Another episode of Family Affair had a kid in leg braces (remember those?) who was being smothered by his overprotective mother. Of course, Bill, Buffy, and Jody taught that family the true meaning of life (“Run, and if you fall, pick yourself up again”).
An early episode of Mary Tyler Moore (1970?) dealt with anti-Semitism, as directed against Rhoda.
I wonder if that’s how his daughter Marlo met Grier and got him involved in her Free to Be… project; or, conversely, she already knew Grier and suggested to he father that he include him on his show.
Anyway, sorry for the hijack, carry on…interesting thread, folks.
Was that the one with the kid screaming ‘I want some bread and buttah!’ Mother yells back ‘We don’t have any buttah!’ Kid screams back 'Then I want some bread and shugah!" That’s one of the few fragments I remember from that series.
Yep. All they had to eat was bread and sugar and (at the party at the end of the show) baloney sandwiches.
LOL! I do recall the kid as more polite “Can we have some bread and buttah?”
In 1967, Opie had a black football coach on The Andy Griffith Show. The coach was a smart and cultured guy who also played the piano very well.
They never made a big deal of a cultured, educated (“uppity”) black man who “talked white” coaching white kids on the show, though such a thing surely WOULD have been a big deal in most small Southern towns in 1967.
Did you recognize the actress who played the young woman? She also played this character:
http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0005745/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_70
I was going to post that. Also another had Beaver smoking, although it was played for light laughs.
Opie spent a whole very early ep of The Andy Griffith Show saving his money to buy his “girlfriend” a present. After Andy got done being mad (that Opie wouldn’t donate any of his money to Sunday School, or something), he found out that Opie was planning to buy the girl a coat, since her family couldn’t afford one. Does that count? Probably not, but I’ll leave it out there.
Rob finds out that there was another couple that had a son at the same hospital on the same day their son was born. For some reason, he begins to suspect that the two babies were switched and they have the other couple’s son. The punchline is he finally invites the other couple to his home so he can confront them and when they arrive it turns out the other couple is black.
So not really confronting any social issue other than the acknowledgement that other races exist.
They had similar last names.
“Why didn’t you tell me over the phone?”
“And miss the expression on your face?”
At the end, Rob mentions that the two kids are in the same school and the other kid gets better grades.
Ergo, the school is integrated. Doesn’t sound like much now, but an integrated school back then was unusual.
Yes, but it’s definitely not the sequel I’m thinking of. It was definitely Thomas’ first show. Thomas was still young, it was B&W — I was still very young, whereas I was a teenager by the time of the sequel. I was so sure it was Rosey Grier that I’m wondering if it got left out of the Imdb listings somehow. It could explain why he went on to appear in the sequel series. Anyway, in 1970 or 1971, there wouldn’t have been such a big deal made anymore out of hiring a black pianist.
Mine was. In Virginia. It was the 60s, not the 40s, and they lived in New Rochelle, NY, not Klansville, AL.
Not even a really big black pianist? I guess that was a few years before Mandingo. :eek:
Not to the extent it was made a big deal of in that episode. You would have thought that Danny Thomas was Abraham Lincoln. Anyway it was B&W, which was unheard of by 1970. It was the original series.
Right, no racial stereotyping in Hogan’s Heroes, no siree bob! :smack:
Didn’t The Jack Benny Program have all of these others beat by several years? Or decades, if you count the radio program.
In broad terms, Gilligan’s Island was socially conscious, as it was meant to portray a microcosm of American society. Of course, if it were to be remade today, there would be at least one gay and one black on the island (if Schwartz’s estate didn’t own the characters, that is).
The same could be said of The Brady Bunch, which was inspired by a contemporary newspaper article on the trend toward “blended” families.
That’s not true- schools in my area (Western NY) were integrated as far back as the early 50s when my sisters went, and probably earlier.