October 1957

WHA' HAPPON'?!
You will notice that our material for October 1957 looks a lot worse than what you are accustomed to seeing on BIRMINGHAM REWOUND, and we thought we should tell you why. For some now-forgotten reason, when The Birmingham News issues of that period were being put on microfilm, someone was asleep at the wheel, and the entire run is badly, BADLY overexposed. The image on the microfilm is so light that most of the type cannot be read at all; one of the articles that month involved a fight between WBRC-TV and CBS over ownership of some of the films the station had been broadcasting, but we cannot read the text of it. Believe it or not, the images you are about to see look good compared to the actual microfilm, but they are still nothing to brag about.

As this is being written, we have not begun work on the November 1957 material yet, so we do not know whether the overexposure problem was remedied by the time those papers were microfilmed. If not, it looks like 1957 is going to be a crummy Thanksgiving and Christmas season!  --Tim




"See the U.S.A." in that thing?  A 1957 Chevrolet?  It is to laugh.  Nobody'll ever buy that heap of iron.  It's ugly as sin, and will lose its value quickly.  I'd suggest opting for an Edsel instead -- what a beautiful car.  Destined to become a real classic.

Curtiss' message is clear: If you give the little ghosts and goblins any other brand of candy, expect your trees and shrubs to be full of strikin' paper come dawn.

Don't feel so bad for not having bought one this early.  Color TV in 1957 made these microfilmed images look good by comparison.

"But dear, I thought football games were played on green grass, not blue."

At 1:00 on Channel 10, it's "Let's Learn More."  And in case you feel as if you've learned enough for one day, there's always your choice of "The Big Payoff" on Channel 6 or a good movie on 13.


"Nearly everybody?"  I'm reminded of a late '50s radio parody called "Russian Bandstand" ... "In Russia, almost everybody watches Russian Bandstand.....[machine guns firing]...Now EVERYBODY watches Russian Bandstand!"

With two seating sections: "Plain" and "Peanut."

Uhhhhh ... yeah.
Personally, I think THE GRINCH might've been behind this month's microfilm run.

We can only hope 1957's "Enchanted Forest" didn't look anything like this...

09/28/2007 -- 1034 PM EDT

GO TO OCTOBER 1967 | RETURN TO "THIS MONTH" PAGE