Invasion of the Mind Snatchers: Television's Conquest of America in the Fifties

I’m sitting there in a Davy Crockett chair consuming with a Davy Crockett spoon out of a Davy Crockett bowl . . . without warning it hits me. . . . ” Fourth panel: Charlie seems bleakly at Linus, the shovel status subsequent to him. “Where will all of it finish? ” ALL informed, greater than ten-million Davy Crockett coonskin caps have been offered within the usa, and to 1 specific enterprise, the easiest days of which had appeared ceaselessly in the back of it, the revenues have been the main unforeseen of windfalls. “The wholesale expense of raccoon skins,” published Landon Y. Jones, “jumped from 25 cents a pound to $8 a pound. ” Jones places the complete variety of Davy Crockett items at an important 3,000. as well as these approximately which Charlie Brown complained (some of which didn't quite exist), they integrated T- shirts, sweaters, sweatshirts, gymnasium shorts, boots, slippers, pajamas, undies, belts, bandannas, jackets, dolls, knapsacks, books, sleds, blankets, snowsuits, hairbrushes, toothbrushes, phonographs, keepsake images and posters and postcards, photo frames—and after all lunch bins. INVISIBLE DOUGHNUTS AND COONSKIN CAPS ninety five yet none of those items might were profitable had it now not been for Davy Crockett, and Crockett do not have been profitable had it no longer been for Fess Parker, and Parker shouldn't have been profitable had he now not been noticeable, and attractive, to nearly all of those that watched him. that is to assert that tv couldn't have bought its items had it no longer first offered its personalities. And it was once the latter, the celebrities of the indicates, the lads and ladies delivering the gold for television’s Golden Age, who, greater than the other issue, verified tv because the ruling cultural medium of the yankee fifties. bankruptcy five “Really gigantic exhibits” I T used to be no longer A GOLDEN AGE, though—not relatively. With few exceptions, what made tv glitter within the early days was once its newness greater than the distinction of its courses. If humans of my approximate age bear in mind these courses with a different fondness, it really is partly simply because they coincide with the very starting of our thoughts, thoughts that have been produced partially by way of the main formative software in our lives on the so much formative time in our lives. however the caliber of a few of the courses was once indisputable. the most effective have been episodes of dramatic anthology sequence like Studio One and Playhouse ninety and some of the courses indexed past that have been named after sponsors. different anthologies integrated TV’s first such sequence, hearth Theatre, and choices corresponding to Armchair Theatre, NBC tv Playhouse, 4 celebrity Playhouse, Actors Studio, and Robert Montgomery provides, during which the actor could introduce every one week’s application, as Alistair Cooke and Russell Baker may later introduce Masterpiece Theatre. The names of the exhibits stayed an analogous from week to week, yet purely the names. The tales replaced, the casts replaced, the settings replaced, the “ R E A L LY B I G S H O W S ” ninety seven writers and administrators changed—each episode of a dramatic anthology sequence used to be like going to another theater to work out a special play.