Yesterday, on TMC, I watched, for the first time, from beginning to end, the 1963 movie The Courtship of Eddy's Father. The movie opens in the kitchen with a yellow 40" Imperial range. It looks strange with only one oven dial, but the surface unit controls are still the horizontal window type. There is a Pyrex percolator perking and boiling much too hard on the on the front 6 inch surface unit (without the wire grid) and a yellow Club Aluminum 10" skillet on the 8" unit. There is a matching refrigerator and dishwasher. When the housekeeper arrives she comments on the nice equipment. The strangest thing was that in the two scenes where first, the housekeeper and, later, Eddy's father are putting plates in the dishwasher, only the top rack is pulled out and the plates are just set down in it like they would be on a table. The only other really iconic early 60s thing is the tank in which Eddy keeps his goldfish. It is a plastic Flair aquarium without the light hood. If any of you are old enough and kept tropical fish, you might remember the style. Ron Howard does some really good acting in this with a lot more emotional range than on the Andy Griffith Show. Stella Stevens and Dina Merrill look as glamorous as ever, but the appliances were the most interesting part and you get to see the best shots of them right at the start of the movie; much better than Mommie Dearest where you don't get to see the combos until more than halfway through the movie.
Yellow 1962 Frigidaire Appliances
- Thread starter tomturbomatic
- Start date
Help Support :
passatdoc
Well-known member
I remember a bizarre Flair aquarium with red trim on the set of the tv version of "The Courtship of Eddie's Father", with Brandon Cruz, Bill Bixby and Miyoshi Umeki. I was 13 when the show debuted, too old to relate to Cruz's character (with a deceased parent) and too young to understand the single parent issues raised by Bixby's widowhood. It was easier to understand Umeki's character, as an immigrant housekeeper/governess, as her character could have just as easily worked in a two-parent household. I think I watched it for a season and then gave up. People my age seemed most attracted to it because Bill Bixby was a familiar character from "My Favorite Martian".
Get a look at "Under The Yum Yum Tree" sometime, where in the kitchen of the Carol Linley and Dean Jones characters, there is what seems to be a Frigidaire 40" range with no console. I think the controls are on the rangetop, on the far right. Strange. And it seems like the refrigerator was unidentifiable.
