In 1969, classes at Helen Keller Middle School didn’t conclude until 3:36 p.m., post-season baseball games were played far more rapidly than today’s prime-time, endless-commercial-breaks-between-half-innings snoozers are, and my home was a 10-minute, all-out sprint from the school. Live, post-season telecasts of World Series games began promptly at 1 p.m. back then, which explains why I was cruelly denied the once-in-my-boyhood opportunity to see my favorite team, the New York Mets, win baseball’s nominal World Championship.
But last week, that gaping hole in my childhood was patched. Not only did I watch the original NBC broadcast of the fifth and final game of that year’s Fall Classic in its entirety, I also caught the pre-game show featuring a youthful Sandy Koufax cheerfully predicting a third consecutive New York Met victory while his colleague Mickey Mantle bravely (and incorrectly, as it turned out) stuck with the Baltimore Orioles.
For the belated privilege of seeing a televised version of the memorable event I missed seeing live 44 years ago, I can thank the video-sharing website YouTube.
And it turns out there are lots more golden TV moments where that came from.
For example, it’s now possible to again watch “To Tell the Truth,” a game show of the 1950s and ’60s where four celebrity panelists tried to ascertain which of three ordinary-looking guests actually had an unusual occupation or experience that had been described at the program’s start. The two fakers could fib all they wanted, but the “real” spy, war hero, kissing bandit, youthful entrepreneur, bank robber, daredevil or professional gambler was sworn “to tell the truth.”
Because cameras weren’t so ubiquitous back then, some remarkable people were able to appear as contestants because no one knew what they looked like. Author Alex Haley, civil-rights pioneer Rosa Parks, hockey Hall-of-Famers Jean Beliveau and Red Kelly, Olympic sprinting Gold Medalist Wilma Rudolph and radio talk-show host Larry King all appeared alongside two imposters but weren’t recognized by their mere appearance, as they likely would be today.
On “I’ve got a Secret,” seemingly everyday people possessed unusual information, which a quartet of well-knowns tried to deduce in a televised version of “20 Questions.” Among those who shared “secrets” now viewable via YouTube: Neil Armstrong’s parents (their son had just become an astronaut), Colonel Harland Sanders (he began his Kentucky Fried Chicken business with his first $105 Social Security check), and 96-year-old Samuel J. Seymour, who had been taken to Ford’s Theatre one April night in 1865 and was the last living witness to the Lincoln assassination.
The featured portion of a similar show, “What’s my Line,” saw a four-person celebrity panel don hideous-looking blindfolds before trying to deduce the identity of that night’s mystery guest, usually a person of some renown disguising his or her voice while responding “yes” or “no” to the panelists’ questions. A veritable “Who’s Who” of notables including Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Andy Griffith, Ted Williams, Alfred Hitchcock, Art Carney, Jackie Gleason, Muhammad Ali, Red Skelton, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vincent Price and Walt Disney tried to stump the panel, with varying degrees of success. Watching these often hilarious shows on YouTube is like taking a graduate course on 20th-century American cultural history.
Recently it was reported that Time Warner Cable and CBS are quarreling, and as a result the cable giant has pulled the network’s (and its subsidiaries’) shows from its cable menu, which has more than a few customarily sedentary types up in arms.
A more appropriate reaction: Who cares which corporate behemoth gets hundreds of millions of its customers’ dollars? Let ’em fight!
TV was more entertaining and less expensive before the existence of the 24-7 drivel presented (apparently without shame) by the likes of CNBC, MSNBC, HBO, HSN, BET, CMT, CNN, E!, FX, MTV, OWN, QVC, TBS, TNN, TNT, TLC, VH-1, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, ESPN Deportes, Spike, Disney Channel, Animal Planet, Telemundo, Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, Food Network, Fox News, Baby TV, Lifetime, Cinemax, Showtime, Univision, Starz, C-SPAN, the Weather Channel, the Pentagon Channel, the Erotic Network, and literally hundreds of other mind-numbing options available to those preferring mere existence to actual exertion.
Thanks to YouTube, more wholesome and entertaining (albeit aged) fare is readily accessible.
— Andy Young sees a direct correlation between America’s alarming rise in obesity rates and technology that no longer requires semi-comatose TV-watchers to physically lift their increasingly bulky selves out of their seat(s) to go change the channel.
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
