Home // Features // Features Columnists // Tom Mooney

Channeling TV shows of the ’50s Tom Mooney Remember When

Thursday December 04, 2008 | 12:00 AM

Digital TV is coming in just a couple of months. And that’s a wonderful thing.

As for me, though, I wish some genius would invent a totally different kind of television set – one that could retrieve from the airwaves some of the long-gone shows of the 1950s.

That’s not to say there isn’t good stuff available today. No, I’m far from a hater of modern-day television. I just believe that there was also some very good stuff in circulation a half-century or more ago, and people who never saw it really missed something.

So, in no particular order, here’s some of what I’d like to see in my fantasy weeklong marathon of ’50s shows.

1. It wasn’t just goofy sketches that made “Caesar’s Hour” rollicking good fun. It was the incredible Sid Caesar himself, who could break you up with rapid-fire, quasi-foreign language or an agonizingly slow double-take. Once the live theater audience (the show was done on a stage) burst into applause when Sid registered comic pain by crying real tears on cue.

2. In the days when every American male could name the champion of every weight class in boxing, the “Friday Night Fights” was a must-see. There’s little boxing on free TV today, but titans came out to battle in Madison Square Garden’s ring every week in the 1950s. Incidentally, boxing was not the niche sport that “extreme fighting” is today. It was second only to Major League Baseball in fan appeal.

3. If you wanted high-quality drama but couldn’t get to Broadway, there was an alternative. It was called “Playhouse 90.” In their day, “The Helen Morgan Story” and “Requiem for a Heavyweight” (starring Hazleton area’s Jack Palance) were true landmarks of broadcasting, commercial-TV precursors of PBS and the insufferably British-oriented “Masterpiece Theater.”

4. I’ve always believed that the appeal of 1950s panel shows like “What’s My Line” was less in any suspense over whether somebody would get found out than in the big-city glitter and suaveness of the panelists. To see tuxedo-clad New York publisher Bennett Cerf offer a joking aside to a be-gowned Arlene Francis was to be admitted to a midtown Manhattan party where you could mingle with the beautiful people.

5. For sheer gritty realism on what war really is, you couldn’t beat “Victory at Sea.” This season-long documentary about World War II powerfully struck adults and young people alike with its no-hokum depiction of desperate battle and the courage needed to fight it. The magnificently symphonic musical score has never been matched.

6. OK, I’m a “Honeymooners” junkie. This old chestnut, a spinoff of Jackie Gleason’s variety show, may still be seen late at night on some cable channels. Of course it trafficked in exaggeration, but at its heart was something we can all identify with - the daily struggle to get by in a world where sometimes friendship or love alone makes life bearable.

7. Ever wonder how the Battle of Gettysburg would have been covered in modern times? The inventive “You Are There” told you all about the great events of world history, blending historical re-creation with journalists shoving microphones in the faces of famous people, who didn’t seem at all disturbed by the time warp.

There were plenty more; these are just some of my favorites. If you want to see these and other old warhorses, trek on over to the Paley Center for Media at 25 W. 52nd St. in New York City ( www.paleycenter.org).