Last night I watched ABC’s 50th Anniversary Celebration on TV. (Actually, I was out for the first half of it, so I taped it and watched most of it last night.) I’m a sucker for those big TV nostalgia-fests. This one wasn’t spectacular — it was awkwardly edited and had pointless, incomplete cast reunions — but it was filled with lots of great TV clips. I think ABC’s heyday was in the late ’70s and early ’80s, when it ran escapist sitcoms like “Happy Days” and “Mork & Mindy” and fun shows like “Eight is Enough” and “The Greatest American Hero.” I’m too young to remember that era very well, but these are the memories I have manufactured for myself, and isn’t that what nostalgia’s all about?
The best network anniversary special I’ve ever seen was NBC’s 60th Anniversary Celebration, a three-hour show broadcast on a Sunday night in May 1986. I still have it on tape somewhere, and I used to watch it all the time. The whole thing was liberally sprinkled with clips from the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. There were a few radio excerpts, but I guess radio doesn’t translate very well to TV. Different NBC celebrities introduced each segment, but the main hosts were Malcolm Jamal-Warner and Keshia Knight-Pulliam, a.k.a. Theo and Rudy of “The Cosby Show,” NBC’s big hit at the time. They travelled through the NBC studios at 30 Rockefeller Center, and there was a musical number in the lobby of the building, with all the singers and dances dressed as NBC tour guides, wearing navy blue jackets with the NBC logo and khaki pants or skirts. And the musical number included a woman dressed as the NBC Peacock. You really had to see it.
There was an entire segment consisting of clips from “Saturday Night Live.” Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley hosted a segment on the history of “The Today Show.” Deidre Hall of “Days of Our Lives” and Pat Sajak of “Wheel of Fortune” hosted a segment on NBC daytime. Barbara Eden of “I Dream of Jeannie” appeared on a stage decorated as a big suburban home to host a loving segment on NBC sitcoms. Michael Landon of “Little House on the Prairie” did Westerns. Michael J. Fox did something. There were segments on variety shows, cop shows, news, TV movies, sports programming, children’s television, and so on. There was an even a segment that had various NBC logos morphing into each other.
The whole thing was really quite cheesy and wonderful. I have to find that tape.
I love the 1950s, or at least the 1950s as I used to see them, filtered through movies and television. I used to fantasize about going back in time to the ’50s and wandering through an empty suburban house on a random weekday, when the kids were at school and the father was at work and the wife was out shopping with her wifely friends. Nobody would be home, so I could sit on 1950s furniture and watch cheesy 1950s game shows and soap operas, and then I could go outside and wander along the suburban streets filled with big Chevys, kids on tricycles, and leafy black-and-white trees.
It should be no surprise that “Back to the Future” is one of my all-time favorite movies.
We all need a little escapism, right?
Your fantasy is disturbingly reminiscent of One Hour Photo.
But then you’re much cuter than Robin Williams, so why not?
Glad to see you got your comments thing working again. From what you had been posting previously, I was kinda concerned about you. I assume it must be a feature you can turn on and off whenever it suits your fancy.
As far as the nostalgia trip, sometimes they are good because they can help us remember good things in our past when a lot of the bad things seem to be creeping up ever so slowly. I vividly recall a great many of the programs you mention although my tastes always seemed to run toward sci-fi (no I am not a trekkie, couldn’t stand Shitner)Television offered one of very few escapes for me as a kid, even though the old man refused to buy a color set until after I had already moved away from home. (late 70’s) I remember the NBC anniversary special, at least parts of it, the morphing of the peacock was way cool to me at the time. Funny thing, back in the day, I never once dreamed I would ever actually own a pc (let alone more than one) so maybe a few other dreams and fantasies I had as a youngster may still come to pass. Have a great day, kiddo.
That NBC special does sound pretty cool.
I’m assuming you also like the movie “Pleasantville,” as well.
I used to wish I was alive in the 50s all throughout junior high. I was such a little nerdlinger.