For those who are into entertainment "before your time" what was your gateway?

I was born in 1998, but I'm really into 1920s-1950s pop culture from the movies, radio, TV, cartoons and music. What started it for me was watching Looney Tunes cartoons on TV (pretty much the only staple from that era that was still popular when I was growing up). I loved the series and started researching the Golden Age of Animation, which lead me to start getting into other cartoons from the era. That lead me to more short films such as Our Gang and The Three Stooges, and then it lead me to consuming just about anything from that time period that was even before my grandparents' time.

What are your stories?

 

Rear Window


I saw it on TV and was entranced when Grace Kelly walks into Jimmy Stewart's apartment. I was thirteen at the time.

 

Music: my parents record collection

Movies: watching all-night B&W movies on KTLA and KTTV in the 70s. I was around 10 or 11 years old at the time.

 

They were still showing older cartoons on TV when I was a kid - 1940's Loony Tunes, Fleisher Pop -Eyes etc, Movies, just seeing them on TV, music, I don't know, I guess reading about it. I was always more interested in the pre-1960's than the 60's -- Boomer culture was never my thing.

 

Well, I am a 'Boomer, and my influences were the same. A new, blonde-wood TV set came into our house around 1961, and I could finally get the nearby independent station on a regular basis (even learned to master the antenna rotor!).

Also our local station had old movies every afternoon. Lots of bad sci-fi.

Also, my grandmother had kept most of my dad's, aunt's and uncles' 78's, so I had a lot to explore there.

 

Music: Weekly sing-alongs at my Grans & 1 of my Uncles & Aunts as well as my parents & Sisters record & cassette collections as well as music class & choir practices. When I got older going out to a working men's club on a Saturday night & friends recommendations, 1940's days & doing research so I could plan & vocally conduct 1920's & 1940's sing-alongs for 1920's & 1940's Days at work.

T.V. & film: Watching old films on T.V. & video with my family as a young girl as well as having to watch old films in English & Media Studies class at school. We read the books in English class as well as watching the film.

I also got used to old music when I read old books my parents bought me which told me about almost everything.

I was born in 1982 but like music from the 1900's onwards. Saying that I was brought up singing songs from the late 1700's which were written by the ploughman poet, Robert/Robbie/Rabbie Burns. I like films from the 1940's onwards but I also like a few silent movies.

 

i am SO happy for you. lol. i had somewhat of the same experience ... but was born in 68! thing is when i was young, our gang, the three stooges, looney tunes were still all on TV, when channels were obviously limited .... because of 'happy days' which was also on tv ... i also got into early rock and roll ..... when i was in jr.high it was the 80's .... and i was right into the 60's .... lol

 

Music.. books about the subject, older brothers influence, some friends recommendations,.. and more

Movies.. late night TV

 

You are are the same age as my parents! I think people your age were more likely to find content before they were born mostly because the TV content was more limited. Funny thing just last week I was watching La Strada and my grandmother (born in 1948) was complaining about the movie being black-and-white! It’s almost a reversal, because she is much more up to date with pop culture then I am.

 

Does anyone only seek out entertainment that was made when they were teenagers or later? I don't know anyone offline who does not like movies/albums/TV shows that were made before their time. But online, it seems we are all supposed to only know what happened during our formative years.

 

No. I look for music I've got at home & like to share with internet friends & discuss. Internet friends offer recommendations & I listen. I listen to music online. I research music from the 1920's & 1940's to vocally conduct sing-alongs at work. I don't research modern music.

 

For me, it was the one-two punch of encountering the first ROLLING STONE and Robert Christgau record guides. As a young teenager, I was otherwise trapped by Top 40 radio and the already calcifying strictures of Classic Rock.

That first ROLLING STONE volume was helpfully illustrated with the covers of five-star albums. I would spend my minimum wage paychecks on a record I knew from radio and blind buy a record I didn't.

 

I got into Westerns by purchasing the first go of Have Gun, Will Travel for a sawbuck at my local Wal-Mart-- I wasn't sure at first how it would turn out, those stories of how Richard Boone was the Old West troubleshooter Paladin, based in San Francisco of olden days. I waded in cautiously at first, then over time, got more and more into it, until I became hooked, and finished the first go, and got the second go for that same price, and finished it too (now, I have all of the series in one release, and it's been one of the best I've gotten).

 

For my sister, anything from the 1990s is too old for her.

 

By the time I was watching shows/cartoons on TV, they were reruns. Like The Flintstones, Bugs Bunnie, Gilligan's Island, etc...

They were new to me!

 

For my nephew, anything from before that seems to be too old for him.

 

I was the youngest of six children, and my oldest brother was 17 when I was born, so I had a lot of influence from older siblings. I was born in 1966 and was probably among the last age group in which it was still common to only have a black and white TV in the house so it was no problem watching old shows and movies. We didn't get a color TV until I was about 8, but by then I was used to watching things in B&W.

I did get into the music of my older siblings - mostly British Invasion and my sister liked singer-sonwriter stuff, but I never enjoyed my parents' Mitch Miller, Roger Williams and various Broadway musical albums. The only music that my parents had that I didn't mind was big band stuff like Benny Goodman.

 

I used to watch Harold Lloyd (and other silent shorts) on Sunday mornings on the local TV station. This was around 1974 when I was 11. We also had an independent station that would play old movies in the afternoons - I can distinctly remember watching "King Kong" on our small B&W set in the kitchen. I also recall my middle school playing the silent version of "Phantom Of The Opera" with Lon Chaney - I'd hate to guess the reaction most middle schoolers would have if they had to sit through that now.

 

King Kong
Laurel and Hardy
The Three Stooges
The Little Rascals

 

I'm 50, and started getting into 60s and 70s music and cinematic culture in the 1990s during my 20s...

Absolutely love exploring the past - especially with music and film.

Started with a lot of movies that came out in 1970 that I was too young to see, and just went up from there. Some of these I'd already seen on TV as a kid, but needed to revisit as an adult to truly understand.

Titles like:

A Clockwork Orange
Where Eagles Dare
The Graduate
Cool Hand Luke
Midnight Cowboy
Straw Dogs
2001
Patton
Chinatown
Jaws

In the last year I've been focused on the 80s film and music - but moreso on the lesser seen and heard side. Movies from the 80s like Paris Texas and Badgdhad Cafe, or in the case of music, a genre I wasn't a fan of growing up, but am now checking out - electronic music like Kraftwerk.

I'm sure I am preaching to the choir here, but there's nothing more satisfying than discovering a great piece of music or art that you missed the first time around in life!

 

When I was 6 or 7, Ch 38 in Boston were showing MAMMY(1930)and I was really fascinated by how OLD it looked(though at that time it was only about 35 years old). Somehow that got me really deep into old films, and I avidly watched "The Little Rascals/Our Gang" and 20s and early 30s cartoons on UHF(Farmer Al Falfa, Out of the Inkwell, Ub Iwerks cartoons)because they were old. An upstairs neighbor of ours from England who reminded me of Twiggy said "these cartoons are so old, the Man who made them died". I also bought a lot of old 78s at Goodwill, and I came to be a fan of 20s dance bands. When other kids wanted to be like metal rock stars, I wanted to be Leon Errol!

 

I have always loved movies from the 10s to the 50s, my gateway was having no TV but living right next to Cornell University during the heyday of Cornell Cinema. Probably watched 1-2 movies per week from age 11-14, with a heavy diet of Warner Brothers and MGM from the 30s and 40s, and silent movies.

 

Local TV station programmed lots of old movies from 1940’and 50’s for weekend afternoon slots. They were cheap to rent

rainy Saturday’s I’d catch something in progress and was captivated by the crazy “fun-house” camera angles and fast talking dialog. Everyone smoked impossibly much and seemed dangerous. Especially the odd looking short guy who I later discovered was Peter Lorre. I was 10-12 years old.

I lost track of it all until after college when some of the movie houses played double bills. Movies changed every 3 days. That reawakened my old film noir memories.

They make up a sizable portion of my dvd and Blu-ray collection

 

I'm a bit older than the oldest who has 'fessed up so far, and I was a very late addendum to a family with relatively old parents. Dad would have been 100 this year. I think growing up with parents who were two children of the '20s/Depression era probably predisposed me to favor entertainment, especially music but also comics and movies, from long, long before my time. For example, thanks to having received hand-me-downs from my mom's father, some of my favorite reading as a kid was Tom Swift. No, not Tom Swift, Jr., Tom Swift--from the World War I era. Similarly, although I didn't start collecting them until later, my earliest experience with records included "kid" 78s Mom and Dad had bought for my brother in the '50s and juke box rejects they'd bought for a nickel each when they set up housekeeping right after WW II. As a result, I'll plead guilty to living to some degree in the past, with an aggravating offense that it's not even my own past.

 

In my early 20s here. I grew up with my grandparents, so you might think that's why I have a fondness for 60s/70s/80s music. But strangely enough, a lot of the stuff that I like from those decades is not particularly favoured - or even remembered - by them. For instance, they'd never heard of Steely Dan or T. Rex before I became a fan.

I suppose it's a matter of one's tastes differing from the current norm. I just happen to enjoy progressive rock, glam rock, art-pop etc., and arguably the best work in those genres was produced many decades ago. I don't particularly associate music with a given era, either. It's not like I listen to Supertramp's Crime of the Century whilst thinking "Wow, I wonder what life was like in 1974?" I just simply enjoy it for what it is.