Happy Days - Back To The 50s - America Went Retro, Too!

A 1977 UK Happy Days novel.

So, as the '70s flopped, overshadowed by the '60s, pummelled by financial angst, anger and violence, the UK was not the only nation to seek refuge in the 1950s. Yep, the USA was well and truly in there - putting out Happy Days from 1974 until 1984.

And of course those glorious Happy Days weren't long in coming to England. We already had '50s nostalgia aplenty, of course - remember Wizzard, Showaddywaddy, Alvin Stardust, etc? But now we had the American angle and we found Fonzie just so great.

Fonzie's '50s style became much imitated - and this became even more pronounced with the release of Grease in 1978 - in which John Travolta played a be-quiffed Fonzie-style dude.

The absolute star of Happy Days was Henry Winkler as one Arthur Fonzarelli - AKA "The Fonz" - the coolest '50s dude in Milwaukee. He "hung out" with the likes of Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard) - who was not very cool really. So that made Fonzie seem even cooler.

Only Richie's mother, Marion (Marion Ross) called "The Fonz" any thing other than "The Fonz" or "Fonzie": she called him Arthur.

Which did not seem terribly cool at all.

I remember that, back in the '70s and '80s, if the word "cool" was used as slang it was always used derisively - we regarded it as outdated '50s/'60s nonsense. "Oh, that's so cool," we'd sneer - meaning that whatever it was was actually fogey - out of date.

Now, when I hear twitty young things using the "cool" tag in all seriousness, I often snigger. Particularly as they often look like they've just stepped out of the '60s or the '70s or the '80s. So fogey.

1975 Small Ads: 1950s Style Pencil Skirt? Man About The House Apron? Lock For The 'Phone?

From the Sunday People, 23 November, 1975. I love the telephone dial lock. Sadly, only one family had a phone in my street in 1975...

All That Glitters...

Said Paul Gadd, aka Gary Glitter, in 1975: "My appeal is something different. My appeal, I think, comes from the fact that I am the first of my type to hit the rock 'n' roll business for a long time. I'm not saying I'm the first ever....

"I got my new name after watching Rock Around The Clock on TV with a group of people. We were all joking around afterwards and recalling the days of rock 'n' rollers in the '50s. People like Billy Fury and Vince Eager. And we all started making up funny names. Someone suggested he'd like to be called Vicky Vomit, another Terry Tinsel. And I suddenly said I wanted to be Gary Glitter. Somehow, the name stuck more as a nickname. Then, when I wrote Rock 'n' Roll Parts One And Two, it was my manager Mike Leander's idea to actually change my stage name. And he said suddenly, 'That's it - you must keep that name, Gary Glitter. It sounds just right."

I never liked Gary Glitter, never liked all the gobby rantings of the early-to-mid-'70s "Glam" scene. Things were grim enough at home financially without glittery stage yobs rampant in the pop chart.

"That Glitter chap looks like a cross between Elvis Presley and Danny La Rue!" said a very forthright auntie of mine at the time. "The man's nothing but a pervert!"

We didn't know the half of it...

The 70s - a Decade of Revivals

The 1970s were a time of recession, and the decade played host to many revivals. The 1950s were huge, 1940s boutiques flourished, platform shoes were dragged out of the 1930s and the 1960s look - flared trousers and all - stuck around and stagnated.

Here is a newspaper article from 1971 (Cambridge Evening News, England, UK) detailing the blossoming 50s revival (70s music leant heavily on the 50s - from Roy Wood and Abba to the Sex Pistols).

Later in the 70s, the 60s began to shine again (and we were only just beginning to shake off the 60s flares!) with a revival of interest in the Mods/Rockers and Ska scenes.

Being a child in the 70s has given me a lasting love of 1950s and 60s music!

1979: Proudly Presenting Mr Shakin' Stevens...

IT COULD BE A SHAKING REVIVAL

From the TV Times, July 1979.

Shakin’ Stevens - known to his friends as Shaky - is a miner’s son from Cardiff who is rising to fame on the rock ‘n’ roll revival. From playing Elvis Presley on stage in the London hit musical “Elvis”, he’s now shaking up “Oh Boy!” on Monday evenings.

He doesn’t see himself as an out-and-out rocker. “I mean,” he says, “I’ve never worn Teddy Boy clothes. Never been a Ted. Never wore creeper shoes. I’m more casual. You don’t have to plaster your hair with grease to like the music. That’s the trouble - everyone’s putting everyone else in compartments. I’m just Shaky Stevens, rock artist.”

He says it’s always the same in the music business - fashions keep changing, but rock music stays much the same. Jack Good, who created this series of “Oh Boy!” as well as the original twenty years ago, agrees. “Music goes round in ever decreasing circles. Fashions come and go but the sounds still keep turning up again.”

Good is 47. Perhaps, he says, it’s a little too old to still be messing with rock ‘n’ roll but he’s not that bothered. “I don’t think it’s any more mature to play “Hamlet” rather than play “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On”.

Viewers of this series of “Oh Boy!” aren’t just entertained by the rock ‘n’ rollers on stage, but by the committed, specially invited Teddy boys and girls in the audience.

Now that audience really DOES believe in the fashion. Take Barry Rodgers, aged 28, from Selly Oak, Birmingham. He is a Teddy boy and proud of it; his two best suits prove the point. One’s black and edged with silver-grey velvet, the other is blue drape set off with mauve. Sometimes he wears a bootlace tie, but basically, says Barry, he’s a “slim Jim” man. His wife Ann is a Teddy girl. “Our interests, our beliefs, brought us together. Ann wears stiletto heels, full circular skirt, suspenders, stockings and pony tail. She looks great.”

“One day,” says Barry Rodgers, who goes to his job as a fitter dressed in all the gear, “we’ll have a little Teddy boy or Teddy girl. And they’ll be wearing drainpipe nappies.”

The 70s had a huge love affair with the 50s.

Think Fonzie.

Roy Wood and Wizzard

Grease

Certain Abba songs, like Waterloo

The repeated 1950’s guitar riffs on certain Punk records

Showaddywaddy

Mud

The Crocodile Rock

The Rubettes

The Bay City Rollers (with their “blue suede shoes, dancin' the night away”)

It could be annoying because watching Top Of the Pops in the 70s was a nightmare for me. My mother, who had been very much part of the 50s scene, always punctuated the show with squawks of “We did that! They’re copying us!”

But what the heck. Because of my 70s childhood I grew to love 50s (and some 60s) music.

And I’m glad.

"TV Times", July 1979 - we Love the 50s and 60s. 70s 50s retro pop star Alvin Stardust and his 60s mate Joe Brown welcome us back to two great musical decades.

What else can you see of interest in this TV Times clipping?

Clapperboard sure bored me.

Why Can't I Go Home? was great. It was aimed at kids a bit younger than me, so I watched it whilst apparently "doing my homework".

Crossroads was deeply into the hellishly long story of Alison Cotterill, her gloomy uncle Reg, her facial scar, her plastic surgery, etc, etc...

Jenny Tomasin, Ruby of Upstairs, Downstairs fame, was appearing as a character called Florence Baker. I vaguely recall Jenny appearing in Crossroads (not that I ever watched it, of course), and, if I remember rightly, her character in the motel saga was not a million miles away from Ruby.

Coronation Street was going great guns, now well into the Bill Podmore era.

And yellow dentures?!! I'll pass on that.