Things I wanna know before I kick the bucket!

[LizzieMaine]

The desperate craving for five minutes of fame isn't a recent thing -- "reality radio" was all the rage in the 1930s, and led to some truly horrific "audience partcipation" programs in the 1940s, produced by vicious marketing cynics for an audience of stunted emotional cripples. Anyone who thinks the Era was a time of elevated, refined broadcasting in contrast to the monstrosities of the 21st Century has never listened to "Queen For A Day."

 

[2jakes]

The desperate craving for five minutes of fame isn't a recent thing -- "reality radio" was all the rage in the 1930s, and led to some truly horrific "audience partcipation" programs in the 1940s, produced by vicious marketing cynics for an audience of stunted emotional cripples. Anyone who thinks the Era was a time of elevated, refined broadcasting in contrast to the monstrosities of the 21st Century has never listened to "Queen For A Day."

Remember the question that Jack Bailey
asked at the start of every show on tv?
My sisters loved it, I thought it was corny and preferred
watching Gene or Roy as they rode into the sunset.
But we only had one black-and-white television set
with only a couple of channels. It was five sisters against
me.

 

[3fingers]

Anyone who thinks the Era was a time of elevated, refined broadcasting in contrast to the monstrosities of the 21st Century has never listened to "Queen For A Day."

This brought back something that I hadn't thought of in years.
There was a woman in the next town from where I grew up who was on that show. She was still attempting to dine out on that tiny flicker of fame in the 1970's.
Another local couple got married on the radio but I am no longer sure of what program it was.

 

[tonyb]

The few minutes that I have suffered through "reality" television tells me there's a lot of that attitude around.
Mental illness used to be something that we attempted to treat, now we seem to celebrate or embrace it as often as we seek a cure.
The oxygen theives themselves are only still relevant because we collectively make them so. Left to their own initiative most people don't think about or remember anything that happened past last season. Movies, television, etc. keep them and their fellow human waste alive in people's minds. Anything for a buck.

I recall to this day an exchange I had in late November of 1963 with a grade school teacher who asked of her young charges what we thought might have motivated one Lee Harvey Oswald to do what he done done. (Allegedly.)

I suggested that it might well have been for notoriety, but I expressed it in a manner one might expect from kid of not quite 8 years of age. "To be famous in books," is what I recall myself saying.

The teacher's almost flippant dismissal of that notion hurt just a bit, what with me being an approval-seeking little kid and all, but it also made plain that a person doesn't really need a particularly expansive mind to get her teaching credentials. And that some people are ill-suited to their chosen occupations.

 

[2jakes]

December 17, 1969.
The most watched episode of Johnny Carson’s
Tonight show was Tiny Tim’s wedding to Miss Vicky.
This was “reality” in $pades.

 

[3fingers]

I recall to this day an exchange I had in late November of 1963 with a grade school teacher who asked of her young charges what we thought might have motivated one Lee Harvey Oswald to have done what he done done. (Allegedly.)

I suggested that it might well have been for notoriety, but I expressed it in a manner one might expect from kid of not quite 8 years of age. "To be famous in books," is what I recall myself saying.

The teacher's almost flippant dismissal of that notion hurt just a bit, what with me being an approval-seeking little kid and all, but it also made plain that a person doesn't really need a particularly expansive mind to get her teaching credentials. And that some people are ill-suited to their chosen occupations.

It's amazing sometimes how things are sometimes made so clear in our minds by small events like a teacher's reaction.
"So simple an 8 year old can understand it."
Sometimes the obvious is too obvious I suppose.

 

[2jakes]

When “reality shows" went surreal on TV.

Watching “live” Jack Ruby shoot Oswald up close
(no remotes back then)
November ’63.

 

[vitanola]

December 17, 1969.
The most watched episode of Johnny Carson’s
Tonight show was Tiny Tim’s wedding to Miss Vicky.
This was “reality” in $pades.

Well, at least Nick Lucas was there...

 

[2jakes]

(You forgot the rimshot sound effect )


.
Well...at least Nick Lucas was there...

 

[1mach1]

(You forgot the rimshot sound effect )


.
Well...at least Nick Lucas was there...

 

[HadleyH1]

Id like to know why people skydive at all [emoji14]

who knows why...

just another different thing to do before falling off the perch...lol .....ok?

 

[Zombie_61]

..."So simple an 8 year old can understand it."...
Sometimes the obvious is too obvious I suppose.

"Run out and find me an eight-year-old child; I can't make head or tail of it."

 

[GHT]

Id like to know why people skydive at all [emoji14]

The hardest part of skydiving is the ground. So if at first you don't succeed, forget skydiving.

 

[LizzieMaine]

This brought back something that I hadn't thought of in years.
There was a woman in the next town from where I grew up who was on that show. She was still attempting to dine out on that tiny flicker of fame in the 1970's.
Another local couple got married on the radio but I am no longer sure of what program it was.

Probably "Bride and Groom," a daytime show of the postwar era. It wasn't the most obnoxious of these types of things, but it was pretty far up there.

Some of the daytime audience participation shows weren't so much vicious as they were just plain dumb. A second-echelon comedian named Tom Breneman became one of the biggest fads on the air during the war with "Breakfast At Sardi's/Breakfast In Hollywood," a program which consisted entirely of him roving thru a restaurant where a throng of gaggling tourists were having breakfast. He'd stop at each table, try on a woman's hat or two, and ask everyone where they were from so that he could poke fun at midwestern towns with funny names or kid their dialects. This went on for a half an hour a day for five days a week, and somehow nobody ever punched Breneman in the face.

Sometimes something interesting would happen on this show. One morning Breneman started hassling a woman who declared she was a natural-food enthusiast, and when he tried to push his sponsor's product -- Kellogg's All Bran -- she was, to say the least, not enthusiastic about it. But this type of thing didn't happen often enough to relieve the air of patronizing smarminess that characterized the show.

 

[3fingers]

I have heard parts of a couple of episodes of Breakfast in Hollywood. Awful. There were others about breakfast. One is a smarmy husband and wife. She calls him captain and he has vomitous pet names for her. The name escapes me at the moment. Absolute dreck.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There were tons of those husband-and-wife breakfast shows all over the country after "Dorothy and Dick" started the trend in New York in the mid-forties -- Tex and Jinx, Allen and Jean, ad infinitum. Fred Allen took the mickey out of all of them with his parody sketch alongside Tallulah Bankhead, in which the obnoxiousness was only slightly exaggerated.

 

[Zombie_61]

...Some of the daytime audience participation shows weren't so much vicious as they were just plain dumb...

Dialing for Dollars. As an adult it became clear this was not much more than a way to keep viewers tuned in to a local TV station, presumably to get better ratings, but as a child it made no sense to me whatsoever. With Bowling for Dollars at least the monetary reward was based on the contestant's "skills", but with Dialing the only skill you needed was being at home at the right time and knowing the secret password.

 

[2jakes]

This sums it up for me:

 

[Fading Fast]

There were tons of those husband-and-wife breakfast shows all over the country after "Dorothy and Dick" started the trend in New York in the mid-forties -- Tex and Jinx, Allen and Jean, ad infinitum. Fred Allen took the mickey out of all of them with his parody sketch alongside Tallulah Bankhead, in which the obnoxiousness was only slightly exaggerated.

Tallulah Bankhead* pops up here and there in the GE as way more than a gadfly - stage, screen and radio actress and mixer with society in a not bounder way - but not quite anything you can put your finger on (although many are said to have done just that ). Love her in "Lifeboat."


*Hard to believe that name would fit anyone, but it fit her absolutely perfectly.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I had a friend who was in "The Little Foxes" with her on Broadway, and was propositioned by her. She never took Talllulah up on the idea because she was such a young small-town innocent she didn't realize such things were possible. The phrase "larger than life" does not begin to describe La Bankhead.