10 Jaw Dropping Moments From Vintage Television

with hundreds of shows being produced a year on hulu netflix and amazon alone other television can seem like it can't possibly be worth checking out visually it's almost certain to look stayed beyond being grainy and even black-and-white further the reference points for the comedy will likely be so dated as to be incomprehensible the plots of all the shows will have long been ripped off to death or spoiled by the time you can see them these days and surely the sense is removed with surgical precision everything halfway interesting but oh no entertainers are just as much desire to break out of creative molds decades ago as they do now censors could miss what today would be considered the most jaw-dropping content you could imagine also back then when scrubs happens they could put a whole season's worth of blooper reels to shame all that and more we're looking at in the video today thanks to the dedicated efforts of antiquarians who scoured through hours of television for its hidden novelties number 10 William Shatner's Twilight Zone slur everyone he knows about Rod Serling's 1959 to 1964 sci-fi fantasy classic remembers William Shatner's struggle with his sanity and against a gremlin on the wing of a plane in nightmare at 20,000 feet in the final season turns out that two seasons earlier he starred as Don Carter in a much less remembered but also extremely good episode called nick of time from the third season probably because in that episode ended battle with little novelty fortune teller with uncannily accurate answers in a diner meaning it was less relatable than an embodiment of the commonplace fear of flying in both episodes Shatner is accompanied by a beleaguered wife who doubts his sanity in the middle of the episode after Don Carter has already had six straight fortunes confirmed by the toy in the diner his obsession is clearly worrying her while they're crossing the street after leaving the diner Shatner delivers the shocking line oh stop treating me like a [ __ ] child despite what you might think [ __ ] was considered an insult at the time according to unlocking the door to television classics by Martin Graham's jr. Serling's office received a letter from a mother of a child with Down syndrome expressing her discomfort with its use in the show Serling wrote a letter of apology and told his staff that they should never use the word in such a context again number nine William F Buckley you call gore vidal's learn as he threatens to punch him in 1968 during the Democratic National Convention ABC aired numerous debates between National Review founder William F Buckley and incendiary authored gore fat all during a debate about whether allegations over waving Vietcong flags just to find police using tear gas and beatings Vidale took the chance to call Buckley a crypto Nazi for favoring using those methods on protesters but be replied now listen you queer stop calling me a crypto Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddamn face it became enough of a scandal but a year later Buckley called back to it on firing line while debating Noam Chomsky Buckley came to regretted writing several letters to Vidal questioning how he could have lost control like that indeed in 2017 two Academy Award winners made a documentary best of enemies that focused in large part on how that loss of poise changed the tone for televised American debates for the coming decades number eight Jackie Gleason's half-hour apology now here's something a little lighter in tone if you think that today the media spends too much time apologizing for the slightest trespasses you should see what the creator and star of The Honeymooners got up to in the early 60s admittedly he was much more entertaining about it than most are today on January the 20th 1961 the day the Kennedy was inaugurated Jackie Gleason played host to a program called you're in the picture where the contestants stuck their heads through pictures such as a picture where there was an image with a body of a woman in a yellow polka dot bikini it's a common photo gag of vacation spots which might have been part of why the show got such a tepid reaction the next week with just two commercial breaks he spends an hour of air time dissecting the terrible pilot calling it the biggest bomb in entertainment history and explaining the creative process behind it this half-hour made such an impact that Johnny Carson brought it up on the Today Show when he interviewed Gleason in 1985 though since Carson had been one of the contestants on you're in the picture he probably only felt comfortable bringing it up because it just gotten around to forgiving Gleason for it number 7 long Cheney as Frankenstein doesn't even try to break chairs in 1952 lon Cheney best known for playing the titular role in the Phantom of the Opera in 1925 was hired to play Frankenstein's monster for a 1952 broadcast of tales of tomorrow through some confusion that either stems from Chaney being confused after how long it took to apply his makeup or through drunkenness he thought much of the performance was a rehearsal instead of the live broadcast this led to the hilarious sight of Chaney picking up chains to smash them in a momentous fury only to gently set them down again since at one point he was supposed to be leaving the set as he breaks a chair he turns almost straight into the camera and in his regular barely audible voice says I'm saving the chair for the remainder of the program Chaney gave a perfectly competent and very physical performance which put to rest the claims that had been drunk so it was hard for audiences to forget to the Frankenstein monsters bewildering delicacy with furniture number 6 Dorothy Gray's cold cream campaign you get some idea of how prevailing the fear of nuclear attack was in America by the very fact that Duck and Cover as a means of attempting to survive an atomic strike was taught in elementary school but then this commercial comes along and shows just how ambivalence feelings were at the time about radiation in general the Dorothy gray cosmetics company had been founded in 1960 and so it had been around 38 years and entered the cultural consciousness by the time it launched what would today be considered a truly shocking ad campaign especially for a relatively benign skin treatments to demonstrate the effectiveness of their cold cream in commercials that said in 1954 they would spread radioactive dirt on the faces of their models use a Geiger counter then apply cold cream and use the Geiger counter again to demonstrate how effectively it removed the dangerous substance all of which the narrator explained very cheerfully considering that the company lasted until it was bought out in 2008 it seems a safe bet that the models didn't sue them for all they were worth for reckless endangerment number 5 Andy Griffith explains gunless law enforcement among right-wing pundits this sitcom that ran from 1960 to 1968 is particularly treasured for presenting a wholesome portrait of small-town values even 50 years after it ended the town of Mount areas kept afloat by tourism because it was Andy Griffith's real hometown and preserved numerous locations that inspired stories set in the fictional town of Mayberry this makes a monologue that sheriff Andy Taylor gives particularly surprising in the 1965 episode TV or not TV and the is asked why he doesn't carry a gun he own says when a man carries a gun all the time the respect he thinks he's getting my might really be fear so I don't carry a gun because I don't want the people of Mayberry to fear a gun I'd rather they would respect me it is at least a critique of the notion that guns are necessary to keep the peace and that the militarization of the police is wrong also this was deep in the civil rights movement where it might have been a more inflammatory statement than it seems today it is true that his deputy Barney Fife had a gun but he was often shown as being a combination of buffoonish and horribly dangerous with it which seems like only a slightly subtle a critique of gun enthusiasts than griffiths words number four I Claudius brings graphic violence and nudity to public television this 1976 twelve part adaptation of Robert Graves is epic story of the man who went from palace clown to Emperor is still one of the most acclaimed BBC productions of all time the obvious low budget and technical limitations numerous cast members said early on that they didn't expect the show to work didn't prevent audiences from appreciating the stellar performances and the riveting story but it has a potentially much greater obstacle to mainstream appreciation especially as far as America was concerned a frank attitude towards graphic sex and violence as could be expected of any show dealing with palace intrigue during the height of the Roman Empire when the public broadcasting station agreed to Ares in 1977 the political climate provided much that should have given them pause ABC had recently experienced a concerted boycott effort for the comedy series soap which had mentions the controversial topic of trans Vestas 'im it had cost the network considerable advertisers by the time the show would run its course a publicly owned network was even more vulnerable to such pressures and yet with the headings toplessness and other provocative material the series ran its course on the 270 local PBS affiliates number three poor devil Sammy Davis jr. is a demon you i've heard that this member of the Rat Pack joins the Church of Satan for a few years beginning in 1968 apparently it wasn't just fine about people knowing that wanted to spread the word because in 1972 we managed to sell NBC on a pilot where he would play a demon who had to go convincing people to sell their soul to Satan his primary target is played like Jack Klugman as surprising as it is that such a show ever got a green light in the 1970s and made it to air it's probably not so surprising that it never made it to series probably didn't help that instead of airing it more sensibly on Halloween it premiered on Valentine's Day number two queen for a day the following program would sound like something out of some especially grim science-fiction dystopia except that as Stephanie buck wrote for time line it was a real program that ruled the airwaves from 1956 to 1964 it was a game show on NBC Universal hosted by television bit player Jack Bailey although not so much a game in the Jeopardy sense and more in the Hunger Games sense the idea was that people would tell the audience about their financial woes and their garner enough sympathy get enough ballots and win so the show's sponsors would hopefully lift them out of poverty these were not conventionally fabulous prizes though they had things like artificial legs lessons for a beauty school or a year's supply of baby food one woman of the several who'd have to fly out on their own expense would be given a prize per episode even at the time it was well known how exploitative this was and this show in its knockoffs became known as misery shows or sob shows number one Twilight zones Pro child marriage episode in the third season episode the fugitive the story is about a kid named Jenny with leg races and her aged friend old Ben Jenny lives with her aunt in a small apartment one day Ben and Jenny play a ball game with some friends and two agents show up they use some kind of sci-fi magic device to put Jenny in a coma then then heal Sarah and heals her legs which involves removing her leg braces and socks and then it's revealed when the agents show up that he's actually a runaway King and the two agents are there to bring him back to his planet this will of course mean that he has to abandon Jenny after the agents give them a moment alone to say goodbye they come back and see the Bennis turned himself into Jenny meaning that they have to bring both of them back to the planet Serling ven shows up to do the outro while sitting on Jenny's bed and tells us that Jenny will become an honest-to-goodness Queen and shows us a photo of what been supposedly looks like and Ben's actually a handsome young man it's literally a happy ending where a girl is taken from her home and marries the much older man who's known her since she was maybe eight years old you might think that because this is back in 1962 it might just be a product of a more innocent time but considering that the issue of age of consent had been a controversy even back in the late 19th century and was still a controversial topic in 1939 when the exploitation film child-bride was released the episode was clearly made at a time when such poor trails would have at least been decades out of fashion it's bewildering how senses producers and network executives all could have failed to see what a creatively blinkered episode this really was so I hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below and don't forget to subscribe for brand new videos just like this every day of the week also if you like the stuff you might like our other channel by graphics link to that on the screen now and as always thank you for watching

Channel: TopTenz

Views: 946,146

Keywords: top 10, toptenz, top10, top ten, top 10 list, William Shatner’s Twilight Zone, William F. Buckley, Jackie Gleason’s Half-Hour Apology, Lon Chaney as Frankenstein, Dorothy Gray’s Cold Cream Campaign, Andy Griffith, Claudius Brings Graphic Violence, Poor Devil, Sammy Davis Jr, Queen for a Day, Twilight Zone’s Pro-Child Marriage, Jaw Dropping Moments, Moments From Vintage Television

Id: TDVxEP0j8zU

Length: 11min 44sec (704 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 14 2018