Baby Boomer Chronicles (BBC) 1960’s TV: the Creative and the Corny- Introduction
When we watch current television entertainment today, each of the networks are in a race to see who can lace more of their dramatic programming dialogue with adult language, words that are not the most coarse, but language not generally used in polite company. The programs deal with more adult themes and are filled with violent images. I don’t know if I like seeing decapitated heads or bullet ridden bodies each week. Don’t get me wrong, these shows are well done, but they are hard hitting and quite graphic. But this is now, then, the 1960’s, television was different and much more innocent by whatever standards you wish to use. Let’s go back to a time and have a little fun when TV was more fun, if not considered ‘corny’ today.
Madison Avenue must have been working overtime in those days. Cigarette advertising was overwhelming and many of the jingles for certain brands stuck with you, they did me, anyway, to this very day.
“Winston tastes good like a cigarette should”
(The Flintstones even got into the act, see this video)
“Come up; come all the way up to Kool”. This little penguin was the product icon.
“You can take Salem out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of Salem”
We cannot forget that during this period the women movement came into vogue. Now they had a brand of cigarettes directed at them,” Virginia Slims”
Who can forget the Benson and Hedges commercial with the foot long cigarette that the smoker always caught in elevators when the doors closed.
The Flinstones get into the act
TV was not so much a window on the world but more of the world as viewed from a carnival funhouse mirror. It was ‘us’ and the world as we wanted to see them, which had nothing to do with reality. This was a turbulent decade and none of that was reflected in television programming until the last year or two of the decade.
Growing up during this time, there were a lot of television programs available but from a child perspective there were some that I would not miss and there were others that I found corny even during the time they were on the air. In this series of articles I will address these programs from a child’s eye, lending adult commentary when appropriate. I have made my evaluation based on the way I saw the programs during that time and not as an adult.
This is the first in a series of three or four articles. For many of us, this is nostalgic. If you are too young to have been involved, come along for the ride anyway.
