Category: TV

Boomers Gladly Went Where No One Had Gone Before

On September 8, 1966, NBC began broadcasting Star Trek, and Mister Boomer was watching. He watched all three seasons — just 79 episodes — with his family on their black & white TV. Then, when the show began syndication, he continued to watch the original episodes as well as the later incarnations of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and all of the movies. Mister Boomer’s aunt, born in 1918, was even a bigger fan than Mister B. She never missed an episode, and declared her favorite character was Mister Spock. The show had a vast reach across generations, because of its hope and optimism for a peaceful future based on mutual respect.

The show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, worked with Desilu Productions to pitch a pilot for the show to NBC. Desilu was Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball’s company, but Lucille Ball had bought out Desi’s share to become sole owner when they were divorced in 1960. It was pitched as “Wagon Train to the stars,” comparing the premise to the popular western TV series about pioneering the Old West. The first pilot was rejected by the network, but they saw enough potential in it that they asked for a second pilot to be produced. It was the second pilot that introduced the actors and characters boomers came to cherish on Star Trek.

It’s not surprising that boomers loved the show; after all, they grew up with the inception of the Space Program. At the same time, they watched the metaphorical sci-fi alien movies of the 1950s on TV and it set their imaginations churning into what might be found out among the stars. NASA was in the process of forming its ability to take us where no one had gone before, and then Star Trek showed the possibility of that progress into the 23rd century. Meanwhile, boomers were watching every launch and mission, from Project Mercury with Alan Shepherd’s first foray into space, to ultimately Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon.

In 1960, President John F. Kennedy had laid down the challenge of sending a man to the moon and back within the decade. By 1966, however, when Star Trek first appeared, NASA was in the middle of the Gemini program, which tested crucial docking procedures between spacecraft and saw the first U.S. space walk EVAs (extravehicular activity). Star Trek was leaps and bounds beyond any earthly capabilities.

As a youngster, the technology of the show was the ultimate dream. Mister B recalls that in school, he and his friends were immediately struck by the ethereal theme song and whooshing Enterprise spacecraft that left the name of the show in futuristic lettering on the TV screen. Mister B and his friends would try to draw their own names in the style of the Star Trek lettering on their paper bag book covers. Then there were the flip-open communicator devices; they seemed very far out at the time, but sort of the logical move from Dick Tracy’s two-way wrist radio. The hand-held phasers were a real mindblower. A flip of a switch could change the gun phaser blast from a stun ray to a death ray. Now that was a weapon young boys wanted to see. The mac-daddy of tech was the Transporter. To think people could be molecularly deconstructed and whisked through space, only to be reconstructed at a different location was great sci-fi in anyone’s estimation.

And as soon as Mister Spock performed his first split-hand salute while stating, “Live long and prosper,” all the boys tried furiously to duplicate the sign. Very few could do it as effortlessly as Spock in their initial attempts. One by one they succeeded, and Mister B was among the first group who could display the hand signal across a classroom when a teacher wasn’t watching. It was as if the “Trek” boys had a new club of their own.

Like Twilight Zone before it, boomers who Mister B knew quickly latched on to favorite characters and episodes. However, Mister B would be hard pressed to pick a favorite character or episode. Before Star Trek appeared, his sci-fi reading was defined by Jules Verne, so the show was a real mind expander and gateway to his next generation of sci-fi reading, which continues to this day.

Rather than a favorite character, Mister B enjoyed certain phrases repeated by certain characters. There was Mister Spock’s “Live long and prosper,” of course. There was also, “I’ve given it all she’s got, Captain,” from Engineer Scotty; and “I’m a doctor, not a magician,” uttered in various iterations by Doctor McCoy. Mister B also liked when Captain Kirk, at the end of several episodes, was asked by navigator Sulu for travel coordinates, would point to the space view screen and say, “Out there, Mr. Sulu,” like Babe Ruth pointing to the spot he would hit his next home run.

There is hardly a person in our culture who hasn’t been in some way touched by the concepts that began in Star Trek sixty years ago. If you watch those original episodes during the 60th Anniversary celebration that is now underway, take note of the influences the program has had. Star Trek had people of all races working together peacefully, and portrayed women in key positions at a time when it was unheard of in corporate America. While most will readily admit humans have a ways to go in accepting each other, progress has occurred in spits and spurts. We’ve seen women at the head of major companies as well as at the top of the ticket in presidential elections, though it should be noted that the office of President of the United States is still an all-male club. Then, of course, Motorola based its early designs of the cell phone on the Star Trek communicator. The StarTAC phone debuted in 1996. Mister B carried a similar flip phone model a decade ago. He thought of Captain Kirk every time he opened it. When Yeoman Rand approached Captain Kirk with electronic data tablets, it was hard to imagine the future e-readers and tablets that are common today.

Mister Boomer has always been a Trekker at heart, though he never — not once — used the phrase, “set your phasers on stunning” when greeting a young lady. How about you, boomers? Were you watching 60 years ago, and what influence has the program had on you through the years?

Please note: This is an updated post first published by Mister B on September 4, 2016.

 

Boomers Were the “Peanut Gallery”

Recently, Mister Boomer was thinking about the idioms spoken by the parents of boomers, and how you don’t hear many of them any more. Boomer parents would say phrases such as, “that’s the cat’s meow,” or “keep your shirt on.” It makes sense that so many of these common idioms heard in the boomer years have disappeared since they originated in the 1930s and 40s, or even earlier; as children grow, they hear and internalize the slang and catchphrases spoken by their parents, until they reach their teens and adopt the phrases of their own generation. (Mister Boomer has explored two slang words of the Boomer Generation that have, to some extent, survived to the present: Boomers Knew What was Cool, Man)

The phrase that sprang to mind recently was, “no comments from the peanut gallery.” As Mister B swirled the words around in his skull, like examining aged wine in a glass, he immediately thought the phrase had to originate in the Boomer Era with the Howdy Doody Show (1947-60). This TV show combined live actors with puppets, including the show’s namesake, a puppet-boy dressed in cowboy garb. Each show had a live audience of kids who sat on school-style bleachers that was labeled as the “Peanut Gallery.” Since “peanut” was a common slang term for “small” (like “shrimp”), it seemed logical that the Peanut Gallery would seat the little ones.

In 1943, Howdy Doody was a children’s radio program. “Peanut Gallery” was a phrase used on the show to represent the listening audience of kids. When the program became a TV show in 1947, the term came with it, only then it was the literal representation of the kids in the audience. (Incidentally, Clarabell, one of the characters on the show, was a clown who spoke only by honking a horn. He was played by Bob Keeshan, who boomers will recall later became Captain Kangaroo [1955-1984].)

Mister Boomer’s earliest memories of watching TV was the Howdy Doody Show. The TV program, considered pioneering educational children’s programming at the time, was credited with helping sell more TVs in the 1950s than any previous program. As more boomer families bought TVs and watched, the show’s audience grew — and with it, their ability to sell advertising sponsorship to national brands like Kellogg’s cereal.

After a little investigation, however, Mister B found that “peanut gallery” did not originate with Howdy Doody. Au contraire, mon ami! “Peanut gallery” has been around for many decades. At the turn of the century, vaudeville theaters called the most affordable seats — usually the top rows of the upper balcony — the “peanut gallery” because the cheapest snack available for purchase there was peanuts. Since this echelon of theater-goers was considered the most uneducated and unruly, “comments from the peanut gallery” referred to their physically tossed peanuts and verbal heckling that were hurled to the stage to express disapproval with the performers. So, if boomers were riding in the car with their parents and one turned around to say, “Hey, I don’t want any comments from the peanut gallery,” they weren’t referring to the Howdy Doody Show, they were telling the kids to behave.

Howdy Doody’s Peanut Gallery did influence another player on the stage of boomer experience, though. The cartoonist Charles Schulz was about to syndicate his comic strip, Li’l Folks to newspapers in 1948. The comic syndicators thought the title of his comic strip would be confusing to readers since Little Folks and Li’l Abner already existed, so they suggested he change the strip’s title. Faced with a name change, Schulz chose Peanuts, a reference to both the Howdy Doody radio show and the unruly commenters of vaudeville. His characters would be kids who made their comments on the cultural stage of the Boomer Era, without any adults present.

On rare occasion the term still pops up on the national stage, but one has to wonder if Millennials and Gen Zers, let alone their kids, have any idea what it means.

Did your parents use the idiom on you and your siblings, boomers? What are your recollections about hearing the phrase, “peanut gallery?”

Please note: This is an edited version of a post first published by Mister Boomer on March 12, 2016.