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Feb. 28, 1961: Arthur Godfrey announces that he’s leaving TV’s “Candid Camera” and Paul Coates takes the opportunity to say he can’t understand Godfrey’s appeal.
Notice: This KNX ad actually ran Feb. 27 but I wanted to include it because it has the full day’s programming schedule. Please notice Bob Crane in the morning slot. (And, yes, Arthur Godfrey!)
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 In speaking at the tribute honoring the Ronald Reagan centennial on Friday night, former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin invoked his now-famous speech “A Time for Choosing.”
Times reporter Maeve Reston noted that Reagan gave the televised speech in October 1964 on behalf of Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and I thought it would be interesting to explore some of the details. The Times was a stalwart Republican paper in this era and endorsed Goldwater for president, so it seemed likely that there might be some coverage of Reagan’s speech.
My research found that if the address has become one the landmarks of Reagan’s political career, it certainly didn’t start out that way.
In fact, The Times’ clips and other news sources show that for nearly two years before his televised address, Reagan had been delivering a speech on the theme of “A Time for Choosing” to business and political groups. Given the time references in the televised version (“Senator Humphrey last week…”) , it’s evident that Reagan revised the work and I will defer to Reagan scholars to compare drafts of the speech, although I imagine it would be a fascinating project.
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Photos courtesy of Matthew Harris |
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[Update: Please congratulate Steve Stoliar for identifying this mystery group as the T-Bones! Nice research, Steve!]
[Update: Here’s a frame grab from YouTube.]
Here’s a series of mystery photos from reader Matthew Harris. He says they “are photos taken on the set of the TV show, "Hullabaloo." I have a pal that was a musician on the show & he snapped these, but has no idea who they are.”
And yes, the first thing I thought of was the Beatles “butcher” cover on "The Beatles Yesterday and Today." Although I’m the right vintage, I never watched “Hullabaloo” or “Shindig,” so I’m not much help.
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Jan. 26, 1961: The sound of an auto collision at Sunset Boulevard and Roxbury Drive attracted the usual crowd of onlookers and as Eugene Rodney, producer of the Robert Young TV show, dejectedly appraised the damage to his white Thunderbird, one of them, a man in sports shirt and slacks, asked, "Is there anything I can do?"
Rodney recognized him as pianist Jose Iturbi and after a moment's contemplation said, "Yes, there is! Would you play 'The Ritual Fire Dance' from 'El Amor Brujo' by De Falla--Softly!"
DEAR ABBY: Yesterday I saw two people together who had absolutely no business being together. The man is the husband of a very good friend of mine. The women is the wife of a respected professional man. He was helping her into his car and they were laughing and so wrapped up in each other's company they didn't know anyone else was on the street. This was about noontime.
It worked on my mind so much I decided to call up my friend and tell her about her husband....
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Oct. 4, 1974: Jack LaLanne celebrates his 60th birthday by swimming from Alcatraz to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco -- with his hands and feet tied and pulling a 1,000-pound boat.
In addition to his usual training program -- rising at 4 a.m. for 90 minutes of weightlifting, 30 minutes of swimming and 30 minutes of running -- he had sat for an hour a day in a bathtub filled with water and 100 pounds of ice, which brought the temperature to 55 degrees, The Times said.
[Updated at 9:32 p.m.: An earlier version of this post said LaLanne was handcuffed. His hands and feet were "bound by cords that allowed minimal freedom."]
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Jan. 21, 1961: Paul Coates has a terrific item on a radio announcer whose life fell apart after he lost his job because the station went to rock ‘n’ roll.
Charley used to patronize a place on Hill Street near 5th where one doughnut and coffee were 10 cents. But it became a hangout for beatnik types who would dawdle for hours over their cups of java, crowding out the regulars. The place recently changed ownership and the price was raised to 16 cents. Now everything is back to normal, Matt Weinstock says.
DEAR ABBY: How does a married woman, 29, cope with a 14-year-old neighbor girl who hangs around her husband constantly? The girl is as physically mature as I. |
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Jan. 6, 1980: Years before there was MTV’s “The Real World” (or MTV, for that matter), there was Craig Gilbert’s “An American Family,” the story of the Loud family of Santa Barbara, which aired on PBS in 12 one-hour episodes in 1973. During what is now considered the first reality TV show, oldest son Lance Loud announced that he was homosexual and Pat Loud ordered her husband, Bill, out of the house because of his infidelity.
Margaret Mead called Gilbert's approach "As important in the history of human thought as the invention of the novel" but critics were less enthusiastic, saying that all the Louds seemed to do was lounge around their swimming pool. Several members of the family criticized Gilbert for selective editing that trivialized them.
A follow-up film was made in 1983 and a 2001 film explored the life of Lance Loud, who died in 2001 at the age of 50.
Note to Times copy desk: 1980 - 1973 = 7, not 8.
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Look! They had a two-for-one sale on Volkswagen Beetles!
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I’m a respectful researcher. So when someone writes to The Times and asks about the location of a sleazy hotel featured in the “Bounty Hunter” episode of “Starsky and Hutch,” I assume there’s a good reason. Why people at The Times know to pass a question like this to me is an issue that I’m just going to ignore.
Young persons: “Starsky and Hutch” was one of those popular cop shows of the 1970s that your parents probably watched. The program moved between Wednesday nights at 10 and Tuesday nights at 9 and starred David Soul (yes, that’s his name) as Det. Kenneth Hutchinson and Paul Michael Glaser as Det. David Starsky
Here are screen grabs from Hulu of the sequence in question. Notice that the top of City Hall is barely visible in the opening frames.
The entire episode is on Hulu. The hotel sequence begins at the 36:26 time mark.
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Dec. 1, 1930: Editorial cartooning from the pen of a younger Bruce Russell, in the days when newspapers ran them on the front page. And no, Russell’s concepts didn’t get any clearer over the years. Compare his 1960 cartoon on Richard Nixon’s experienced hair. (Hm. Reminds me of A. Victor Segno.)
Also on the front page: James J. Davis, President Herbert Hoover’s outgoing secretary of Labor (he resigned to become a senator from Pennsylvania), calls for tighter restrictions on immigration. Notice the proposal of Sen. David A Reed (R-Pa.) who wants to shut down immigration for two years.
On the jump, how should sports announcers cover football games? Lots of color and constant chatter or pure statistics and long pauses?
ALSO
Times Editorials on Immigration:
The Japanese ‘Menace,’ 1920
Accepting Jewish Refugees Is Impractical, 1938
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