Jackie Gleason conducts the Laclede Orchestra in St. Louis, 1962

ALAN writes:

I have always looked upon the late 1950s/early 1960s as a high-water mark of modern American life. I would like to cite two examples from the realm of popular entertainment that will show the contrast between then and today. Here is the first:

Sixty years ago, at the noon hour on a sunny day in August 1962, thousands of people gathered on Eighth Street in the heart of downtown St. Louis:  Office workers, shoppers, visitors, diners, and department store and specialty store employees. They did not harm anyone, shoot anybody, break any windows, or vandalize any property.  It was a peaceful assembly of civilized men and women. They were there to see and hear one man; a man who had by then become a legend in the realm of television comedy entertainment.  Jackie Gleason was there in person to speak briefly and conduct the Laclede Concert Band in a rendition of his theme song “Melancholy Serenade.”

The crowd was not “diverse” or “multicultural.” It was 99.99% white. Women wore dresses and hats. Men wore white shirts, ties, suits, and hats.  There were no blue jeans, t-shirts, ball caps, or tattoos and no men or boys with long hair.

Would that such mobs could still be seen in downtown St. Louis.

Nearly everyone there was old enough to remember the entertainment Jackie Gleason provided on his TV shows during the previous ten years.

I regret that I was not there that day. At age 12, I had not yet developed an appreciation for his comedy talent. That would come several years later when I discovered the richly-entertaining, hour-long color program on Saturday nights in 1966-’67, and when I began to read about this man who took more than a casual interest in books, philosophy, religion, psychical research, and the eternal questions of life and death.

The photograph above appeared in the July-August issue of the Downtown Newsletter. In the block across the street from where he stood was a Mavrakos Candies store with large glass windows, and the Doubleday Book Shop, a modest store compared with modern bookstores, where my father and I browsed often in the 1960s.

Within one block from where Mr. Gleason stood on that day, there were four tall office buildings, two department stores: Vandervoort’s and Famous-Barr, the Arcade Building, with offices on upper floors and shops at street and mezzanine level, Miss Hulling’s Cafeteria, below street level, Lipic’s Pen Store, Florsheim Shoes, a tobacco shop, jewelry stores, card and gift shops, and a large magazine and newspaper stand at the corner, where my father and I stopped one day in 1965 to purchase out-of-town newspapers in which we could read additional press coverage of Project Gemini spaceflights.

Numerous bus routes crossed that intersection in those years, and I remember standing there many times as crowds of people waited for one bus after another to take them home after a day of working or shopping.

The three big department stores downtown undertook extensive remodeling in 1959. St. Louisans were confident and optimistic that year. Improvements were made in retail stores, specialty shops, clothing stores, hardware stores, restaurants, and hotels. A store on Tenth Street sold guns and was in business for years, yet there was no wave of crime in downtown St. Louis then as there is today when there are no stores selling guns. There were two movie palaces and a third theater offering stage plays. There was an automobile dealership on Washington Avenue, the main street downtown, with large glass windows.

You could stand today—as I have done—at the exact location shown in this picture and try to envision such vitality as was there in 1962. But you would fail. All that you would see today are abandoned businesses, empty sidewalks, storefronts that remain boarded-up for decades, bums asking for handouts, and streets notorious for their advanced state of disrepair.

The irony is that Jackie Gleason presented “Melancholy Serenade” —a lovely, bittersweet melody— at a time when downtown St. Louis thrived with activities, commerce and entertainment. But “Melancholy Serenade” is a better fit for the ghost town that downtown St. Louis is today.

What we see in this photograph is a snapshot of well-dressed and well-mannered people at a public event in those summit years: people and things the likes of which we will never see again.

— Comments —

George Weinbaum writes:

In about 2005, a man at my church, who was then in his 70’s, and is now deceased asked me, “George, when do you think this country was at its best”?

I respond, “In about 1961, the first year of the Kennedy administration.”

He answers, “Remarkable.  I say 1960, the last year of the Eisenhower administration.”

By the way, long live: Ralph Kramden, Ed Norton, Alice and Trixie!

Patrick O’Brien writes:

I read years ago that Jackie Gleason was fortunate enough to live in the same apartment building in New York as Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who received the thrice-married man back into the good graces of the Church.

Please follow and like us: