In Iowa City in the early 60s, the only tv in our house was in my parents’ bedroom, so we were pretty tv-starved. But we had to be pretty desperate to actually watch Mr. Ed, one of the lamest and dumbest shows ever in that great wasteland that was tv back then. The story lines were so stupid and stilted, and the whole premise of Mr. Ed, the talking horse, giving advice to Wilbur on…some idiotic domestic issue. I couldn’t begin to force myself to try to conjure up any memorable episodes; they were all more or less equally dumb.
And then there was their sponsorship by Studebaker. Oh my; what a less than inspired choice by that out-of-touch South Bend outfit. Couldn’t they find something just a wee bit more…with it, rather than clueless Wilbur, Carol and Ed Post? No wonder we called them Stupidbakers back then.
Not convinced? Help yourself; I have no idea what this episode is about, but I wasn’t going to waste 25 minutes watching this. Sorry if I’ve offended any Mr. Ed fans. Now if it had been Route 66, or Bonanza…is it more than a coincidence that Chevy was involved with those two shows?
Given that ’62 saw widespread introduction of narrow whitewalls, I wonders if the mounting of wide whites on a heavily updated body for ’62 was related to the perceived democraphic if the show’s fans.
Wow! A tv in the bedroom! I grew up in the 50s and 60s, and nearly every family I knew had a tv, but it was always in the living room, and always black and white. I never knew any family thad had a bedroom tv! You’re folks were some real pioneers! I would gladly take Mister Ed any day over present day tv shows. And, I sure would like myself a nice old Studebaker!
The only reason I’d watch the show now is to see all the Studebakers. I grew up Chevy but I love ’62 and later Studes now. I have owned four of them. They got the exterior size/shape versus interior space right, that took GM until 1977-78 to get. Plus, disc brakes, automatic transmissions that could be shifted manually through three forward gears, superchargers, sunroofs, standard full instrumentation, tachs that were in the dash instead of tacked onto the steering column or top of dash or out on the hood or down on the console, reclining seats, dual-chamber master cylinders, etc. They did still use king pins, but so did 1962 Corvettes.
As a kid, I thought Ed reading the paper with his glasses on was funny. I befriended our hometown Stude dealer years after-the-fact, and he said “I used to have to put money from sales into helping sponsor that show. I hated that show”, LOL. He and his family were Stude dealers in our town for forty years.
At the South Bend airport some years ago, the Stude Museum had a display of the barn with the dutch doors and Mr. Ed and a real Wagonaire, and in a clear case had the contract with CBS between Studebaker and them.
Can you recall any TV shows that AMC sponsored? I can’t. I do remember shows the Big Three sponsored.
“As a kid, I thought Ed reading the paper with his glasses on was funny”.
Isn’t that what glasses were for?
“Isn’t that what glasses were for?”
Maybe, if Mr. Ed were over 45…
There was that James Bond movie where he is doing outrageous stunts with a pretty mild AMC Hornet.
I think that red Hornet hatch was spiffy.
AMC had an exclusive corporate tie up with the Astro Spiral stunt, so AMC insisted on the product placement throughout the movie.
I still don’t know why there was a slide whistle.
I believe AMC (Nash/Hudson/Rambler) sponsored “Disneyland” in 1956-57.
Superman had Nash’s and Ramblers
“Jiminy Cricket” like to expound on the virtues of the “Nash”.
In a recent CC on the Matador coupe, someone commented that AMC may have provided cars for Adam-12. There were a lot of of them on the show, that’s for sure.
Yes. Adam-12 had AMC Matadors in the later years after having Plymouth Satellites in the earlier years. I am not sure if there is a difference between sponsoring a show with cash for production and just having profiler placement.
I think the reason you saw Matadors on Adam 12 after the Plymouths was because Jack Webb was a stickler for detail and wanted to use cars that matched the actual cars used by the LAPD. Why they skipped the Mercury’s is beyond me, although there was an occasional Montego in the background.
I’m not sure about any AMC sponsorship. On the one had you had Officer Malloy driving a Matador coupe as a personal car, but there was also an episode where their Matador squad car had chronic mechanical or electrical issues. I’m going by a fuzzy memory but it was something like that.
I remember that episode when Reed and Malloy got a clunker patrol car while there Matador was in the shop. IIRC, the car they got was none other than a 1968 Fury. One scene I recall, in particular, was how the rear view mirror kept flopping around. The reason I remember was it was the distinctive Chrysler rear view mirror that hung down from the headliner (by this time, Ford and GM were both using the type that was held in place in the middle of the windshield by a glued-on bracket). Plus, as anyone who pays attention to those in-car scenes, most times, they remove the rear view mirror, often because there’s also no windshield so there’s no camera reflection.
They also don’t want to mirror to block the view of the actors. I notice on Adam-12 that the same background cars are frequently in multiple positions in the same show. A car will pass them and then suddenly be parked in front of them. The used a lot of stock footage just edited in different ways. But that show sure is a car spotters heaven.
“Matadors? How many do you need? Just let us know when to pick them back up.”
I don’t know if AMC sponsored the show but they provided vehicles for Adam-12 at one time. Mainly police cars but in one show the Martin Milner character was saddled with an ugly yellow Matador coupe.
In a first season episode of Adam-12, Malloy had a Mustang. The patrol cars were Plymouth’s but I guess they didn’t have an exclusive contract then.
Here’s a ’63 Lark vs. Falcon commercial I like, and I’m sure it was shown on ‘Mr. Ed’. I base my theory of ‘high volume normalizes bad or at least meh styling’ here as on other cars. The Lark has some ‘Mercedes bends’ as the Eagles say, plus the rear-door upper styling reminds me of ’77 GM B-and C-bodies. The Falcon looks dumpy in comparison to my eyes, with its 13 inch wheels and droopy rear wheel openings. Of course I’ve seen many more Falcons in my lifetime than ’63 Larks.
Studebaker mentioned their disk brakes in several commercials from 1963 and 64, referring to other cars having “conventional” brakes or “ordinary hydraulic brakes”, but never “drum brakes” which is what everyone calls them. Then I realized, that’s what everyone calls them now, but not in 1963 when (with a few rare exceptions) that was the only kind of brakes used in cars. “Drum brakes” is a “retronym”, a new term that has to be coined to describe something old because it now needs to be distinguished from something newer. “Bias-ply tire” is another one – try finding any reference to that term from before radial tires became available. Or “manual transmission” before the Hydra-matic was a thing. Retronyms that were coined during my lifetime I always recognize, like “film camera” or “landline phone”, but those that predate me (acoustic guitar, AM radio, mainframe, World War I) I have to think about how those were once never called that.
Studebaker mentioned their disk brakes in several commercials from 1963 and 64, referring to other cars having “conventional” brakes or “ordinary hydraulic brakes”, but never “drum brakes” which is what everyone calls them. Then I realized, that’s what everyone calls them now, but not in 1963 when (with a few rare exceptions) that was the only kind of brakes used in cars. “Drum brakes” is a “retronym”, a new term that has to be coined to describe something old because it now needs to be distinguished from something newer. “Bias-ply tire” is another one – try finding any reference to that term from before radial tires became available. Or “manual transmission” before the Hydra-matic was a thing. Retronyms that were coined during my lifetime I always recognize, like “film camera” or “landline phone”, but those that predate me (acoustic guitar, AM radio, mainframe, World War I) I have to think about how those were once never called that.
IMO: A dull car, for a dull tv couple, on a dull tv show.
Even brand new the Studebaker Lark drove like an old car when compared to the same year Valiant and Falcon. No surprise, given the age of the Lark’s chassis and drivetrain.
You couldn’t even get a V8 in a ’63 Valiant, and it took ’til ’63 to get a V8 in a Falcon. No disc brakes. Look beyond the usual Big Three and you might be surprised!
Brooks Stevens, Lark and Hawk designer for ’62 and later, was primarily an industrial designer. I think Studes benefitted from that as they lacked ‘googie’ interior shapes and trim features as on some other cars of that period, which were clearly designed by ‘stylists’. MHO only. Your opinion is of course more mainstream than mine.
Guess it’s a matter of opinion, but I find Connie Hines to be far from “dull!”
She did at least two/three “Perry Mason” episodes.
A fleet of Studebaker Larks, in this colour, with 4 doors and top engine specifications Special Tuned in the Force’s Melbourne workshop, was one of the finest Pursuit Vehicles used by Victoria Police. Its good handling was exceptional for an American sedan / saloon of its era.
Although the show was stupid, Mr. Ed was still pretty funny and the acting was quite good. The show was popular, running for six years. Alan Young (Wilbur) was an accomplished actor with a long, successful career in radio, movies and television. He did a lot of work with Disney later in his career. Through the wonders of internet streaming, my young grandson has discovered the show and thinks it’s a riot.
Mr Ed is the only place I’ve ever heard of with carrot pizzas. As a kid, I thought it pretty funny. In retrospect, it was typical of the time, which compared to these days wasn’t all bad.
Finally… Wilbur may have been a bit of a dork, but Carol Post was a bit of a babe.
I know where there is a ’63 Cruiser four-door sedan, black, with red broadcloth (optional) factory upholstery. It’s beautiful seating, and plush. And, the car has the black Skytop sunroof. No one would mistake it in person for a ‘Benz, but there are similarities in concept. I would love to own that particular car. Really, there was nothing else domestic like it at the time.
The ’64 Studebaker styling was more contemporary by American standards. I think they’re handsome. A Daytona two-door hardtop at Hershey was parked next to a ’63 Olds F-85 Cutlass two-door a few years back, and I was struck by, again, how dumpy the F-85 looked to me in comparison despite its higher-volume of production.
I wasn’t there, but Alan Young spoke at one of the Studebaker Drivers’ Club International Meets, I believe in CA, in the late 2000’s. I have heard he was very pleasant, meeting members and signing autographs.
MHO only, but that powder blue color isn’t doing that Lark in the pic any favors. Also, wherever the bumper guards got installed (I’d say a dealer or somewhere else but not on the line) placed them one bolt in too far, closer to each other, than the factory did per many cars I’ve seen over the years, and per brochure photos.
Like your grandson, I also *loved* the reruns when I was a kid. “Mr. Ed”, at one point, was almost as essential in my TV watching as after-school cartoons.
To Paul’s point somewhat, as an adult, I just haven’t been able to stream / watch an entire episode in recent years.
It was highly entertaining at the time, and Mr. Ed’s slow drawl sounded almost exactly what I thought a horse’s voice would sound like if they could speak English.
“Stupidbakers”…🤣🤣🤣
I did like the Stude commercials featuring Mr. Ed on a DVD of old commercials I had purchased years ago.
Great flashback.
Oops, I meant this in response to CPJ’s comment above…
I am right there with you on the powder blue paint. I would bet that was a set designer/art director decision. If you are going to set a car apart from a red/white barn and green grass, there are not a lot of choices if you are looking to make the car pop. Their color choices were pretty truncated in 1962.
The ’64 restyling modernized the lines more to American standards I think. It was a good restyle. At Hershey a few years back I was drooling over a supercharged ’64 Daytona sitting next to a ’63 F-85 Cutlass two-door. I’m sure I’d seen more of those in my life, but I thought the styling was absolutely dumpy.
I know where there is a ’63 Cruiser four-door sedan, black with red optional broadcloth interior, and black Skytop sunroof. The most ‘Benz-like domestic car in concept and proportions at the time. I would love to own that particular car.
Totally agree on the Lark’s 1964 restyle, even to the point of it looking good to this day. I’ve wondered if Studebaker had put what meager funds they had into bringing out the 1964 Lark a few years earlier, instead of dumping all that money into the ill-fated Avanti, how differently things might have been.
I mean, consider how the modern-looking 1964 Lark would have faired up against the Big 3’s compacts in, say, as early as 1962.
Once again, Paul and I agree on a car AND a television program.
🙂
Mr Ed was a cute show and Ed was always sarcastic. I liked when he drove the milk truck. And he always made Wilbur look crazy. The show started in Syndication and they made it with very little money. The couldn’t get a big sponsor like one of the big three so they settled for a second tier automaker. They did feature the cars fairly prominently. When Studebaker ended production, and the show was on CBS, Ford decided to sponsor the show. I think Paul was a bit harsh about the show. It was never meant to be anything but a silly show at a time of many silly shows. It’s fun.
I was more than a bit harsh. probably because I was exhausted last night after working all day on a roof I’m putting on one of my rentals.
Part of it too is the influence of my older brother and sister, who were 4 and 6 years older, and were pretty jaded about things like Mr. Ed.
An interesting take on why those old TV shows weren’t as “great” as nostalgia makes them out to be:
https://quillette.com/2022/05/20/undiminished-by-decadence/
Undiminished by Decadence
By Kevin Mims
I grew up in the 1960s and ’70s and I’m happy to report that, for the most part, television and mainstream cinema today are orders of magnitude better than they were in my salad days.
“To be a TV junkie in the 1960s and ’70s was to live in a permanent state of déjà vu. Dusty’s Trail, a sitcom that aired in 1973 and 1974, was created by Sherwood Schwartz, who created Gilligan’s Island, both of which starred Bob Denver. The former was essentially a rip-off of the latter, but set on the Oregon Trail rather than a desert isle. The Munsters, a sitcom featuring tropes from horror fiction but set in American suburbia, debuted on CBS on September 24th, 1964, just six days after the debut of ABC-TV’s The Addams Family, a show with a nearly identical premise. As Allan Burns, co-creator of The Munsters, later noted, “We sort of stole the idea from Charles Addams and his New Yorker cartoons.” Likewise, The Big Valley was just Bonanza with a female lead. And The Jetsons was just The Flintstones set in the future rather than the past…
An industry practice known as script recycling was rampant in the 1960s and ’70s. I was a television super-fan in the 1970s, and I corresponded with many of the most successful TV writers of the era including Alvin Sapinsley, Stirling Silliphant, and Roland Kibbee. I read the writing credits of every TV show I watched. I kept track of episode titles. And I frequently saw writers recycling virtually the same script over and over again for different TV series. This was much easier to get away with back before home entertainment made it possible to review TV episodes over and over again…
As a lengthy post about script recycling on the TV Tropes website points out:
’24 scripts on Bewitched were recycled scene by scene. One was recycled twice. Most of these were episodes featuring the first Darrin [Dick York] that were recycled with The Other Darrin [Dick Sargent], while the others were black and white episodes remade in color. Since some were two-parters, this means that a total of 55 of the 254 episodes, 22% of the entire show, weren’t unique. In addition to these completely recycled scripts, there were also many that had similar premises but were different in the particulars, and many individual scenes and gags that were recycled in otherwise original episodes.’
The next few years would bring us hit series like Laverne & Shirley (a spinoff of Happy Days), Mork & Mindy (ditto), The Ropers (a spinoff of Three’s Company, which was a remake of the British program Man About The House), Alice (a sitcom based on Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More), The Dukes of Hazzard (a spinoff of the 1975 film Moonrunners), Lou Grant (a Mary Tyler Moore spinoff), Phyllis (ditto), Flo (a spinoff of Alice), Archie Bunker’s Place (a re-working of All in the Family), House Calls (based on a 1978 film of the same name), Trapper John, M.D. (a spinoff of M*A*S*H), Benson (a spinoff of Soap)…
I should add that I loved many of the old films and TV shows I’ve disparaged in this article. I was a big fan of Glen A. Larson. It Takes a Thief and Alias Smith and Jones were two of my favorite shows as a kid. Hell, I even loved Jaws 3D and Battle for the Planet of the Apes. So, I take no pleasure in the frank acknowledgment that the TV programs I grew up on look like garbage when compared to contemporary television shows. Yes, spinoffs, remakes, sequels, and reboots still constitute a great deal of what is available on TV or at the multiplex. But many, if not most, of these re-workings benefit from a level of creativity and investment that studios simply weren’t prepared to offer the cynical cash grabs that passed for sequels and spinoffs 50 years ago…”
Paul, I found your initial entry quite accurate and correct.
The show may or may not have been awful (I’ve only seen a few episodes), but the theme song is classic…
This episode is good for car spotting –
and here’s a compilation of ’60s Lark commercials and Mr. Ed clips (which inexplicably includes a few ads for the unrelated Lark brand of cigarettes) –
youtube.com/watch?v=FqUzO_1S0w4
Mr. Ed, like Studebaker, seemed to cheap out whenever possible. Still airing in black & white in 1966? NBC had gone all-color two years earlier.
oops, 2nd link above should be:
That’s the old Kittenger’s store in Peekskill, NY at 18:02. My grandfather used to be Santa Claus there. Church of the Assumption in the background, where I was baptised. Hersh’s Law office off to the right. The phone booth is gone now.
“Still airing in black & white in 1966? NBC had gone all-color two years earlier.”
CBS lagged behind NBC in going to color, in part because it was pissed over the FCC’s actions when color systems were being approved in the early 1950s. The FCC approved CBS’s color system in 1950; that system was incompatible with the existing black-and-white system, and would make all existing TV sets obsolete. The FCC then did an about face in 1953, and approved RCA’s compatible system. RCA owned NBC, so NBC was quicker to start broadcasting in color.
ABC is a whole ‘nother story. Its small size, and its lack of a dedicated channel in many medium and small markets, positioned it in a distant third place until the 1970s. It was the last of the big three TV networks in the US to go all-color in first run episodes, in December of ‘67.
Who can’t love a horse driving a truck? And lots of cool cars in those scenes. And heavily populated with Studebakers. I don’t think I ever saw that many Studebakers on any street at one time. Funny how there was some 1940’s stock footage thrown in there. As if we wouldn’t notice that all the cars in that hill scene were 20 years old.
About thirty years ago, my sister rented a brownstone in Manhattan from Alan Young’s daughter. It turned out that it was an illegal sublet, and that the woman wasn’t passing on the portion of the rent that my sister was paying that would have covered the rent-controlled amount needed to keep my sister from getting kicked out. Other than that, my only familiarity with “Mr. Ed” comes from the opening sequence.
My parents went to school with Alan Young in West Vancouver, BC back in the 30’s. Willburrrrr!!
Growing up in the ’70s, it was sort of hit and miss which of the silly TV comedies of the previous decade would cross my screen – still limited to three network channels and PBS if the roof antenna was hooked up that day, the moon was in the right phase and it was 78 degrees outside.
Loved Gilligan’s Island and Get Smart. Thought Green Acres was terrible. Bewitched was a lot of fun, and despite Jeannie’s charms, I saw it as a weak knock-off and didn’t dream of her all that much.
Mr. Ed never made the re-run list locally, the little I’ve seen doesn’t seem very encouraging.
Bewitched was pretty good for car watching, plenty of new well equipped Chevrolets to feast your eyes on.
There is a 1965 Chevrolet new model presentation on Youtube melding the casts of Bonanza (NBC) and Bewitched (ABC). Such was the power of Chevrolet at the time that the casts from top rated shows on competing networks could work in a collaboration.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbblrSXVF7c&w=560&h=315%5D
I didn’t even have a rooftop antenna in the ’70s, just “rabbit ears” and a round loop for UHF stations. But I was just north of DC outside the beltway, so in addition to the big three networks there was Channel 5, originally a DuMont affiliate, which became Metromedia, which became Fox (that’s an oversimplification, but essentially what happened). They ran lots of syndicated shows and reruns of popular series. Then there was the independent Channel 20 which was where I could watch old shows from the 1960s like “Hogan’s Heroes” and “Get Smart”. The only new shows I could watch were the ones on Friday nights when I wasn’t busy with homework, like “Love American Style” and “The Odd Couple”. I could also pick up Baltimore stations, which sometimes ran shows at a different time or day than the DC stations, important in those pre-VCR days. Didn’t pay attention to the car commercials back then unfortunately, but do remember some of the local dealers’ jingles and a few for the car brands themselves (Mazda rotary engines – “the piston engine goes boing! boing! boing! but the Mazda goes mmmmmm”)
I don’t think Mr. Ed is any more or less dumb than the other hit sitcoms of the period. Is this really more inane in concept than The Munsters, The Addams Family, Bewitched, Green Acres, My Favorite Martian, I Dream of Jeannie, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, Gilligan’s Island, The Flying Nun, etc., etc.?
And if the shows are stupid, what does that say about those who produce them and the large audiences that enjoy watching them?
What about today’s TV fare? At least all that “canned laughter” is mostly gone!
It was definitely better than “My Mother, the Car.”
True that!
Buddy you have no taste Mr. Ed trying out for the dodgers stealing a milk truck because he wants his license or wanting to become a secret agent cheesy but classic and timeless along with great writing that will hold up in any era
A distinction without a difference, IMO.
I disagree. My Mother The Car had no charm and humor. It was dreadful. And why wasn’t it a modern car? Like a family would drive a 1928 Porter in the early 60’s. I had heard of the show and knew it was bad. But when I finally saw it, it was worse.
Supposedly Grant Tinker (a network executive and Mary Tyler Moore’s husband at the time) said that My Mother the Car was going to be “the next I Love Lucy.”
Boy, was he off the mark!
Grant Tinker was a network executive. He was married to Mary Tyler Moore. Mary played Dick Van Dyke’s wife on his show. His brother was Jerry Van Dyke, who starred in My Mother The Car. It all goes in circles. Trivia: Rob Petrie drove a 58 Dodge and his neighbor Jerry Helper drove an Edsel.
FWIW, Jerry Van Dyke turned down the role of Gilligan in Gilligan’s Island to star in My Mother The Car. Not sure if that was a wise career move.
He was also involved with The Judy Garland Show but that didn’t work out, either. It wouldn’t be until Coach that he finally got on a successful tv show.
Jerry always annoyed me. I hated when he was in his brothers show. His character was simplistic and annoying. His character was supposed to be annoying on Coach so he was ok on that. He definitely did not have the talent that his brother has. A good actor can rise above a horrible show. Look at Sally Field in The Flying Nun, with that nice old woody wagon.
Agreed. These were all excellent shows, mostly clever and enjoyable even today. I often watch episodes of these, plenty of curbside classics to see.
There is a simple answer as to why Studebaker chose this show instead of shows like Bonanza. I would guess it is true then as it is now, that advertising rates varied on the amount of viewership. Studebaker was not exactly flush with cash at the time. And if dealers helped pay for them, I doubt they would have wanted a higher take than they paid.
That was my first thought, as well, i.e., Mr. Ed might have been one of the few national network shows that the sponsership price was low enough for Studebaker to afford.
Additionally, the whole quasi-rural premise of the the show (a talking horse in a suburban barn) might have appealed to the demographic at which Studebaker executives were aiming to sell their vehicles (at least as much as anything else on television at the time).
“Ed” was good kids show.
Stude was owned by conglomerate that couldn’t care less about making cars, so they cut the cord when ‘not profitable’.
Stude’s president, Sherwood H. Egbert, was a big booster of the auto division and IMHO the products under his tenure (1961-1963) got more interesting and diverse. He was ill with cancer and was replaced as president, ostensibly due to his having increased hospital visits, on the Monday after JFK’s assassination. Three weeks later, the last South Bend-built Studebaker rolled off the assembly line. A red two-door hardtop with Avanti R1 power, disc brakes, tach, Twin Traction, 50/50 front bench seat. It survives in the Studebaker National Museum with just under 24 miles. It’s literally a NOS Studebaker.
One last thing about Mr. Ed–I always thought ‘Ed’ spoke like my grandfather, LOL.<img src="http://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/pnp/highsm/41300/41383v.jpg"
Yeah, I watched it, as a child. As a child I found it minorly humorous – well, Mr. Ed was funny, don’t remember anything about the plots.
There’s a reason I’ve pointedly not watched a television sitcom since sometime around 1968. The banal stupidity of them gets to me.
What? They made bad TV shows in the early 60s? Who could have imagined? (/sarcasm off/) 🙂 Good grief, there was soooo much bad TV then, just as has been the case from almost the beginning. My family never watched it when it was new, but as an adult when Nick at Night ran the show in the late 80s I found it to be hokey period fun, nothing more or less. I would argue that it was no worse than average in the swamp of crank-em-out half-hour comedies of that decade. Really, is there anything but camp factor that keeps people watching Lost in Space or The Munsters?
Nobody has yet mentioned that there had been a moderately popular series of movies that starred Francis the Talking Mule. I just looked it up, and they made one film every year from 1950 to 1956 (7 in all). Chil Wills was the voice for Francis. I always kind of figured that Mr. Ed was a Francis knockoff, right down to the similar voices for the talking animals.
As mentioned above, Studebaker sponsored the low-budget show that was made strictly for syndication in 1961. It was evidently more popular than anticipated because CBS picked up the show for season 2. I have always wondered what Studebaker’s advertising contract looked like – I would imagine that they were grandfathered in for sponsorship rights. The bigger question is did they have a right to cheaper advertising rates than would have normally been the case?
I’m sorry to disagree with you at any time, but I have to say that your take on 1960s TV shows isn’t correct. What was popular, what is in syndication and what was actually shown during this era are not the same at all. Thanks to modern streaming, we can view shows that weren’t syndicated, but were excellent. Most all of the “theatre” series were often excellent. We best remember “Twilight Zone”, but there are many theatre series that weren’t syndicated that were movie or Broadway quality.
What we see in syndication is Boomer-focused. This generation was too young for the quality television shows at that time. The commonly mentioned black/white 1960 shows appealed to families with children, and when those Boomer kids grew up, they brought those shows back. There are lodes of treasure to find by digging past those common titles and doing a little research. “Cult” shows like Batman, the Munsters, Green Hornet and similar, hit when Boomers were teens and marketers wanting to reach this new target market started pointing to these shows to reach “groovy young people”. PR shoved a lot of these shows into cult status and these shows are iconic – but they are NOT representative of the quality of television of this era.
“When television is good, nothing—not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is better.
But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.”
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Newton N. Minow to the convention of the National Association of Broadcasters on May 9, 1961.
Ironically, Newton Minow is supposedly where they got the name for the boat (‘Minnow’) on Gilligan’s Island.
Alright, so…what shows from that era are better? What’s in those lodes; what’re we looking to find when we dig?
I really liked the Irwin Allen shows like “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” and “Lost in Space”. (for the latter, the soundtrack was scored by some newbie named John Williams.) The comedies were short and … sort of funny, and I remember them best in syndication, not in prime time. The Saturday Morning cartoons were much much better: Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera productions most of all.
McHale’s Navy, anyone?
Every night there was a theatre performance starring big names like Olivier, Ethyl Barrymore, Hitchcock, Bergman, Stanwick, Julie Andrews, Julie Harris, Guinness, Lee J. Cobb, and future Hollywood stars. These were live performances by Broadway and Hollywood’s best. Episodic shows include Perry Mason, Father Knows Best, Untouchables, Twilight Zone, Playhouse 90, Hallmark Hall of Fame. Comedy legends like Jack Benny, Jackie Gleason, Danny Kaye, Red Skelton. Most of these performances are not in syndication because they are one-off live performances. You need to research and hunt them down – and they are worth the effort. (We might be familiar with “The Edsel Show”, but frankly, that show was pretty lame.)
Westerns were huge, and most – not good. Except for Rifleman, Have Gun Will Travel, Gunsmoke, Maverick, and western-style episodic shows like Wagon Train, Death Valley Days – often had famous stars in episodes each season. Many of those performances were quality work.
None of those is what is considered kid-friendly. That stuff is what makes up the majority of what we remember of this era. Thanks to streaming we can find amazing early television well worth watching.
I hope that helps. My kids expect me to find rare items for them to watch and even as young teens, they’ve like a lot of it – even though they complain about it being black/white.
Pretty standard TV fare of the time. I remember one episode where they are towing Ed’s trailer with the Lark. It finally gave up a few years ago but I had a T shirt with the same pic at the top of the post. The Larks were not bad cars, I daily drove a ’60 VIII and a ’66 Commander 6 both 2Dr sedans. Both cars were good drivers and I wouldn’t hesitate to pick up another one if the opportunity arose.
A few years back, I visited the Studebaker Museum in South Bend and it sure seemed like the Lark was getting short-shift with just a couple of them on display, almost as if they considered it an embarrassment. Odd, considering how the Lark was successful enough to be the main reason the company was able to keep going at least a few more years than anyone would have thought.
But, then, I was there recently and it appears that someone noticed the error with more Larks added.
Seems like Mr. Ed was absurd, escapist humor that was not out of context, considering the era: the Kennedy assassination, the burgeoning Vietnam War, the draft, racial tension and unrest, the escalating cold war, and the list could go on. Mindless comedy gave many of us a short respite from the general miseries that we were immersed in back then. Viewed through that lens, the Beverly Hillbillies, Mr. Ed, Petticoat Junction, and the others don’t seem quite so inane and worthless if they provided us momentary distraction and respite from some pretty relentless and unpleasant realities. To each his own…….
Sorry, but none of that was happening in 1962
The escalating cold war wasn’t happening in 1962? Um, but it was. I assume you’ve heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis, no…?
And racial tension, not in 1962? C’mon. The Ole Miss Riot of 1962, for just one example.
Most Americans were still feeling pretty isolated from those issues in 1962 and for some years yet. Sure there were a few crises, but beyond that, optimism, fueled by the pap on tv, still reigned.
It wasn’t until 1968 that things started to get real, as the shit hit the wall on many fronts, and average folks could no longer deny the reality of a rapidly changing world.
That actually brought on a noticeable change in tv: goodbye Mr Ed, Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies and hello All in the Family, Laugh In, Smothers Brothers, and some other much more real and palatable fare. Not that all of it was brilliant, by far, but it was an improvement.
1962 is to many, Camelot. An innocent time.
TV news arrived at 5-6 each night, for 30 minutes. You read yesterday’s local news in the local paper. The adult male population experienced the BIG ONE and social activism meant the Elks, Moose, Shriners, Kiwanis, or Knights of Columbus. Sunday services were where the Father, reverend, pastor or rabbi reinforced proven values. The veterans knew what leadership, patriotism and obedience could do. Literally everyone focused on raising the next generation.
Not many rabbis doing services on Sunday, and I think if I were to chew on your idea of “proven” values, the conversation would veer off into…territory.
LOL – good catch!
Waxing nostalgic
> Not many rabbis doing services on Sunday
Or even Saturday night for that matter. The Jewish sabbath is from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.
I’m with Daniel. The early and mid-1960’s presented plenty of problems on the national news every night and JFK and LBJ were very worried about them. The Cold War was pretty hot in Asia and Latin America and I well remember the horrible feeling we all had that the world as we knew it might end in October 1962. The Freedom Riders met extreme violence at the hands of folks like Bull Connor in 1961 and the news about those events was very disturbing throughout the population. Things got worse in 1963 with Connor’s fire hoses and dogs, forcing JFK to go on national television with a major civil rights speech in June. The Watts riots in 1964 and the huge escalation in Vietnam in 1965 were major, unsettling turning points well before 1968.
Sorry, Watts riots in 1965.
That happened, but if a tree falls in a forest, and it isn’t reported 24/7 – would all of America argue over it? This information was only reported for 26 minutes – once a day. This happened, but daily lives weren’t impacted by news like it is today.
We aren’t forgetting bad things that happened. We’re remembering how bad things weren’t in our faces 24/7 by one political side or the other, trying to score political points.
In 1962, the world was filled with young couples making families, or maintaining families. If you had a family car, you wanted to be on a television show designed for families, right? “Mr. Ed” was a fine show, starring one of the first Emmy award winning actors, Canadian Alan Young. Alan Young was already a successful TV star and with the popularity of Bob Newhart, Alan was already known with having a similar television personality. Young also had a repertoire of physical comedy used often in the shows.
Like everything else during this era, the episodes of “Mr. Ed” was about newlywed life, not a talking horse. Wilbur, the newlywed husband encountered domestic problems for the first time, and is “id” was “Mr. Ed” – get it? The horse was his marriage counselor. So any kid wanting to watch a show about a talking horse, isn’t going to find what Mr. Ed has to say as very interesting, since his advice to Wilbur was usually domestic counseling. Also, the show today doesn’t translate very well due to the changes in domestic relationships. Wilbur’s traditional Post-WWII husband role doesn’t work today. His wife, Carol, who is a very hot and sexy newlywed wife, is also trying to fit into the traditional role of a wife. The older couple is there for marriage advice as well. The show encountered a death with the actor playing the older neighbor, so for the remainder of the seasons, there were attempts to bring around other supporting characters with varying degrees of success. Each of the seasons, with each of the supporting characters, marital aggravations were a reoccurring theme. During the final season, Carol’s father moves in and all he wants to tell his daughter to do is divorce Wilbur – (not a great addition to the show.)
So if we imagine the comedy duo of Young and Ed, they spend most of their time discussing problems in Wilbur’s married life. As a matter of fact, at no time was Mr. Ed’s ability to talk ever explained. It just wasn’t the point of the show.
“Mr. Ed” isn’t a bad show if you know what you are looking at. It is a domestic comedy about a young couple. So, in reruns – those of us who were kids, wanting to watch it again, aren’t going to find the show too interesting because as adults, we realize that as a horse comedy, it is very lame.
Now – as for the car – Studebakers look a whole lot better on television and in photos than they do in real life. We can admire all those 1962 lines in black/white television, but in person – the car looks like a it was assembled out of someone’s garage using old parts. Because it was. The fender lines do not flow smoothly from the updated front fenders, over the 1953 cowl, past the dated windshield, over the squared off doors, past the faux Thunderbird C pillar, and then rounding off the rear fenders. It does not look like a unified whole. You need to step back to admire these cars, because up close, they don’t present well.
There was no computer technology and robot welding back then, and it shows. Imagine how many times we’ve seen “refreshing” that doesn’t quite work. That is with modern technology. As for a 1962 Studebaker, you don’t get that, and what you are seeing is a refreshing, of a refreshing, of a refreshing, ad nauseum. Best work on this is JP’s Studebaker presentation, which is a highlight of Curbside. Period. https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automotive-history-the-studebaker-sedans-last-decade-of-styling-magic-with-leftovers/
That’s a good summation of the show and why we kids thought it was stupid. We just couldn’t relate to it. And I couldn’t relate to it when I got older either, because things had changed so quickly. It doesn’t exactly hold up well.
It is flat-out hard to watch. It seemed to have been written by a bunch of Mad Men with wife jokes. Painful. While Alan Young could soften the harsh stereotypes getting the canned laughter, his talents were wasted. If anyone cares to learn more, search out “The Alan Young Show” found on grainy kinescopes and you will see how good he is in sketch comedy. He earned those Emmys he won. He was also an excellent Disney voice actor.
The storylines with Carol Post were contrived and never changed. She never even tried to like the horse. And the neighbors were just there for comic relief. Wilbur and Ed were the only good characters. Without the talking horse, the show would have been nothing. But the Studebakers looked good. I can’t remember seeing the Fords in the last season.
Why would she have liked the horse. Her hormones were raging like a young brides’ will do. She couldn’t lure Wilbur into the bedroom because he was always in the barn with the horse because she married a milquetoast. It wouldn’t surprise me if she had an affair with the mailman. The show from this era that drove me absolutely nuts was Dennis the Menace. If that kid lived in my neighborhood, I’d have had barbed wire around the perimeter of my property.
I can totally understand Carol being jealous of Ed. But people can compartmentalize. It would be fun tk see some little scenes with Carol and Ed where he didn’t talk to her but spend time with him. So she was jealous of the time Wilbur spend with the horse, not the horse himself. I would have called child protective services on Dennis the Menace. Ironically, the neighbor guy in both shows died during the run and had to be replaced. And both wife characters were written out and replaced with the new characters wife.
Watching all of these “Mr. Ed”-style shows about bickering married couples when I was a kid made me very much not want to get married when I grew up (though the fate of my family’s marriages played a big role in this attitude too).
The ’62 Larks looked good (and vaguely Mercedes-ish) as a hardtop or convertible. In other body styles, the thick window frame, fully exposed B pillar, and fishbowl windshield looked dated. That wasn’t the 1953 cowl though, but the revised 1955-1/2 one, with another new cowl and windshield arriving in 1963, which along with new modern thin window frames and concealed B pillar made it look reasonably up to date. Yet another refresh in 1964 erased the last vestiges of ’50s-ness in its styling.
Funnily enough, when watching these as a 8-or-so y.o., in the middle ’70’s, I completely got that it was never about a talking horse, and I was no precocious child.
I was a big fan of some show, I forget which one, that aired right after Mr. Ed, so I’d get in front of the TV a few minutes early, and I caught the closing credits and theme song of Mr. Ed.
“Wow, Mr. Ed sounds like a great show, and I’ve got to catch it next week!” said I never. At least it didn’t wildly revolt/offend me.
The ’62 Larks had some Mercedes influence in the styling IMHO, and had wide-open rear wheel openings instead of the typical droopy ones used by everybody else. I think some of us here are forgetting that, despite the huge number you’ve seen over the years, the Valiant, Falcon, and the Chevy II of 1962 aren’t beauties, and not a one of them could be had with a V8. I think the Lark Daytona looks downright elegant next to any of them.
“But, then, I was there recently and it appears that someone noticed the error with more Larks added.”
I’ve been going to the SNM yearly for almost 30 years. They have always had the last production-line ’64 Daytona, which has 24 miles; the last Studebaker built in Canada, a ’66; a Blue Mist ’63 Lark Regal four-door sedan; a white ’62 Lark Daytona Hardtop with Skytop; and a prototype rear-engined ’59 Lark.
I’m guessing you might not have checked in the basement displays each time you were there, as they do move cars around in the displays.
Well, I ‘did’ say that it’s better now. Before, they had the Sceptre concept car tightly stacked away in the back, gathering dust. Now, it’s out in the open, much more prominently displayed.
I’m not sure, but I think they got rid of that 4-door Avanti shell, too. As one might imagine, the Avanti got a lot of attention, more than I thought it deserved. I think someone wised up and the Lark has been given more and the Avanti less.
As I’ve mentioned before, the first Saturday in June, August, September, and October will have a Cars and Coffee event at the SNM from 8am to 10am. The cars are nice (mostly the typical car show fare), but what’s really noteworthy is there will be free admission to the museum during that time.
I don’t even know where to start so I’ll just say that…Mr. Ed is fine entertainment. What’s not to like about a talking horse?!?
I have this magazine ad with a red ’62 Lark Daytona on my office wall. UPDATE: Forget it, only jpegs show up, sigh.
Full disclosure: I owned a white ’63 Lark Daytona Skytop with factory Avanti power, Twin Traction, factory air for 23 years. It is in Australia now. I subsequently owned a ’64 Daytona Hardtop, a ’66 Daytona Sports Sedan, and now own a ’66 Cruiser with 27K miles.
There is good tv from those days, but you really have to look for it.
Kind of like today’s music. 🎵🎵😀
A lot of 60’s TV doesn’t hold up today. It isn’t always just the show, but the viewer who is much older and is looking back with nostalgia. I was watching a few episodes of The Wild Wild West, one of my favorite shows of the ’60’s. They were okay, but kind of lame. The same thing happened when I read a 60’s Marvel comic book, a Fantastic Four and a Spiderman. They were okay, but beyond Peter Parker’s anxiety, there wasn’t much of interest to me now. Don’t get me started on the endless repetition of Marvel hero movies, the same thing over, and over, and over again. I can still enjoy nostalgia, mindless entertainment, and even off color humor and commentary, depending on my mood. I don’t mind stepping back in time for an occasional visit.
“Willlllllllllllllllllllburrr!”
I personally don’t care much for horses in general, so I particularly didn’t care for the self-important Mr. Ed (a horse, of course….unless of course it’s a talking horse….).
When the show started reruns on Nick at Nite in the early 2000s, I was flabbergasted. Who would want to see that thing…which many of us had put up with in after-school reruns in the 1970s, in those days before cable when we had to watch whatever was on. And “whatever was on” seemed often to be Mr. Ed. “The famous Mr. Ed” as the lyrics told us. Although I frequently substituted “famous” with another word that started with the letter “F”. When I was 13.
Well, at least it wasn’t F-Troop.
Do you know what the “F” in F-Troop stood for?
I’ve never watched Mr. Ed before, but after viewing 10 minutes, I’d say it’s very similar to the cult 80s show Alf. Comparable premise and style of humour. Like Mr.Ed, very much a love or hate program.
One of my favourite shows as a kid.
The Stude looks better without the roof.
Although, as a child, I watched “Mr. Ed” on TV, at the time I don’t really ever recall the cars on the show. I do have a memory of watching a game show, possibly “Let’s Make a Deal” where one of the prizes was a Studebaker station wagon, but I can’t recall if anyone won it or not. (Well,I couldn’t have been more than 4.)
I guess it was because I had watched all those episodes of Mr. Ed, but I had a better feeling about horses that looked like him compared to other horses as the years went on. I had always been pretty paranoid around them, but no so much with Palomino horses. Until a neighbor’s horse that looked exactly like Mr. Ed bit the hell out of me. What did I do to piss him off? I rubbed his muzzle, which he liked a lot, and then turned my back on him. CRUNCH! I had a bruise the size of a baseball mitt for the next two weeks on my left shoulder. The owners didn’t warn me to not turn my back on him until I was far enough away to not be “catchable”.
I had been bitten a couple of times by large dogs before the horse bite, and I would have taken another dog bite anytime before another horse bite.
As far as the cars went, even the biggest cheapskates we knew wouldn’t drive Studebakers. The tightest of the bunch all drove Ford Falcons, and the ones who needed more room drove stripper Fairlanes or Galaxie wagons. Later on, almost all of them drove stripper Taurus’s or Sables. One family strangely jumped from Ford to Olds, just as Olds went into the crapper. When Olds was gone, they went back to Ford again, their last vehicle was one of the first Edges I had ever seen. Not a good last car, it had endless minor trim and rattles that never ended, along with major electrical problems that finally got fixed just before the warranty was up.
We did have two Avanti’s in the neighborhood. I have never understood the appeal of them at all. In the early 70’s, a cheapskate neighbor fell in love with Toyota Carollas.
I was very young when Mr. Ed was on and enjoyed it very much. Mostly I remember wanting a palomino.
I’m with you, Susan; I, too, watched Mr. Ed as a kid, and enjoyed every episode, and I still want a palomino to this day, and I soon will be 66!
Was there ever a show that featured a Maserati Biturbo ? The only time I remember seeing one on TV was a review on Motorweek.
Don’t know about the Biturbo (frankly, I doubt it because it’s unlikely they could have kept one running) but on The Sopranos, John Sacrimoni (“Johnny Sack”) drove a Maserati Quattroporte, which he sold to Christopher Moltisanti due to his arrest and legal troubles. The Quattroporte was then subsequently seized by the FBI.
I guffawed at Paul’s opening grump, and I second it, minus his slight retractions in the comments.
Man, what an inane concept, larded with that heavy-handed know-thy-place moralizing that infected practically every US comedy until Seinfeld. Grimly unamusing, and frankly, about as much fun as staring at a horse’s ass for half an hour. Thank god for the new millenium, and the sudden flowering of the great US cable and streaming era, such that the country now makes amongst the best there’s ever been.
In truth, being a car nutter, I only ever watched a show like this to see flash US cars, and this one only had Studes, which we’d actually got here, and which I didn’t much like anyway. Sorry, JPC, but they weren’t low and glamourous, which, incidentally I now know is for reasons explained by Our Man In Indiana’s good work here.
My watching of TV peaked when I was in the the 6th grade, corresponding to the 1963-64 season, so I did watch Mr. Ed at least occasionally when it was broadcast in prime time. I don’t remember the featured Studebakers at all, but I certainly recall the ads for Chevys on Bonanza and the Corvettes on Route 66. My family watched CBS programs the most followed by NBC. With our rabbit-ears equipped B&W TV, we couldn’t reliably receive the signal from the ABC affiliate in Pittsburgh at the time.
Today, we don’t even have our TV hooked up. If I want to watch anything (such as the presidential debates), I do it on my laptop.
I liked it as a kid, mostly because we would watch almost anything.
No TV in 1960s New Guinea, and only one state owned radio station, so when we kids were in Australia 6 weeks over summer, TV was a real novelty.
That they were repeats never entered our minds. They were new to us.
I never saw Route 66 or Naked City in the day, but I’ve managed to see virtually every episode of them by now. TV then, like now was a few islands of quality in a sea of crap
Just another take on “Mr. Ed:” During the time the show aired, TV was still in its early stages. Sit-coms were popular, and, since America was experiencing some scary times, what with foreign threats from nuclear-armed adversaries, and all, we were learning more about the world around us than we’d ever known before, and of the dangers we were newly facing. All that being said, shows like Mr. Ed filled a need we had for some harmless, corny comedy, that was nothing but pure escapism, offering that in more benign ways than what we see offered so often from today’s media. So, came Mr. Ed, and other shows that to some of us offered relaxation, and, yes, escape, albeit temporary, from what we were being shown that constantly blew our minds away with apprehension about the future.