Television Grew With Us
As the program line-up evolved, anti-communist shows like I Led Three Lives went the way of McCarthyism. Westerns stampeded over much of the competition, as reality shows have done in recent years. Popular radio shows like Gunsmoke were reborn for television, often with new, more visually-appealing actors in lieu of the radio stars. Outlandish sitcoms like I Love Lucy yielded to more polished series, with real plots and some drama as well as laughs, like the Dick Van Dyke show. Phil Silvers, whose burlesque manner had not worked on radio, thrived as Sgt. Bilko on You'll Never Get Rich. Perhaps the most curious sitcom was The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which almost exclusively featured teenagers as major characters. The show relied on words and whimsy, not sets and scenery. In case you've forgotten, the only movie theater in town always played the same movie, The Monster That Devoured Cleveland.
There were varieties of variety shows. Dinah Shore's was mostly musical, Red Skelton's was mostly comedic, and Ed Sullivan's was mostly... hard to categorize.
And he could wield a comb even better than he could act!
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Aimed squarely at us were the Warner Brothers' crime-fighting series, like 77 Sunset Strip and Hawaiian Eye. We joined our parents as they watched Naked City, Peter Gunn, and Perry Mason. Incidentally, Mason episodes included a wide range of actors, from silent-era great Francis X. Bushman to a very young Robert Redford, in his first-ever appearance on a screen.
Game shows with huge prizes held the nation's attention, until news broke that some were fixed. Panel shows, and Truth or Consequences (a transplant from radio), were watched because people enjoyed seeing the game played; prizes didn't really matter.
Theater had a strong presence on TV. There were live dramas, even musicals like Kiss Me Kate or Peter Pan. The latter featured the original Broadway cast (except for the child actors, who had outgrown their roles). Rod Serling's Twilight Zone showed us life from new and fantastic perspectives. You Are There recreated historical events, from the death of Socrates through the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Sadly, we no longer have to imagine.
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The television season was long, and regular shows took the summer off. Instead of reruns, we got "summer replacement" series, sometimes hosted by stars like Bobby Darin. Quality reruns only came along after the invention of videotape, which made its on-air debut late in 1963, showing us the first instant replays during the annual Army-Navy football game. New technologies also made possible trans-oceanic broadcasts (the first used Telstar I in 1962), and series in color (Bonanza was the first to use color from the start).
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