Originally Posted by
JimmyHAD
One of the cool things in the fifties was what they called variety shows. Ed Sullivan, Milton Berle, Jimmy Durante and the like. All of these had entertainers who had played vaudeville and took those acts to television. Even in the movies stars like Abbot & Costello and the Marx Brothers were often duplicating what they had done on the stage in vaudeville.
Shows I recall watching when I was really young were Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, Rin Tin Tin and when I was allowed to stay up Gunsmoke when it was a half hour. All the shows except for some of the variety type were a half hour to begin with. Alfred Hitchcock, Twilight Zone. Great stuff those.
I can remember when movies were a quarter and that was for first run features. There was a theater downtown that ran grade B flicks and the admission was fifteen cents for three features. Movies had the previews (coming attraction) and then a newsreel followed by the feature and then a cartoon. My grandpa took me to one and it showed ironworkers building a skyscraper, walking the iron away up high. I told my grandpa that I wanted to do that and he told me they were "lunatics." :)