Week 2: 1960s Television

Kennedy-Nixon Debate

• Increased popularity of television

• Influenced election, Kennedy directly addressed TV cameras while Nixon addressed reporters to the side

Color TV

• Existed since 1954

• Luxury item

• NBC changed majority of shows to color in 1965 to compete with rival networks

• Half of American households had color TV in 1970

Struggle for Diversity

• Representation of POC was scarce

• Sitcoms mostly focused on white families

• Writers wanted to tackle current events, but networks refused to comment directly

• Diversity was commented on through allegory in fantasy and sci-fi genres

Rod Serling

• Created The Twilight Zone

• Explored social issues

• Taught at Ithaca College

• Fought in WWII

• Struggled with PTSD and survivor’s guilt

• Anti-fascist and anti-racist

• Wrote to work through trauma

• Took 71 scripts to get discovered

• Often struggled with censorship

• Worked with Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball

Gene Roddenberry

• Created Star Trek

• Pilot in the Air Force in WWII

• Police officer

• Worked in entertainment industry as advisor

• Started writing Westerns

• Progressive

• Friends with Lucille Ball

I Spy

• First American TV drama to cast a Black actor in a lead role

• Starred Bill Cosby

• Spy show

Patrick McGoohan

• Star of British spy show Danger Man

• Created The Prisoner, wrote, starred, and directed several episodes

Carl Reiner

• Friends with Mel Brooks

• Worked on Your Show of Shows

• Wrote pilot and played character on The Dick van Dyke Show

Selma Diamond

• Emmy nominated writer and comedian

• Wrote for Groucho Marx’s radio show

• Wrote for Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour

• Often the only woman in a writer’s room

• Inspired Rose Marie’s character on The Dick van Dyke Show

Rose Marie

• Friend of Lucille Ball

• Actress, singer, comedian

• Played a comedy writer on The Dick van Dyke Show, a woman in a traditionally male field

• Character often successful professionally but struggled with love life (unintentional messaging about having to choose between being a housewife and having a career)

Mary Tyler Moore

• Won 7 Emmy Awards

• Starred in The Mary Tyler Moore Show

• Drawn to The Dick van Dyke Show because her character had strong opinions despite being a housewife

James L. Brooks and Allan Burns

• Created The Mary Tyler Moore Show

• Writers for That Girl, The Andy Griffith Show, Get Smart, The Munsters, etc.

• Both worked on My Mother, The Car (the greatest show of all time)

Star Trek

• Created by Gene Roddenberry

• Optimistic

• Lucille Ball helped finance pilot

• Diverse cast

• Lots of spin-offs

The Addams Family

• Spawned several spin-offs

• Based on a series of cartoons in the New Yorker by Charles Addams

• Nat Perrin adapted it for TV

• Eccentric and macabre, but ultimately kind and loving

• Represented families outside of the mainstream through allegory

• Gomez and Morticia are more affectionate than other TV couples, they are the first TV couple with an implied sex life

The Munsters

• Parody of Universal monster movies

• Kind, sweet, and relatable

• Presented positive messages about diversity through allegory

The Twilight Zone

• Sci-fi horror anthology series

• Focus on social justice and Cold War commentary

• Cautionary tales

• Created by Rod Serling

The Prisoner

• Created by and starring Patrick McGoohan

• Surreal and imaginative

• Paved the way for Twin Peaks and Lost

Father Knows Best

• Family sitcom

• Criticized by the Society of Women Engineers

The Dick van Dyke Show

• Won several Emmy Awards

• Very popular and critically acclaimed

• Starred Mary Tyler Moore, Dick van Dyke and Rose Marie

• Both a family sitcom and a workplace sitcom

• Created by Carl Reiner

• Portrayed a woman working in a traditionally male field

• Housewife character wore pants, controversial at the time

Bewitched

• Fantasy sitcom

• Very popular

• Allegorically about interracial relationships

• Put emphasis on female characters, but sometimes interpreted as anti-feminist

• Explored gender dynamics through fantasy

• Has plot exploring pregnancy

• Nagging mother-in-law trope

Julia

• Single mother

• Starred Diahann Carroll

• First sitcom centered around a Black character since The Amos ‘n Andy Show (very offensive)

• Created by Hal Kanter who wanted to repent for working on Amos ‘n Andy

• NBC wanted to capitalize on the Civil Rights Movement while also putting it against competition so it could have plausible deniability

• Surprise ratings hit

• More of a dramedy than a sitcom

• Some Black viewers didn’t connect to the show and thought it was sanitized

• Initially didn’t have many Black writers or producers, more Black writers came on in the later seasons right before the show was cancelled

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

• Won 29 Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award

• Starred Mary Tyler Moore

• Unmarried woman pursues a career

• Created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns

• Originally supposed to be about a divorced woman, but the network disagreed, she just broke off her engagement in the show

Get Smart

• Sitcom parody of Cold War espionage movies

• Won Emmy Award

• Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry

The Andy Griffith Show

• Idealized version of the South

• Character Ellie Walker was a pharmacist in season 1, left due to lack of chemistry with rest of cast

• Still, a woman with a scientific career, she later runs for council

The Lucy Show

• Lucille Ball’s show after I Love Lucy

• Ball was reluctant to do it but was convinced by Desi Arnaz

• Lucy was portrayed as a widow to not break up Desi and Lucy’s characters

• Vivian Bagley, Lucy’s friend, was divorced, the first divorced woman on primetime TV

• One of the first sitcoms to focus on women without husbands

• Depicted two women as roommates raising kids their together

That Girl

• Actress trying to make it in NYC

• One of the first sitcoms to focus on an unmarried woman living on her own

• Developed by writers of The Dick van Dyke Show

• Starred Marlo Thomas, also helped create the show

• Inspired by Second-Wave Feminism

• Helped realize a market for unmarried, single women on TV

• Precursor to The Mary Tyler Moore Show

• Although the character got engaged, her wedding was never shown