Built in Disneyland in 1957 as a joint project between Disneyland, Monsanto, and MIT, the House of the Future was constructed of 16 identical plastic shells that were fabricated off-site and then shipped to the building site for assembly. The home was meant to display technological marvels, such as the microwave oven and speaker phone,… Continue reading Monsanto House of the Future: When Our Future Was Made of Plastics
Category: 1960s
Cutaways from the 1960s (1960 to 1969).
Screw You, Food Court! When Department Store Restaurants Reigned
Anybody who is under a certain age will not remember how mall department stores once ruled the retail roost. Before their peak and then eventual decline in the 1980s, these massive shopping cubes, which often went by a single name moniker (Alexander’s, Dalton’s, Gottschalk’s, etc.), were the place to buy everything from clothing to books… Continue reading Screw You, Food Court! When Department Store Restaurants Reigned
Johnny Cash Has Five Minutes to Live!
He’s a goddamn door-to-door maniac! He’s a milky faced, baby-faced cruel psychopath of a guitar-strumming KILLER. It’s our favorite warbler–Johnny Cash, in the late noir thriller Five Minutes to Live, directed by Ludlow Flower, Jr., who cast his wife Cay Forrester in the role of imperiled housewife Nancy Wilson. Definitely late noir: it came out… Continue reading Johnny Cash Has Five Minutes to Live!
Twilight Zone: “We All Know What Became of Bonnie Beecher”
And I chose Bonnie Beecher, and we all know what became of Bonnie Beecher. William Froug, in The Twilight Zone Companion, by Marc Scott Zicree These are the curious words uttered by Twilight Zone producer William Froug, in reference to a May 22, 1964 episode titled “Come Wander With Me.” What Froug was so upset… Continue reading Twilight Zone: “We All Know What Became of Bonnie Beecher”
The Day Mission: Impossible Invaded The Brady Bunch House
One of the best things about fictional environments is that we can project our dreams on them. And kids of the 1970s universally projected dreams onto The Brady Bunch house. We all wanted to live there. It was grander, fancier, and more modern than our own houses. Even that oh-so-fake backyard, with its Astroturfed lawn… Continue reading The Day Mission: Impossible Invaded The Brady Bunch House