I will always remember that big RCA entertainment center with its Radio, 78 rpm Record Player, and tiny round TV. We had this great big magnifying glass on a stand that you set in front of it so it looked big enough to watch.
Interestingly TV took off faster than computers. That TV was probably from 1947-48 though we got it in 1949, by 1952-53 everyone had a TV, and they had 17-21 inch square screens. In 57 or so my dear old dad pulled a tube from the set and claimed he could not afford to get it fixed. Actually he had decided us kids were watching too much TV. I got out of the habit, and never really got back into it. I never actually bought a TV until I was married in my 30's, though I had a couple of old B&W sets over the years that folks who felt I was deprived gave me, when I bought a color set for my ex-wife who was addicted to cartoons.
Interestingly, the Hopalong Cassidy books were written by an Englishman. In them Hoppy was about the badest of the cowboys. In the TV shows Hoppy was an old white haired guy who was booooooooooorrrrrrriiiiiiiinnnnnnngggggg. He had a pretty horse though.
My cowboy hero was Gene Autry. He only carried one gun when all the others needed two, so I figured he was really tough. His movies never were on TV though, apparently he actually bought up all the rights to them to keep them off of TV.
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[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Ryan,
Tell the good professor he is full of it. Read that URL you sent along. Cassidy was a silent movie actor and the TV shows were not even "B" class westerns... more like "C" class. They were 1/2 hour morality plays with terrible production values and plots. The "Lone Ranger" was much higher quality but still a kids show. You didn't have adult viewers of a weekly TV western until "Gun Smoke". I still like "Dragnet" but others had suggestions too!
Regards, Bob S.
Ryan writes:
Hopalong Cassidy never struck me anything! ;-) Anyway, all sorts of titles were flying about the discussion table and when he mentioned Hopalong Cassidy everyone else was like hurh? Oh well.
-- graywolf http://graywolfphoto.com
"You might as well accept people as they are, you are not going to be able to change them anyway."
