It's 1956 and you want a color TV

[estatesale_gary]

Try Dayton's in downtown Minneapolis...they have several to choose from in their window!

 

[estatesale_gary]

Another shot

Dayton's downtown Minneapolis 1956

 

[estatesale_gary]

Color too much cash? Try Southdale

Southdale was the first indoor shopping mall in Minnesota. This is from the early to mid-60's. Dayton's used to have a large appliance dept.

 

[estatesale_gary]

Southdale isn't convenient for me....

...how about the Motorola dealer in Golden Valley?

 

[estatesale_gary]

Maybe Donaldson's at Southdale?

..now where are the tv's?

FYI - The MN Historical Society database has some really great old photos - these are just a few!

 

[petek]

oooh look at those lovely airconditioners and I see Hoover convertibles too

 

[scott55405]

Wow, that was enough to bring me out of hibernation!

These are fantastic pictures Gary! I will have to go to that site and see what else I see. The Dayton's picture would have been when the furniture and appliances were still in the department store building; relatively early on (in the 70s) they moved to a separate store down France, which I think (?) Macy's still operates.

Both Dayton's and Donaldson's stores at Southdale had 4 shopping levels, quite large by suburban mall standards. Donaldson's appliance dept. was in the basement. They left the appliance business relatively early, in about 1973. I think Dayton's lasted into the early 90s if memory serves, and electronics (tvs etc) even slightly longer.

I see the Hoovers and the Maytag wringer and I think some Maytag Auto washers in the Donaldsons picture, I know there were some Frigidaires lurking in probably the next row! I wonder what the a/cs are; I know Fedders always had that round grille on front. Those were the days when window ac's were serviceable and made to last, not the throwaways we know today.

I'm not sure that any of the original Donaldson's buildings exist in any form today; Southdale and Rosedale were demo'd and replaced by Mervyns, gone now too; not sure what became of Brookdale's. Even the Power's locations they occupied after that merger are largely gone. Dayton's still has the two downtowns and Brookdale, the latter of which I understand is going to fold.

You can still see the original Dayton's midcentury facade at Southdale even though the store is no longer in that location. The original not surprisingly was much more interesting in many ways than that which replaced it 10 or 15 years ago. (Anyone remember the Valley View Room?) Donaldson's had a neat looking building too; there was a row of windows at the top where the restaurant had been located.

This is going way back, but there was even an outbuilding on the mall property near 66th and France that housed ski equipment, all manner of sporting goods, and you could even buy boats (from Dayton's)! I don't think Donaldson's did, but Dayton's had the obligatory auto repair centers like Sears, Wards, Penneys and othes at their stores into the 70s (even downtown).

 

[scott55405]

One more piece of fun Dayton's trivia

For most years of its existence, the downtown TV department was located on 7th floor. When I first worked downtown in the late 70s/early 80s and who knows how long before that, Dayton's had made a sort of "corral" with short walls in the TV department in which it placed some seating and a tv, where working (mostly) women would gather on their lunch hours to catch up on what they could of their soap operas (no VCRs in those days).

 

[toggleswitch2]

You have been missed Scott!

 

[scott55405]

TVs were sold on the furniture floor

Gary I just saw one of your headings. I think Donaldson's Southdale Furniture Dept. was on the 3rd floor, and the tv section would have been with that. Both stores always had that section nearest furniture (maybe because in those days tvs and stereos often were furniture?)

The major appliances were generally on the same floor as other housewares (ie mixers, vacuums, etc) (not that that explains Doaldson's Southdale, whose housewares were upstairs, moving to the basement only years later after the appliances and bargain basement were gone). Only time I remember tv and appliances adjoining was at Dayton's St. Paul, where furniture, housewares, tvs, appliances (and toys) were on the same floor. There was even a smaller version of Minneapolis' 8th floor auditorium, and in those days both downtowns had walk-through holiday displays, as the Minneapolis store still does. Appropriately enough in both those stores during that season, toys were located on the auditorium floor, adjoining the auditorium and holiday display, in addition to housewares, appliances, and in Minneapolis the probably long-forgotten save by me Pet Department.

Now I'm trying to remember if the original Southdale store had an auditorium...I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it had...

 

[dalangdon]

Scott, I worked as a temp at the Southdale Daytons when they were moving from the old store to the new store. I moved display equipment from the old store to the display storeroom. You're right - the old one was much more fun. Didn't it have a big atrium with a sculpture or mobile or something?

 

[beadsobleach]

The Seville

I think that color set shown was the "Seville", $795,I saw an ad for them, a lot of money in '56, sure would love to have one of those old color sets,

 

[iheartmaytag]

Does it strike anyone else as funny that the pictures of color television are in black & white?

 

[danemodsandy]

Not a Seville 21:

We had the Seville 21 when I was a kid (Dad worked for RCA, so we had colour pretty early on), and it was not the same set seen in the Dayton's photos; the Seville was from 1955-56, and used the CTC-4 chassis. A photo is below; the Seville was also available without the legs, as the Havilland 21. The Dayton's set appears to be the Westcott, a CTC-5 chassis model from 1956-57.

That Seville of ours soldiered on into the '70s, when it was finally given to my younger brother's high school as an electronics shop project. It had had one new picture tube sometime in the mid-1960s. It was reliable enough for a colour set of its era, except that it had to have convergence adjustments if anyone breathed on it, which was par for the course at the time. Cabinet was red mahogany veneer over plywood, extremely solid and beautifully finished to a glasslike surface.

 

[danemodsandy]

The Westcott:

Here 'tis:

 

[beadsobleach]

Big Color

Thanks for the information. My relatives bought a used color set in the early 60s, it was big and blond. only worked a few months, I remember seeing some cartoons on it. Was convergence something the ordinary person could fix or did you have to call in a serviceman?

 

[iheartmaytag]

We were late to the game as far as color was concerned. We didn't get a color set until about 1974 or so. I remember it was a big GE console.

My Dad loved his football in color. unfortunately he only got to watch about a year before he died that was July of 75. We had that set until 1992. The cabinet was still in good condition but the tube was dead. we gave it to a man that rebuilt TV's just to keep it out of the dump.

 

[danemodsandy]

Mike:

"Was convergence something the ordinary person could fix or did you have to call in a serviceman?"

Mike - you needed a serviceman; the adjustments took special tools and there were voltages in those old sets that could weld your a$$ to the wall. In most instances, if the set was left in place and was not subject to a lot of vibration, it was good for a long time without adjustment. But if it was moved, adjustment was very often needed. As you might expect, clean freaks had the most trouble with their sets - many a housewife moved the set to clean underneath it (usually with the help of a husky teenager) and knocked the convergence off.

RCA tried very hard to educate consumers at the time the set was delivered, but it often took a bill or two for unnecessary service calls (adjustments were not covered under warranty) before some folks started to listen and leave their sets alone.

 

[beadsobleach]

Sandy

Thanks again, I guess I can see why there was resistance in the early days. Still it must have been exciting to see those shows in color. We didn't get color till 67, I use to go to a friends to watch saturday cartoons and Charley Brown Christmas of course...

 

[bajaespuma]

Help me fill in the blanks:

"The world is a carousel of color,
History,tragedy, comedy.
There's drama and mirth,
and old Mother Earth,
and all of her creatures to see.
The miracle of imagination,
...
(The NBC color TV song)

 

[petek]

Me thinks that the song from The Wonderful World of Disney.
Formerly Color.

 

[petek]

But most vividly I remember this RCA color tv ad. Me and my sisters bugging mom and dad to buy one. They didn't till years later

 

[whirlaway]

Disney song

It certainly was from the show,before that it was just called Disneyland,they went to color after the switch to NBC.I dont recall many color shows on ABC where they started in late54.My uncle had a 1959 color set and NBC was the basic color station,Dinah Shore was called the first lady of color.

 

[danemodsandy]

Mike:

" I guess I can see why there was resistance in the early days. Still it must have been exciting to see those shows in color. We didn't get color till 67..."

You got colour when most people did. In '65, two major advances occurred that made colour more practical in the eyes of most consumers. For one, the rectangular colour CRT ("picture tube") was made practical for mass production. For another, the electron guns were made more stable in alignment, cutting way down on convergence problems. After the late '60s, I can't ever remember seeing a TV with convergence issues like the old sets had.

Also, RCA, which owned NBC at the time, did a boatload of print advertising in the 1964-65 time frame promoting NBC shows on RCA TV sets. You'd see the new Radnor colour tabletop set with a scene from NBC's Bonanza on its screen, that sort of thing. Some ads showed part of the scene in black-and-white, and part in colour, to really play up the contrast. Before then, ads had primarily shown sets with models on the screen, not actual stars of network shows. It made all the difference; people suddenly understood that the experience of seeing their favourite shows was different on a colour set. Here's an RCA ad with the Bonanza guys; it's from '64, the year before picture tubes went rectangular:

 

[scott55405]

Thank you Toggle!

Hi Dan! It seems almost like a whole other lifetime now, but that atrium scenario does kind of ring a bell! Sadly one of the few remaining glimpses of the Southdale of old today aside from the original Dayton's exterior I spoke of is the clock on the 2nd floor mall wall, which originally was right outside the Dayton's entrance.

We got our first color set in about 1966 or 67. It was a Magnavox and I could not tell you the screen size. It was in a cabinet on legs, and it had rollaway doors that closed over it when not in use. A few years later, maybe about 1970, we got a "portable" (talk about an oxymoron!) 19" I think RCA set for the family room.

We had the Magnavox for probably 15 years and the RCA about 13, and yes, both sets were purchased at Dayton's, as was their predecessor RCA b/w set, which lived on many years thereafter in the kitchen (that one needed a few new tubes over the years and I remember going with my father to the drug store and using the tube tester!). I think the Maganavox was in the neighborhood of $700, the RCA I want to say between $4 and 500.

I don't think we ever had a service call with the RCA; the Magnavox had more than a few first year adjustments (including one time I recall when they took the insides out to the shop and left the cabinet!) but after that it worked pretty well, although we all thought the RCA had a better picture and better color overall.

Funny to think of how different tvs were then, when I look at my flat 32" Sony in front of me now. I didn't pay much less for my first 13" Magnavox non-remote bedroom tv in 1983 as I did for this Sony! Later that same year the RCA was replaced with a JCPenney set (which I think actually was an RCA) of similar size, our very first remote control TV. We got it there because I was working there part time and it was on sale. I think it came to about $360 after discounts and all. It too was a nice TV. The Magnavox, our one and only console tv, was never replaced since we'd fallen out of using the living room except for company, we always watched in the family room. Being it closed up, it actually lived in the living room for a few more years as "furniture" even after it no longer worked that well anymore.

 

[toggleswitch2]

We got our first color set in 1974. A SONY trinitron. 19" I nearly fainted that we went name-brand.

Dad even splurged of a chimney-top antenna! *LOL* !

Of course this meant that the old black & white set moved to his man-cave in the boiler room! Hockey games were on constantly.

 

[passatdoc]

Our first color set was won in a Lions Club raffle

It was 1967 and I was in sixth grade. My father and I had gone to a hockey game (San Diego Gulls, minor league team in the Pacific Coast league). During our absence, someone from the Lions Club called my mom to inform her that we had won the grand prize in the Lions Club raffle, for which my father had (as a nominal member) dutifully purchased $20 in tickets.

She drove over to pick it up from the appliance dealer who donated it, and they loaded it into the car for her. When we came home, she said "we won a color tv and it's in the station wagon, why don't you bring it inside?" and of course we thought she was joking.

It was a GE 19 inch table top model with a cart. Although we had coax cable, making the portability of the tv a nonissue, the cart still functioned as a free matching stand, and there was a shelf underneath to store books and magazines. The existing tv was a b&w Zenith which fit in a built in bookcase in the wall....the new set was too large to fit in the bookcase, so the cart was a nice addition.

Until then, the very first time I ever saw color tv in operation was at a hotel lobby in Sun City, CA en route to Palm Springs. I had a relative in LA with a broken color tv but never saw it work. Within a year or two, a family around the corner, who were more affluent than my family, had a Zenith tv with legs in the parents' bedroom, so very occasionally I saw a color program there.

Color programming was more limited until the 1960s. It cost more to produce a program in color, so sponsors didn't want to pony up the extra money unless there were enough homes watching the enhanced picture. In some cases, the decision of which channel to view at a given hour was influenced by whether or not the program was shown in color. Some of the networks, ABC in particular, did not fully convert prime time shows to color until c. 1967. This explains why episodes such as "Bewitched" are B&W in earlier seasons and then switch to color. "Donna Reed", which ended in 1966, remained B&W to the end. Some shows such as "The Lucy Show" were filmed in color but originally broadcast in B&W, probably because they realized the residual fees for reruns would eventually justify the added cost in the future when more homes had color.

The first color tv that we PURCHASED was a 19 inch Hitachi table top unit, to replace the dead GE set, in 1972. About 350 dollars, and now prices were dropping quickly, and at this point color tv was now in more than 50% of US homes. Even so, when I bought my first personal tv set in grad school, color was still priced over $200 and out of reach for me at the time, so I bought a 13" B&W for $59 on sale at a discount house. A good portable 13" Mitsubishi color set, which my parents bought for the guest bedroom, would have cost close to $300 c. 1980.

The Hitachi died after 16-17 years faithful service. My parents assigned me the task of buying a replacement (they paid for it but I had to do the research and legwork) and we bought a 19" tabletop Mitsubishi for $500. The quality was so superior to the old Mitsubishi that my parents never questioned the added expense. This set slogged on to the mid 1990s, when it was replaced by a 25" Magnavox. It still works fine but my parents are now itching to move on to the HD era.

 

[passatdoc]

ps

The famous NBC peacock served to alert viewers if the following program was in color or not. A top rated show like Bonanza was an early convert to color, but not all prime time shows were in color in the early 1960s. This alert reduced the volume of calls to the station by people who were only pulling in a B&W picture. If you didn't see the peacock, it wasn't going to be in color.

I remember that with each showing of Wizard of Oz, the host would have to remind the audience that the film did not switch to color until Dorothy lands in Oz. Again, they would be deluged with calls from viewers who couldn't see any color early on. See the following link:

 

[whirlcool]

And before that NBC Peacock, there was this version of the same thing.....

 

[whirlcool]

But this one was my favorite... CBS!

ABC usually had the stars of the upcoming show telling you something the show was in color. For example, Elizibeth Montgomery would come on and say something like "Stay tuned for Bewitched, next in color".