I was just thinking...

I don't know that they used to play it before the show, but they did play it afterwards. There's an episode of Dad's Army where Captain Mainwaring tries to stand for the NA at the end, but is pushed aside by people rushing to get out. That's probably why they stopped it.

Anyway I'll respond to your random thought with another. Isn't it time to stop playing God Save the Queen at sports events where England is playing. God Save the Queen is the British NA. I've therefore got no problem with it being played at the Olympics where the team is British. When Scotland play they sing 'Flowers of Scotland,' and the Welsh have their own tune as well. When England play we should sing Jerusalem.

Thanks for that correction! Didn't remember it was played at the end of the show.

It wasn't a correction, just a recollection of an old episode of Dad's Army. They may well have played it at the beginning as well.

If we think about it, it was both the beginning and the end. LOL

They'd always play the national anthem before movies when I was a kid too.

Same here.

When I was a kid, they always showed newsreels before the movie. I won't attempt to describe what they showed to boost The Mothers' March of Dimes.

I recall the newsreels, too. In fact, they made it a rounded entertainment by showing at least one cartoon, also.

I almost just wrote that, Roger. I remember newsreels, and don't remember the national anthem at the movies at all.

Now you're going to make me google The Mothers' March of Dimes. (I might remember it if I see it again).

I also somewhat remember documentaries before movies. (I don't think I'm making that up.)

In the 1970s we used to have really terrible supporting films. They were usually about a group of celebrities playing a charity cricket match for disadvantaged children.

Another one was a tourist film about Pheonix Arizona, which was alright at first, Rainbow Bridge and everything. But then it started going on about London Bridge and Old London Town. I actually saw that in a cinema in Chiswick, and 'Old London Town' was nothing like London. It was a bridge, a phone box, a pub, and someone wearing a busby.

Not only that but why on Earth would anyone try advertising a resort like 'Old London Town,' in a cinema in London. When you go on holiday you want to go somewhere different.

Newsreels and documentaries kind of blended together.

Don't look up March of Dimes. Just remember row after row of iron lungs - with people inside. If you ever want to separate the generations, watch how different age groups react to the word 'polio'. Ah, for the good old days.

They didn't do the national anthem, except at sporting events and late at night when television stations went off the air. There really was a time when television was not a 24 hour per day proposition.

Heh. I have had a friend who opened the London Bridge Chinese Restaurant, in Lake Havusu, Arizona. Haven't talked to him in years, hope he is well. He was a boat person from Vietnam, and when we first knew him, he held three jobs. My favorite time was when he owned, and cooked at, the vietnamese restaurant, Sing Sing, on Hollywood Blvd. Later, he went back to his chinese roots, thus the Lake Havasu move.

I don't remember seeing the bridge when we visited him there (he insisted we cancel our hotel and stay at his house - a dear man). I do remember the speed boats on the Lake where our hotel was were too noisy to bear.

Anyway, the idea of the bridge being brought to the desert was always total nonsense to me. On the other hand, our friend's cooking was still fantastic. I'll hoist a small virtual class of exceptionally good cognac in his memory (he called it, special tea).

Oh - that's interesting. My father did a small movie about iron lungs. I don't think that ever showed up at movie theaters though; it was some sort of government agency movie. I watched at something like 8 or 9. I think I remember surgery being shown in the movie. That might have had something to do with desire not too many years later to be a doctor, and to delve into the history of medicine in my early teens, once I could manage to be allowed into the adult library (snarl).

The word was, if I remember, infantile paralysis. A boy in my St. Gabriel's elementary school died from it (I think), and a girl in my high school class definitely died from it. Boss's wife had it as a child.

Yes, re anthem at sporting events. Yes, re the tv going off the air in the late night hours.

There is an apocryphal story that they thought they were buying Tower Bridge. London Bridge has got a song written about it, but other than that it's a rather nondescript bridge. Your post has made me feel hungry, some of the best food I've ever tasted was at a Malasyian Restaurant in Soho.

Back in my old Bronx neighborhood, parents could send their kids to the movies for the whole day. For a quarter (children's rate), we got a newsreel, at least one cartoon, a main feature, and a second feature. No national anthem. Once in a while a documentary.

Back in the same Bronx neighborhood, when I was a little older, I went go to Yankee Stadium. Grandstand admission was $1.50. Fifty cents on Ladies Day! (How can I be sure? I've still got my ticket stubs.) The national anthem was played at the beginning of the game. And they let us walk on the field to get out. So I got to see the monuments to Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and others close up.

We had a better deal; we only needed some bottle tops for entrance to the kiddie matinee, and it included everything on your list. Those newsreels with the camera at the beginning still sticks in my mind's eye, and I can even still hear the music.

Smiles.

His american name was Frank (we got to know him and his family over the years). I think it was the best food I ever had - not that I could document it for Hamilton's best meal thread. His mother taught him and worked at the Vietnam House in old LA chinatown with him. He knew chinoise, he knew country. Never since have found a vietnamese restaurant that approached his cooking. I crave his clay pot dishes.

Three jobs when he got to the US, but before that he was a factory manager.
We are not all the same people as we talk - communication tricky even within the same language. He wasn't a false guy.

Every Saturday I lament how Saturday night's over the air broadcasts was the best programs that many people waited all week to watch. Friday and Sunday were decent days for tv also. And, what made it good, in my opinion, was there were all the western programs. I think that westerns were produced, since in the 1950's men still made decisions regarding large purchases for the family? Plus, westerns, I believe, enhanced the image of the U.S. being built up in the west by a bunch of ethical heroes.