50th anniversary of CBS TV in 1978

I used to watch on WNBF-TV, Channel 12, Binghamton, NY

cbs 1978 starsOn Facebook, Quora, and undoubtedly other sites, there’s What’s a test to see if you are old? The example involved this photo from the 50th anniversary of CBS TV in 1978. I remember it well. Because Binghamton, NY, only had one VHF station back when that actually mattered, I tended to watch WNBF Channel 12. The reception was generally better on channels 2 to 13 than on the UHF stations 14 to 83.

The Old Wolf shared a list of the participants. But someone complained that “the list should show the CBS SHOWS for which they were attending the CBS 50th anniversary show.” For instance, NOT Sandy Duncan in ABC’s Roots or Cicely Tyson in the 2011 movie The Help.

Old Wolf replied: “Like I said, the shows that I mentioned are the ones that were the most familiar to me and not necessarily the ones that they were best known for. Want a different list? Create one on your own blog.”

A challenge

So, here’s the list with the performer, the shows, whether I likely recognized them in 1978, and whether I recognize them now. (I had to biggify the pic, of course.)

1 Lassie- Lassie, Y,Y
2 Jean Stapleton -All in the Family, Y, Y
3 Walter Cronkite – CBS Evening News, Y, Y
4 Alfred Hitchcock – Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Y, Y
5 Mary Tyler Moore – The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Y, Y
6 Ellen Corby – The Waltons Y, N
7 Gene Rayburn – Match Game, Y, Y
8 Vivian Vance – I Love Lucy, Y, Y
9 Milburn Stone- Gunsmoke, Y, N – I thought he looked like Barry Goldwater
10 Ann Sothern – The Ann Sothern Show, Y, N
11 Barbara Bain – Mission: Impossible, Y, Y
12 Nancy Walker – Rhoda, Y, Y
13 George Burns – The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, Y, Y
14 Cicely Tyson – East Side, West Side, Y, Y
15 Arthur Godfrey – Arthur Godfrey and His Friends, Y, Y

Born Richard Skelton

16 Red Skelton – The Red Skelton Hour, Y, Y
17 Gale Storm – My Little Margie, The Gale Storm Show (Oh! Susanna), Y, N
18 Danny Kaye – The Danny Kaye Show, Y, Y
19 Sandy Duncan – Funny Face/The Sandy Duncan Show, Y, N
20 Telly Savalas – Kojak, Y, Y
21 Dale Evans – The Roy Rogers Show, Y, Y; incidentally, this was an NBC primetime show (1951–1957), but rerun on CBS Saturday mornings from 1961 to 1964
22 Roy Rogers – The Roy Rogers Show, Y, Y
23 Ken Murray – The Ken Murray Show (1950-53), N, N
24 June Lockhart – Lassie, Lost in Space, Petticoat Junction, Y, Y
25 Arthur Murray – The Arthur Murray Party, Y, N
26 Kathryn Murray – The Arthur Murray Party, N, N
27 Eric Scott – The Waltons, N, N
28 Cami Cotler – The Waltons, N, N; I could identify them in 1978 as “those kids from the Waltons,” but not by name
29 Bonnie Franklin – One Day at a Time, Y, Y
30 William Conrad- Cannon, Y, Y
31 Eva Gabor – Green Acres, Y, Y
32 Allen Funt – Candid Camera, Y, Y
33 Tim Conway – The Tim Conway Comedy Hour, The Carol Burnett Show, Y, Y
34 Danny Thomas – The Danny Thomas Show, Y, Y
35 Bob Keeshan – Captain Kangaroo, Y, Y; his copy of the picture was up for auction in 2013
36 Dennis Weaver – Gunsmoke, Y, Y
37 Ray Walston – My Favorite Martian, Y, Y
38 Sally Struthers – All in the Family, Y, Y
39 Garry Moore – I’ve Got A Secret, The Garry Moore Show, Y, Y
40 Linda Lavin – Alice, Y, Y
41 Douglas Edwards – Douglas Edwards with the News, N, N

Guinness World Record for “Longest TV career by an entertainer (female)

42 Betty White – The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Y, Y
43 Bob Schieffer- CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, Y, Y
44 Ned Beatty – Szysznyk (a 15-episode show from 1977 I had never heard of), Y, Y
45 Charles Kuralt- CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, Y, Y
46 Arlene Francis- What’s My Line, Y, Y
47 Jamie Farr – MAS*H, Y, Y
48 Adrienne Barbeau – Maude, Y, Y
49 Vicki Lawrence – The Carol Burnett Show, Y, Y
50 Mary McDonough – The Waltons, N, N
51 Don Knotts – The Andy Griffith Show, Y, Y
52 Lucille Ball – I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, Y, Y
53 Ed Asner – The Mary Tyler Moore Show; Lou Grant, Y, Y
54 Jackie Cooper – Hennessey, Y, Y
55 Esther Rolle – Maude;, Good Times, Y, Y
56 Joan Hackett – The Defenders, N, N
57 Eric Sevareid – CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, Y, Y
58 Mike Wallace – 60 Minutes, Y, Y
59 Sherman Hemsley – The Jeffersons, Y, Y
60 Jack Whitaker – The NFL on CBS, Y, Y
61 Isabel Sanford – The Jeffersons, Y, Y
62 Judy Norton Taylor – The Waltons, N, N

Models for Scooby-Doo?

63 Bob Denver – The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis; Gilligan’s Island, Y, Y
64 Caroll O’Connor – All in the Family, Y, Y
65 Dwayne Hickman- The Bob Cummings Show, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Y, Y
66 Richard C. Hottelet – See It Now, Y, N
67 Will Geer – The Waltons, Y, Y
68 Lesley Stahl – CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, Y, Y
69 Art Carney – The Honeymooners, Y, Y
70 Tony Randall – The Tony Randall Show (which started on ABC but moved to CBS), Y, Y
71 Bob Newhart – The Bob Newhart Show, Y, Y
72 Dick Smothers – The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Y, Y
73 Hughes Rudd – The CBS Morning News, Y, N
74 Ted Knight – The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Y, Y
75 Georgia Engel The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Y, Y
76 Jon Walmsley – The Waltons, N, N (I thought it was Ron Howard from The And Griffith Show!)
77 Charles Collingwood CBS Reports, Y, N
78 Audrey Meadows – The Honeymooners, Y, Y
79 Valerie Harper – The Mary Tyler Moore Show; Rhoda, Y, Y
80 Julie Kavner – Rhoda, Y, Y
81 David Harper – The Waltons, N, N
82 Bill Macy – Maude, Y, Y
83 Ken Berry – Mayberry RFD, Y, Y
84 Art Linkletter – Art Linkletter’s House Party, Y, Y
85 Glen Campbell – The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, Y, Y
86 Buddy Ebsen – The Beverly Hillbillies; Barnaby Jones, Y, Y
87 Michael Learned – The Waltons, Y, N
88 John Forsythe – Bachelor Father (on CBS, NBC, then ABC), Y, Y
89 Steve Allen – The Steve Allen Show (1950-55), I’ve Got A Secret, Y, Y
90 Carol Burnett – The Carol Burnett Show, Y, Y

Sha-ZAM!

91 Jim Nabors – The Andy Griffith Show; Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., Y, Y
92 Beatrice Arthur – Maude, Y, Y
93 Loretta Swit – MAS*H, Y, Y
94 Ed Bradley – 60 Minutes, Y, Y
95 Andy Griffith – The Andy Griffith Show, Y, Y
96 Lee Merriwether- Barnaby Jones, Y, Y
97 Demond Wilson – Baby, I’m Back (a 1978 show I had never heard of), Y, Y
98 Lynda Carter – Wonder Women (started on ABC, then CBS), Y, Y
99 James Arness – Gunsmoke, Y, Y
100 Dick Van Dyke- The Dick Van Dyke Show, Y, Y
101 Jack Lord – Hawaii Five-O, Y, Y
102 Ralph Waite – The Waltons, Y, Y
103 Bernard Kalb – CBS Reports, Y, N
104 Martin Landau – Mission: Impossible, Y, Y
105 Rob Reiner – All In The Family, Y, Y
106 Lynnie Greene – On Our Own (a 1977-78 sitcom I don’t remember), N, N
107 John Amos – Good Times, Y, Y
108 Bob Barker – The Price Is Right, Y, Y
109 Bert Convy – Tattletales, Y, Y
110 Dan Rather – 60 Minutes, Y, Y
111 Richard Crenna – The Real McCoys, Y, Y
112 Mike Connors – Mannix, Y, Y
113 David Groh – Rhoda, Y, Y

key CBS list

Interesting list of folks NOT here: Jackie Gleason, Alan Alda (MASH), Ron Howard (The Andy Griffith Show), Eddie Albert (Green Acres), and especially Harry Morgan (Pete and Gladys, MASH).

The value of the full-body hug

24th wedding anniversary

I am a proponent of the full-body hug.

Let me note that back at my previous church, which I left in 2000, I was known by a few as the Trinity Hugger. Which someone always liked to say was better than being the Trinity Mugger.

At my church, and also among my in-laws, there are people I like to hug and who like to be embraced. However, COVID – it’s always COVID – put the kibosh on that for a good while.

My wife was not a natural hugger, in my experience. Sometimes, she’d give me a side hug, which was better than nothing. Often, though, she d go to bed, and I wouldn’t even know until I saw the bedroom door closed – to keep out the cats, I should add.

At some point, she suggested, and I eagerly agreed, that we should hug twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. Not one of those obligatory ones either, when you do it while holding something, but a full-body hug, with hands now free of everything.

This has made me very happy.

Taking care

I don’t know precisely when FBH, as we call it, started. I’m fairly sure it was after my wife’s leg trauma last fall.    It wasn’t intentionally a quid pro quo, but I’ve noted that she’s better at taking care of my emotional needs after I unexpectedly had to take care of her physical needs.

As a result, I think we’re in a better place. We’re always punning each other, but historically, hers had often been groan-worthy to my ears. For whatever reason, her banter is sharper. This is situational humor, so I can’t recreate any specific examples, but it’s true.

This is our 24th wedding anniversary. There’s less than a 50/50 chance she’ll read this since she seldom reads my blog. Moreover, I’ve told her that I ALWAYS write about her on her birthday and about us on our anniversary. It used to bug me a little, but now I’m at, “Hey, it’s her choice.”

Happy anniversary, dear. We should get a newer picture.

55 years after the MLK assassination

“We must revolt against this peace.”

Martin Luther KingMany have noted that August 28, 2023, will be the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington. Incidentally, that date is also the 15th anniversary of the nomination of Barack Obama for the presidency.

But today is 55 years after the MLK assassination. I remember the day extremely well. I’m not particularly prone to conspiracy, but even The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford asks the question of who killed the reverend, was more than one person involved, and the like. And my thought: was it a coincidence that he was killed on the first anniversary of his sermon denouncing US military involvement in Vietnam?

Missing the point

I despair that King’s message is often obfuscated. Dr. King campaigned against not just racism but poverty. In his final book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?”, he wrote:

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.  With righteous indignation, it will look at thousands of working people displaced from their jobs with reduced incomes as a result of automation while the profits of the employers remain intact, and say: ‘This is not just.’ . . . Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness.

Yet Census data show an increase in income inequality in the US. Worldwide, the rich keep getting richer. “The top 1 percent seized twice the new wealth as the rest of the world in the past two years.”

So it is absurd when the Christian nationalist founder of Pastors for Trump said he was ‘pretty sure‘ that Martin Luther King Would Have Been a ‘MAGA’ Republican. I’m “pretty sure” Jackson Lahmeyer has heard, at most, one piece of one MLK sermon. For your maximum irritation, readers, go to the link above to see a MAGA hat photoshopped onto an image of King.

Labor

The AFL-CIO posted on the most recent King holiday: “We must remember him and his words truthfully—far beyond the often-repeated and misused line about skin color and character.

“Most people know Dr. King only as a civil rights leader. But we must remember him as a labor leader who was assassinated while supporting 1,300 Black men in their fight against neglect and abuse at the sanitation strike in Memphis, Tennessee.

“Dr. King is associated with ‘peaceful protest.’ But we must remember his sermon ‘When Peace Becomes Obnoxious.'”

“If peace means a willingness to be exploited economically, dominated politically, humiliated, and segregated, I don’t want peace. So in a passive, non-violent manner, we must revolt against this peace.”

(Coincidentally, I linked to that piece two years ago.)

Really honoring MLK

I recommend to you that you read  Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Peruse his speeches.

If you want to take in I Have A Dream, which was at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom – he was an economic warrior  – read or listen to the WHOLE thing; it’s about 17 minutes long.

“There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, when will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality…

“It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds. But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.”

Then remember, he advised the crowd not to “drink the poisonous wine of hate,” but to use the “way of nonviolence” when taking “direct action” against oppression.

Music: my mom and my dad

West Side Story

As part of my birthday month celebration, I’ve selected songs tied to a particular time and place, or occasionally multiple times and places, in my life. I associate these with my mom and my dad.

I wish I could find a recording of Be Kind To Your Parents that sounds like the pink vinyl we had growing up, possibly from Peter Pan Records. My sister Leslie and I would sing it to our parents, and I sang it to my daughter.  Here’s Florence Henderson singing it, not as perkily as I remember it.

I’ve noted my father’s vinyl collection growing up, music I listened to in our living room. Of all his singles, Forty-Five Men In A Telephone Booth by The Four Tophatters is the one I most loved. I bought a compilation album mainly for this one track. We listened on a brown squarish record player that played at 78, 45, and 33. To listen to the 45s, one had to put an adapter on the turntable.

My mother, sisters, and I went to see West Side Story in a second run, probably at the Riviera or Strand Theater on Chenango Street in Binghamton. My baby sister was young enough that the ticket seller questioned whether she should be allowed to see the movie. When I heard   Quintet, I thought, “I didn’t know you could have two competing melodies like that!”

My father owned an album by  Joan Baez, a “best of” from 1963(!). One of the songs the Green Family Singers performed was this version of So Soon In The Morning, which featured Bill Wood. Leslie and I sang it at my 50th birthday party. My friend Laura and I sang it at my former church in the 1990s.

What is he listening to?

My mother came home from the grocery store. I went to the car to help haul in the food. When I returned to the living room, the stereo, playing the eponymous Vanilla Fudge album, was turned off. My mom said, “The record player must be broken. The song kept getting louder!”  No, it was just the crescendo at the end of Take Me For A Little While, which retreated sonically in short order.

I was listening to the Tommy album by The Who. The last track, We’re Not Gonna Take It, was on. My father was in the room, reading the newspaper, I think. When he heard the lyrics, “We forsake you, Gonna rape you, Let’s forget you better still,” he peered over the paper with a look that said, “What IS that boy listening to?” But he said nothing.

 

Les Green: a very important person

Binghamton’s finest

Les Green.city leadersOne of my sisters sent me this newspaper clipping from 1970. There’s Les Green, a very important person, in Binghamton, NY with city and county leaders, state legislative representatives, and others.

If I’m reading my Les Green history correctly, this took place largely over a 15-year period. It was roughly from 1959, when he first started singing and playing his guitar publicly, until 1974, when he, my mother, and my baby sister moved to Charlotte, NC.

And it wasn’t because he was a civil rights leader or a singer of folk songs. It was that he was those things AND a tremendous arranger of flowers AND a painter of signs AND a set designer for the Civic Theater. He was very active in his church, from running the mimeograph machine that produced the weekly bulletin to singing in the choir to leading the MAZET singers, the youth choir which included my sister Leslie and me. Also, he was an advocate for those with mental illness at Binghamton State Hospital; I do wonder what was his special affinity for that place was.

Moreover, he and his wife bought their first house in 1972, after living in a property owned by his mother-in-law for all of his married life. After I wrote about my dad a few years back, an acquaintance seriously suggested that there should have been a statue of Les Green in Binghamton.

CLT

So, on the anniversary of his death in 2000, I’ve been musing about how he felt about the move to Charlotte. Surely, he took time to find his bearings. When he first came down there, he referred to it as a “big country town.” And he wasn’t wrong, though it become more civilized over time, with a real mass transit system, not the abomination it used when I lived down there at the beginning of 1977.

The family had a rental house and they took time before discovering the right church for them. He did important work there. His job, where he became a Vice-President of J.A. Jones probably generated more income than any other job he had. He was very involved in his church, with music but also a breakfast program.

But he was always out looking for the financial rainbow, starting so many little businesses that neither my mother nor their accountant knew how many. He regularly came to me in the latter stages of his life wondering how he could get rich on this new World Wide Web thing. (The brutal truth is that he couldn’t because he was lousy at recordkeeping or even giving his wife or the accountant his receipts. Being online wouldn’t have helped.)

When he moved the Charlotte, he was sure that he couldn’t find a market for his music in the South. I was not convinced he was correct. He did start writing poetry; I have a massive manuscript in this very room.

Thinking about you, dear old Dad, as you liked to be called.

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