Easter Time TV Listings – 1963

Anyone who reads this blog knows I like to post vintage Lorain Journal TV listings from time to time, especially if they include a promotional photo for an upcoming animated program.

Thus, the one above from April 12, 1963 fills the bill nicely. It includes a promotional illustration of Pebbles, the Flintstone tyke, pulling a large Easter egg decorated with prehistoric animals. However, I was never a fan of Flintstones stories involving Pebbles and/or Bamm-Bamm. I’d much rather see an episode with Fred and Barney bowling, golfing or fighting.

There’s all sorts of fun things on the TV grid to jog your memories if you’re old enough (like a local channel actually signing on and off).

The TV listings actually fall within the timeframe of what I remember, since I was about four years old at the time. I do recall watching cartoons after dinner (such as Quick Draw McGraw at 7:00) and I'm one of the few people on the planet who remembers watching I'm Dickens, He's Fenster (which according to the listings came on right after The Flintstones).

Lorain Telephone Co. Ad – March 23, 1968

Last week I did a post on a 1960s ad for the Elyria Telephone Company. Here’s one for the Lorain Telephone Company that ran in the Journal on March 23, 1968 – 50 years ago this month.

It’s another one of those quaint ads reminding us of how things used to be. In this case, the subject is party lines – and the illustration does a good job depicting how with a 4-party line, four different phone company customers had to share the same line.

The ad suggests replacing a 4-party line with a 2-party line for $5.90 a month, or a private line for $7.00 a month. That’s fifty bucks in today’s world, using one of those online inflation calculators!

This Wiki entry for party lines reveals that hogging the line, and even eavesdropping, were common complaints of party line customers.

Today, you don’t have to be a party line sneak to eavesdrop. Many people are more than happy to yak on their smartphones anywhere, oblivious to the people around them.

Luxury High Rise Apts. for Lorain’s West Side – March 1964

When I saw this photo on the front page of the March 25, 1964 Lorain Journal, I thought it was an architectural rendering of the Lakeside 10 Apartments that were built in Sheffield Lake in the late 1960s (known today as The Perch on Lake). 

But as it turned out, the rendering was a high-rise luxury apartment project slated for the West Side of Lorain. Read all about in the article by Ralph Neumeyer below.

****

$2 Million Luxury Apartment Planned
By RALPH NEUMEYER

An eight-story high-rise luxury apartment is in prospect on Lorain’s West Side.

Plans were announced today for a new $2 million apartment development in the fast growing area near the Lorain Community Hospital.

The multi-story, 222-foot by 72-foot unit will be located west of the hospital and overlooking Beavercrest Dr. and Oak Hills Country Club.

The five-acre site fronts on Beavercrest Dr. and W. Lake Rd., Rts. 2 and 6.

Application for a building permit has been filed by Bozsoki Bros., Lorain builders.

The architect is Keith Haag and Associates of Cuyahoga Falls, specialists in high rise construction.

The Haag company has designed similar apartments in Akron, Philadelphia and other cities.

Construction is expected to get under way by late summer with occupancy scheduled for May, 1965.

The project contemplates 100 luxury suites of one, two or three bedrooms and balconies overlooking Beaver Creek and the Oak Hills golf course to the west and Lake Erie to the north.

The apartments will feature underground heated garages, high speed elevators, and sound proof walls. The building will be of poured concrete construction with a brick exterior.

A large heated swimming pool, cabana and party room will be incorporated and extensive landscaping and grounds for tenant enjoyment.

The apartments will be known as “Crest Towers,” with a rental range of $115 to $275 per month.

The project is being financed by private investors, it was indicated.

Muriel Watt Mead Real Estate Co. will be leasing and managing agents.

****

Today, there are plenty of apartment buildings out there by Mercy hospital, but Crest Towers isn’t one of them. I’m not sure why.

****

UPDATE (March 28, 2018)
As usual, regular blog contributor and researcher extraordinaire Rick Kurish has come through, this time with the answer as to why the high-rise apartments were never built.

Rick wrote, "As with many of the grandiose projects proposed for Lorain, the financing for Crest Towers apparently fell through. I found the attached article from the Chronicle-Telegram of June 7, 1968 which details the story."

The short article had the headline of "Lorain high rise just can't get off the ground." It noted that the plans had fallen through, according to a stockholder.

"Building for the 10-story high rise apartment was to have begun two years ago," stated the article.

The stockholder mentioned in the article said, "The company, Crest Towers Inc., could not receive financial support for the project after the Lorain Planning Commission granted a zoning variance."

The article noted, "The structure, planned for a site on Beavercrest Drive, was to contain 104 apartment units plus an indoor heated swimming pool."

Foreclosure proceedings on the land eventually took place.

From Amherst to Hollywood – March 1941

The front page of the March 1, 1941 Lorain Journal is a study in contrasts.

On one hand, the boldfaced headline somberly notes that the Nazis were marching into Bulgaria, who had just joined the side of the Axis powers in the war raging in Europe.

But right under that headline, is a story (and glamour photo) of a former Amherst girl who was making headlines of her own out in Hollywood, where her movie career was beginning to take off.

Read all about Juanita Stark and the Cinderella story of how the Ohio beauty got her big break in the article below.

****

Former Amherst Girl’s New Film
Cinderella; Has Movie Contract

Juanita Stark Has Whirlwind Rise to Success

A former Amherst girl, 20-year old Juanita Stark, is being hailed as Hollywood’s first “Cinderella Girl” of 1941, possessor of a movie contract and a role in a new picture.

A month ago Miss Stark was unemployed and it was while she was standing in line for her last unemployment check that she was “discovered” by Lewis Green, a Hollywood agent.

Green was attracted by her beauty, arranged for a screen test at Warner Bros. and Miss Stark is now on the payroll there – all within a week’s time.

FATHER’S INJURY 
LEADS THEM WEST
When Juanita went to Los Angeles with her parents six years ago, she had no intention of being a movie actress, altho she had once desired to become a singer.

The family left Amherst, where Juanita finished the ninth grade, for the west when her father, former world’s champion punching bag puncher, got a job in Los Angeles.

Shortly after arriving in California, Juanita’s father, who had recovered in Amherst from an injury suffered in a fall during one of his exhibitions, was again stricken with the ailment. Juanita was forced to get a job so she became a waitress after school hours in a restaurant where her mother worked.

Mrs. Stark finally had to give up her job to attend her husband. In the following five years that Juanita worked as a waitress she was employed at three different places. The last of these was at Republic studios.

While at Republic, she was suggested by two directors for bit parts but the front office frowned at the suggestion. Juanita quit her job there six months ago because “I would have been fired anyway because of this complication.”

Juanita, her parents and one sister came to Amherst from North Olmsted. They were former Clevelanders.

After landing the movie contract, Juanita first moved her family from Los Angeles to Burbank, Cal., a mile and a half from the studio. She then had her 15-year-old sister who was working weekends give up her job.

Then she went to her first Hollywood party, one given by Rex St. Cyr at Ciro’s which resulted in a picture layout of the former Ohioan in Life magazine.

Juanita is now studying drama and posing for publicity pictures and is looking forward to having her fingernails manicured in a beauty shop for the first time.

She has been offered a bit part in “Affectionately Yours” and has no desire to be like anyone else on the screen, she says.

****

It’s easy to see why Juanita Stark was discovered, with her ‘girl next door’ beauty (honed in Amherst no doubt) and haunting eyes.

She didn’t have a very long career in the movies, though. According to her biography on a blog about little-known Hollywood actresses entitled “Those Obscure Objects of Desire”, Juanita had retired by 1946. 

She passed away in California in the early 2000s.

****

I did a little field research for this post, watching one of her movies, Thank Your Lucky Stars. The musical comedy starring Eddie Cantor featured almost the entire galaxy of Warner Brothers stars and was a fundraiser for the war effort.

Juanita has two funny scenes in the movie, playing a flustered secretary to prissy Edward Everett Horton. Chubby S. Z. Sakall is also featured in both bits, one of which involves an elephant and other animals that were disrupting the big show rehearsal – much to Horton’s consternation.

More Utility Company Mascot Fun

A few days ago, I featured Reddy Kilowatt and Ohio Edison here on the blog. So, to close out the week, I'll move on to another utility – the telephone system – and its mascot.

You might remember that I did a big post on the Bell Telephone System’s mascot (above), a sort of a moon-faced fellow with a telephone for a body. He appeared in full-page magazine ads throughout the 1940s and into the 50s.

Sometimes he had arms, and other times he didn’t.

Well, here he is doing a local gig in a 1963 Elyria Telephone ad (below) that appeared in the pages of the Chronicle-Telegram that spring.

It’s kind of interesting that the Elyria telephone customer received a punched card printed on heavy paper along with their regular itemized bill. The punched card had to be returned along with the payment as part of the processing. I guess that was the latest technology at the time.

Anyway, the mascot in the Elyria Telephone ad looks an awful lot like the Bell mascot. He’s got to be the same guy.

I wonder if the mascot that the Lorain Telephone Company was using about the same time (below) was supposed to be an updated version of the same character. Or was he a phone-y?

Casey’s Drive-in Ad – March 23, 1968

This blog is still one of the few places on the internet where you can find any mention of Casey’s Drive-in, the Northeast Ohio hamburger chain with the baseball theme that had restaurants in Lorain, Elyria, Vermilion, Rocky River and North Royalton. (I’ve done many posts about it since 2009.)

Well, here’s another vintage newspaper ad to add to the growing collection of online Casey’s memorabilia.  It ran in the Lorain Journal on March 23, 1968 – fifty years ago this month.

It’s a clever promotion, giving away kites in the windy month of March with the restaurant’s great Casey mascot on it. But more importantly, it has the one ingredient that is missing from most fast food restaurant marketing campaigns today: fun.

Today’s fast food restaurants try to convince potential customers that their food is the freshest, or that you can get your meal exactly how you want it, as if you made it yourself in your own kitchen – with local ingredients. 

My thought is that if I wanted that, then I would buy the ingredients at my local grocery store and make it myself for a lot less money.

I much prefer the days when fast food was a treat, and something fun.

Reddy for Action in the 1960s

Last week our old pal Reddy Kilowatt, my favorite advertising mascot of all time, electrified one of Gene Patrick’s "The Passing Scene" comics with a cameo appearance. This week, Reddy’s back as I feature two of his March appearances from ads that ran in the Journal during the month of March in the early 1960s.

After appearing seemingly every day in the newspaper in the 40s and 50s, Reddy's career as a spokesman for electricity began to dim a bit in the 1960s. Perhaps consumers were more sophisticated by then, having already embraced the many modern conveniences available in the post-war period.

But Reddy still had a job to do for Ohio Edison in the war against gas appliances. Here he is in a March 3, 1963 Journal ad promoting electric ranges.

(Looking at this ad, it occurs to me that some of my younger readers may not recognize the chalkboard and erasers in the illustration.)

Here’s Reddy in an attractive rendering a year later in a March 30, 1964 ad. He’s still pointing out that cooking with electricity is cleaner because it’s flameless.

****

I’m not convinced that the cleanliness factor was a strong enough advertising point to make the case against cooking with gas.

A better angle might have been to point out that “You’ll never blow up your kitchen with an electric range.” After all, there's at least two Laurel & Hardy movies where attempting to light a gas stove had explosive results.

Here’s the hilarious scene from Blockheads (1938).

In case you’re wondering why Laurel flicked his thumb a few times after discovering he didn’t have any matches, it’s because earlier in the movie he demonstrated a bit of white magic: using his thumb as a lighter. It worked with a pipe; too bad it didn’t work with the stove.

It’s also unfortunate that they didn’t take Reddy’s advice.