene Roddenberry's first television outing with none other than William Shatner as a spacecraft cruiser returning from a mission on (guess where) Vulcan (...but. no Mr. Spock yet). One of Du Mont's biggest hits, aside from The Honeymooners and the good Bishop, was Captain Video & His Video Rangers which was the outer space craze of it's time (more info about Captain Vid on our ch. 46. Science Fiction was always a ratings getter, save a few bomb's like the mid 50's syndicated Top Secret also on DuMont, But distrib Ziv wasn't about to transport itself into oblivion; it's highly successful Science Fiction Theatre with host Truman Bradley combining real science with the futuristic dramas that aired on CBS and NBC. In the early 60's, young public television used Flash to rattle the tin cup, Serling was still going strong (not so his immitators) and when NBC agreed to launch Star Trek from Desilu/Paramount to get their Mission Impossible, they were unaware the craze and two decades of syndicated spinoffs that would support Paramount's UPN foray. When NBC pulled the plug on Trek in it's third season, England's ATV launched Space: 1999 with Mission's Martin Landau and Barbara Bain at the helm. Even after 40 years, the original Star Trek is still in broadcast syndication, even in major markets (i.e. Saturday nights at midnight on WPIX Ch 11 New York) and same full length episodes (legally) all over the internet (cbs.com, hulu, johnqtv. veoh). After all, wasn't the internet once science fiction in the 60's?

Gabfest TV talk shows were around since TV itself. early 50's Pioneers On Networks: Dave Garroway, Jack Paar, Fred Allen, Joe Franklin, who claims he had "the first eyeball to eyeball talk show." Problem with the claim? It was on the johnny-come-lately network, ABC; prior named were already gabbing on the other networks. Perhaps the first two daytime talkers in the early 50's were Robert Q. Lewis (see also our trivia quiz), Arthur Godfery and Art Linkletter, who started the "kids say the darnest thing" craze. Later would come, via syndication, Dinah Shore, Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas, Virginia Graham and the first Tabloid-TV gabber, Phil Donahue .(Phil would be farthest from the last, albeit Phil was soft spoken....remember Morton Downey jr?). The noted 50's newscasters: John Cameron Swayze ("hop scotching the world for headlines"), Edward R. Murrow and a young upstart, Walter Cronkite.

The Early TV Scandals: Rock & Roll Payola, Dance Shows & Hiked Skirts, and Rigged Quiz Shows. The TV teen dance craze started on the East Coast and spread worldwide, with their (then critiqued) provocative movements.. "Dick Clark's American Bandstand" that went from local Philadelphia WFIL TV 6 (4PM Mon-Fri) in 1957 to the nationwide ABC network and into syndication up to the 1980's. (Did you know Dick took over the helm after a previous host was discovered dating one of the high school dancers?) There were also the local shows hosted by Alan Freed (1958-62 5-6PM Mon-Fri, 8PM Sat WNEW-TV 5 NY), Clay Cole, Rate The Record 6-7PM Mon-Fri 1958 WNTA-TV 13 Newark NJ, then The Clay Cole Show 5 to 6PM M-F & Sat 5PM lip synchs with co-star Angela Martin, 1959-62 WPIX-TV 11 NY), Al Jarvis, movie actor (Make Believe Ballroom) and KECA-TV Los Angeles talk show host got in on the dance party craze with his weekday afternoon show on KABC-TV (also L.A.) which spanned the late fifties through early sixties. Jerry Blavatt the Geeter with the Heater on WPHL-TV 17 PA and John Zacherle, who morphed from host-spook-spoofing horror flicks on WABC-TV 7 NY 1957-61 to DiscoTeen, 6-7PM Mon-Fri 1962-3, on WNJU-TV 47 Newark NJ, the latter two on UHF frequencies that many TV "sets" then could not yet receive!

The "Payola" scandal (1957-60) investigated by the Feds got top 40 radio, TV teen music and dance shows, even rock and roll concerts all shook up. WNEW-TV and WOR-AM radio fired Alan Freed, he and Dick Clark were summoned to testify at Senate hearings (we have the press statements from both on Oldies Television Ch. 15. Freed had previously been bounced from the ABC network after a brief national run of his show. Clark survived until the late 80's, when "American Bandstand" ratings went into the cellar, the Tribune Company syndicated "Soul Train,"originally hosted by founder Don Cornelius, retained a strong viewership through today, especially in LA, Chicago, Baltimore and New York.Shemar Moore took over hosting duties in 1999, Cornelius still pushing the buttons as an executive producer

The Day The Music Died February 3, 1959. It was a cold, blistery, snowy winter night when the plane crashed, which claimed the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Jiles .P. "Big Bopper" Richardson and the pilot, Roger Peterson. The three 50's rock and roll idols were headed to a dance party tour scheduled to run in 24 cities from January 23rd to February 15th in 1958. Dion & TThe Belmonts, also booked on the show, took a tour bus along with backup musician Waylon Jennings. Unfortunately, there was controversy in this tragedy, too. Tabloid newspapers alleged a cover-up of an onboard shooting. There are more details about the harrowing music event along with a tear evoking final performance of The Big Bopper, J. P. Richardson, on The Dick Clark show on Oldies Television Channel 22.

Yes, Virginia, there was a Snookey Lansen Who was Snookey Lansen? That's the number one question we see on search engines leading to our Trivia Quiz page. The answer is there. Hint: he was on network TV every Saturday night at 10PM. Okay, we'll cheat and give you the answer here, too. The venerable Snooky Lansen was one of an ensemble of four singers appearing each week to sing homogenized versions of top ten songs on Your Hit Parade. The Snook was joined by three other relatively unknowns: Dorothy Collins, Russel Arms and Giselle MacKenzie who, in '54, had a mild barely breaking #20 hit with "Hard To Get" on an RCA bumpoff label, X Records, which the show "phonyously" placed one week at #2.

Things got rough in the late 50's on Your Hit Parade when the fortysomething big band era singers had to perform teen craze rock & roll tunes like Stagger Lee & Hound Dog. It was humorous to see conservatively dressed Dorothy Collins do a jitterbuggy jump dance to the rockabilly Blue Suede Shoes. Actually, Snooky Lansen adapted the best to Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry tunes, but with a name like Snooky you have to be good. CBS pulled Your Hit Parade off the turntable permanently in 1962, that year airing only sporadically on various nights, sort of like the way NBC tried to kill Star Trek five years later. We know where Shatner went, but Snooky, where are you?

The second most asked question to search engines eludes to TV censorship back in the fifties. In a nutshell: the word "pregnant" was taboo (the forbidden word list was not just seven as it is today, but well over seventy). Visually, a married couple could not be seen in the same bed together (thus the twin beds on sitcoms). Permitted then, was smoking on camera. On general entertainment shows today, smoking on camera is disallowed by network censors, which would be quite an enigma for Ernie Kovacs. George Burns and Groucho Marx, if their shows were on right now. Visual depictions or words deemed to make fun on mainstream religion were also censored on TV in the 1950's and most of the 60's. Jokes about Snooky Lansen, however, always fair game.

The Beatles, The British Invasion and Ed Sullivan Unfortunately, Ed Sullivan could not get the credit for the first to have Elvis on TV (more about Ed Sullivan and rock music stars below). The Tommy & Jimmy Dorsey Show beat him to it. So did Berle. In 1963, when Brian Epstein showed Sullivan a film of The Beatles performing She Loves You on Britain TV (the very performance we have for you on Oldies Television Channel 54), Ed inked the foursome to debut in America on his show after the stadium arrival brouha. Thus began the British Invasion and Ed Sullivan, knowing attracting young viewers was attractive to television advertisers) would debut not only The Beatles, but their opposites, The Rolling Stones, complete with Mick Jagger's tongue, along with Herman's Hermits, The Dave Clark Five, and countless appearances by Petula Clark, Sullivan's personal talent favorite of all the British pop stars. While EMI's Capitol Records was tickled with the money from three to five Beatle's songs being in the top 20 at the same time during most of 1964 amd '65, not everyone was tickled to death over the British invasion. American artists felt squeezed out of the record charts and TV appearances from such shows as Sullivan's. Eventually, things equalized and Elvis' Burning Love and even a non rock & roll Patti Page record, Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte were in the top ten with Nowhere Man and DC5's Needles and Pins (-ah)

Did Ed Sullivan really like rock and roll? Ed Sullivan had the then much misaligned Elvis on his show numerous time, once calling the now King of Rock & Roll a "Fine, fine boy." Sullivan introduced the Beatles to American television and had all the most popular British Invasion groups on at least once: The Rolling Stones, The Dave Clark Five, Freddie & The Dreamers, Petula Clark (although she was not really a rock and roll singer) among others. Ed Sullivan even gave obscure rock bands a spot, if one can remember such less than top ten hits as "Black Slacks" by The Sparkletones. Truth known, it was The Ed Sullivan Show sponsors who wanted the rock and roll acts featured. The reason, of course, the teen to thirty demographics.

Oft appearing Catarina Valente, Rise Stevens, Alan King, The Four Aces et al appealed to the Lawrence Welk crowd (30+). Topogigo the Mouse and dancing bears were for the kiddies. Some artists, such as The Platters and Rodney Dangerfield cross-appealed to young and old. But Madison Avenue wanted assurance young adults were glued to Sullivan's Sunday Night variety show. And so, Ed's talent bookers went after top ten rock and roll acts. Truth be known, Ed was not exactly thrilled and stated so in his newspaper column.

The week after defending Elvis against the backlash of daddys' vulgar pelvis protests, Ed, on the air, called rock and roll "rubbish" when introducing Robert Goulet: "And now, ladies and gentleman, to bring us away from the rubbish of rock and roll, here now on our stage, Robert Goulet."

Clearly, the celebrated presentation of rock stars on The Ed Sullivan Show was about advertisers and money, not Ed Sullivan's personal likes. He did, however, like Elvis' remakes of such old 40's crooner tunes like "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" "Can't Help Falling In Love With You," and "Love Me Tender," the movie theme to the tune of "Aura Lee." But The Beatles and Stones (and probably The Sparkletones) music would not be found on Ed Sullivan's home phonograph (for you teens, that's a record player, vinyl).

We've Got Your Favorite Oldies Music Memories Right Here On OLDIESTELEVISION.COM

Here to relive or experience anew are all the great music performances on the "bandstand" format TV shows coast to coast, onstage music live and lip-synched by stars who formed the roots of Rock and Roll like Bill Haley & The Comets, Chuck Berry, Danny & The Juniors, Fats Domino, Little Richard and, of course, The King, Elvis? How about the stars who sang songs that went from streetcorner harmony to the making out love harmony in the back seat. Call it Doo Wop, call it Back Seat Music, call it Group Vocal, we'll always remember The Dubs, The Duprees, The Five Satins, the underestimated Reparata & The Delrons, and the classic Tony Williams and The Platters (and we've got Tony Williams singing lead on TV with the original Platters, not Paul Robi or any other substitute). Berry Gordy brought us the Motown Sound with The Supremes, The Temptations... we could go on and on, but why say it? Click on the Oldies TV banner at the bottom of this webpage, see and hear the stars, the songs, the memories from when Rock & Roll was young The Golden Oldies...still today, they are the heart of Rock & Roll! Don't forget our Oldies Music Video Jukebox is here, links below on this home index page. We are pro-oldies, but not anti-newies; we have today's music videos linked here, too! Future Gold! Also, international music, classic and new indie movies on a separate set of channel links below, and. of course, they are all free, too.

The Oldies TV Trivia game is also on this site. Can you remember the name of Ernie Kovac's "aped" musical combo? Who played Bachelor Father? (Hint: he went on to fame as the rich mogul of Colorado on Dynasty (Thanks, CallerMike, for helping us on the hint). Who played Flash Gordon in the TV series filmed not in the United States (no, it wasn't Buster Crabbe). Who hosted "The $64,000 Question" (Jack Barry was the host of the scandal ridden "21.") There's also Oldies Music Trivia Quiz questions...like who recorded a charted 1950's R&B song while stoned drunk that was re-recorded in the late 70's by Creedence Clearwater Revival? Which 1959 released top 40 record originated the harsh electronic "swish" that is used today in Heavy Metal? Out of all the songs Elvis recorded, which one was The King's personal favorite? (Hint, it was released in 1962).

What was it like to watch television in the 1950's? The most asked question on search engines by college students which brings them here, answered by OTV moderator, Lou)

I was born in 1945 (please don't scurry for a calculator). My parents bought their first "TV set" in 1947, an Admiral brand, with ten inch screen and a built in AM/FM radio with record player ("changer") on the side, all contained in a beautiful solid oak cabinet with a 12" speaker (woof).

Being in the metro New York area, we were lucky. There were seven channels, all on VHF because there were only 12 VHF frequencies at the time, designated as channels 2-13. No UHF until two decades later. A good outdoor antenna around the New York area could pick up WCBS-TV 2, WNBC-TV 4, then WABD-TV 5 (ill fated Du Miont), the rest, WOR-TV 9, WPIX-TV 11 and WATV 13 all independent. No PBS yet. LA had a similar set of choices, but other areas were limited to two, three, or four network affilliates. The stations went on the air with a test pattern about 3PM, national anthem and programs followed until about midnight when stations signed off with a Priest, Minister, or Rabbi (no joke follows), the national anthem, and a long, dragged out speech about the stations operating power (usually two million watts circular radiation), who owns it, and how the station so wonderfully complies with FCC public service regulations. The exaltation was spoken while a robot camera pointed one of it's three turret lenses at an art card of the stations logo.

There were no electronically generated graphics in the fifties. Station ID's, show titles and credits, and ad words were drawn, printed, pasted on a square cardboard. After Desi Arnaz and Jackie Gleason pressed for multiple camera set-ups in the mid fifties, super imposition of lettering over video emerged. Aw, I still loved the picture Uncle Fred['s clown holding the "Junior Frolics" title card.

So, it's 5PM EST and this then 5 year old kid wanted to watch "Howdy Doody" (in black and white, of course). Mom turned on the Admiral TV at 4:55PM. It's 28 vacuum tubes needed two minutes to bring sound, then picture. All TV sets back then did. No HDTV, guys, not even HQ. The monochrome image was fuzzy, blurry, streaky and that's before reception problems. If a plane flew over the house, Clarabelle would wiggle and flutter. If a nearby hospital turned on diagnostic equipment, bars of squiggly lines (called "diathermy") rolled up the ten inch CRT picture. If a car passed by, Dilly Dally would have white lines dashing through him. Indigenous to old, tube TV's were horizontal and vertical rolls when anything (like electrical surge) bothered the hand wired circuitry or the huge power transformer inside the thing. There were knobs to fix the nuisance, also focus knob and fine tuning knob. Channels were changed on the set by a big ratchet-contact round (vernier) tuner and a fine tuning knob usually inset on the click tuner. Yes, Mr. Tudbury's secretary, you had to get up and change the channel. No remotes, although hospital and maybe nursing home patient rooms used a motor rotor wired to a forward button.

The shows we watched from 5PM to midnight are described and shown on the Oldies Television website. Slowly, TV stations increased on air time to 16 hours on weekends, 16 hours every day and then, voila, 24/7 which played havoc with vacuum tube transmitting equipment that was eccentric already. Enter the "Please Stand By" signs. Some days, we'dl be "standing by" a particular station for hours. Even when IBM invented the transistor (grandaddy of integrated circuits and chipsets) and computer (a huge, klunky, tubey, tubby Univac), the technics of television broadcasting during the fifties was rough going. Young people, curious about what TV was like during the 50's, often send e-mail about "the fuzzy pictures" on some of our streams not re-mastered. Well, boys and girls, that was the picture and sound quality further degraded by kinescope which recorded video pictures off the screen or camera viewer. At home on our Admiral, we were watching video with about 80 lines of resolution (about 340x150 pixels at 5MB now). Better than the spinning disc configuration of the 30's, but not much better via early Cathode Ray/ The first "color TV" was a multicolored transparent sheet over the black and white screen (yeah, right). When RCA developed the first tri-striped vidicon system (sensing primary three colors), we lived for awhile in the early 60's with a green Red Skelton and Connie Stevens with purple hair (at least now it'd be in goth fashion).

That's how it was in the early 50's. Grooved records, sound produced by a vibrating "needle" (stylus), crackly AM, multipath distorted FM, jumpy, fuzzy tiny size picture TV. Refrigerators that had to be defrosted (better than changing ice in the previous decade), no three prong electrical outlet shock protection, nary a polarity, no cable (community antennas for Andy Griffith country), no PC, no YouTube or Facebook (unless you went to Parochial school and got hit by a book by a Nun), no e-Mail and Spam was salty processed ham.

OLDIES TELEVISION CLASSIC OLDIES VIDEO JUKEBOX

Sure, we have a Juke Box ...and it plays Oldies Video Music Online!
The music goes down & round and you'll find it below,
so it comes out your computer screen and speakers!