50 Favs of the '60S '70S '80S

© 2012, 2013, 2014 Fred John Del Bianco, Jr. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/30/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4685-6111-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-6110-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012904456

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Contents

Introduction

1960s

FROM MUNSTERS TO MUSTANGS

Color Television

Bonanza

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Bonnie and Clyde

The Graduate

Joe Namath

New York Mets

Sandy Koufax

1968: The Year of the Pitcher

The Sound of Music

West Side Story

John F. Kennedy

NASA

Planet of the Apes

2001: A Space Odyssey

Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In

Liz and Dick

MPAA Ratings System

Peanuts

The Christmas TV Specials

The Kingston Trio

Bob Dylan

Peter, Paul and Mary

The Byrds

The Rolling Stones

The Doors

The Smothers Brothers

Lawrence of Arabia

James Bond/007

McDonald’s

Diet Soda

Pull-Tab Cans/Twist-Off Bottles

Ford Mustang

Unsafe at Any Speed

The Beach Boys

The Monkees

Woodstock

Jimi Hendrix

The Valley of the Dolls

The Feminine Mystique

Motown

Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass

Natural Disasters of the ’60s

Godzilla/Giant Monsters from Japan

The Addams Family/The Munsters

Where the Wild Things Are

Jim Brown

Vince Lombardi

Super Bowl

The Beatles

1970s

From Saturday Night Live to Saturday Night Fever

Burt Reynolds

Star Wars

Energy Crisis

Inflation

Richard M. Nixon

All in the Family

Bicentennial of the United States

Dallas Cowboys

Pittsburgh Steelers

President Jimmy Carter

Papillon

The French Connection

Dirty Harry

Son of Sam

The Godfather

Saturday Night Live

1950s and ’60s Nostalgia

The Brothers Gibb

The Jackson 5

Battle of the Sexes

Chicago

Led Zeppelin

1970: Four War Movies

1972 Olympics

Ecology

Microwave Ovens

Three Mile Island/The China Syndrome

Disaster Movies

Jaws

Evel Knievel

Kareem Abdul-Jabaar

Dr. J.

Hank Aaron

The Carpenters

Jim Croce

Elton John

Miami Dolphins

Japanese Imports

Secretariat

The Eagles

Paper Moon

The Sting

Oakland A’s

Cincinnati Reds

New York Knicks

Ali-Frazier

Rocky

Philadelphia 76ers: 73 in ’73

The Exorcist

I’m OK—You’re OK

1980s

From Pac-Man To Brat Pack

Journey

Air Supply

John McEnroe

Martina Navratilova

Huey Lewis and the News

San Francisco 49ers

1989 San Francisco Earthquake

Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

Desktop Computer

Pac-Man

Rubik’s Cube

The A-Team

Raiders of the Lost Ark

E.T.

Lionel Richie

Music Television (MTV)

Benefit Venues

Hall and Oates

Phil Collins

The Police

John Lennon Killed

President Ronald Reagan

Iran-Contra Affair

Challenger Disaster

Mount St. Helens

Hurricane Allen

1988 Drought

The Day After

Chrysler Turns it Around

A Christmas Story

Michael Jackson

Weird Al Yankovic

Miami Vice

Risky Business

Automated Teller Machines

Fatal Attraction

Wall Street

Wayne Gretzky

Mike Tyson

New Coke

The Cosby Show

Cheers

Whitney Houston

Madonna

Compact Disc

Dallas

Brat Pack

United States Football League

George Michael

Ma Bell Breaks Up

Selected Bibliography

Online Sources

All references to trademarks, service marks, company names, and products herein are for informational purposes only, and are not intended to imply any endorsement by, or affiliation with, the owners of these trademarks, service marks, company names, and products.

INTRODUCTION

Having grown up in three of perhaps the most diverse and exciting decades of all time, and being nostalgic to begin with, I thought it appropriate to present a list of fifty of the essential subjects of each of those decades … the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. These are the favorite topics of interest, though certainly not necessarily favorite occurrences (Challenger disaster).

The list contains many of the well-known people, places, and events of those decades, bad or good. Of course, with the selection limited to fifty (150 total), there were many subjects that were left off the compilation: for example, the movies Cool Hand Luke, Easy Rider, and Love Story; the toppling of the Berlin Wall; Culture Club and KC and the Sunshine Band; the Pan Am Flight disaster; Johnny Carson; Martin Luther King Jr.; Stevie Wonder; the death of Elvis Presley; and so on. (Although the Vietnam War does not have its own write-up, as such, I refer to it numerous times.) These, and many others, are worthy of inclusion, but they also had a lot of competition.

Most of the book focuses on the entertainment industry, whether it is sports, movies, television, or music. Because I thought it was important to include also some of the not-so-pleasant events of those thirty years, however, I had to decide which of these I would leave off this book. Perhaps, I could assemble them for a second collection of the decades’ popular topics.

For now, I present what I believe to be a fundamental, amusing, and very informative compendium of mostly well-remembered subjects of those decades. Many of these I, admittedly, have a personal connection with and fondly remember. This collection should kindle other reminiscences while enlightening those not so familiar.

Indeed, a helluva thirty-year period unlike any other!

1960s

FROM MUNSTERS

TO MUSTANGS

Color Television

Although it may seem to many that it has been with us for a hundred years, the age of television did not begin really until the late 1940s. As with other early electronics, the first TV sets were rather crude and bulky (to house the array of wiring, tubes, and other components) and they had very small screens, no more than 16 inches diagonally. It was quite a novelty, nonetheless, and created a sensation for an American public coming off World War II.

At first, most households did not include the rather expensive device, and citizens would flock to the homes of neighbors and family members, or to retail establishments to watch their favorite programs. Each week they looked forward to being entertained by Milton Berle, Arthur Godfrey, Lucille Ball, and William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy. And the fact that the small-scale images shown before them were monochrome, or black and white, seemed to matter little.

As the novelty of television was enamoring the public—while many in Hollywood, perhaps in denial, dismissed it as merely a fad—the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), for one, knew television was here to stay. It looked to the future and began to make inroads with the development of color television during the 1950s.

Along with the introduction of color sets (Westinghouse made the first ones available to the public, with a price of about $1,295) in the middle fifties came the first programs transmitted in color; however, while most households had a TV set by then, very few had the more-expensive color sets, which became the new innovation. As more programs were filmed and broadcast chromatically, including NBC’s Bonanza (sponsored by RCA) and Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, so, naturally, was the increase in demand and manufacture of those sets.

The inevitable transition to the life-like hues truly accelerated during the mid-1960s. In the midst of the 1965-1966 television season, NBC became The Full Color Network. At the beginning of the 1966-67 season, all the networks’ new shows were now in color and any renewed ones that were in black-and-white the prior season were converted. ABC, CBS, and NBC made sure viewers were well aware that (if they had a color TV) what they were about to watch would be In Color, like the advertising of a new and improved household product. They figured it was time, and there was no turning back. By then, a large majority of theatrical motion pictures were in Technicolor or Deluxe, anyway, and television wanted to retain its competitiveness, which had been countered also by the advent of the widescreen motion picture presentations since 1953.

American companies RCA, Magnavox, Zenith, Sylvania, and other makes would predominately supply the demand for such sets, whether they were your furniture-style console models or your portable ones.

By the 1970s, color televisions were just about as common in American homes as refrigerators.

Bonanza

This legendary television series—about a moneyed patriarch named Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene) and his three sons who reside on their sprawling Ponderosa homestead in the Virginia City area of Nevada during the latter-nineteenth century—was one of the many that arrived from the flurry of westerns that saturated network programming in the late 1950s.

Premiering on NBC in September of 1959, Bonanza, however, was the only one of its kind in color. It was one of the very few TV programs, in fact, filmed and broadcast in color at all! (Some earlier programs recorded chromatically were transmitted in black-and-white.) NBC co-operated with (or was pressured by?) its parent company, the Radio Corporation of America, to promote their new color television sets. And since NBC was the first to broadcast a coast-to-coast program in color (in 1954, dubbed a colorcast), it was only natural that they make the move to an actual color television series.

This western was also different in that it focused much more on personal relationships and issues, rather than on the usual law-and-order, gunfighting premise.

The music to the opening and closing credits, of course, composed by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, has gone down as one of the most recognized themes in entertainment history.

Despite its standout theme and the uniqueness of a TV western in color, viewers were slow to catch on and Bonanza struggled against the competition in its Saturday, 7:30-8:30 p.m. timeslot, to the point of facing cancellation. NBC’s decision to renew it paid off, as it jumped to a respectable #17 in the Nielsen ratings during the 1960-61 season.

The network wanted to further its audience by re-scheduling it for Sunday, 9 p.m. This move proved to be a bonanza in itself, shooting the show to #2, the first of ten consecutive seasons in the top ten. For the 1964-65 season, after flirting with the number one position for a few years, Bonanza earned its rightful place at the zenith, as the phenomenally successful Beverly Hillbillies dropped down several notches after its two-year domination at the top.

The top-ranked program for three consecutive seasons in the middle portion of the 1960s, Bonanza outlasted mostly all the westerns that had left it in the dust at the end of its first season in 1960. The show’s prominence invariably spawned endorsement opportunities and various related merchandising—comic books, lunch boxes, and even restaurants!

Additionally, the cast recorded a Christmas album and head of the family himself, Lorne Greene, actually had a number one single on the Hot 100 in December of 1964, while Beatlemania was still in effect. They called it Ringo—no, Greene did not sing a song about the Beatle drummer! It was, rather, mostly a poem narrative about a sheriff who saves the life of a gunman named Johnny Ringo (it just so happens!)

After the show’s first year at #1, Pernell Roberts, who played son Adam, left Bonanza, reportedly to return to theatre acting, though he had also become quite displeased with the show in general and was anxious to depart once his contract was up in 1965. His character, thus, was written out of the show, as Bonanza went on to enjoy two more seasons as the #1-rated show on the small screen. During its final season at the top in 1966-67, when just about all the other TV shows were enjoying their first season in color, Bonanza was already in its eighth! At the start of the 1967-68 season, a new character named Candy, acted by David Canary, was added to the cast regulars as a wanderer whom the Cartwright family adopts.

After the 1969-70 season, the show’s ratings began to decline considerably. The sudden passing of big Dan Blocker, who had starred as stalwart Cartwright son Hoss throughout, and a move to Tuesday night (both in 1972) hastened its demise. Bonanza lasted just a half-season more and its original run ended in January 1973.

But its overall thirteen and one-half seasons put it at one of the longest-running and most-successful programs in television history.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

The tale of these real-life, turn-of-the-century train and bank robbers was given a contemporary and fun treatment in 1969, with accompaniment of a nifty soundtrack provided by Burt Bacharach—including the song Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head—giving it a late-1960s, turn-of-the-decade kind of feel.

In-between heists, Butch (starring veteran actor Paul Newman), and his gunslinger comrade, Sundance (portrayed by promising young actor Robert Redford), spend much of the film fleeing from posses looking to bring to justice (or outright kill) the Bandidos Yanquis, who minimize their larcenous misdeeds while making a mockery of their pursuers.

Nonetheless, after they flee the United States and the wrath of trackers Lord Baltimore and Joe Lefors, their luck runs out against an entire Bolivian militia that guns them down, firing squad-style.

Released in October 1969, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was a major success, eventually grossing upwards of $100 million, winning four Academy Awards (including two for Bacharach/Hal David musical contributions), and becoming one of the most popular movies in the history of cinema. The 45 rpm version of Raindrops went on to become the first chart-topping single of the 1970s.

Bonnie and Clyde

Depression-era criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow drew the nation’s attention for their nefarious exploits. The duo and its cohorts were responsible for about a dozen bank robberies and the murder of nine police officers. The stickup artists’ ability to elude the law for three years made them celebrities—and in the eyes of some, heroes.

However, their careers as thieves and their very lives came to a brutal and bloody conclusion in 1934 when a posse of six officers gunned them down.

Over thirty years later, Warner Brothers-Seven Arts released a depiction of Bonnie and Clyde’s association called, simply, Bonnie and Clyde. The 1967 movie, directed by Arthur Penn, was produced in what became known as the New Hollywood style of stark realism. It also showed the romance and sexual tension taking place between the two.

Meanwhile, as Bonnie (played by Faye Dunaway in her first lead-acting role) and Clyde (Warren Beatty) engaged in running battles with the police (or any citizen trying to be a hero), the gunfire they exchanged and the killing and maiming that resulted were particularly jarring. The film’s climax, in which the two robbers are cut to pieces by a hail of bullets, was gruesome and disturbing, taking film violence to new heights.

In one of his earliest film roles, Gene Hackman was one of nine Oscar nominees, with the motion picture winning two for Best Supporting Actress (Estelle Parsons) and Best Cinematography.

The Graduate

This adaptation of a 1963 Charles Webb novel by director Mike Nichols and screenwriters Buck Henry and Calder Willingham resulted in a culturally significant movie.

The Graduate made the story of a lost, disillusioned college graduate and his fling with the wife of his father’s business partner into one of the best pictures of the 1960s. It did this by supplementing satire with engaging cinematography by Robert Surtees (using great on-location shots, including some impressive aerial views) and effectively using Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel music.

Up-and-coming actor Dustin Hoffman does a fine job as Benjamin Braddock, who nervously bumbles his way into an affair with Mrs. Robinson (no first names given to either the Braddock or the Robinson couples), performed by Anne Bancroft. This, despite the fact that Hoffman was a thirty-year-old playing a twenty-one-year-old college graduate; furthermore, Bancroft was not twice his age (as she reminds Ben). Quite the contrary… in reality, she was only six years older!

Likewise, William Daniels, who plays Mr. Braddock, was only ten years older than Hoffman, implausibly playing his father; nevertheless, it all seemed to work just fine, with Hoffman’s boyish look and naive demeanor lending realism to offset the actual age differences.

What also helped make the screenplay compelling was the great soundtrack, with instrumentals provided by the versatile Dave Grusin, and the rest comprising the music of Simon and Garfunkel. Included were Scarborough Fair/Canticle and the 1966 number one The Sound of Silence,