The 1950s Rewind, September 10

Good morning. It is September 10, and we are starting on a Saturday night in 1955.

CBS, half past ten. A new programme, and nobody knew yet what it would become.

The screen opens on a dusty street. A man walks out and speaks straight to you.

It is John Wayne. He has come on to introduce somebody else, which he almost never did.

He tells you this is a Western for grown-ups, and that the fellow in it is a friend of his.

Then he steps aside, and James Arness walks into Dodge City as Marshal Matt Dillon.

That was Gunsmoke, September 10, 1955. It ran twenty years. Six hundred and thirty-five nights.

From 1957 to 1961 it was the number one programme in America. Nothing else came close.

Some of you had it on every Saturday. Some of you had a father who would not miss it.

Now, a few years earlier, on the radio that same week in 1951, one record was on top.

Tony Bennett, singing "Because of You." He was twenty-five years old, and it was his first big one.

It sat at number one for eight weeks that summer and into September. Eight weeks.

Two of the finest athletes this country produced were born on this day, both of them.

Arnold Palmer, September 10, 1929. A steelworker's son from Latrobe, Pennsylvania.

He is the man who made people who had never held a club sit down and watch golf.

They called him the King, and the crowds that followed him around a course had a name too.

And Roger Maris, September 10, 1934. A Yankee, from Fargo, North Dakota.

In 1961 he hit sixty-one home runs and passed Babe Ruth, and the country argued about it all summer.

Charles Kuralt was born on this day in 1934 as well. He drove around America for CBS.

He found ordinary people and let them talk, and it turned out that was the whole show.

One more. On September 10, 1960, in Rome, a man from Ethiopia won the Olympic marathon.

His name was Abebe Bikila, and he ran the whole twenty-six miles with nothing on his feet.

So that is September 10. A marshal, a crooner, two ballplayers of a kind, and a barefoot runner.

Let us talk about it for a few minutes, and then we will put some music on.