Listening, Watching, Reading: Memories of Mass Media in the 1950s & 1960s
My lifelong love of radio began in my childhood. I was enticed and enthralled by the magic of sound, whether voices or music, being transmitted over great distances through unseen airwaves, to be received by an electrical device with knobs, a dial, and a speaker. One Christmas I was given the delightful gift of a do-it-yourself crystal set purchased at Radio Shack, from whose parts I was able to assemble an AM radio, with earphones and a primitive tuner, on which I could pull in signals from local transmitters in the San Francisco Bay Area (where my family was living, after moving to California from the United Kingdom). That crystal set got me started, and I had an array of other radios as the years passed: an old Zenith radio with glowing tubes inside a Bakelite housing, a pocket-size solid-state radio which allowed me to listen anywhere, a General Electric clock radio which offered the welcome oppotunity of awakening to the music of my choice every morning, and a Sony AM/FM table radio in a wooden cabinet.
Although I was born too late for the "golden age" of radio, when it flourished at its peak during the 1930s and 1940s, I did get to hear Top 40 radio, which was delivered to my ears by KFRC AM and KYA AM in the middle period of the 1960s, when that form of radio was at its most glorious. I also heard Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Tony Bennett, Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis, and other crooners on KSFO AM, late-night phone-in shows on KGO AM, and in-depth examination of the current happenings from around the globe on KCBS AM. In the late 1960s (and into the 1970s), on my Sony radio, I listened to folk rock, acid rock, prog rock, heavy rock, and country rock on KSAN FM (known to its hip listeners as "The Jive 95"), the underground station coming out of San Francisco. Apart from listening to rock of all kinds, I listened to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky on KDFC FM and KKHI FM, round-the-clock jazz, from Duke Ellington to Dizzy Gillespie to Miles Davis, on KJAZ FM, and free-spirited discussions of radicalism and revolution on KPFA FM. Nowadays, radio has mostly become a thing of the past, supplanted by a constant abundance of online distractions, and many young people have never even owned a radio. Thus has the world changed for the worse in my lifetime.
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In common with most others of my elder stature, I watched many, many hours of television when I was growing up. We were the first television generation, spellbound children of the picture tube, pint-sized worshippers at the video altar, passively basking in the electronic shimmer of cathode rays. Before I was old enough to be in school, I watched Kukla, Fran and Ollie, Howdy Doody, Captain Kangaroo, and The Mickey Mouse Club. As I got a bit older, I was bent on seeing as many cartoons as I could, getting up early on Saturday mornings (whereas on school days, I was less than willing to get out of bed) to sleepily sit, wearing pajamas and eating spoonfuls of milky breakfast cereal from a bowl, in front of our television and watch the animated exploits of Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, Ruff and Ready, King Leonardo, Beany and Cecil, Hector Heathcoate, Tennessee Tuxedo, Hoppity Hooper, and Underdog. I was also a dedicated fan of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose, who were residents of Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, and starred (with their hapless adversaries, Boris Badenov, Natasha Fatale, and Fearless Leader) in a wry, offbeat cartoon that was shown (on ABC and NBC) at different times on different days.
Alongside those cartoons, I grew up watching the same kinds of shows that everyone else was watching: variety shows, game shows, talk shows, detective shows, westerns, dramas, sitcoms, and newscasts. Most of the shows that I watched were, in hindsight, of generally poor quality, clearly meant to do nothing more than satisfy the lowest standard and soothe the slow-witted masses, but the best of them (I Love Lucy, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Playhouse 90, Perry Mason, Naked City, Peter Gunn, 77 Sunset Strip, One Step Beyond, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Andy Griffith Show, Thriller, The Defenders, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Twilight Zone, Route 66, Combat!, The Outer Limits, The Patty Duke Show, The Fugitive, Star Trek, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In) ranged from above average to honestly good to undeniably excellent, and have stood the test of time. When I was no longer a child, I could endure television for, at most, an hour (or maybe two) at one sitting, and only if what I was viewing was truly worthwhile. I found that the older I got, the more I preferred the exalted company of books and music to the unedifying company of a television screen.
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Westerns reigned on every American television channel in the late 1950s and early 1960s (Cheyenne, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Wagon Train, Maverick, Tombstone Territory, Tales of Wells Fargo, Lawman, Bat Masterson, Laramie, Bonanza, Rawhide, The Virginian, The Big Valley, along with many others), and, joining in with most boys of my age (in spite of my own English background), I was, for a few years, greatly interested in cowboys and horses, and in anything else pertaining to the Wild West. I possessed an extensive collection of toy guns (which, considering that I would grow up to be an uncompromising pacifist with an avowed hatred of all firearms, now seems quite funny), such as a toy pistol with a leather holster, and I took lessons in horseback riding at a local ranch. I even met James Arness, the rugged actor who played Marshal Matt Dillon of Dodge City on Gunsmoke, a western on CBS, when he made a special appearance at the grand opening of a new supermarket. When not imagining myself as a Western gunslinger riding a trusty steed across the lawless frontier in pursuit of desperados, I also played games of "army" with friends from my neighborhood, inspired by films from the 1940s that were frequently shown on television, with all of us fighting hard against the Nazi enemies of World War II, on front lawns and in backyards.
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At that same age when I was watching Gerry Anderson's productions on television, I also became hooked on the scary films that came out of Toho Studios in Japan, depicting giant monsters such as Godzilla, Rodan, Varan, Mothra, and Ghidorah, raising hell and laying waste to Japanese cities in gleeful binges of wholesale destruction, achieved by filming actors encased in rubber suits clumsily knocking down small structures on flimsy sets that were built to scale. I mostly saw them on Saturday afternoons, when they were shown by local television channels in the Bay Area. None of those films stand as outstanding pieces of cinematic art (and none of them were ever intended to do so), and when broadcast on American television they had clunky English dialogue that had been dubbed by actors in Hollywood, but I always found them compelling. Whenever I watched one of those films, my mother, knowing what was likely to happen afterward, would say, “If you keep watching that movie, you're going to have nightmares tonight," but I brushed away her cautions and watched the film anyway, even though I knew that she was right about the nightmares.
Running along the same lines as the films from Toho Studios were the television offerings of Irwin Allen, an enterprising American producer who, in the 1960s, created a string of highly imaginative shows, with each of them dispensing far-fetched stories enhanced by a frequent application of special effects, that provided a weekly dose of science fiction for a mostly young audience. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, and The Time Tunnel were all fairly low-budget productions (although Irwin Allen's final show of the 1960s, Land of the Giants, was a more costly undertaking), being reliably entertaining while also being, on the whole, fundamentally silly, containing more overblown fiction than believable science, and therefore not to be taken seriously, but in those days, any show that revolved around monsters and spaceships appealed to me.
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A lot of newsworthy things happened in the 1960s, both good things and bad things, and, even as a child, I was always eager to keep up with the running flow of the latest news. I had an active mind and I was deeply curious about human affairs, wanting to know what was going on everywhere in the world, near and far. I read The San Francisco Chronicle each day, and I also watched the evening news on television, choosing, in particular, the nightly broadcast of news on CBS, which, Monday through Friday, was hosted by Walter Cronkite (an American journalist who had first established himself by reporting from Europe during World War II, later famously gaining a reputation as "the most trusted man in America") and was regarded as the preeminent newscast in the United States. In addition to receiving the latest information from the daily newspaper, the evening news, and the news summaries that were featured hourly on most radio stations, I perused weekly news magazines such as Time, Newsweek, and Life. (I was able to stay in regular touch with my roots in the United Kingdom by reading the newspapers and magazines that my grandmother in England sent to my family in a weekly bundle.)
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Midway through my childhood, my earlier fixation with cowboys gave way to a new fixation with British (and to a somewhat lesser extent, American) spies. During the Cold War that ensued after World War II, with ongoing enmity between East and West, between the forces of communism and the forces of capitalism, undercover activities by one government against another provided a continual supply of stories for books, films and television in the 1960s. British spies were the most stylish (in keeping with the young generation of up-and-coming British musicians who played rock 'n' roll, such as The Beatles, upon whom I also became fixated), with James Bond, Agent 007, a dashing figure created in 1953 by the British writer, Ian Fleming, leading the way. The films based on Ian Fleming's books (Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, all starring Sean Connery, a Scottish actor, as James Bond) blazed a venturesome trail for many others to follow. I saw all those films, reveling in their outlandish plots, ingenious gadgets, and megalomaniacal villains.
On television, I watched British spies on The Avengers (starring Patrick Macnee as John Steed, a dapper spy known for wearing tailored suits and a bowler hat, carrying an umbrella, and driving a vintage car, who was partnered first with Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale, then Diana Rigg as Emma Peel, and finally, Linda Thorson as Tara King), Danger Man (known as Secret Agent in the US, starring Patrick McGoohan as John Drake, an intense character with a sharp mind and strong principles, who shuns firearms, choosing instead to rely on his wits), The Prisoner (also starring Patrick McGoohan, as Number Six, a former spy determined to escape from the Orwellian life of the Village, a sinister community in which he was trapped), and The Saint (starring Roger Moore as Simon Templar, a debonair, footloose chancer, formerly a jewel thief and still held in suspicion by the authorities, who was actually more a ladies' man and a smooth adventurer than a spy).
American spies were represented on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (starring Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo, an American employed by the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, and David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin, his Russian partner), I Spy (with Robert Culp and Bill Cosby starring as Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott, a pair of American spies who tour the world, posing as a tennis player and his trainer), Honey West (starring Anne Francis as a bold female detective, pitched as an American answer to Cathy Gale and Emma Peel of The Avengers) Mission Impossible (starring Peter Graves as Jim Phelps, the leader of the Impossible Missions Force), The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (a spin-off of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., starring Stephanie Powers as April Dancer and Noel Harrison as Mark Slate), and It Takes a Thief (starring Robert Wagner as Alexander Mundy, an American counterpart of Simon Templar). The world of spies, as thrillingly portrayed in films and on television, was mainly a fantasy, but I was happily engrossed by it, and it was great fun while it lasted.
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Talk shows were plentiful during the 1960s, taking up many broadcast hours on American television, in the morning, the afternoon, the evening, and late at night. They varied widely in their content and their tone, from tiresome chit-chat and funny stories being exchanged among small gatherings of shallow celebrities to serious discussions of timely questions by esteemed thinkers. The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, which appeared Monday through Friday on NBC, 11:30 PM to 1 AM, had, by far, the biggest viewership, and mainly featured leading stars from the world of show business, with most talk shows (The Merv Griffin Show, The Mike Douglas Show, The Joey Bishop Show) using the same informal, easygoing blueprint. Other talk shows, such as The David Susskind Show, Firing Line with William F. Buckley, The Dick Cavett Show, and The David Frost Show, attempted to take a more serious approach, which gave their guests (actors, musicians, writers, journalists, politicians) an opportunity to engage in conversations that were less overtly frivolous. Although I watched nearly all the talk shows at one time or another, even those that were decidedly lowbrow, I was especially drawn to shows with more thought-provoking talk, shows that provided me with at least some degree of sustenance for my budding intellect.
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The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 had brought American life to a brief standstill, completely taking over all media outlets for days. Later in the decade, in the last week of August, 1968, after the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, and Robert F. Kennedy, on June 5, had jointly darkened the collective mood of America, there was wild unrest in the streets of Chicago, during the Democratic National Convention, where Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey (who had come to the forefront of leadership in the party after President Lyndon B. Johnson stunned the nation on March 31 by announcing his decision not to run again) was being anointed as the Democratic standard-bearer. Thousands of young people, filled with righteous fury, had gone to Chicago, to protest against the war in Vietnam and to voice their opposition to what they perceived as the corrupt framework of American elections. The hard-nosed mayor of Chicago, Richard M. Daley (a burly, hot-tempered Democrat, well-known as an unmistakable example of brazen corruption himself), responded to the unrest with a bellicose display of tyranny and brutality, directing the police to use truncheons and tear gas in their vicious assault upon unarmed protesters. The young people tried to stand their ground, but many were beaten and bloodied without restraint.
All the tumult and mayhem at the Democratic National Convention was broadcast live on television for the entire nation, and the entire world, to see, starkly projecting a fraught, unsettling view of America that harshly undermined the ingrained falsehood of a peaceful homeland inhabited by amiable citizens, proudly defined by the upright, God-given values of freedom, democracy, prosperity, and harmony. I watched it all myself, feeling angered, sickened, and disturbed by what I beheld, but not feeling surprised. It seemed that America was, at that difficult moment in its history, a nation on the edge of desperation, a nation coming undone at the seams, a nation increasingly losing its grip on morality and sanity. A nation drowning in profound unease, being steadily consumed by the overwhelming harm of its own unruly rottenness. It turned out that, in November, 1968, after the shambles that had beset the Democrats in Chicago, it was a Republican, Richard M. Nixon, who won the election and became the next President of the United States.
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On July 20, 1969, twelve years after the Soviet Union had surprised the world and started the Space Race between itself and the United States by launching a satellite, Sputnik 1, into orbit around the Earth, a NASA lunar module, carrying two of three American astronauts from the Apollo 11 mission, separated from its command module and made a painstaking descent to the Moon, where it succeeded in achieving a safe landing, the first time that human beings had ever accomplished such a feat. A little more than six and a half hours after the module landed, Neil Armstrong, wearing a cumbersome spacesuit, gingerly climbed out of the spacecraft and became the first man to set foot on the Moon. He and his fellow astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, then took a careful walk around their lunar environs, taking photographs, picking up rocks, and collecting samples of soil, with their unprecedented expedition, lasting over two hours, being visually conveyed to televisions on Earth in a live broadcast that was seen by millions of awestruck people, myself among them. That night, I stepped outside, into the warm darkness of our backyard, and stood for a while, looking up at the sky above me, gazing at the distant Moon. I was astounded at the thought of two men being up there on their own, so far from the comfort and safety of their earthly home.
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In August, 1969, Sharon Tate, a beautiful (and heavily pregnant) actress who had appeared in the film, Valley of the Dolls (and who was married to Roman Polanski, the director of Rosemary's Baby), was savagely murdered along with several of her friends, including Jay Sebring (a famed hairdresser who catered to celebrities in Hollywood) and Abigail Folger (the great-granddaughter of the man who founded Folgers Coffee), at her house on a hillside in Benedict Canyon, Los Angeles. The murders, heinously carried out with a gun and with knives, were committed by members of the "Manson Family" (most of whom were young women), a depraved cult of stoned lowlifes, steeped in perverse delusions of mindless evil, that had been founded by, and was under the wicked control of, Charles Manson, a drifter and a psychopathic misfit with a long record of unlawful acts stretching back to his boyhood. When Manson and his followers were arrested and brought to trial, it was alleged that Manson, having supposedly been inspired by a perverse meaning that he malignly attributed to "Helter Skelter," a loud, noisy song recorded by The Beatles in 1968, had wanted the murders to prompt the onset of what he believed would be a "race war" in the United States.
The extreme, wanton viciousness of the murders, and the foul, unwholesome mentality embodied by Manson and the other murderers, quickly provoked a wave of strait-laced terror among the American public, fueling all the worst apprehensions that most Americans held in regard to communes, hippies, and drugs. When I read about the killings in the press, and saw grim reports on the television news, I was taken aback, utterly aghast at the appalling gruesomeness of the accounts. I was unable to comprehend how anyone could ever bring themselves to take part in such coldbloodedly violent acts, even in America, where the threat of bodily injury lurked around every corner and random instances of unrepentant homicide were not unknown. Fashionable expressions of superficial brotherhood notwithstanding, it became uncomfortably evident that Charles Manson and his devilish gang of ragtag killers manifested, unfortunately and unspeakably, but nevertheless unmistakably, the seamy, venomous undercurrent of the American counterculture.
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In September, 1969, The Beatles, whose music (along with their floppy hairstyle and lively outlook) had been an essential part of my life since 1964, released a new album, Abbey Road, which was destined to be the last album that the four musicians would ever record together. I was enchanted by the music of Abbey Road (aside, that is, from "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," a weak, charmless composition that, even at first hearing, came over to many listeners, such as myself, as being one of Paul McCartney's lesser offerings), but I already suspected that the end of The Beatles was nigh. They were known to be drawing away from one another, no longer seeking to maintain a united front: John Lennon had married Yoko Ono and was occupied with promoting peace, Paul McCartney had married Linda Eastman and was starting a family, George Harrison was openly weary of being a Beatle and had turned his mind to spiritual matters, and Ringo Starr was seeking work as an actor in films. Within a year, they had all testily parted company, each of them wanting to pursue their own interests, and The Beatles were definitively finished, never again working as a foursome.
In early December, 1969, The Rolling Stones, the British rockers who were almost as essential to my life as The Beatles, released their own new album, Let It Bleed, and also gave a free performance in the Bay Area (promoted on the AM airwaves by KFRC and KYA), appearing with Jefferson Airplane, Santana, and others at the Altamont Speedway. I was there with a handful of friends, and while I was glad to see The Rolling Stones perform, having seen them many times on television but never onstage, the rest of what I witnessed going on around me that day was thoroughly nightmarish, an afternoon and evening of music spoiled by the reckless actions of a huge crowd that had fallen prey to a vile combination of too many hard drugs and too much unrelenting violence. After the trouble at the Altamont Speedway, it had to be acknowledged that, however marvelous the 1960s might have been in certain ways, the decade was fully spent and had come to a disappointing end. The 1970s were stepping up for consideration, ready to unfold.