Screens Were Small, but Shows Were Big

by Karen Richman

When I think back on what a child of television I was in the ‘50s and ‘60s, I can hardly believe that now my TV watching has been reduced strictly to Lester Holt giving me bad news each night and telling me to take care of myself and each other and the Reagan family on Blue Bloods. That’s it. Really. It is rare that I watch anything else.

I don’t own a smart TV so I can’t stream, and frankly, I don’t miss it because I don’t have the time. Someday, maybe. That’s on the list along with cleaning the basement, alphabetizing my spices, and writing letters again.

What I do enjoy, however, are the memories of old TV shows that quite often pop up from the cobwebs of my mind, and I realize that while most of them would never make it today in our “politically correct” society, there were some great simple truths and damn fine acting back then that you just don’t see anymore on the 60” flat screen with HD, surround sound, and all the bells and whistles. TV back then, especially the black and white stuff of the ‘50s, was somehow more real, honest, gritty; then when the networks shifted to “living color” in the midsixties, and the NBC peacock developed a colorful plumage, it somehow made a difference. Today Peacock is a streaming option that advertises you can watch 80,000 hours of TV and movies if you subscribe to their service. I don’t think I’ll be alive for 80,000 more hours!

So, what did I watch back in those coveted days of black and white? I was sick a lot as a kid with viruses of every stripe and every childhood disease on the menu, although I had been immunized against them all. So I was out of school frequently and watched TV from morning till my mother remanded me to bed. I loved sitcoms, so I became a real fan of I Married Joan, December Bride, Hazel, Beulah, Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, Make Room for Daddy, Our Miss Brooks, and of course, I Love Lucy. As decades changed and most of these old chestnuts faded away, there were more “sophisticated” comedies, but it just wasn’t the same.

I also loved westerns like Have Gun Will Travel, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, The Cisco Kid, and The Lone Ranger. Later it was The Rifleman and Cimmaron City among others, but Bonanza led them all, beginning in the late 50s and extending into the 70s. However, If you looked closely, the Cartwrights all seemed to be the same age, sons and father, but no one complained. The acting was great and so was the screenwriting.

As a young child, I really liked game shows but grew out of them eventually. Yet I remember with fondness Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your

Life, combining his acerbic wit with an insipid game that featured a duck holding the secret word in his bill. I would root for my favorite sob story hoping Jack Bailey and the audience would pick my choice of unfortunate to be Queen for a Day, and with the rest of America, I was reviled when Charles Van Doren who sweated believably in the “isola tion booth” trying to get the right answer and win The $64,000 Question, was proved to be a fake. My childlike innocence was shaken to the very core; today cheating doesn’t rattle anyone.

I begged my mother to buy me a Ben Casey shirt, the popular swag from one of the first medical shows. Vince Edwards would snarl and be ob streperous but was still a fine doctor along with the more kindly Dr. Kildare and Marcus Welby.

Space does not permit me to go on and on although the crime/mystery shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Perry Mason, Peter Gunn, The Defenders, The Naked City, and The Fugitive were all personal favorites.

Without a doubt, Sunday night on CBS was the winner of the week in my house. There were no remotes then, but with the lineup the network had, no one had to get up to change the channel. There was Lassie, followed by Dennis the Menace, The Ed Sullivan Show (arguably the best variety show on TV although Ed himself was a stiff monotoned host), The GE Theater, hosted by decades-later-President, Ronald Reagan, Alfred Hitchcock, Candid Camera, and What’s My Line?

I literally ran home from school every day to watch The Adventures of Superman and was crushed when the actor, George Reeves, died of an apparent suicide. Still, my greatest joy from these years is relived every New Year’s Eve when vintage Twilight Zone episodes are aired on cable for 24 hours. Who needs Rockin’ Eve in Times Square when you can get inside Rod Serling’s brilliant, yet twisted mind and watch a whole host of unknowns who later became some of the finest actors we ever had perform with brilliant scripts and direction. And yes, it was all in black and white. No streaming, no remotes, no giant flat screens.

Just quality broadcasting...no extra charge.