These vintage ads reminded me of my two years in grade school where I took accordion lessons and played with the Modern American School accordion band under the leadership of my music teacher, Miss Anne Pertack. The highlight of that experience was a performance at a concert hall inside the Palace Of Fine Arts In Mexico City.
I never pictured myself as the Mexican Lawrence Welk although I have to admit I enjoyed The Lawrence Welk Show quite a lot, in a guilty pleasure kind of way.
These ads promise hours of joy and pleasure and claim accordions are IN, which of course,
were slight exaggerations. All I can say is that an accordion, played by a talented musician, makes delightful and very happy music.
My accordion was the Hohner Student VII and it was sold for a paltry amount when my mom died, in 2009.
But I still remember with nostalgia those boring hours practicing the instrument in the full knowledge I would never become a skilled musician.
Years later, I took up the clarinet and learned to play it with some proficiency. I even got to play it on an episode of a local TV sitcom and on a nightclub show.
After that, I wisely left the music in the talented hands of professional musicians like Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. My real passion is listening to music, not playing it.
And here's a sampling of good accordion music with Lawrence Welk!
"America's First Family of Fright!"
During the Monster Craze of the mid-sixties, television became the resting ground for many supernatural and horror-inspired shows. My favorite one was, without any doubt, THE MUNSTERS, which were an average and typical American family, except for the fact that Father Herman looked like the Frankenstein monster, Mother Lily and Grandpa, were vampires and their son Eddie was a werewolf. The 'different"one in that family happened to be young Marilyn, who was a beautiful blonde girl, with normal looks which the rest of her family accepted lovingly.
Fred Gwynne, who previously had starred in the comedy series "CAR 54, WHERE ARE YOU?", portrayed Herman Munster. Beautiful movie siren Yvonne De Carlo gave life to Lily Munster while Al Lewis, also from "CAR 54", inhabited the role of Grandpa Munster. The rest of the cast was completed with Butch Patrick who played little Eddie Munster and lovely Beverley Owen as Marilyn Munster.
THE MUNSTERS lived in 1313 Mockingbird Lane which was located on the backlot of Universal Studios, the same place where the original Universal monsters were created, back in the 1930s and 40s.
The show was successful enough to span lots of toys and collectible merchandise which, to this day, is still sought after by memorabilia enthusiasts.
After 13 episodes of the first season, Beverley Owen left the series to join her boyfriend and was replaced by Pat Priest, who did a marvelous job as Marilyn until the show ended in 1966.
As of this writing, only Butch Patrick and Pat Priest are still the only living members from the series.
Fred Gwynne passed on in 1993; Yvonne De Carlo died in 2007, Al Lewis left us in 2006 and Beverley Owen joined them February 21, 2019.
However, the show is still well remembered and running in syndication on several TV channels.
THE MUNSTERS were also featured in a Gold Key comic which published 16 issues during the 60s and two reunion movies followed, one right after the show was cancelled in 1966, MUNSTER, GO HOME and a TV special in 1988, THE MUNSTERS' REVENGE.
And with these images of the TV show and the Gold Key comics, we bid farewell to that typical
All-American family, THE MUNSTERS, wishing you a very Frightful and Happy Halloween!
As a bonus, here are the openings of both seasons:
I suppose I'm really showing my age when I say Halloween is not officially Halloween for me until I watch the 1944 Cary Grant film "ARSENIC AND OLD LACE".
In the age of Google, where you can find out everything about any movie, it's a bit useless and redundant to give some background info about this film, but anyway, all I can say is that Cary Grant gives the funniest performance of his career here and that Josephine Hull and Jean Adair are just perfect to play Mortimer Brewster's purported aunts Abby and Martha.
The rest of the cast is excellent, from Raymond Massey's mentally deranged Jonathan Brewster and his assistant Dr. Einstein, played with his usual creepiness by Peter Lorre, to the supporting players, who were familiar and beloved faces from the movies of that time, like Jack Carson, Edward Everett Horton, James Gleason, John Alexander as "Teddy Roosevelt", Ed McNamara, John Ridgely, and Garry Owen among many others.
And of course, beautiful, young Priscilla Lane as Mortimer's fiancee Elaine Harper is the very picture of innocent beauty, charm and bewilderment at the unexplainable shenanigans unfolding before her.
It is almost impossible to pinpoint exactly who walks away with the picture, since all the performances hit the mark right on the button, but let's just say that Cary Grant especially runs the gamut from romantic boyfriend, to horrified nephew at his aunts' hobby of doing away with lonely old men, to befuddled playwright trying to distract policeman Jack Carson from the crimes around him and terrified victim of his "brother" Jonathan's intentions of getting rid of him by way of torture before murder, for a veritable tour de force of comedic acting.
But of course, it would be unfair to single him out here since the film is more of an ensemble work than a one-man show.
ARSENIC AND OLD LACE ranks as one of director Frank Capra's better achievements and is regarded as a true classic from the Golden Era of motion pictures.
So, be glad you're not a Brewster and have a Happy Halloween!
