I recently seen a few episodes of the original “Lassie”. It’s interesting as a history lesson, to see the technology, and the social patterns of the time.
There’s the old telephone (operated by turning a crank), and the conversation with the operator lady who plugged your call through for you, and listened in to your call. And the day laborers the family hired to help out on the farm, who just naturally went to sleep in the barn, pitching their sleeping roll on the floor.
Today’s plot was about the new-fangled invention the family just acquired–a refrigerator, which replaced the old ice box. The ice man came by, carrying in his tongs the last block of ice.
So my question is: in what year was all this taking place? And was it supposed to be real?
The TV show was produced( I think) in 1954, but was set at some nostalgic point in the past.
The viewing audience obviously has TV’s in their own home, but the Lassie family does not. For transportation,the show uses cars or trucks, not horses, so it wasn’t supposed to be set in the 1920’s or even 30’s.
Was it an accurate portrayal of life in the rural countryside? What was the appeal of the show? Did the audience watching in the cities see the boy-with-his-dog, living on a farm , and enjoy the show because it showed the idyllic life in the countryside of 1954? Or did they watch it feeling smug and superior in their new, modern homes , owning a refrigerator,and telephone with a dial, knowing how far they had progressed over the poor Lassie family, stuck in the past?
What sorts of styles were you seeing the cars and trucks in? I don’t recall thinking of any of the features as being anachronistic, myself, so that might give you some hints.
Of course, I don’t recall having any concept of anachronism when I was seven, either.
I do recall watching an episode where Lassie went to live with a U.S. Park Ranger named Corey, and saying goodbye to Timmy and June Lockhart. During her time with the ranger, I have a vague memory of furnishings and technology that were pretty much contemporaneous with the sixties, so I’m thinking the shows were pretty much set in the years they were made (especially since Timmy usually had Campbell’s Soup for lunch, and it tended to be the same flavor that had been featured in the commercial).
OTOH, I next saw June Lockhart gallivanting around the galaxy in a poorly-navigated spaceship, so maybe it was set in a post-apocalyptic 22nd century…
My mother likes to tell a story about the nice man in the ice truck giving kids pieces of ice to suck on during hot summer days when she was really little. Her family had a fridge, but her grandparents had an ice box (and an outhouse!), hence the ice. They also didn’t have trash pick up in those days, but her father would burn the trash in a barrel.
FTR, she was born in 1956.
This wasn’t in a particularly rural area, either, but on the south shore of Massachussetts.
I think the Lassie series was pretty much considered to be contemporary with the year each particular season was filmed in. Even in the 50’s and 60’s modern conveniences took longer to get to the boonies. Timmy’s family (and before that, Lassie was owned by a boy named Jeff and his family - the show was known as “Jeff’s Collie”) may not have had a TV for the simple reason there might not have been any stations broadcasting near them. No reason to own a TV if there’s nothing to watch. Same with the phone, the attitude on most farms was if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. If it is broke, fix it yourself, or do without. To get a new phone then, you had to have a serviceman from the phone company come out to install one, and that’s an expense many farm families felt they could do without. I do remember when Timmy’s family moved to Australia. If they had taken Lassie with them, she’d have had to have been quarantined six months. Rather than have her go through that, they gave her to the forest ranger, Corey Stewart. And yes, that was assumed to be set in 1967 or 68, about the time the show went through the cast change.
It was designed to be contemporaneous. In a rural area, there quite likely would be some cranked phones. I know that near me they had something similar: no hand cranks, but all calls went through an operator.
Ice was probably still being used at the time, too. People were switching to refrigerators, but there were still rural areas that didn’t have electricity.
Not quote. When the show had Jeff, it was called Lassie. However, when they started rerunning it after Timmy took over, the older episodes were packaged at Jeff’s Collie.
This wasn’t just in the boonies. In the Honeymooners, the Kramdens still had an icebox in Brooklyn in 1955 (to Alice’s chagrin), even though the Nortons had a refrigerator.
When watching the show in the 1950s I always perceived it to be contemporaneous; it was just that people in rural areas still were a bit behind those in cities in terms of modern convieniences.
In an episode aired in December 1955, a television set meant for the Brockways is delivered to the Millers (Lassie’s owners). In another episode aired in February 1956, the Millers welcome a Japanese exchange student, and run into bigotry from a neighbor who has never gotten over World War II.
Ruth Miller did get an electric refrigerator in 1959, although Lassie preferred her meals from the old icebox.
I was born in ‘54 and lived in rural Maine as a young child. We had a refrigerator, but no phone, and the bathroom facilities were in a shed behind the barn. Watching Lassie as a boy, I always felt the setting was contemporary. An even more accurate portrayal of country life graced our TV screens in 1965 .