We're all about the history of rock & roll at BoomtownAmerica.com!
Every week, we present “ROCK REMEMBERED,” a deep dive into the hidden history of rock & roll, the stories behind the artists and songs that changed the world. Join host “Boomtown Bill” Cross each Wednesday at 7 pm (Eastern) with an encore broadcast on Saturday at noon (Eastern).
Join us this Saturday as we reveal "The Hit-Making Machine That Was Chapman & Chinn!"
Shows come and go so fast. For every I Love Lucy or Andy Griffith Show, there are hundreds that have vanished from the pop culture landscape. How many of these do you remember?
Bachelor Father
In TV-land, millionaires came in two flavors: the crusty old guy with a bushy white mustache (think Mr. Moneybags from the Monopoly game) and handsome, dashing playboys.
Bachelor Father featured this second flavor and served as the launching pad for one of TV’s most durable actors, John Forsythe.
Before Dynasty and Charlie’s Angels, Forsythe was best known for playing Bentley Gregg, a wealthy L.A. attorney who somehow was raising his orphaned teenage niece, Kelly (played by the far less famous Noreen Corcoran).
What was very weird (besides child services not at all concerned with the endless parade of one night stands through the Gregg household) was that, according to the premise of the show, Kelly lost both her parents in a tragic accident just months before the show's first season. Yet, she never showed the slightest signs of grief and, on more than one occasion, showed some sexual designs on her uncle/guardian (yeah, ultra-creepy).
Typical shows revolved around one of two plots. Either Kelly had gotten herself into some kind of wholesome trouble that she didn’t want her uncle to find out about. Or Kelly was screening many of the women Bentley was dating to see if they would be suitable marriage material (although Forsythe’s character never showed the slightest interest in matrimony).
Whitney Blake (who co-starred in Hazel and created the very successful sit-com One Day at a Time) and Barbara Eden (who went on to a long, successful career in movies & TV, best remembered for playing the title role in I Dream of Jeannie) appeared as women who were dating Bentley.
Linda Evans (who would play Forsythe’s wife on Dynasty) appeared as one of Kelly’s teen-age friends!
The show also featured another staple of the era: the wise-cracking domestic aide, played by a member of a minority group. On Bachelor Father, that would be Bentley’s cook and valet, Peter, played by Sammy Tong. Tong had been a successful stand-up and had great comic timing. His interactions with Forsythe created some of the show’s best laughs.
Bachelor Father lasted 5 seasons beginning in 1957, but was unique in that it aired on all three major networks. The first two seasons were broadcast on CBS, seasons 3 and 4 appeared on NBC and the fifth and final season was on ABC.It was successful in syndication, but as it was produced in black & white, disappeared from TV when color took over.
Noreen Corcoran’s career fell off rapidly once Bachelor Father left the air. In 1966, she gave up acting and instead focused on working behind the scenes in dance and theater arts. Currently retired, Noreen never married but did maintain a lifelong friendship with Forsythe, whom she considered her professional mentor. So he was sort of a bachelor stage father to her.
Is there a Baby Boomer who did not own at least one egg of Silly Putty at some point in their childhood?
Much more than a fad, the stuff still sells over six million eggs a year!
And just think, we have the Japanese of World War II to thank for it!
You see, in the early months of the Second World War, the Japanese quickly invaded and took over the major rubber-producing countries. Rubber was vital to the American war effort. So in addition to rationing rubber back home, the search was on to find a rubber substitute.
Credit for the substance goes to Earl Warrick at Dow Chemical as well as James Wright at General Electric. Working independently, these gentlemen added boric acid to silicone oil. A few other minor ingredients were added and viola – Silly Putty! Only neither company called it that. In fact, both companies could see no use for the stuff. While the stuff bounced like a ball, could stretch more than rubber and snapped apart if you smashed it hard, it just wasn’t stable enough to replace rubber. The stuff tended to form a puddle if left alone long enough.
So Wright patented the stuff, but nothing came of it. Until 1949.
For reasons lost to history, toy shop owner Ruth Fallgatter came across the substance. She thought she might be able to sell it. She called a marketing consultant named Peter Hodgson. Together they named it Silly Putty, put it in a clear plastic case and onto the shelves of Ruth’s shop. The stuff sold pretty well. But Ruth saw it as a limited fad and really wasn’t interested in trying to sell a second batch.
So Hodgson went out on his own. He borrowed $147 to buy a batch of Silly Putty and then had his really genius idea. Because the stuff tended to melt went left alone for long periods of time, Hodgson hit on the idea of packaging Silly Putty inside plastic eggs.
At first, sales were slow, but then he convinced New Yorker magazine to run an article about it. He sold 250,000 eggs of Silly Putty at $1 an egg in three days.
In 1955, Silly Putty became one of the first toys to be sold via television when Hodgson bought time on The Howdy Doody Show.
Pete Hodgson passed away in 1976. One year later, the rights to the toy where acquired by Binney & Smith, the makers of Crayola crayons.
Today, Silly Putty is sold in countries all over the world. It’s been up in space with the astronauts. And in 2001, it was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame.
Oh, and if you get some caught in you hair or it melts all over the sofa, the manufacturer recommends using alcohol. No, not the kind you drink. The kind you should rub on the Silly Putty.
Tommy James’ “Mony Mony” is one of those great little rock songs from the 60s that has aged very well. Thanks to a cover from Billy Idol in the 1980s, the song was reintroduced to a whole new generation of listeners. But what, exactly, is the song about?
Not much, as it turns out. Tommy James says he and songwriting partner, Ritchie Cordell, were just trying to come with a frat/party rock song in the vein of “California Sun” or “Money (That’s What I Want)”… something that cut against the grain of all the “serious” rock that was then dominating the music scene.
So, who the heck is “Mony?”
Ah, there is the real story. James and Cordell had most of the song together. They had even created the music tracks in the studio. But they were stuck on a girl’s name. They wanted it to be unusual (like “Sloopy”) and it had to be two syllables to fit the track they had already created.
The pair were sitting in James’ apartment in New York City trying to complete the song. As James tells it: “…finally we get disgusted, we throw our guitars down, we go out on the terrace, we light up a cigarette, and we look up into the sky. And the first thing our eyes fall on is the Mutual of New York Insurance Company. M-O-N-Y. True story.”
And for the first and probably last time in rock history, an insurance company inspired a classic song!
Just as we eat foods that can help keep our bodies healthy, there are foods that can improve brain activity.
Here are 5 “smart” things to eat:
- Orange Juice – Helps improve memory
- Split Peas – Helps mental processing speed
- Walnuts – Helps the heart as well as the brain
- Asparagus – Help the brain create new neural pathways
- Shrimp – Helps maintain the brain’s signaling system