Home Improvement. Was a huge hit in the '90s, even giving Seinfeld a run for its money. Now it’s mainly remembered for giving Tim Allen his big break.
Is it even still in syndication? It’s been ages since I recall seeing a rerun anywhere.
Long running and pretty much forgotten hit TV shows:
*Alice
One Day at a Time
Wings
Falcon Crest
Maude*
Doh I knew that too but made the thinko anyway.
A couple more writers: Pearl S. Buck, novellist, winner of a Pulitzer prize and a Nobel prize for her novels about China and biographical writing. I used to read her in my teens along with the aforementioned Francis Parkinson Keyes.
R.D. Blackmore, famous in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Of his novels only Lorna Doone had lasting success and I’m not sure how well known that is these days. I once tried to read one his other novels and couldn’t get into it at all.
You can still find The Good Earth in most bookstores, but that’s it, and most people aren’t even aware TGE is part one of a trilogy as you never see the sequels in bookstores.
What about “All in the Family?” It was, at the time, the most ground-breaking series ever shown on television.
Old folk, like me, remember it but it’s pretty much joined Fonzie’s jacket in the dust-bin.
Here’s my test: My 16-year-old daughter knows Steve McQueen, Lucy, Jack Lemmon (she considers “Some Like It Hot” the pinnacle of screwball comedy) and James Garner, just for examples, but she hasn’t a clue who Carol O’Connor, Rob Reiner, Sally Struthers or Jean Stapleton are. And, for that matter, the entire cast of “Seinfield” are a mystery to her. Ask her about Cary Grant, though, and she can recite his filmography.
It’s kind of funny, in the long run, what sticks around and what doesn’t.
Rio, by Duran Duran
1920’s-style death rays
These were hugely popular, for about 20 minutes in the 1960s, but you don’t hear much about them anymore.
Religious kitsch cinema doesn’t seem to have much staying power. Who remembers any of these films…?
**Samson and Delilah
David and Bathsheba
The Robe
The Egyptian
Solomon and Sheba
**
The first three were the number one top grossing films of their year; the other two ranked in the top ten. And these were color movies from the '50s, not ancient silent films.
In the field of music, a lot of easy listening titans qualify. Aside from the aforementioned Percy Faith, there were Ray Conniff, Mantovani, Ferrante & Teicher, Horst Jankowski, Bert Kaempfert, Enoch Light, 101 Strings, Roger Williams, and Hugo Winterhalter. Billboard Magazine tells us these artists were once massively popular, and this is confirmed by what we find in second-hand stores and the garage sales of older people.
In terms of pop music, Paul Revere & the Raiders were once a huge deal & today seem to maintain a pretty low profile to the extent they are known at all. In 1968 they were at least ten times as popular as the Velvet Underground, whereas today, among people under 45 the reverse is probably true.
Lots of old-time radio and vaudeville acts would fit this category. Lum & Abner. Fibber McGee and Molly. Zasu Pitts. Baby Snooks. The Ziegfeld Follies. Eva Tanguay. Julian Eltinge.
Besides the ones who are dead or retired, I’d guess a lot of these people dropped out of sight because there is no longer a publicist working on getting their name in the press regularly. And the movie studios and TV networks do the same for their headliners
These people are gone becuse they are no longer on the celebrity news industry assembly line. They’ve been replaced by newer models.
Basically, they are a lot like cell phones.
AC/DC. For a while, they had a couple of the top grossing of all time records, and then they got crushed by Billy Joel. Yes, Billy Joel had the highest grossing album of all time at one point.
The Jackson 5 going solo, except Michael: For a while the other brothers drew crowds as solo acts. I remember Jermaine being the guest star on Facts of Life.
Annette Funicello: her beach movies were early forms of the summer blockbuster. Then, Elvis just blew her away.
This morning Turner Classic Movies was showing two of the Bomba the Jungle Boy movies with Johnny Sheffield. I haven’t thougt of that series in 40 years.
Weird. I got really into All in the Family in high school watching the Nick at Nite reruns. Looking back, it could be cheesy but I really loved it. Jeffersons, too. Never got into the whole old movie thing, though…so I’m sort of the inverse of your daughter.
He’s so danged forgotten that I figured you meant the other forgotten Louis Jordan.
Thirty- perhaps even 25 years ago, you could walk in any book store & see a huge display of this lady’s novels-
Taylor Caldwell.
Now, only Captains and the Kings is still in “regular” print, while Dear & Glorious Physician has been put back into print by Ignatius House which specializes in conservative Catholic works.
Whenever I hear of “Norma Desmond,” my brain goes to “Carol Burnett.”
And how many young people ever heard of Bing Crosby?
How about Ivy League sports? I’ve read many times that Harvard and Yale were the kings of the football world through the 1930s or so. People have accused me of lying or being confused if I mention it, though.
AC/DC might have had some dry spell after their US breakthrough with Back In Black (and btw., I don’t think any Billy Joel album outsold this), but take a look at the figures for their last two albums from 2008 rsp. 2010 here. I don’t think double platinum in the US and #1 in all the listed charts (incl. US and UK) for their 2008 album indicates that they are completely forgotten. They are equally big with their live work.