The Perfect Day: August 28, 1964

It’s cool for August on Friday, August 28, 1964, with a high of 79 degrees, and in the low sixties overnight. Earlier in the week, Lyndon Johnson was named the Democrat’s nominee for the November election during the convention held in Atlantic City, as the long shadow of John Kennedy, murdered only ten months earlier, hangs over the week’s proceedings.

We’re living in what could best be called interim housing, a massive brick fortress of an apartment building while my parents saved enough to buy a house – which would happen it just another year’s time.

But right now, it’s time for 24 hours of television.

The morning is the usual mix of cartoons, game shows and Gale Storm and Topper reruns. We make time for Birthday House at 9 a.m. on NBC, hosted by Paul Tripp, a longtime children’s TV host (a job title nobody can claim anymore). One of his IMDB credits is for the movie, "The Christmas That Almost Wasn't," an abysmal affair that Mystery Science Theatre 3000 once featured. Birthday House was on five days a week for an hour, live, leaving its cast to scratch around for material, like time spent each show saying good morning to a caged parakeet and making a boom microphone (Mike) a character (greeted with the song, “Hi Mike, Hi Mike, I like to say, Hi Mike”).

More live TV at 12:30 with Joe Franklin’s Memory Lane. At 2:00, it’s Loretta Young, always worth watching for the show’s opening as Loretta sweeps into the room, a different gown everyday trailing her entrance.

At 4:00 p.m., it’s time for Hall of Fun on Channel 5. Uncle Fred Hall’s most memorable bit was having the viewers mail in drawings of five random lines, which Uncle Fred would turn into whatever the kid requested: a lion, a car, a lollipop. It was endlessly fascinating to watch and hear the squeak of Uncle Fred’s marker on the easel.

On Channel 11 at 6:30, we’re treated to two episodes of a 1953 serial, “Canadian Mounties vs. Atomic Invaders,” billed at the time as “Thrill a minute action in the frozen north.” The female lead was a mostly unknown actress named Susan Morrow, the older sister of Judith Exner, who claimed to be the mistress of both Mob boss Sam Giancana and John Kennedy.

We’re into prime time now. I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster is on Channel 7 at 7 p.m., with John Astin and Marty Ingels. At 7:30 on Channel 2, it’s time for The Great Adventure, an ambitious dramatic anthology series based on events in U.S. history. Tonight, Leif Erickson stars as President Grover Cleveland in an episode about his mysterious public disappearance for six days in 1893. (He had a malignant tumor on the roof of his month, which was removed in secrecy by a team of doctors aboard a yacht anchored off Manhattan). And we recall that Grover Cleveland was a character in Robert Altman’s “Buffalo Bill and Indians,” played by Pat McCormick.

At 8:30, we go to Channel 7 and Burke’s Law, with the usual line-up of Hollywood guest stars whose fame was on the fade: Joan Blondell, Betty Hutton, Buster Keaton and Giselle McKenzie. The TV Guide tells us that the script is by Harlan Ellison, a writing machine and professional maverick who seemed to have written thousands of scripts, novellas, short stories and critical columns. (He wrote the only Star Trek episode that matters, “The City On the Edge of Forever,” as the future fate of the world hinges on Captain Kirk being held back to helplessly watch as Joan Collins is struck by a car and killed while crossing the street; Shatner’s restrained “Let’s get the hell out of here” was powerful and shocking for its use of a word that you just didn't hear on television back then).

At 10, there’s a boxing match between Willie Pastrano, 28, and Bobo Olson, 36, on Channel 7. The much younger Pastrano knocks out Bobo two minutes into the first round. How will ABC fill out the rest of the hour?

The rest of the night is mostly old movies (“Brain From Plant Arous” on Million Dollar Movie, starring Mr. Shirley Temple, John Agar) and Steve Allen’s syndicated variety show on Channel 11 with guests Jim Backus (and wife, Henny), Jayne Mansfield, Connie Stevens and Joe E. Lewis – no need for having a parakeet on camera to kill time. 

 

Marathon Man 

Working my way through a box of old VHS tapes from the 80s and 90s, many of them unlabeled, is a never-ending series of Christmas mornings opening wrapped gifts, each cassette holding another surprise. So far, they’ve mostly indicated what a sucker I was for those Boomer TV marathons the cable channels used to run. I’ve fast-forwarded my way already through hours and hours of The Outer Limits, The Wild, Wild West, The Adventures of Superman, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and the Three Stooges – all of which looks an awful lot like my current DVR viewing habits. 

But they’re also a reminder that there was time when cable seemed to care a lot more about programming than it does today with its endless recycling of ancient TV Westerns and half-day blocks of infomercials. TBS aired its Wild, Wild West and U.N.C.L.E. marathons with new commentary from Robert Conrad and Robert Vaughan. Even the not-so-super superstation WWOR had Jack Larsen host its Superman marathon. The Stooges episodes I taped more than 30 years ago off AMC are still shown on the channel, but often edited down to six minutes from their original twenty, plus more commercials to pad things out to a crisp 15 minutes. 

Because blank VHS tapes were somewhat costly, we did a lot of re-recording over programs we’d already watched. Something I’m hoping to uncover is what’s known in painting as pentimento – I had to look it up – the “presence or emergence of earlier images, forms or strokes that have been painted over.” Maybe a Superman episode will end abruptly and some exotic, rarely seen movie or a New York Giants football game will appear. So far, I’ve only uncovered a hidden last hour of the forgettable Schwarzenegger film “The Running Man” and a Scooby Doo cartoon. 

Recognizing the more ephemeral aspects of taped television, I find myself now fast-forwarding through the shows and watching the commercials. Hair Club for Men. Tote bags that come with a subscription to Time magazine. The Pathmark guy. All of which leads me to a videotape existential crisis. Am I the last person to have these fleeting moments of airtime in my possession and now have the responsibility for the preservation and stewardship of commercials for Carvel’s Fudgie the Whale and Slim Whitman’s “All My Best” album? I almost don’t want to check YouTube to see if they exist in perpetuity there. 

OK, I checked. They’re both on YouTube. I’m off the hook.

 

The Marie Kondo blues 

I began haunting newsstands when I was ten or eleven, spending my allowance on comic books, monster magazines or MAD before moving on in my teens to sports and music magazines, and National Lampoon. Oh, the fun of spending an afternoon or evening with a new mag. When I got comfortable with eBay, I began searching out more. My first dip into online bidding was a bundle of Hit Parader magazines from the 60s. It was easy and I was hooked; as my mania went unchecked, so did the clutter. 

Now, in anticipation of a downsizing that seems inevitable, I’ve gone on a Marie Kondo kick, looking to rid myself of the things that no longer bring joy – stuff in the attic that had become, literally and otherwise, a weight hanging over my head. 

For years I had a subscription to Goldmine, a thick biweekly publication for record collectors. What I thought were about twenty or so copies in the attic turned out to be closer to 75. I spent the better part of an afternoon going through them and discovered that what was entertaining and relevant 30 years ago today felt marginally interesting, but mostly obsolete and musty. 

Witness the countless letters to the editor revealing the paranoia and suspicion record collectors back then felt about those new-fangled CDs. Questions about their shelf-life (“Won’t the metal start to deteriorate with time?”) and production sources (“Why does my original Little Richard’s Greatest Hits album have noticeable differences when compared with the CD?”). These were questions that went on for years in Goldmine. That and a long running debate regarding the urban legend that if you drew a circle around the edge of a CD with a green marker it would sound better. 

Goldmines aside, another box in the attic held something like 50 issues of The Coffin Corner, a newsletter of original research dedicated to the history of pro football. Seemed like a good buy at the time, but too many of the articles were about subjects I could care less about (“The 1927 Pottstown Maroons: A Closer Look.”) Today you can find similar material – better written and researched – online. 

No doubt, The Coffin Corners would have been of some interest to somebody, but I was resigned to let them go. The entire load, Goldmines included, ended up in recycling. But as I dumped them into the bin, I kept hoping someone would walk over and offer to take all this stuff off my hands and put it in the trunk of his car. 

Next up: VHS tapes, and lots of ‘em.