Understanding the GENERATION GAP Of Entertainment Choices

Understanding the GENERATION GAP Of Entertainment Choices

by Bill Knell

The world of entertainment has never been a domesticated animal, or a recently discovered feral one that was eventually trained. Showman P.T. Barnum used animals and people with unusual features in his performances and called the industry he worked in “The SHOW Business” trying to never lose sight of the fact that it existed to make money like any other investment. One could argue that his grandiose spending on certain acts or attractions often threw caution to the wind. However, it always repaid many times over and brought his regular customers and new ones the benefit of his ability to spot what people wanted and could not get elsewhere.

Growing up in the 1960s-70s allowed me to see and experience the Generation Gap between me and my parents first hand as it applied to politics and popular culture. From my standpoint it was easier for me to understand the world of my parents and grandparents choices then it was for them to understand mine. That was especially true when it came to movies and music. In those days before home video my mom could hardly wait for films like Bambi, Gone With The Wind and Old Yeller to make their way back into theaters so she could drag me to see them. Most had sad endings that left me feeling down. I wanted to see King Kong vs Godzilla, Children Of The Damned and Psycho.

I wrote an essay about a favorite film I saw for an elementary school assignment I had. It got me sent to the school psychologist. My older cousin had sneaked us in to see “Goldfinger” at the local theater and I wrote about it. He was dating the girl who sold the movie theater tickets. I was a huge fan of Ian Fleming and his 007 novels. With characters like Pussy Galore, they were not considered age appropriate for me even though there was no nudity or foul language. Who cared anyway? The stories were excellent and the movies well made. I was born to older parents and used to a wider selection of books, films and music than most kids. Our house was filled with records and books. My dad's hidden drawer full of Playboy mags also made good reading for a young boy in severe need of sexual fulfillment and education.

Bear in mind that my younger days were a confusing time when kids books like Dr Doolittle were sometimes considered racist. In other cases there were complaints about blue humor and off-color jokes that some comedians used to stand out. These included profanity, sexual situations, bashing our political system and so on. Some comedians like Red Foxx, Lenny Bruce, Moms Mabley and Richard Pryor were constantly “working blue” when they could because despite some complaints, it was what many audiences wanted. It was a step up for them from the same old one liners offered by Henny Youngman. Some comedians, like Rodney Dangerfield, managed to insert some blue material into his act so well that he got away with being on The Tonight Show and other network programming without getting banned. Johnny Carson (of The Tonight Show) had Rodney on frequently and he was always a popular guest.

I learned to read early and was already breezing through the local library's collections, the set of encyclopedias we had, our magazines and the TV Guide. I enjoyed TV, records and movies as much as books. I even had a bunch of dramatized books on records. Besides my own musical choices, I had access to old recordings owned by family members or classics loaned out by the library. National and syndicated broadcasters were showing new, made-for-TV movies and TV series in those days much as they do today. The difference was that those broadcasts seemed to suddenly inject more realistic situations into highly optimistic and censored storylines and music. Today it sounds silly that African - Americans were often denied roles because of segregation and outdated beliefs. In other instances words like “pregnant” could not be spoken on TV until after 1968.

I really enjoyed “Goldfinger”. When I mentioned that to the Psych he was unimpressed, so I told him about some other shows and films I liked. Steven Spielberg directed the stories which made up the original pilot episode for Rod Serling's new series “Night Gallery” which aired in November of 1969. Even though Spielberg was new to the game in those days, the pilot was an immediate success and included three short stories by Rod Serling who personally introduced each segment the same way he introduced every episode on his successful "Twilight Zone” series. Like Spielberg, Serling was an amazing storyteller who wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film “Planet Of The Apes” and other notable projects.

Spielberg’s work on the pilot episode of

“Night Gallery” included three stories: “The Cemetery” which starred Roddy McDowell as a greedy man who murders his wealthy uncle for his money. “Eyes” was about a wealthy blind woman played by Joan Crawford who found an unethical way to get her eyesight back, only to face a shocking turn of events. “The Escape Route" starred Richard Kiley as a Nazi war criminal hiding in South America. Confronted by his past he becomes hypnotized by an idyllic painting in a local museum and finds a surreal way to enter its world.

Dan Curtis had always been obsessed with vampire stories. He brought us a daytime drama called “Dark Shadows” (1966-1969) which I watched every day after school. It was about a vampire from the past trying to find his long lost love and survive in modern times. Two movies were later made with the same characters. Curtis also gave us a TV movie called The Night Stalker (1974). It was so successful that Curtis and the studio that produced it later wished they had released it as a theater film first. That was followed up by another film called The Night Strangler (1974). Those led to a prime time TV series called “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” (1974) about a reporter (Darren McGavin) who covered stories about the unexplained.

I tended to be more interested in my parent's comedic entertainment choices than they were in mine. I enjoyed Abbot and Costello, The Three Stooges and so on. They were unmoved by mine like Laugh Inn, Richard Pryor and George Carlin. All were equally funny in their own ways and all had their own demons and shortcomings. Of course I wasn't exactly a “by the book” guy when it came to comedy and music. I could tolerate various musical performers from their younger days, even Dixieland performers like Pete Fountain and his clarinet, and excluded many Acid Rock bands from mine like Jimmy Hendrix that were more about getting high and turning on their fans then entertaining people. In the end it's all about being open to all worlds of information and entertainment regardless of what others think.

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