Remember when: 1955

Randal Hill

Close your eyes and drift back. It’s 1955, the early days of television. Sure, the images were monochrome and the screens were miniscule, but — wow! — it was amazing and magical and brought us wonders from far beyond our immediate world.

Walt Disney debuted “Davy Crockett” — arguably TV’s first mini-series — in monthly, one-hour episodes. Forty million of us sat mesmerized as 29-year-old Fess Parker became an overnight superstar as the ruggedly handsome frontiersman.

Manufacturers rushed out “official” merchandise. Oh, how some of us longed for that ultra-cool Davy Crockett coonskin cap! More than a million of us managed to get one.

While the fad passed in months, the business community eagerly adopted the product tie-in model — Kid Biz heralded a potential goldmine. For the first time, we Baby Boomers

had flexed our collective commercial muscles.

On the big screen, Blackboard Jungle was remembered not so much for the grim juvenile-delinquent tale as for Bill Haley and His Comets’ beat-heavy “Rock Around the Clock.” We thrilled at dancing in the aisles as it blasted through those massive theater speakers!

Haley briefly became a teen idol after “Clock” streaked to Number One, launching rock ‘n’ roll music. During this time many of us were exposed for the first time to black culture via the welcome arrival of Fats Domino (“Ain’t That a Shame”), Chuck Berry (“Maybellene”) and Little Richard (“Tutti Fruitti”).

This was also the year James Dean muttered, “Boy, if I had one day when I didn’t have to be all confused, and didn’t have to feel that I was ashamed of everything… if I felt that I belonged someplace, you know…” Rebel Without a Cause resonated so powerfully.

And we’ll never forget the shock and heartbreak when, just a month before Rebel opened, Dean lost his life.

Power. Excitement. Joy, Sadness. It was all there in 1955.