Tag: America in the 1960s

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See also: John Wayne

Oh, Almighty God, centuries ago thou raised a magnificent Mission, a harbor for all of peace and freedom. This was the Alamo. Today we ask thy blessing, thy help, and thy protection as once again history is re-lived in this production. We ask that this film, The Alamo, be the World’s most outstanding production. We ask this in the name of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns world without end. Amen. — Invocation recited on the first day of The Alamo’s production (more…)

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Patrick J. Buchanan
Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles that Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever
New York: Crown Forum, 2017

It’s déjà vu all over again, folks. The more things change, the more they stay the same. This is one of the takeaways from this fascinating political memoir by Pat Buchanan, who worked in the Nixon White House as a strategist and speechwriter after serving Candidate Nixon on the campaign trail. (more…)

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If you’re old enough to remember your teacher threading film from a small reel into a projector about the size of a sewing machine, chances are that you’ve seen a few social guidance films. You might remember the deep and authoritative voice-overs which often narrated these flicks. (more…)

Robert Cuccioli as Ben Rumson in Jon Marans’ Paint Your Wagon

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The Western dominated American pop culture until the early 1970s, when it suddenly winked out like an aging athlete. TV was infested with Westerns. Jonathan Winters once complained that though he loved Westerns, he didn’t like “fifteen of them in a row.” It sure seemed that way. (more…)

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On a Sunday last May, while Minneapolis burned, my Yankee sweetheart and I indulged in a double helping of nostalgia. The engine that propelled us along this journey down memory lane was Blast from the Past, an American romantic comedy, now a little more than twenty years old, that celebrated the morals, manners, and milieux of an even earlier time and place, the America sacrificed on the altar of equality of opportunity in the annus mirabilis of 1965. (more…)

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Although few readers of this site would disagree that believing you were born in the wrong body is a sign of mental illness, what does it say about those of us who feel we were born in the wrong era? (more…)

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1970’s Halls of Anger is low-budget, tense, sensational, but real. Calvin Lockhart plays Quincy Davis, an ex-basketball star who’s happy teaching in a suburban high school until integration comes and he’s reassigned to a ghetto school, as are several white students. The principal, Boyd Wilkerson (John McLiam), couldn’t care less about his students; he wants more federal money (from integration) and a chance to get elected to the school board. (more…)

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Editor’s note: This is a transcript of Robert Stark’s July 4, 2016 interview with Charles Krafft. We would like to thank Hyacinth Bouquet for this transcript.

Robert Stark: This is Robert Stark. I am joined here with Charles Krafft. Charles, it is great having you on the show.

Charles Krafft: Well, thank you; and nice to talk to you again, Robert. (more…)

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Shiva Naipaul
Journey to Nowhere: A New World Tragedy
New York: Penguin, 1982

In 1997, thirty-nine members of the Heaven’s Gate cult committed mass suicide. A joke at the time went like this: “Why did Heaven’s Gate kill themselves? They had to keep up with the Joneses.” (more…)

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There is no city quite like Detroit, Michigan that exemplifies American deindustrialization. If one flies into the city’s airport at night, one looks down on a dark void, occasionally lit by streetlamps shining their light upon a ruin. By day, things look no better. Vast stretches of the city have become urban prairie. The story of Detroit (more…)

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One of the smartest moves I ever made was becoming a “cord cutter.” Aside from the financial benefit, it has served to liberate my mind from the clutter of contemporary pop culture and media propaganda. Nevertheless, I occasionally indulge in streaming old movies, classics, whenever I can find them. (more…)

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Paul Matzko [1]
The Radio Right: How a Band of Broadcasters took on the Federal Government and Built the Modern Conservative Movement
New York: Oxford University Press, 2020

The decade of the 1960s is laden with irony and contradictions. On the one hand, especially in the early days of the decade, there was the appearance of national unity and calm across America. But just under the surface, explosive forces were gathering. (more…)