A Boy and His Robot

The movie poster--which has pretty
much nothing to do with the movie--
and its stars demonstrating a toy. Looks
a little like the one I got for Christmas--
even though I asked for Robby.

Robby the Robot, from
The Invisible Boy. Next
to maybe Gort in The Day
the Earth Stood Still, he
was the coolest looking robot of
the 50s, and when you add
in his voice and dry sense of humor
in Forbidden Planet, he was the best.

Two Robot Movies of the 50s

Among the 1950s sci-fi movies featuring robots, two had protagonists to match the expected audience for the movie: boys. Tobor the Great was released in 1954 by Republic Pictures. I don't remember seeing it. I do remember seeing The Invisible Boy, released in 1957 by MGM. I saw them both recently--the DVD of Tobor showed up at one of the video stores, with its typically 1950s lurid cover of a woman being carried by the robot/monster/space creature. In this case, as in others, nothing remotely like that happens in the film. It reminded me that I had The Invisible Boy on tape, so I watched that as well.

They had roughly the same plot: a robot, meant for good purposes, is controlled to do evil for awhile, but returns to the good through its friendship with a pre-teen boy. Both also feature a family, in which the principal male is an eminent scientist.

In Tobor the Great, a young scientist is upset over the dangers that potential astronauts must face in space, and even in training tests. Because he makes waves about it and is fired, he meets an older scientist who agrees with him, and has a solution. He brings the young scientist to his remote and electronically guarded home, to meet his daughter (recently widowed--her husband killed in the war in Korea), his inquisitive grandson, and his invention--a robot, designed to pilot a spacecraft so that dangers to humans will be known before men themselves go into space.

The space program stuff is futuristic for 1954, but the villain is very much of the time: foreign spies (Russians obviously, though I'm not sure they're named as such), one of whom poses as a reporter when Tobor is introduced to the press. The sci-fi wrinkle here is that Tobor can be controlled telepathically. The boy and the robot bond, so when bad guys eventually kidnap the scientist, the robot responds to the boy's calls for help.

"Tobor" is the name of television's first famous robot, in the Captain Video series. I don't think this is the same one, but it could be. In any case, it was meant to be a toy from the beginning--the publicity includes shots of the toy robot along with the life-size one (although they don't look very much alike.)

This movie has a lot of charm, due a good deal to Billy Chapin (brother of Lauren Chapin, Princess on Father Knows Best) as the boy, and director Lee Sholem. The family is a bit wooden but nice, and I really enjoyed seeing the early 1950s cars. When I watched it, it struck me that what Tobor did--stopping a car, disarming bad guys, rescuing humans and enforcing justice, etc.--was a lot like what Superman did in the early 50s TV show. This may say something about how we see both robots and Superman, or it may have something to do with the fact that director Lee Sholem directed a lot of Superman episodes the year before. (He also directed the very first George Reeves Superman--the movie Superman and the Mole Men.)

The robot in The Invisible Boy is not only called Robby, as in Forbidden Planet (1956), this time it is the same robot--MGM wanted it in another film. Robby was the star of robots then, but that didn't seem to be enough for this movie. There is a sense that either the writers had to find a way to use him in an existing story, or they didn't trust that the robot would interest the audience enough to carry the film, because they also included a megalomaniac super-computer (with the neat ability to hypnotise people with its banks of flashing lights) and some re-tread effects from The Invisible Man as the boy does become invisible for awhile.

I don't know what Robby saw in this kid, because he is whiny, selfish, brainless and thoroughly unappealing. His parents aren't much better, especially his 1950s alpha dad, the computer scientist. Anyway, the computer also takes control of Robby to further his plans for world domination. Subversives are also involved in this one--it's still the 50s. Also a space ship, slightly more plausible in 1957, the year of Sputnik.

The Invisible Boy tries to do too much, and too much of the story is too hard to swallow, but in ideas it may be a bit more adventurous. Still, I liked Tobor the Great a lot more. Both films do deal with the fear of a robot's power, but also see it as capable of great good, and perhaps even of some kind of relationship with humans. There is a sense in The Invisible Boy, as there would be in other TV and movies, of the robot as a kind of pet. Do robots relate to boys because they're both curious, smart but lacking in social skills and experience, and innocent?

Robots from Robby (in Forbidden Planet at least) to the android Data seem to show that behavior based on intelligence, logic and guiding principle turns out to be behavior that is fair, compassionate and courageous.

Classic Stuff

Spearmint leaves--another classic
movie candy from the 1950s.

R.I.P. in 2007: 60s Stars

Two classic film directors influential in the 60s died on the same day in 2007: Michelangelo Antonioni (Blow up, Zabriskie Point) and Ingmar Bergman (Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Through A Glass Darkly, etc.)
Laszlo Kovacs was an esteemed and influential cinematographer, beginning with the 60s classics Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, and 70s classics Paper Moon and Shampoo.
Denny Doherty was the closest that the Mamas and Papas had to a lead singer. With just a few albums in a few years, this was one of the most important groups of the 60s, here headlining the Monterry Pop Festival, the first of the great 60s music events, organized by Papa John Phillips.

On the right in this photo is Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., already a noted political historian when he became an advisor to President John Kennedy, and promoted 60s liberalism as the "politics of hope." His sad duty later was to write indispensable chronicles of JFK and Robert Kennedy, after their assassinations. His book on RFK in particular is well worth reading today.

R.I.P. 2007: 50s-70s TV Stars

Merv Griffin's talk show in the 60s hosted many of the boomer era
political figures, movie stars, writers and entertainers--even if Merv was a whole different era in himself.




Tom Snyder's Tomorrow show, late night on NBC, was an oasis of inquisitiveness in the 70s. He was opinionated, provocative and unpredictable, sometimes infuriating, and sometimes brilliant.
"Watch Mr. Wizard" with Don Herbert demonstrating science to kids on TV beginning in the 50s. Remember his barely disguised commercials
for breakfast cereals as lessons in nutrition? "Fruit, cereal, milk, bread & butter?" Later generations saw him again, most recently on Nickelodeon.

R.I.P. in 2007: 50s TV Stars

Jane Wyman was a well regarded film actress who was among the first to make the transition to television drama. She appeared in various 50s anthologies such as General Electric Theatre, Lux Playhouse and Westinghouse Playhouse. She was a host on The Bell Telephone Hour before hosting her own anthology series, Jane Wyman Presents the Fireside Theatre. It allowed her to play a variety of roles. Later she did guest parts until landing the regular role of matriarch Angela Channing in a popular prime time soap of the 80s, Falcon Crest.
In a long and distinguished career, Kitty Carlisle Hart sang and acted on the stage and on film, then became a socially prominent advocate for the arts in New York. Though she sang in operas and operettas, boomers may remember her in Night at the Opera, starring the Marx Brothers. But she became most familiar as a regular panelist on the 50s quiz show, "To Tell the Truth," as well as a guest on other popular quiz shows of the day.
Tom Poston is also in that photo with Kitty Carlisle as a quiz show regular, though he was better known in the 50s for the expression in this photo--as one of the regulars on the Steve Allen Sunday show, especially the "Man in the Street" routine, for which he won an Emmy. In the 70s he was a recurring character on the Bob Newhart Show. He won several more Emmys there--and married Bob's "wife," Suzanne Pleshette. He had a recurring role on Mork & Mindy and did TV and movie guest parts until his death in 2007 at the age of 85.

Alice in Disneyland

Alice in Disneyland

For Boomers, Alice in Wonderland became associated with Christmas through the good offices of Walt Disney. Even before his animated movie version was completed, he showed a scene from it as part of his Christmas television special in 1950, co-hosted by the young Kathyrn Beaumont, who provided Alice's voice in the film. When his Disneyland show became a weekly series, he featured an hour version of the movie as his Christmas shows in 1954 and again in 1964.

All this is revealed on the two disk DVD of the Disney movie, still the best known dramatization of Alice. Moreover, the digitized DVD version reveals its breathtaking use of color, and of course the kind of sumptuous and witty animation that just isn't done anymore. (The people who made Yellow Submarine must have watched it many times.)

Since then, Alice's adventures have been dramatized many times in the movies and on TV. The usual practice was to fill the numerous but relatively small roles with the name actors and comics of the day. A surprising number of these Alices are available on DVD. For instance:

Jonathan Miller did a 1966 television version with Peter Sellers, John Gielgud and music by Ravi Shankar. Ralph Richardson and Michael Crawford were in a 1972 film, with Alice played by the future "Bond girl," Fiona Fullerton.

There was a 1985 version, scripted by Paul Zindel and with music by Steve Allen, that featured Donald O'Connor, Martha Raye, Telly Savalas, Shelley Winters, Sid Caesar and Ringo Starr. Kate Burton was a charming Alice in her first credited role in 1983, co-starring with her father, Richard Burton, as well as Nathan Lane and Maureen Stapleton.

And a 1999 TV movie featured Martin Short, Robbie Coltrane, Ben Kingsley, Christopher Lloyd and Miranda Richardson with Jim Henson's puppets.

By now, Alice is seen on stage (in ballets, musicals and stage plays) around the country at Christmastime. But for my money, that Disney DVD is still the best.

Classic Stuff

I don't remember liking Sour
Apple or Sour Cherry gum, or
even trying them. I remember
Beemans (Chuck Yeager's favorite
when testing hot airplanes in
"The Right Stuff," remember?)
But who could forget Black Jack
gum? It turned your mouth black!
It was great! But what did it taste
like? Sort of licorice?

R.I.P. Elders

The deaths of two classic film directors were announced
within days of each other this week: Ingmar Bergman,
whose movies deeply influenced the Boomer generation
of filmmakers as well as filmgoers (see more on Bergman
here). He died at age 89.

Michelangelo Antonioni died at age 94. His films influenced
many filmmakers and cinema buffs of the Boomer film
generation, but he also made several films that directly
reflected on the 1960s, such as Zabriskie Point and his
most famous film, Blow-Up, with Vanessa Redgrave
(pictured here) in an early screen appearance.

Classic Stuff

We played baseball a lot in the 50s. Catch in the "vacant lot" between houses, pickup games here and there. For the first few years I had to make do with castoff gloves, which usually were for right handers. I'm a lefty--which means throwing left-handed, catching with the right. So for awhile I had to catch the ball with the glove on my left hand, take the glove off, and throw the ball back.

Then at some point I got my own glove. It was probably a darker leather than this one--this actually looks like the one I have now, though I can't remember when I bought it. But it's a lefty glove. It's leather, as "real" gloves were then, and you used a ointment with a unique, pleasant smell to keep it lubricated. I kept the tube of that blue paste on a narrow shelf next to the stairs leading to the basement. It stayed there for decades. The house has a new owner now, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's still there.

Elders

Barry Commoner at 90. NYTimes photo.

Elders

Barry Commoner

He's one of the surviving first wave environmentalists, whose book, The Closing Circle was particularly influential in the 1970s. Born the same year as JFK, Barry Commoner was recently interviewed by the New York Times. There's a new book and a big conference about him upcoming.

In the Times interview, the 90 year old Commoner describes himself as still an optimist, although he is also famous for saying, "When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think."

In particular, his Four Laws of Ecology became deeply embedded in the ecological consciousness of activists, and to some extent have become bedrock knowledge for the Boomer generation. They are (from his Wikipedia article)

1.. Everything is Connected to Everything Else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all.

2. Everything Must Go Somewhere. There is no "waste" in nature and there is no “away” to which things can be thrown.

3. Nature Knows Best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is, says Commoner, “likely to be detrimental to that system.”

4. There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. In nature, both sides of the equation must balance, for every gain there is a cost, and all debts are eventually paid.

Heroes

Heroes

RFK

The anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy's death comes at a dark moment of intense political polarization, in a nation roiled by an unpopular war characterized by official deceit. Many of Robert Kennedy's words on Vietnam could be dropped into the newspaper today and they would be just as relevant.

It is a time of violence in word and deed. It is a time mortal peril for this country and its institutions, the country and the institutions of which he had a deep knowledge, for which he had a deep commitment. It is a time of mortal peril for the world and its life. His son and namesake knows this--Robert Kennedy, Jr. has been and remains one of our greatest champions of our environment.1968 was a time of political upheaval as well.

In this election year it is well to remember that the revered RFK, if he were a politican today, would be criticized and castigated from one end of the political spectrum to the other, and all over the Internet. He would be charged today, as he was charged then, with opportunism, cynical and self-centered politics, and trading on his name and wealthy family.

Kennedy was himself a polarizing figure, although his words were of reconcilation. That in part was what made him polarizing. His positions on various issues did not satisfy the templates of the left or right. Yet he was the only white politician who had the passionate support and love of many blacks. He was the only political leader who spent time on Indian reservations and tiny Inuit villages as well as southern rural and white West Virgina mountain shanty towns.He inspired passions for and passions against. People wanted to touch him, and he needed to touch others--he seemed to learn through touch. He learned through children, extending the feelings of a father to compassion for all children.

1968 presidential primary campaign.

He grew up in privilege, and his early meetings with black leaders were not warm. Yet by 1968, when Martin Luther King was shot and killed, his widow asked Robert Kennedy to arrange to have his body moved from Memphis to Atlanta. His impromptu speech, passing on the news of King's assassination in a black neighborhood where he happened to be, is one of his most famous.

If we took Robert Kennedy out of time, and dropped him into our own, he would find a different country in many ways. There are nearly twice as many people in the United States. The racial and ethnic composition has changed. In 1968, one parent usually did the earning for the family, the man in most white families, and increasingly the woman in single parent poor black families. Two paycheck families, let alone two parents with five or six jobs between them, were rare.

Politically, the parties were stronger. Democrats had deep organizations in the cities, and industrial unions were strong. But the Democratic party was also coming apart. JFK knew that by leading on civil rights, the Democrats would lose their hold on the solid South. 1968 would see Richard Nixon exploit this. Vietnam was itself tearing younger people like me away from the party. Eugene McCarthy ran within the party, but he was not really of it. Robert Kennedy was, and his candidacy may have kept many young people in the party.