Tv Shows of The Fifties

The first thing you need to know is that there wasn't much of it. Mostly, in the afternoons and evenings. The second thing you need to know is that it was black and white. Actually, it was various shades of gray. Dithered, sort of. And, ladies, just think of it, No Remote Control!!!!!!! We were enthralled. This was much better than radio. You became very popular, very quickly if your family had a T.V. And people would linger outside the windows of stores that sold this new wonder - hoping to catch a glimpse of the future. Our view of the world around us would forever be shaped by the images on the television. For those of you too young to know, it was as revolutionary a change as the world before and after the Internet. We all loved Lucy, and Ricky and Fred and Ethel and Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV, the real, Little Ricky...

I Love Lucy ('51)

Lucille Ball as Lucy (MacGillicuddy)Ricardo Desi Arnaz as Ricky RicardoVivian Vance as Ethel MertzWilliam Frawley as Fred Mertz Keith Thibodeaux as Little Ricky

American Bandstand began as a local program in Philadelphia in 1952. Then it was called Bob Horn's Bandstand. In July of 1956 the show got a new host, a clean-cut 26 year old named Dick Clark. When ABC picked the show up, it was renamed American Bandstand, airing it's first national show on August 5, 1957. Weekday afternoons were spent with the kids in Philly, the kids on American Bandstand. I knew all their names. I knew when couples broke up. I imitated all the dance steps, sometimes with the refrigerator door as a partner. My mother thought I was nuts. To many of you, it was about the music and the artists. Forget that. I was a preteen, which is to say, I was a teenage wannabe. And, for me, the kids on Bandstand were all I aspired to be.

"It has a good beat and you can dance to it." Dancing was a major feature of Bandstand. The kids who showed up every day (Bandstand aired every weekday afternoon for the first six years) knew all the most popular steps. The Slop. The Hand Jive. The Bop. They even invented a few - the Stroll, the Circle and the Chalypso. These experienced regulars considered an infrequent participant or a first time visitor "an amateur." I wonder what they would have thought about a kid in TV Land, practicing the new steps in front of her bedroom mirror and praying to God her little brother didn't catch her at it. American Bandstand became the springboard for launching the careers of most of Rock's early stars. Among them: Bill Haley and the Comets, Buddy Holly, Connie Francis, Bobby Darin, Fabian and Ritchie Valens.

Dick Cark was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Richard W. Clark was born November 30, 1929. He entered the music business as a sales manager for an upstate New York radio station at age seventeen. In 1952, Clark began doing a radio show "Caravan of Music" at WFIL in Philadelphia. The station's TV affiliate had a teen-oriented show called Bandstand which was hosted by Bob Horn. Taking over the reins in July of 1956, Dick Clark turned American Bandstand into a national institution.

Aw, shucks, pardner... Things were so simple in those golden days of yesteryear. Good guys wore white, bad guys wore black and none of the guns were fully automatic. See how many of these you remember....

('49) The Lone Ranger
Clayton Moore Jay Silverheels as Tonto *Who was that masked man? John Reid was a Texas Ranger who, after being injured in an ambush, was nursed back to health by Tonto. Remember kemo sabe? Means "trusted scout"

('57) Zorro

Guy Williams (real name: Armando Catalando) as Don Diego de la Vega Henry Calvin as Sgt. Garcia Gene Sheldon .... Bernardo George J. Lewis .... Don Alejandro de la Vega (Tornado - Horse) The note Zorro left behind with his signature Z: My sword is a flame To right every wrong So heed my name Guy Williams died in 1989 of a brain aneurysm

('59) Bonanza

Lorne Greene as Ben Cartwright (Big Buck) Pernell Roberts as Adam Cartwright (Beauty) Dan Blocker as Eric "Hoss" Cartwright (Ginger, Piute and Chubb) Michael Landon as Joseph "Little Joe" Cartwright (Paint and Cochise) Victor Sen Yung as Hop Sing Ray Teal as Sheriff Roy Coffee David Canary as "Candy" Canaday I loved this show, but ya just gotta wonder would it have killed them to have had a Cartwright daughter? The Cartwright's thousand-square-mile Ponderosa Ranch is located near Virginia City, Nevada, site of the Comstock Silver Lode. Life with Ben must have been tough because none of his wives survived it. Adam was born in New England and his mother was Elizabeth. Hoss' mother Inger was killed by Indians. She was Scandinavian and Hoss means "good luck" in Norwegian. Little Joe's mother, Marie, was a woman Ben met in New Orleans and she died from a fall from a horse. Dan Blocker died in 1972 after a surgery. Lorne Green died in 1987 of pneumonia. Michael Landon died in 1991 of pancreatic cancer.