Latest Twitter Threads by @ClassicShowbiz on Thread Reader App

Nov 12, 2020 • 21 tweets • 7 min read

The campaign for a national healthcare system was opposed by the Canadian business community for decades. Before the system was implemented in 1966, they cranked out all kinds of propaganda, claiming universal healthcare would lead to Soviet rule.

1965 - Among the most strenuously opposed was the notoriously anti-Semitic Social Credit Party. Public opinion was against them.

Oct 28, 2020 • 17 tweets • 4 min read

Rare episodes of the Larry King Radio Show on the Mutual Broadcasting System (THREAD)

#1 - Guest Albert Brooks

#2 - Guest David Letterman

Sep 21, 2020 • 11 tweets • 4 min read

1970 - According to FBI correspondence, the Carol Burnett Show was "contributing to the breakdown in this nation's respect for law and order..."

1973 - The Carol Burnett Show was targeted by a religious lobby called Stop Immorality on TV.

Aug 26, 2020 • 24 tweets • 5 min read

Jul 28, 2020 • 6 tweets • 4 min read

The Sexual Intensity of Young Uncle Fester

Jul 6, 2020 • 7 tweets • 3 min read

Bernard Herrmann. Nino Rota. Ennio Morricone. The only Mount Rushmore worth a dang.:

Jun 30, 2020 • 25 tweets • 6 min read

Carl Reiner (THREAD)

Jun 11, 2020 • 9 tweets • 2 min read

1957 - Many favored the stereotype purge, white and Black alike. A school teacher in Texas said, “As a matter of courtesy, the networks should change words that might offend large groups of people. It certainly would be bad taste to go ahead and offend them.” 1957 - A music teacher in Indiana said, "Whenever the lyrics of a song are offensive to a large number of people, there is no reason why they shouldn’t be changed. Some of the Negro students in my classes have told me they considered certain lyrics an affront to them.”

Jun 11, 2020 • 12 tweets • 2 min read

1956 - The slavery-era songbook of Stephen Foster was scrubbed from TV & radio due to racial stereotypes. Many white people criticized the move as censorship, called minorities"too sensitive," and assailed it as an assault on both history and "tradition."

“No dialect jokes, no working in blackface, no this and that,” complained columnist Erskine Johnson in 1958. He said there were too many “taboos under which all comedians now work.”

Jun 10, 2020 • 16 tweets • 4 min read

January 1940 - The New York Age. The opinion of Gone with the Wind as seen in the Black Press.

January 1940 - The way Gone with the Wind was covered in the Black press was the opposite of how it was covered in the white press.

May 26, 2020 • 15 tweets • 6 min read

How I wish the late 1960s version of The Steve Allen Show was available for streaming. The guest combinations were divine.

Because of the era in which it was made, the episodes are rife with references to LSD, marijuana, Black Power etc.

Here's some very rare audio of The Steve Allen Show from June 25, 1968 with guests Godfrey Cambridge, Ed Begley Sr., and Frank Zappa:

May 18, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read

Queen's - Home of the Grinders.
San Berdoo, March 2018.

May 16, 2020 • 10 tweets • 3 min read

The Early Fred Willard (THREAD)

1962

May 2, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read

1965-1995 - The Notorious Huntington Beach.

Apr 27, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read

1967 - Herman's Hermits put out an underrated album called Blaze which was a break from their previous sound. Shortly thereafter David Bowie started backing up Peter Noone on keyboard. The Hermits are better than their reputation: Herman's Hermits with pre-fame Bowie on the piano: