This has nothing to do with nudity. Just some amazing nostalgia.
From my e-mail:
There was an educational film in the 1950s that was almost feature length. It’s called The Alphabet Conspiracy. It’s technically 54 minutes long, although three of those minutes are the closing credits.
The plot is, a young girl is frustrated with her English homework, especially with trying to figure out all the rules. Then she falls asleep, and dreams that characters from Alice in Wonderland have launched a conspiracy to get rid of English.
Dr. Frank Jackson, an English professor from USC, parleyed a local program about Shakespeare and theater craft into the role of “Dr. Research” on a series of Bell Telephone Hour science programs produced in the 1950’s, with some directed by Frank Capra. This was one of them.
All featured well-known actors of the time like Eddie Albert, Sterling Holloway and Hans Conreid. I believe that Dr. Jackson and Holloway were the inspiration for Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker on the Muppet Show.
The linguistic work of Professor Jackson has continued to this day. Although I have lived in four states (plus NYC, which is different from upstate) and five foreign countries, this quiz was able to identify my home town from my peculiar pronunciations and expressions.
Thanks for posting this. Man, what a rush of long-forgotten memories! They used to show these films with that same guy to my elementary school class. That was so long ago that they would roll in a 16mm projector. Even as a kid, I always thought these were much better than most of the educational films they showed us. I later began my writing career in industrial video, and my habit of trying to inject some humor and creativity into dull subject matter probably was inspired by watching these films.
Do you know about Rifftrax? They “riff” on many feature movies, but also industrial and educational short films. They are cheap to download, and I have liked them for a long time. “Buying Food” is a classic.
Great stuff. And as a public service announcement, “Beware of Mr. Baker”, a documentary about the irascible (to put it mildly) Cream drummer is now free on You Tube. Anyone interested in 60s rock should check it out. One of my favorite Gingerisms is one about John Bonham, “He couldn’t swing a sack of shit”.
There was a new video posted on Youtube about how few old television shows survive and it’s basically hit and miss. The standard practive up until the 1960s or 1970s was to reuse the recording tapes, so whatever survived was basically hit and miss or luck. Similar to this program there are also a few episodes of Captain Video and his Video Rangers that also survive.
The BBC was notorious for not archiving anything and gone are such things as most of the first season of The Avengers, most of the early seasons of Dr Who, nearly all of the first decade or so of Top of the Pops (including the first appearance of The Beatles) and the first acting performance of Bob Dylan (in a musical.)
I gather American networks started archiving their weekly television shows before the BBC, but only 32 of the first 2,500 or so episodes of The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson are known to exist.
A mentioned this to a friend of mine and he told me that the Tonight Show tapes starting being archived when the show moved to Los Angeles.
Oops, that should say the first appearance of The Beatles on Top of the Pops.
Also, too bad if you want to watch game show episodes from that era, including the vast majority of the Art Fleming Jeopardy broadcasts. Not very many Hollywood Squares episodes, either. Basically my childhood.
The Avengers wasn’t a BBC show. It was made by ABC Weekend Television and shown on the ITV (independent Television) channel.
ABC was an organisation owned by Lord Lew Grade.
Lord Lew Grade was the British television impresario who famously saved and financed The Muppet Show in 1976 after American networks rejected the concept.
Jim Henson was said to have modeled the bald, bespectacled scientist Dr. Bunsen Honeydew visually after Lew Grade as an affectionate inside-joke tribute.
Look out a photo of Lew Grade and you’ll see the resemblance.
I did the quiz and it got my home town as well.
Took it twice…never came close.
There are 3 major cities within 50 miles of where I’m from. The quiz guessed all 3 of those. I don’t think it could get any more correct.
Same for me. It guessed my home city and the nearest other city (where my mother hailed from, and I assume she contributed to my expressions and pronunciation.).
That said, you have to have a “tell.” For example, if you call a drinking fountain a “bubbler,” you’re already tied to Wisconsin or Rhode Island. My tell was calling tennis shoes “sneakers.”
(I no longer ask stores where the “pop” is, because nobody knows what I’m talking about, but that has to be another tell. I can remember my dad’s brother talking about how much he loved “orange pop.”)
I suppose Figaro hails from a place with no specific tell, or moved around a lot.
I was born in Dallas and have spent most of my life here, but it guessed that I’m from either Baton Rouge; Jackson, Mississippi; or Birmingham, Alabama. I guess I hang out with a lot of Southerners.
Or he’s a bad Soviet mole.