Missed the edit window, but wanted to add that the real Geezer issue has been addressed in Old Folks: Stand and be countedand has been quite remarkable in its results. Several incarnations of responses and not quite a zombie as those things go, although some of the data is over a year old.
I’ve toyed with the idea of updating the list, but the time lag in the actual ages expressed means I’d have to recalculate them. So it’s mostly up to the reader to decide that sort of thing.
If you haven’t posted there, and are in your own mind “old folks,” please join the crowd.
Jeff Greenfield had an article in the Times proposing that the entire 1960s can be explained by this bit, since it taught disrespect for authority. It sure did for me.
As for the original list, I’ve seen almost all of them, and know of the rest. And not only do I know about Beat the Clock my mother brought me to a taping one day. Another one I saw was Whom do you Trust with Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon before he got on The Tonight Show.
The Million Dollar Movie (weeknights at 8pm then at least twice each on Saturday and Sunday, the same movie)
The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, and it’s ilk, over and over and over…
(or was that just a Los Angeles thing?)
PF Flyers
Red Ball Jets
Sounds like the same sort of thing Nashville had, and maybe Birmingham and Montgomery, in the 50’s and 60’s. That’s the sort of programming that let me see movies from earlier eras. Shows with titles like:
Films of the Fabulous Forties (or Thirties or Fifties)
Also, there were Creature Feature, Shock Theater, and other late-night and weekend showcases for the old 30’s “horror” movies. Usually with a host in a costume and a name like Dr. Lucifer or Sir Cecil Creape.
At one point, WSM-TV in Nashville had a voice-over announcer to those late-night movies, whose gimmick was “This is you announcer speaking…” (That was Pat Sajak who also did some weather forecasting before heading on to the West Coast to fame and fortune and Vanna White).
No, it was the same in New York. When King Kong was featured, I would watch every showing.
The intro music was the Tara theme from Gone With the Wind, something I didn’t find out until many years later. I still can’t watch Gone With the Wind without being reminded of Million Dollar Movie.
[QUOTE=Senegoid]
I saw Milton Berle mentioned above.
Don’t forget Jack Benny
For the slightly younger geezers, Danny Kaye and Red Skelton.
[/QUOTE]
I used to watch Benny, Kaye, and Skelton, but Berle was a little before my time.
You’ve come a long way baby
Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch
My wife. I think I’ll keep her
All my men wear English Leather or they wear nothing at all
Mother Please! I’d rather do it myself
It’s not fried it’s shake and bake and I helped
I wish I were an Oscar Mayer weiner
Sorry, seems to have been before my time, you uber-geezer you
Anyway, to be honest we usually could only get an NBC affiliate with the cheesy rabbit ears my father insisted on using, so it was mostly Huntley and Brinkley who read us our news.
