Just to show that the human race is capable of better things than the state of our colleges and our politics might indicate, here’s Jimmy Durante on Steve Allen’s TV show, vintage 1960. Don’t ask me to sum up what the two of them are doing, besides treating us to a wholesome breath of sanity.
For those of you who are too young to have caught Durante’s act (to say nothing of Steve Allen’s: he was pretty sharp, too)–well, here it is, and better late than never.
Inka-Dinka-Doo, by the way, was one of Jimmy’s signature songs, and a great hit in its time. Nuff said.
Wow, this takes me back a good distance down Memory Lane!
The Adventures of Robin Hood ran from 1955-1959, and I tried never to miss an episode. It starred Richard Greene, not well-remembered now, but quite a big star in his day. How big? In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Greene got top billing over Basil Rathbone. That’s big!
How many times have I whistled this theme song since the show went off the air? How many times did my friends and I play Robin Hood?
Of course, kids have been playing Robin Hood for centuries. Before there was TV, my Aunt Joan and her twin sister, Florence, decided to play Robin Hood on a rainy day. In their game, Robin had to rescue Maid Marian, who was locked up in the Sheriff of Nottingham’s jail. They used a bed frame for that. Unfortunately, after Maid Marian poked her head through the metal struts to call for help, she couldn’t pull it back out again. Grandpa had to bring his tools and take the bed apart. I wish I could’ve seen the look on his face when he discovered what his two youngest daughters had gotten up to.
Enjoy the clips, and feel free to play a little Robin Hood yourselves when no one’s looking. Just be careful with the bed.
Hey, remember these–heroes? Like the Lone Ranger. Show me the kid from the 1950s who never shouted “Hi-yo, Silver!” Every week, the Lone Ranger and Tonto smacked down the bad guys. And they never got their clothes dirty, doing it.
When America junked the whole idea of heroes like the Lone Ranger and Tonto, America did herself a bad turn. Yeah, sure, they were fictional. Of course they were! It’s a thing called “ideals.” We used to have ideals.
Couldn’t resist this! Tales of the Vikings was one of my super-favorite shows when I was ten years old, especially in the summertime, when there was still enough light outside to let you and your friends play “Vikings” while inspired by this rousing theme song. True, we didn’t have any ships, not even an unused rowboat in the neighborhood. But a garbage can led make a fine shield, and there were always sticks for swords.
I suppose it wasn’t the best idea ever, to make heroes out of men whose occupation was robbing and looting other people’s villages. They have another name for that now, and only the Democrat Party praises those who do it.
And no, none of us ever put his eye out with a stick.
This blast from the past comes from I don’t know what year, exactly–late 1950s, early 60s. Nor do I know if the puppet play ever actually came off. Anyway, here’s Clive Clive introducing the star of Sandy Becker’s Christmas carol, the inimitable Geba Geba.
Sandy not only performed these puppets; he created and hand-crafted them himself. This was kids’ TV way back when, and it was wonderful. Becker had a wild imagination, and you never knew what he was going to come up with next.
Remember this TV classic? Sky King, starring Kirby Grant, was one of the earliest TV Western hits, running from 1951-1954. They brought it back in syndication in 1959, which was when I saw it.
Sky King was billed as “America’s favorite flying cowboy.” Was there a lot of competition for that title? Anyhow, it was great fun, watching him chase down the bad guys in his airplane.
Ignore the earnest young woman trying to pass herself off as Peter Pan. Hey, a job is a job, right?
Growing up in the New York media market in the 1950s and 60s, you just can’t imagine it without Sandy Becker on TV. Which he was, from 1955 through 1968, mostly on WNEW.
This guy was a volcano of talent: nobody like him, anymore, to entertain little kids and young teens. Original puppets? Sandy not only performed them; he made them. Far-out characters? Sandy played them: Norton Nork, Hambone, the Big Professor, and the inscrutable Dr. Gesundheit. He also did cartoons.
Much of his show was live, and, alas, little of it was recorded. Much of it was ad-libbed. And you also heard a lot of Bert Kaempfert music: the theme for his daytime show, heard in this video, was That Happy Feeling. When he was on at night, it was Afrikaan Beat.
Kids’ TV in this era was overrun with talent. Along with Sandy, we had the immortal Soupy Sales and the incredible Chuck McCann, who gained national recognition by winning an Oscar nomination for his supporting role in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter… and his “Hi, guy! One shot and I’m good for the whole day!” deodorant commercials. Remember those? The protagonist was an ordinary gtuy who had to share a medicine cabinet with McCann’s weird character. But I digress.
Well, I can’t hear any of Bert Kaempfert’s music without thinking of Sandy Becker–gone, but lovingly remembered by probably millions of people who were kids then.
Let me see if I can get you just a tiny Hambone clip or something…
Remember the old Winky Dink TV show, in the 1950s? Remember how we bugged our parents to send away for the Winky Dink Magic Kit, so we could put the Magic Screen over the TV screen and, with our special Magic Crayons, trace the arcane shapes and scrawls presented to us, until they came together to form a secret message?
Regrettably, a lot of us couldn’t wait for the Magic Kit, so we took ordinary non-magic crayons and scrawled all over the TV screen itself, producing a mass of gibberish that somehow never pleased our folks. It worked just fine, as long as you put up the Magic Screen first. But without the Magic Screen… well, live and learn.