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"Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color", @TheosTrek, Black & White TV, Color television, Cyndi Lauper, NBC, Original Photography, Sidey's Weekend Theme, Television, True Colors
Sidey’s Weekend Theme is “Colours.” That’s “Colors” for us “U-less” Americans. I suppose that makes you Brits “U-ish!”
(NBC’s original Peacock logo – 1957)
I was born near the dawn of the age of television. Most of my childhood TV-time was spent watching a world of black & white. It was wonderful – the colors were left to one’s imagination, and it’s worth mentioning that I never wondered what color an actor’s eyes were, or what color the dress was, or if the house was white with red shutters, or green with black shutters. I just knew. Everyone did. We saw what wasn’t shown, and what was not explicit was brilliantly evident in our minds’ eyes.
The novel idea of “Color TV” was born, and day by day, year by year, more and more of my friends and family were purchasing color TV sets. Color television was available for many years before my father purchased one for our household. And each season more and more network programs boasted that they were being presented in “Living Color!” One of the shows that pricked my curiosity about color TV was “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” – presented by “Proud as a Peacock” NBC. (The program moved there from ABC in 1961.) Have you ever wondered where NBC’s Peacock logo came from? It was to highlight the introduction of color in their programming. The peacock would fan out a rainbow of tail feathers – Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. (The animation of the peacock’s actual body and head have been gradually removed from the symbol over the years, but he still struts his colors around the network.) Each Sunday evening when WDWWOC came on, I wished I could see what that peacock looked like in living color! When someone said they had gotten a color TV, the first question I asked was, “What does the peacock look like? Is it beautiful?”
I liked black & white television, (and I still do), but I don’t especially miss it. I do love to watch old TV re-runs of some of the great B&W shows and see the old movies, made when technicolor wasn’t even dreamed of. I abhor the whole concept of “colorizing” black and white films. (Shame on you, Ted Turner!) It is as unsatisfactory seeing someone else’s idea of the color of the movie’s images as it is to hear voices added to comic strip characters – like the voices of the “Peanuts” gang on the television specials. They never sound like what I have always heard in my mind’s ear. But all in all, color has been a nice addition and enhancement for good programming.
Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color was introduced with glorious color images from around the world, and also splashed with color by “Tinkerbell.” Here is one of the earlier versions of the opening sequence (from 1964).
“The world is a carousel of color,
Wonderful, wonderful color.
The world is a carousel of color,
History, comedy, fantasy,
There’s drama and mirth,
There’s old mother earth
With all of her secrets to see.
The world is a treasure-trove of faces,
Fabulous, faraway places.
The hopes and the fears,
The joys and the tears
Of people like you and like me.
The kingdoms of magic science,
The glorious story of art,
The world of romance,
Of music and dance,
This world where we each play a part.
The miracle of imagination,
The marvels of earth, sea and sky,
These wonders untold
Are ours to behold
In the funny world,
The sunny world,
The wonderful world of color.”
(http://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/waltdisneyswonderfulworldofcolorlyrics.html)
Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Sidey. Hope it triggered some happy memories for you, my dear Gentle Readers. I close with a slideshow of some of my wonderful world of color.
I wish for all of you the abundance of enough. . .
Reflections From a Cloudy Mirror 
I totally agree with you on colorizing B&W movies! Especially when you consider how much thought had to go into what the sets looked like and what people wore so that it would all look good in black and white. It’s funny how enticing that color tv was, even when the quality wasn’t so good. We used to travel over to my cousins’ house each year to watch The Wizard of Oz so we could see Oz in color – even if on their set it was all a bit greenish (even when we weren’t looking at the emerald city).
Most enjoyable sidelight on something we were deprived of in SA for most of my lifetime. TV was ‘an invention of the devil’.
I do remember the utter thrill of the first movie in colour I ever saw, in a small SA town theatre. The movie was ‘Wizard of Oz’ and my bitter disappointment when it started in B & W turned to sheer overwhelming wonder when the arrival in Oz took place.
Like you we were one of the last families on my block to get a color television, but I can still remember seeing the peacock and Disney in color for the first time. I also agree I dislike colorizing old black and white movies…glad we can still get them in b&w. I miss Sunday night’s Disney movies. Thanks for the memories!
Black and white TV reminds me of our first one – a Marconi Corner Console.
Don’t it sound grand.? I was the only one who could repair it, and it needed repairing every time I came home from my apprentice training! The initial picture was upside down, and I was tired, so we leant a mirror on a chair back and watched the inverted image in the mirror. Colour TV was engineered so it could not be serviced in the same way, from which point I was free!!!
Since I’m “8”, count them, “8” years older than you, I was almost 10 before we got a tv, which was b/w, of course. Three channels was all we had and that seemed like a luxury. The tv was in a cabinet and was an Admiral. It cost over $300 which was a small fortune in 1953. Dad had to pay for it on time. The first night after it arrived was a Friday and my brothers and I watched it until we fell asleep. I woke up alone on the floor of the living room with snow on the screen. It seemed like such a miraculous creation full of mystery then and it still does. I still have such a limited understanding of how it is possible to receive images instantaneously in color from anywhere on earth and outer space.
Thanks for the memories. Wel ldone as always.
Hubs
Do not misconstrue; I love television, but, I also loved those years before TV when we had books and radio for enlightenment and entertainment, and we filled in the WHOLE picture, not just the colors, in our mind’s eye. I suspect that our imaginations no longer get a sufficient workout much of the time!
Interesting take on the theme though, Paula. I enjoyed seeing this.
Radio was still around when I was born, but it had pretty much declined by the time I would have been old enough to enjoy it – except for music. I was introduced to the Beatles through the radio, and fell in love with those four men, and knew what they looked like long before I ever saw them on TV!
TV has its good and bad points, and these days I believe, unfortunately. that TV is leaning further and further to the “bad” side. Color does enhance everything to a degree, but I still enjoy black and white – maybe because that’s how I started watching TV and didn’t know I was missing anything! One thing about B&W – it was a useful tool in separating fantasy from reality – as far as movies and sitcoms/dramas, etc.! There was no doubt you were watching something “produced” or manufactured. Case in point: my maternal grandmother lived with my family from before the time I was born, until we moved from Texas to Connecticut in 1963. She did not move with us, as she did not want to leave her “home town,” her friends and other family members. However, she came up to stay with us several times before she died in 1969, and would stay for two or three months at a time.
When “The Sound of Music” movie came out, she went with me, one of my brothers, and my Mom to see it. She was no stranger to movies, but had not been to see one in many, many years. We all enjoyed the film very much, but as we discussed it on the way home, my Grandma wondered why we were talking about a movie! She said “that wasn’t a movie!” That it was what she called “vaudeville!” Now, admittedly, a woman in her 80’s might have had less than perfect eyesight, but she actually believed that she had been watching a live, staged performance! BTW, my Grandma was a wonderful, funny, and very wise woman. I still miss her and think of her every day with joy and thanksgiving. That story came to my mind on reading your comment. . .she would never have made that assumption if the movie had been B&W! But then again, tourism in Austria would not have skyrocketed like it did after that film came out if the beauty of that country had not been on display in Technicolor! 😆
TV has become sort of a pox on the psyche of humanity. At least for many people. It’s indiscriminate use – both by the viewer and the producers – has facilitated a slide that is gathering speed as we head down the slippery slope of desensitization to reality. It didn’t use to be that way. TV was a good thing for me – especially as a child. For one thing, I never watched that much – mostly the children’s programming (Captain Kangaroo, Miss Frances’ “Ding Dong School,” etc.) – but I was encouraged to watch and really did enjoy seeing some of the special TV productions – movies, nature programs, etc. They introduced me to so much that I would not have been in touch with or aware of until much later if at all. For one thing, although I was an avid reader anyway, still TV probably sent me to the library as much as any other single instigator! It seems that now, one needs to go to a library to find anything of substance. Sad really, because TV has always had so much potential for good, for bringing the world together in positive ways. Well – I’ll quit my rant for now. I’ve gone on too long. Maybe I’ll blog about it!
Any comments from you, Karen, or others reading this reply – please chime in!
Thanks again for reading and leaving a comment, sharing your thoughts. 🙂
Paula,
Steam mechanized farming made us lazy. Corn shellers made us get fat. Medicine makes too many old people. Books ruined eyes. Cameras made people vain. Yeast made people alcoholics. Eating utensils added to the work of scullery.
That was all before electricity.
What havoc has all this spread of free color caused?
Ha, ha, ha.
Beautiful photos, Paula. Besides colorizing, Ted is also one of few that preserves and shows black and white movies (which originated before electricity). Makes me want to curl up in my sweats with a liter and a lb. of corn chips right now and admire the freedom of directing in an alternate reality. But you will have to pry my color set out of my cold dead stare. Ha, ha, ha.
Doug
What a perfect comment that illustrates the ambiguity and dichotomy of TV! TV is a savior for me on those long insomnia nights, and while I LOVE music an listening to my CD’s and the radio, TV is able to engage all my senses, and allows me to concentrate enough on one thing instead of my mind flying off in all directions. You would have to pry my TV away from me, too! 😆
I have a lot of respect for Ted Turner. Really! I just thought and still think that the whole “colorization” thing was a huge mistake. It is completely unfair to the directors and producers of the films, because it altered the art of filming in B&W – something that required special lighting, set decoration, costuming, and make-up etc. It destroys the director’s original vision. The same way that chopping off the sides of wide screen films for the purposes of “square” TV screens ruins the vision and scope of the originals. You are right, though – TCM is one of my favorite “go to” channels when I get the time, and where would today’s TV news reporting be if he had not ushered in CNN?
The innovations of the 20th and 21st centuries have indeed created huge problems for mankind. But, I am not so sure they have created and are creating any more problems than the innovations of the previous centuries. It’s just that because of TV they are all so much more visible! How’s that for irony?
Thanks for the comment, Doug!
🙂
We only got TV here when I was an adult. The repressive government thought it would corrupt us all.
My first one was a little black and white portable job, but over time I moved to colour. My big screen was stolen recently (Grrr) so I’m back to using my old colour one
The difference was a lot like going from radio for entertainment to tv – less for the imagination to fill in…
In re imagination, you are so right! We must step away from the screen and force ourselves to see, think, and do in the real world – and because TV can be so mesmerizing, and has become for far too many parents an indiscriminate babysitter, we are losing the capacity for innovative an constructive creativity!
My grandmother had B&W TV in her bedroom. That was the only TV in the house for many years. (Remember the HUGE cabinets built around the small screens, and all the wires and tubes?) Dad got us a larger-screened TV (B&W) when I was about 11 or 12. We did not get a color TV until I was in my late teens. I had a B&W TV while in college, and we still had it and used it (as a personal, second set) well into the 80’s. Finally disposed of it when I got tired of changing the channels with a pair of needle-nosed pliers! (The knob broke off years before!)
Thanks for reading and commenting, Sidey – and for the great theme that was much rich food for thought!
and one’s own imagination is so much more fun