SUPER Old Shows

[Richelle-H]

I think I might just predate you a bit @Gerald Wilgus

You asked for old TV? What better source than an old TV watcher. All of the shows already mentioned seem very recent to me. Here is a list of the shows I grew up on in the fifties and beyond (all of those listed below premiered in the 50s).

• Gunsmoke
• Leave It to Beaver
• I love Lucy
• Father Knows Best
• Bonanza
• Make Room for Daddy
• The Honeymooners
• Love That Bob
• Ozzie and Harriet
• Our Miss Brooks
• Dobie Gillis
• The Real McCoys
• I Married Joan
• The Donna Reed Show
• Dennis the Menace
• Mister Peepers
• Space Patrol
• Superman
• Dragnet
• The Rifleman
• Have Gun Will Travel
• The Last of the Mohicans
• Cheyenne
• Wagon Train
• Perry Mason
• Bat Masterson
• Sky King
• Maverick
• Wyatt Earp
• Naked City
• The Soupy Sales Show
• One Step Beyond
• Mr. & Mrs. North
• Peter Gunn
• The Rebel
• The Roy Rogers Show

I believe I have mentioned elsewhere on the forums that I have been a TV junky since the very early 50s. All the shows listed above I watched religiously as I was growing up. Some of them lasted decades while others lasted for only a few years or so.

Apologies for going off like this, but I have trouble containing my enthusiasm for topics such as this one. When one of my buttons is pushed, I have a great deal of trouble restraining myself (as you can see from all of the above).

THAT IS ALL! Except that you should feel relieved that I limited myself to shows that started in the fifties.

 

[Darkkin]

Mister Ed
My Three Sons
Get Smart
Mysterious Cities of Gold
Fraggle Rock
The Muppets
Muppet Babies
Gummie Bears
David the Gnome
Grimms' Fairytale Classics
Looney Tunes
Tom and Jerry
Inspector Gadget
Jeopardy (Life long fan)
Rocky and Bullwinkle (loved Sherman and Mr. Peabody)
Dinosaurs
Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers
My Little Pony (original series)
Lassie
The Shirt Tales
Smurfs
Anything Hanna Barbera
Scooby-Doo
The Addams Family
The Munsters
F-Troop
Murder She Wrote
Remington Steel

(Once I got a little older, I didn't watch much in terms of fictional television. I would always have history, nature, science, cooking, or true crime on...)

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

Mister Ed
My Three Sons
Get Smart
Mysterious Cities of Gold
Fraggle Rock
The Muppets
Muppet Babies
Gummie Bears
David the Gnome
Grimms' Fairytale Classics
Looney Tunes
Tom and Jerry
Inspector Gadget
Jeopardy (Life long fan)
Rocky and Bullwinkle (loved Sherman and Mr. Peabody)
Dinosaurs
Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers
My Little Pony (original series)
Lassie
The Shirt Tales
Smurfs
Anything Hanna Barbera
Scooby-Doo
The Addams Family
The Munsters
F-Troop
Murder She Wrote
Remington Steel

(Once I got a little older, I didn't watch much in terms of fictional television. I would always have history, nature, science, cooking, or true crime on...)

For an old science show there was always Meet Mr. Wizard.

 

[Darkkin]

For an old science show there was always Meet Mr. Wizard.

I never missed an episode. It is available to stream on Amazon. I also remember the original Star Trek and the animated series, too.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

I think I might just predate you a bit @Gerontius

You asked for old TV? What better source than an old TV watcher. All of the shows already mentioned seem very recent to me. Here is a list of the shows I grew up on in the fifties and beyond (all of those listed below premiered in the 50s).

• Gunsmoke
• Leave It to Beaver
• I love Lucy
• Father Knows Best
• Bonanza
• Make Room for Daddy
• The Honeymooners
• Love That Bob
• Ozzie and Harriet
• Our Miss Brooks
• Dobie Gillis
• The Real McCoys
• I Married Joan
• The Donna Reed Show
• Dennis the Menace
• Mister Peepers
• Space Patrol
• Superman
• Dragnet
• The Rifleman
• Have Gun Will Travel
• The Last of the Mohicans
• Cheyenne
• Wagon Train
• Perry Mason
• Bat Masterson
• Sky King
• Maverick
• Wyatt Earp
• Naked City
• The Soupy Sales Show
• One Step Beyond
• Mr. & Mrs. North
• Peter Gunn
• The Rebel
• The Roy Rogers Show

I believe I have mentioned elsewhere on the forums that I have been a TV junky since the very early 50s. All the shows listed above I watched religiously as I was growing up. Some of them lasted decades while others lasted for only a few years or so.

Apologies for going off like this, but I have trouble containing my enthusiasm for topics such as this one. When one of my buttons is pushed, I have a great deal of trouble restraining myself (as you can see from all of the above).

THAT IS ALL! Except that you should feel relieved that I limited myself to shows that started in the fifties.

Who could ever forget Happy Trails to You? Once in the Arches campground over dinner friends and us were listening to Cowboy Songs by M M Murphy. The album ended with Happy Trails to You and my spouse and I danced around the campsite to it. What a loving memory!

 

[Richelle-H]

Who could ever forget Happy Trails to You?

I certainly cannot. I can even now sing the entire song from memory, that and a dozen other shows from long ago. Oh, and another show popped into my memory when correcting my mistaken user reference in my previous post.

How about Circus Boy with a very young Mickey Dolenz who was one of the Monkey's much later in his career (something of an odd circus coincidence that; playing a young water boy to a baby elephant in a traveling show and then later being cast as a drumming and singing Monkey). It only ran two seasons as I recall but it was another show that is burned into my memory.

 

[LadyS]

I'm a Xennial but grew up watching many of the shows listed above.. my favorites were:

I Love Lucy (all time favorite show)
Donna Read
Mister Ed
Three Stooges
Laurel and Hardy
Dick Van Dyke
Green Acres (great now I have the tune stuck in my head)
Get Smart
Dragnet
Bewitched
Jetsons and Flintstones
Lassie
The Munsters
Johnny Carson
...definitely more cuz I watched way too much TV back then lol

 

[Darkkin]

Green Acres where they use flapjacks as shingles...(lol)

 

[Princess Viola]

I Love Lucy will literally always hold up, despite the show turning 72 years old this year. I'm not going to say I'm a dedicated Lucy superfan or whatever, but hey if I'm just trying to find something to watch and see that it's on? I'll probably watch it.

What I am a superfan of, however, is Doctor Who. Which is still airing to this day, of course, but premiered all the way back in 1963. Favorite era of Doctor Who is Patrick Troughton's run as the Second Doctor from 1966 to 1969. Unfortunately, it's kind of hard to appreciate his era nowadays because of the 21 stories that were part of his era, only seven of them survive complete in the BBC's archives (and five of those stories are from season 6, his last season; two are from season 5, and no complete stories exist from season 4), although if you count for stories that had their missing episodes remade with animation, his era has 17 stories that you can watch.

Twilight Zone is really good too. I don't mind the later remakes (shout out to the episode from the 80s version where a character has died and finds out they're going to Hell but can't figure out why and thinks that it surely couldn't be just because he's gay, pretty powerful message for an episode from the mid-80s) but the original version with Rod Serling will always be the best.

I actually grew up watching a lot of reruns of older shows from the 50s to the 80s because I watched a lot of TV Land as a kid and this was back when Cartoon Network still regularly aired stuff like Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and other Hanna-Barbara cartoons. (Also Boomerang was my jam, I didn't get it on the basic cable I had at home, but I'd watch it a ton when I was at my mom's during the summer). I'd definitely say that while I enjoyed stuff like The Andy Griffith Show, Leave it to Beaver, All in the Family (probably shouldn't have been watching that as a kid tbh), Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, etc., the cartoons I watched growing up were definitely my faves.

Of course, can't forget things like Looney Tunes, Merry Melodies, Popeye, The Three Stooges and various other theatrical cartoons and shorts that later got second wind in television syndication. I try to watch MeTV's weekday and Saturday morning cartoons as often as I can. Crazy how in 2023, we got Looney Tunes airing in broadcast syndication again and not just on cable or streaming.

 

[Darkkin]

Love the Doctor and Twilight Zone (wasn't often allowed to watch that one because it freaked me out. Night of the Living Doll...forget Chucky.)

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

@Richelle-H , here's to you and all of my friends here. My favorite version.

 

[Judge]

I think I might just predate you a bit @Gerald Wilgus

You asked for old TV? What better source than an old TV watcher. All of the shows already mentioned seem very recent to me. Here is a list of the shows I grew up on in the fifties and beyond (all of those listed below premiered in the 50s).

• Gunsmoke
• Leave It to Beaver
• I love Lucy
• Father Knows Best
• Bonanza
• Make Room for Daddy
• The Honeymooners
• Love That Bob
• Ozzie and Harriet
• Our Miss Brooks
• Dobie Gillis
• The Real McCoys
• I Married Joan
• The Donna Reed Show
• Dennis the Menace
• Mister Peepers
• Space Patrol
• Superman
• Dragnet
• The Rifleman
• Have Gun Will Travel
• The Last of the Mohicans
• Cheyenne
• Wagon Train
• Perry Mason
• Bat Masterson
• Sky King
• Maverick
• Wyatt Earp
• Naked City
• The Soupy Sales Show
• One Step Beyond
• Mr. & Mrs. North
• Peter Gunn
• The Rebel
• The Roy Rogers Show

I believe I have mentioned elsewhere on the forums that I have been a TV junky since the very early 50s. All the shows listed above I watched religiously as I was growing up. Some of them lasted decades while others lasted for only a few years or so.

Apologies for going off like this, but I have trouble containing my enthusiasm for topics such as this one. When one of my buttons is pushed, I have a great deal of trouble restraining myself (as you can see from all of the above).

THAT IS ALL! Except that you should feel relieved that I limited myself to shows that started in the fifties.

You forgot "Fury". Don't you like horses? Bob Cummings...that was quite a car he had.

 

[SusanLR]

I watched a lot of those mentioned @Richelle-H
I wasn't born until late 50's but I have a memory that goes back to a baby.
Dad was always watching Westerns.
Gunsmoke was a regular.
The Rifleman
The Lone Ranger
Roy Rogers Show
Maverick
Bonanza
And other types mixed like Sky King
Cannon
Dragnet
Hawaii Five O
Twilight Zone
Alfred Hitchcock
The Fugitive
The Invaders
Time Tunnel
And of course, falling in love with Star Trek original at age 9


I loved watching a lot of cartoons and musical variety shows as a kid.
Sing a-long with Mitch. (follow that bouncing ball.)
Jimmy Dean
Ed Sullivan
He-Haw (later)

There were kid shows like
Captain Kangeroo
Sherry Louis and Lambchops
Ladmo and Wallace
Too many!

Captain Kangeroo with Mr. Moose, Bunny, Mr. Green Jeans and Bear.
Simple, learning for kids. Loved it. Good memories.

 

[Richelle-H]

Thank you for the song rendition @Gerald Wilgus. Dale Evans wrote that as their theme song. Both Roy and Dale were very big in my early youth. I remember my brother having a complete cowboy outfit complete with hat and a set of Roy Rogers cap pistols. There were even Roy and Dale lunch boxes. Oh, and on the western front their was also Hopalong Cassidy with a TV show and a child's radio with Hoppy rearing on his horse as the radio dial.

I refrained from variety shows, but those were on a great deal as I was growing up. The one that sticks with me the most, beyond those already mentioned, was Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris. Of course, there was also the Milton Berle Show (Mr. Television, Uncle Miltie, or Mr. Tuesday night for the day of the week the show aired). Even at a very young age, both those shows impressed themselves upon my memory plane.

You forgot "Fury". Don't you like horses?

Of course I do, the show just slipped my mind.

I left out a large number of shows that, while they may have been seen in other venues, were mostly spawned on the west coast. Children's programs such as Kukla, Fran, and Ollie; The Buster Brown Show (with Froggy the Gremlin; a character with the most benign but in hindsight the most salacious summoning of a hand puppet ever, immediately followed by an equally dubious greeting). The Bob Clampett puppet shows Time for Beany and Thunderbolt the Wonder Colt (a Superman Spoof featuring a lightning-bolt hurling horse).

The most unusual afternoon program that I remember was on KTLA in Los Angeles. It featured an organist playing selections for 15 minutes, Monday through Friday at around 5 PM as I recall. Billed as Korla Pandit, he was actually not from India but an African-American born in Missouri, a fact that was not revealed until after his death in 1998. Amazing that I recall the program as I was between the age of 4 and 5 in 1951 when I had to have heard and seen him, his organ, and the jeweled turban he always wore.

These are vivid memories from my media infused life, and all of this remembered detail underscores my Asperger's long before I ever received a diagnosis.

 

[Misery]

I've watched the entirety of I Love Lucy like 10 times over. As a kid, it was my favorite show.

Watched a lot of shows from that era, despite that they were all well before my time (I was born in '81). But good ol' Nick at Nite was always playing these older shows every night and I always watched something or other just before bed, so... yeah. Exposed to a lot of these.

Other favorites include:

The Munsters
Bewitched
Get Smart
The Three Stooges
Flash Gordon
Twilight Zone
Outer Limits

Well there's tons of others too, but I'm not good at remembering things in list form, so yeah.

 

[Bolletje]

I enjoy Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969/1974) a lot.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

I absolutely adore the first season of The Beverly Hillbillies. Oh my goodness I can relate to the Clampetts!!

 

[Forest Cat]

One of the big mysteries in the universe is how they could stop making this show after only 6 episodes. It's hilarious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_Squad!

 

[Judge]

I remember my brother having a complete cowboy outfit complete with hat and a set of Roy Rogers cap pistols.

Me too. Kid's clothing- both a red and green shirt with all kinds of fancy embroidery with Roy Rogers' name. I think I pretty much wore those shirts out at the age of six....lol.

Happy trails to you....

 

[Judge]

I must say, I'd delighted in how the industry has caught onto just how popular old television shows really are, now being broadcast through streaming media. Particularly those offered at no cost, who are doing quite well on advertising revenue compared to subscription services.

Still odd to realize how the free services seem to jointly own the subscription ones, as well as their cable television and network counterparts. But it also means they are all highly capitalized.