What was so ineffably cool about the Twilight Zone was: most of the time, it was regular people moving around in the regular, recognizable world—a very 1950s world, mostly—going about their regular business, when a…
Posts published by “Eleanor Cooney”
Where exactly did this disrespect for authority, this all-around cheekiness, come from? Well, between prime 50s TV guys like Groucho Marx and Allen Funt, what would you expect? “You Bet Your Life” and “Candid Camera”…
There was no need to feel sorry for anyone on another famous show whose central theme was munificence. As long as people were strictly fictional characters, anything went. We could revel freely in their defeats,…
A good sharp sense of the absurd is a great asset in life, and there was a lush crop of 50s TV shows ready and able to help us develop it. “Queen For a Day”…
There were plenty of two-legged heroes, of course, though they too relied heavily on four-footed stalwarts and tended to live their lives on the fringes of human society. The Lone Ranger got into my soul…
Remember that first television appearing in your house in the early 50s? That tiny screen in the middle of a big clunky cube? Didn’t it look like some sort of oracle in pre-prophecy slumber, an…
I don't keep a ringing phone in my bedroom. Whatever it is, unless it's an invasion from Mars, in which case it wouldn't matter, can wait until I've had a night's sleep, I figure. One…
Arrangements are made to send her back to the home and put her in hospice care there. This is good: she goes back into the hands of people who love her, and when she slips…
I arrive at the little nursing home to visit Berna. In the foyer is a TV. Three old women, two in wheelchairs and one propped up on a gurney, are watching, but they turn hungry…