I might've told this tale here, so bear with me if I did. The first in our neighborhood - I believe it was in '66, give or take a year - to get a color TV were our next door neighbors. Now, in our gathering of folk on Polish Hill, only the kind of people who lived "on da nor't side," particularly the part of Waldo Boulevard close to Lake Michigan, had the price and prestige to own one. It was simply unheard of in our community with things like Pulaski Park and Polish Phil's Bar. As my dad would say, stuff like color TV's, dishwashers, automatic clothes washers (not to mention dryers), power lawn-mowers, snow-blowers and any type of air-conditioning was for "da fancy people." So when our neighbors: grandpa; grandma; son; daughter-in-law; their daughter, and their son (my best friend at that time, also a lover of spooky movies and shows) purchased one, it was the most talked-about news until the moon landing about three years later.
There was a reason for the purchase. As expected in a neighborhood comprised primarily of people of Polish, Galician, and Czech ("Bohemian") people with last names that looked like a line on an eye chart, the vast majority were of the Catholic religion. The massive, two-steepled-with-onion-dome-tops church along with its
campus of school, convent and rectory dominated half-a-block. On TV that year, it was announced that the
classic film, The Song of Bernadette, would be aired for the first time. The older, pre-boomer generation
all remembered seeing it in the theater 20-or-so-years earlier and recalled with pride that Jennifer Jones, who
played the visionary, won the Oscar. In the mid-seventies, she would be remember for dancing with Fred
Astaire before plunging over 1,000 feet to her death in The Towering Inferno. Now it was going to be on
TV in all its 20th-Century-Fox glory. Even a visit by the pope wouldn't have caused such an uproar. So, just
because of that occasion, the neighbors bought a set and invited everyone within a multi-block radius to come
over (everyone brought something - that potluck thing, you know), and the party began. The time of the airing
arrived, everyone settled down to watch this ultimate Catholic classic on color television until it started...
...and all the original viewers had forgot that it was filmed in black-and-white. Well, a good time was had by all. Being an epic, it took three hours for it to air and we kids who had to be in bed long before nine on a school
night got to stay up until ten.
That set did get good use, though. We'd be invited over to watch something in color and I even got to see - are you ready for this, MB? - Lost In Space in color in the second and third seasons. The big thing to watch
was Disney's Wonderful World of Color. One that stood out was Pablo and the Dancing Chihuahua.
After awhile, the novelty wore off. It would be another ten years before my dad capitulated even to the
demands of my mom and we became one of "da fancy people" and got our first set in 1976. The reason why
(and my mom's primary insistence)? Gone With the Wind was going to air for the first time on TV.
And this time we knew it was in color.
Gerard
Oh, Gerard, I don’t know where to start; what a wonderful remembrance of life during the halcyon days of the long-ago 1960s!
I loved your description of the town you grew up in in Wisconsin. I went to high school in Bayonne, NJ, which has a large Polish-American community. Many of my classmates at Marist High School had surnames like Januska, Pietrowski, Polakowski, Radomski and Kowalski (who claimed that the world-renowned wrestling champion, “Killer” Kowalski, was his uncle!). And, Bayonne also had Kosakowski’s Corral, possibly the only Polish-American country-western bar/tavern, east of Chicago, Illinois.
I got a big kick out of your description of people’s surnames that looked like a line on an eye chart. In fact, there was a major league catcher for the San Diego Padres named Doug Gwosdz, whose baseball nickname was, quite understandably, “Eye-Chart”!
Perhaps you’re familiar with Jean Shepherd, the late great humorist, writer, radio host and raconteur? Mr. Shepherd grew up in a steel mill town in Indiana on Lake Michigan, not far from Chicago. In one of his short stories/remembrances, he wrote about a Polish-American family and their beautiful teenaged daughter who moved right next door to his family’s house.
To say that Jean Shepherd was smitten with this lovely young girl would be an understatement; he was struck by the thunderbolt” when he first met her!
His awkward, teenaged pursuit of her is chronicled in Mr. Shepherd’s amusing and bittersweet short story, “The Star-crossed Romance of Josephine Gosnowski.”
As a young kid during the 1960s, I always enjoyed listening to Jean Shepherd on WOR-710 AM in New York City every week night at 10:00 PM. Mr. Shepherd, with his keen and acerbic wit, was an absolutely wonderful
storyteller. The late Raineypark and I would often exchange recollections of listening to Mr. Shepherd on the radio way back then. I suppose Jean Shepherd is best known for the 1983 film comedy based on his short story, “A Christmas Story,” which just had a sequel made, starring Peter Billingsley, the original “Ralphie” in the first
film.
I loved your recollection of everyone getting psyched-up to see the wonderful Jennifer Jones in “The Song of Bernadette.” What a bummer to find out that that classic film had been filmed in black and white! Heck, I think I was into my twenties, before I found out that “The Wizard of Oz” had been filmed in both color and black and white after all those years of watching that film classic on a black and white tv!
Regarding “The Song of Bernadette,” wasn’t the late, great Vincent Price terrific in it as Vital Dutour, the cynical and off-putting imperial prosecutor, who gives poor Bernadette such a hard time? Perhaps that role helped to give Mr. Price the opportunity to later become such an American horror film icon? And, wouldn’t the lovely and breathtakingly beautiful Jennifer Jones have been a wonderful Victoria Winters on “Dark Shadows”?