Few decades have seen more change than the 1960s. Unless you have a feeling for the setting, however, history can be dry and meaningless, and it certainly isn't fun. This blog will try to give a sense for what it was actually like to live in the 1960s. We'll do that mainly (but not always) by talking about what happened on the 50th anniversary of an event.
Julia Child was possibly the world’s most recognized
chef.She is unquestionably the most satirized,
with her flair, her pearls, her distinctive voice, and her iconic “bon appétit!.She is one of the minor but important
personalities of 1960s culture.
Julia’s rise to fame started with the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1961,
a book she wrote with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle and which was
intended to make French cuisine accessible to the everyday cook.Her television career actually began on July 26, 1962, with an appearance on a
book review show on Boston’s fledgling public television station, WGBH.During that broadcast, she demonstrated how
to cook an omelette.The segment was so
well received that it led to her own show, “The French Chef”, which premiered on
February 11, 1963.The show ran for ten
years, and was followed by a number of other series and specials over almost
forty years.It is probably no
exaggeration that Julia Child is the mother of modern cooking television.
One of the many interesting tidbits about this extraordinary
lady was her service in World War II.After being rejected by the army and navy because she was too tall (6’ 2”),
she joined the Office of Strategic Services – the predecessor of the modern
CIA.Her mostly clerical service with
the OSS included working directly with its legendary chief, Gen. Bill Donovan and,
later, "registering, cataloging and channeling a great volume of highly
classified communications" for the OSS's clandestine stations in Ceylon
(now Sri Lanka) in the Indian Ocean.
If you like to cook, Mastering
the Art of French Cooking is a joy to use with its step-by-step
instructions.Be warned, however, that its
liberal use of butter certainly doesn’t meet modern standards for healthy eating.Also, Meryl Streep’s portrayal of Julia in Julie and Julia is a lot of fun if you’re
looking for an entertaining way to learn more about this remarkable character.Finally, if you’re in Washington and want to
get a sense for Julia, or just pay homage, her kitchen has been preserved in
the Smithsonian American History Museum.
You get off the London Underground at the
Oxford Circus station in the middle of London.
It’s past dinner time but still light.
You wander east on the right side of Oxford Street, heading to your
hotel in the general direction of the British Museum. It's a warm summer
evening - a Thursday. Three blocks from the tube, you hear the blues song
“Baby What’s Wrong" through the open door of a club just in front of you.
It's been a long day of sightseeing, and you need a break and a pint, so
you make one of those fateful decisions people make every day without realizing
it. You follow the music inside.
The club's called The Marquee, and it's smokey and not very large or glamorous. You sit down
at the worn English pub table and order. The cute cockney waitress casually mentions
that the band’s on its third number, which shifts your attention to the show. Crammed
on the relatively small stage are six young men - one energetic singer, three
guitarists, one drummer and one on piano. They're slightly
scruffy but really good, as they run through another fifteen songs that include Chuck Berry, Bo
Diddley's, and other recent rock and roll hits, although there's a Muddy
Waters-bluesy feel that sometimes sneaks through. An hour later, after your
second pint, it looks like the band’s set is about to wrap up. Even though the music is REALLY good, you're
tired and head out for your hotel.
Jones
Richards and Jagger
The
date is July 12, 1962 and, while you didn’t realize it, you were a witness to
one of the great moments in musical history – the first live performance of the
Rolling Stones. That night they were
billed as "The
Rollin' Stones". On stage were Mick
Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones (guitar), Ian Stewart (piano), and Dick Taylor (bass) and
Tony Chapman (drums). Jones and Stewart
wanted to play Chicago blues, but were agreeable to the Chuck Berry and Bo
Diddley songs of Jagger and Richards. Fifty years later, Jagger and Richards are still playing together, even though they haven't always been on speaking terms.
Stewart
Chapman
Taylor
The history of the 1960s is necessarily full of both events that were obviously significant at the time, and events, like the Stones' gig at The Marquee, that were insignificant at the time and only become historic because of what happened afterward. Still, wouldn't you like to have been our imaginary tourist on Oxford Circus?
No, there were no live overseas broadcasts before the 1960s. Today we take for granted the pioneering technology
that was one of the hallmarks of this remarkable decade.
On July 11, 1962, Telstar 1, the world’s first
private communications satellite, relayed the first television pictures through
space — a non-public transmission of a flag outside the satellite earth station
in Andover, Maine. It had been launched
the day before. On July 23, 1962, it
relayed the first publicly available live transatlantic television signal – a broadcast featuring CBS's Walter
Cronkite and NBC's Chet Huntley in New York, and the BBC's Richard Dimbleby in
Brussels. The first pictures were the Statue of Liberty in New York and the
Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Walter Cronkite
Thor-Delta rocket launch
Belonging to AT&T, the original Telstar was part
of a multi-national agreement between AT&T, Bell Telephone Laboratories,
NASA, the British General Post Office, and the French National PTT (Post,
Telegraph & Telecom Office) to develop experimental satellite
communications over the Atlantic Ocean. Ironically, it was rendered inoperable
only a few months later by high altitude nuclear weapons testing, but it
remains in orbit to this day.
The first art-gallery exhibition of pop art on the West Coast opened on July 9, 1962 in the Ferus Gallery of Los Angeles. It featured a one-man show by Andy Warhol, who was a leading figure in the pop art movement. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture and advertisement that flourished by the 1960s.
Andy Warhol
Pop art is a movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. It employs aspects of mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any given culture, most often through the use of irony. It is generally understood to be a reaction to the ideas of abstract expressionism – the popular as opposed to elitist culture in art. It arguably reached its height of popularity in the mid 1960s.
On July 5, 1962, noble laureate William Faulkner died of a
heart attack at age 64. Faulkner only
became famous after receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature n 1949. He won two
Pulitzer Prizes – in 1954 for A Fable and
again in 1962 for his last novel, The
Reivers. His significance to the
history of the 1960s is primarily as a milestone in the passing of a literary generation
that included Earnest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Although he wrote his first novel in 1925, his income in the
1930s and ‘40s came primarily from screenwriting. One of his most famous was the 1944 film To Have and Have Not, starring Humphrey
Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Based on the
Hemingway novel of the same title, It contains one of the classic movie lines
of all times:
If you like old movies and have never seen this one, it's definitely worth watching.
Hemingway and Faulkner had something of a rivalry. Faulkner once said about Hemingway:
"He has never been known to use a word that might send
a reader to the dictionary."
Hemingway, in his turn, said of Faulkner:
“Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”
In honor of Andy Griffith, one of the icons of
1960s television, who died earlier this week, I thought a dive into the genre might be fitting (and
fun). So, here goes ….
By way of a quick overview, Wikipedia noted that shortly before the 1961-62
season on which we’ll focus (the television season started with premiers in the
fall of each year) TV had been described by the
Federal Communication Chairman as a "vast wasteland." This season featured rearranged network schedules to accommodate the critics.
So much for the egghead stuff. What was TV really like in the first half of
1962? Here are some facts:
There were
only three networks (ABC, CBS and NBC), all of which were broadcast through
local channels numbered between 2 and 13.
Little of the nation had access to higher
numbered channels, which usually had terrible picture quality (even assuming
the home had a TV set that could receive it).
Although public television had been around in
some form for ten years, it was barely a blip on the radar (Sesame Street didn't begin until 1969).
There was very little cable infrastructure –
the vast majority of television was received through antennas, ranging from “rabbit
ears” to large contraptions attached to the outside of homes.
TV programming started in most areas at 6 am
with the "Star Spangled Banner", and
ended around midnight the same way. As
strange as it may seem today, there was no television of any kind to watch
between midnight and 6 am, and of course there were no home video devices to
fill the gap.
Of the top ten shows, only two had episodes in color – the rest were in
black and white. The top three shows (four
in the top twenty) were all hour-long western dramas.In the rest of the top twenty, seven were
half-hour comedies, three were one-hour variety shows, two were medical dramas
(one-hour each).The remaining four
included a famous court-room drama (Perry
Mason), a half-hour family animal drama (Lassie), Sing Along With
Mitch(which is frankly hard to describe other than as a sing-along show –
really, I’m not kidding), and the iconic Candid
Camera.Not a reality show in the
bunch, and no story line that you wouldn’t have been comfortable discussing in
church.
Here are some additional (hopefully
interesting) tidbits:
Theme music: 1962 TV featured some of the most memorable theme music of all times. This group included:
Bonanza – The #2 program of the
year (and the only one in color) was an atypical western, built around the Cartwright family on their huge
ranch in Nevada. It ran for 14 years,
and among the co-stars were Michael Landon as “Little Joe,” who later starred
in Little House on the Prairie.
The Andy Griffith Show – Ranked 7th
in ‘61-‘62 Nielsen’s, this show was set
in rural, small town North Carolina.
Aside from its classic whistling theme and of course Andy Griffith, it
is best remembered for its child star “Ronnie” Howard, the later Academy Award
winning director.
Perry Mason– In my humble
opinion, this long-running courtroom drama (5th for the season), based on Earle Stanley Gardner’s numerous
pot-boiler novels, has perhaps the most memorable TV theme music of all
times.
Westerns– As we mentioned above,
the top three programs for the year were all westerns. Ironically, the top-rated show, Wagon Train, is probably now the least
memorable. Some other trivia:
Gunsmoke cast, Burt Reynolds seated
Gunsmoke– The show’s 635 total
episodes made it the longest running, prime time series of the 20th century. It ranked third in this TV season. One interesting tidbit is that Burt Reynolds
played half-breed blacksmith Quint Asper from 1962–1965.
Clint Eastwood as Rowdy Yates
Rawhide– Although it only ranked
13th in this season, you can’t
discuss TV westerns of the 1960s without mentioning Rawhide for at least two reasons.
The first is the classic rendition of the show's theme in The Blues Brothers, as the band desperately tries to find anything
country enough to survive a drunken cowboy bar crowd. The show’s other claim to fame is its main co-star
for eight seasons – Clint Eastwood.
Comedies– The seven comedies
that made the season’s top twenty ranged from classic to the silly to the completely
forgettable. In addition to The Andy Griffin Show, some worth
noting, for good or bad, include:
Hazel– A completely inane premise
based around a family’s white, middle class, uniformed housekeeper, the show
actually was the 4th highest rated program of the season.
My Three Sons – The #11 show for
the year is probably best remembered for its star, Fred McMurray, who started
as a leading man in films in the 1930s and ended up making The Absent Minded Professor for Walt Disney.
The Real McCoys – This sitcom
(ranked 14th) involved a poor farming family lead by famous actor Walter Brennan.
Car 54, Where Are You? – Although it only ran three years, that was probably at least two years too long for this series. Based on two idiotic police officers on
patrol, it finished this season ranked 20th.
Ed Sullivan
Variety Shows – Approaching the
heyday of this genre, the top 20 shows of the season included The Red Skelton Show (#6), The Garry Moore Show (#12), and immortal
Ed Sullivan Show (#19). If you’re not familiar with this type of program,
they featured guest acts of all kinds (including many rock and roll bands later in the decade), skits, monologs, and what could only be
described as “general entertainment.”
Richard Chamberlain as Kildare
Medical Dramas – Two new programs
in this season featured medical story lines.
Dr. Kildare (#9) and Ben Casey (#18) were really the prototypes for this
type of programming.
Honorable Mention – Let’s
conclude this already-too-long discussion by mentioning two of the oddest
programs of the season:
Candid Camera – This American hidden
camera/practical joke reality television series (reality in the non-actor
sense, not the contrived drama or competition sense of today) was produced off
and on for decades. It was truly original
and groundbreaking (for good or evil).
It was the 10th rated show in the ’61-’62 season. The following is an episode called "The Power of Conformity."
Mitch Miller leads a song
Sing Along With Mitch - Mitch
Miller was a household name in the early 1960s with his 15th rated show
Sing Along with Mitch, a community-sing program featuring him and a male
chorale. As the title suggests, lyrics were shown at the bottom of the TV screen
so viewers could sing along. As corny as
this sounds, remember that The Lawrence
Welk Show was a prime-time Saturday night staple not yet half way through
its 27 year run.
Wasteland or Wholesome? You now have
a pretty good idea of what popular television was like in the first half of
1962. Would you describe it as “wholesome,”
as many of the tributes to Andy Griffith have done, or would you chose “wasteland,”
as the FCC chairman saw it in 1961? Many
of these programs can still be found in syndication. Many of the formats – particularly sitcoms
and medical dramas – have so far stood the test of time. Certainly, some were completely inane. None were
yet tackling the social issues that they would take on by the end of the
decade, but there was also no reason for parents to censor their children’s
viewing choices. Wholesome or
wasteland? You decide.
1962 turns out to have been an important year in the modern history
of shopping in the United States. On
July 2, 1962, Sam Walton opened the first Walmart Discount City store located
at 719 Walnut Ave. in Rogers, Arkansas. It is now, of course, the largest retailer in
the world. Target and K-Mart were also
founded in that year. The three
represented the trend toward larger, more diverse, somewhat more upscale
discount shopping. Later, they also
exemplify the emerging dominance of national companies over local sellers.
At the time, the dominant retailer was Sears Roebuck and
Co., which still had a thriving catalog business. The Sears catalog was a staple of the first
three-fourths of the 20th Century, and its arrival in the mail an
exciting event (especially during the Christmas season). The other major sales leader was J.C. Penny’s,
which was a classic department store. Some
of the important players of that era that no longer exist included Montgomery
Wards, Rexall Drugs, TG&Y, and Woolworths/Woolco.
While there were certainly shopping malls in 1962, they were
just beginning to hit their stride. The
baby boomers and urban sprawl were pushing the boundaries of all cities, and
that spread created opportunities for newer and bigger malls, often leaving the
original ones behind and failing.
So, what was it like to shop in 1962? Generally, it was not as mall-centered, the stores were more locally owned, and there were fewer retail choices. And, if you can believe it, there was no internet.
