TV of Yesterday

Watching cartoons when I was a kid 60-plus years ago, there were things in them you never saw in real life any more. One of them was a candlestick phone. No one had one in the 1960s, but they were in cartoons and old movies.

Here we are in 2023 and there are plenty of things I was used to see in 1963 that young people today have likely never seen in real life. One of them is the dial phone that replaced the candlestick phone.

There are plenty of other examples in the ironically-named T.V. of Tomorrow, released in 1953. The cartoon opens with a gag about TV antennaes. When was the last time you saw a house with one of those?

The TV of tomorrow is apparently still a box, with a black-and-white screen, and knobs in front that a viewer has to walk to the set and turn. If I were a six-year-old today, this would probably confuse me, too.

There’s also a gag about something else that’s obsolete: horizontal control. Sets that weren’t receiving the signal properly would have the picture roll up to the top of the screen. Tex Avery and Heck Allen’s gag here is that the viewer rolls up as well.

The gag keeps going with the annoyed viewer holding onto a hassock so he won’t roll up. It doesn’t work. His eyes roll up instead.



Ray Patterson and Bob Bentley were added to Tex’s usual ‘50s crew of animators: Grant Simmons, Mike Lah and Walt Clinton. Paul Frees is the narrator, except when John Brown shows up in the "two-bit gambler" gag. Backgrounds are by Joe Montell, judging by the dotted flower blooms at 1:31.