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butAmerica was merely a mournful, helpful observer, consistently intervening
in futile attempts to find common ground between combatants.
After 1961, there were no more riots among the young, the happy racial
minorities, or the working man. 1969 saw the great Peace March ndash lead by
the Reverend Martin Luther King, Senator Lyndon Johnson and John Wayne ndash
which gathered outside theWashington consulates of theSoviet Union and the
Republic of China. Similar marches inMoscow andPeking were not as peaceful;
the death toll of that day will probably never be known.
Employment held steady, rates of divorce and suicide plunged, American
industry launched countless successful products ndash typified perhaps by the
most popular car of the 1960s, the Ford Edsel ndash and the nation's position
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in the world was paramount.
Alfred E. Neuman: What, me worry? I drive an Edsel!
Truly, the 1960s were the American Decade, and the Man of the Solid '60s was
Richard Nixon, the only First Executive ever to have co-hosted Your Show of
Shows with Milton Berle andChevy Chase . President Nixon, that wise old bird,
resisted calls that he share with FDR the opportunity of running for a third
term. With typical good humour, he claimed he could make far more money from
books and lectures after his retirement than he ever could in the White House.
President Nixon: Pat deserves a new coat and Checkers II is looking forward
to theCalifornia sunshine.
Who can forget the spontaneous demonstrations of loyalty that erupted
throughout the country in 1968, as the presidential campaign took on the
good-humoured air of a festival? InChicago , the Democratic Convention was
invaded by pranksters of the "Why Bother?" faction, encouraging delegates not
to tinker with success and admit that the party of opposition could not hope
to compete with the administration.
Even losing candidate Hubert Humphrey, polling proportionately fewer votes
than any second-placer in history, was able to laugh off defeat with an
admission that he didn't envy Barry Goldwater the job of following a fighting
Quaker saint in the White House.
That year, John Kennedy, the forgotten man of American politics, remarried,
not to the blonde goddess whose wiles had ruined his chance for the presidency
in 1960, but to Mia Farrow, youthful star of the summer's heart-warming hit
motion picture, And Rosemary's Baby Makes Three.
Amid the hilarity and fellow-feeling, one should remember Nixon the
Statesman. The triumphs of the Nixon Presidency were epitomised by his swift
intervention inCuba in 1962, providing air support for democratic rebels who
overthrew the short-lived regime of the mad tyrant, Fidel Castro. Here we see
American offshore interests triumphant in 1963 as businessman Samuel Giancana
reopens the Club Whoopee,Havana . That noise you hear has been identified as
the happy popping of champagne corks.
Also, Secretary of State Hoffa presided over the removal of many restrictions
which threatened to impede the progress of American industry, granting rich
government contracts to the technocrats who steadfastly worked in the space
programme. Here, reactionary Ralph Nader slinks away from a congressional
committee after the decisive defeat of his Slow Down Emissions
recommendations, which would have cut American output by up to 50 per cent.
After deliberating the findings of a committee chaired by Governor George
Wallace, the president adopted the policy of Separate But Equal Development in
education, housing and employment, ensuring unprecedented racial harmony in
the South. The amusing shoeshine boy seen here 'accidentally' spilling polish
over Governor George's white pants-cuffs has been identified as a Mr Malcolm
Little, who seems, quite sensibly to judge by that grumpy look on George's
face, to have disappeared from history soon after this candid footage was
shot.
In 1961, everyone went to the movies and saw Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood
in West Side Story, Dolores Hart in Where the Boys Are and Kirk Douglas in
Spartacus; in 1970, it was Richard Beymer and Katharine Houghton in Love
Story, Julie Andrews and Rock Hudson in Darling Lili and John Wayne as John
Glenn and Clinton Eastwood Jr as Wally Schirra in The Right Stuff. In 1961,
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the top TV shows were Bonanza, The Lawrence Welk Show and Dragnet, in 1970,
they were Bonanza, The Ken Dodd Show and Star Trek. Hair went up and skirts
came down. The biggest hit show on Broadway throughout the '60s, so closely
identified with the Nixon Era that Pat Nixon took to calling her husband's
cabinet "the Twilight of the Gods", was Lerner and Lowe's Ragnarok, adapted
from Wagner's Ring cycle. Here's Rex Harrison as Wotan, to sing us out of our
moist-eyed nostalgia with the song President Nixon was reputedly humming
throughout his eight years in office...
"The darkness is descending all around us
The world, they 'say, is ending on this spot
Those monsters from the underworld have found us ...
It's Ragnarok..."
Thank you, Lola. We'll look forward to seeing more of your past in the
future. Those who took advantage of our full interactive function are advised
by ZeeBeeCee's Dr Nick to light up a Snout, the high-tar cigarette that tastes
like tobacco and smells like smoke.
Now, it's back to the '90s for an all-new episode of that show that started
in the '60s and was featured in our nostalgia binge. Star Trek: The Golden
Generation. William Shatner returns as Captain James T. Kirk, with Don Ameche
as Mr Spock, George Burns as Bones McCoy and Jessica Tandy as Lieutenant
O'Hara. In tonight's episode, "The Syndrome Factor", the USS Enterprise visits [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]