ter.ri.to.ri.al.i.ty n. The behavior of a male animal that defines and defends its territory. cu.ra.to.ri.al.i.ty™ n. The behavior of a curator that defines and defends his collection and its history.
AMERICA TUNES IN: 1946-1960
It’s time to get your pompadours and your poodle skirts ready — we’re
heading back to the 1950s for a look at that amazing window to the world we call
television. So cool your heels, daddy-o, ‘cause we’re going to tune
in to TV and see what’s on the dial, from Howdy Doody and the Mickey
Mouse Club to Hopalong Cassidy and Captain Video! And I promise not to use
the period lingo after this paragraph, so don’t worry.
One layer of the GEM presentation is the development of mass media and
how technology leads to the introduction of one form of entertainment
delivery system after another, from print to radio to television. Now
that we’ve arrived in the 50s just in time to set up the tray table,
heat up dinner and park ourselves in front of the tube, we should reflect
on the fact that by 1949, Americans were buying 100,000 television sets
weekly, joining the shared experiences of a gigantic national audience.
And most of them were sitting there in the soft glow munching away on
meatloaf while Jackie Gleason and Hopalong Cassidy did their thing.
“Say kids, what time is it?” As with most of our galleries,
choosing the central character or characters for the room wasn’t
much of a chore. The quintessential children’s character of the
click to enlarge
era and the one who embodied so many of the themes we explore, from marketing
and merchandising to mass impact and long-term contribution to pop culture,
was undoubtedly Howdy Doody. The marionette with the freckled cheeks
and goofy guffaw — and a visage that would give me nightmares for
the rest of my days (I honestly don’t know how kids in the ‘50s
handled it) — was one of the first bonafide television stars. And
he did it all with strings and a little imagination.
Created by Robert “Buffalo Bob” Smith, Howdy reigned supreme
as king of the puppets, regaling the Peanut Gallery with his Doodyville-based
antics alongside Clarabell the Clown, Indian Princess Summerfall Winterspring,
Mr. Bluster, Dilly Dally, and Flub-A-Dub (a strange-sounding assortment
of friends, but that’s how it is when you’re a puppet). Howdy’s
popularity was so pervasive that a 1948 premium campaign offering “I’m
For Howdy Doody” presidential buttons shocked NBC executives by
generating 60,000 requests for the buttons! Not bad for a show that was
only airing on five stations at the time. The giveaway was a television
first and further proof of the medium’s incredible power.
But Howdy wasn’t the only kid’s icon that dominated the
1950s. Those of you who can sing the Mickey Mouse Club theme
song will probably recall how Annette Funicello and Cubby O’Brien
became household names alongside a certain cartoon mouse. You might be
surprised to see our Mouseketeer beanie on display, an odd version with
Mickey’s entire face on the top of the cap! 550,000 of the beanies
were shipped to eager fans; within a year of the program’s debut,
16.5 million people were watching.
Some of the other not-quite-hidden gems (we agree this joke is long
since worn out, right?) in this room include the very first TV Guide with
little Desi Jr. gracing the cover and two of the first Barbie dolls following
her debut in 1959. Clad in black-and-white striped bathing suits, the
poor things have gone gray with age — and I don’t mean their
hair (that flesh-tone plastic loses its lifelike cast over the years).
We also pay tribute to the last great Golden Age of the cowboy heroes
of the old frontier as television-based westerns started to give way
to adventures in a different frontier — outer space. As the United
States began to look to the future, the likes of Captain Video, Tom Corbett
and Commander Corry of Space Patrol adapted the western genre to a new
setting, taking the same American devotion to law and order from the
dusty plains to the starry skies [warning: intellectual commentary ahead].
The juxtaposition (five dollar words and everything, that’s what
happens when you work in a museum) of classic cowboy iconography with
the nascent sci-fi/“space exploration” television category
illustrates just how similar the narrative structure in both genres truly
are. OK, I’ll stop now.
The warm and fuzzy domestic America of the 1950s — or at least
the version we see in all those old “duck and cover” film
shorts — was about to receive quite a revolutionary jolt in the
form of a societal sea change that would open whole new realms of pop
culture. Join me next time as we cover everything from a British invasion
of secret agents and long-haired singers to the marketing of a Marvel
Age and the psychedelic TV success of a not-so-Dark Knight detective.
It’s the ‘60s man… can you dig it?
or in person at 301 W. Camden St.
Baltimore, MD 21201
(410) 625-7060
This is a guest article. The thoughts and opinions in this piece are those of their author and are not necessarily the thoughts of the Certified Collectibles Group.
