Howard Wiggins-I remember an episode of I Love Lucy (I think it was Pioneer Women) where Lucy and Ethel wanted Ricky and Fred to go out and buy them each a dishwasher because they didn't want to get dishpan hands. Ricky's response to Fred? They want us to buy them some rubber gloves! 😄😄😄😄😄😄
@@RStark-ek7mh I absolutely 💯 % hated All in the Family ‼️. Archie hated everybody and mentally abused his wife. I saw that when it 1️⃣st aired and knew it wasn't for me.
@@dianetheisen8664 "All in the Family" is the best-written and acted TV show in history IMO. You are looking in a mirror in life. You stated you "100% hated" the show. Why? Archie hated everything! Your negativity is a shadow that you project onto others instead of owning it within yourself. I bet you voted for President Brandon too. I know your ilk like the back of my hand. Full of hate but flinging your inner feces on others.
Lucy and Dezi and Westinghouse had to have paid them lots of money to star together on their show and also this commercial, otherwise they would have either quit or killed each other. One reason is Dezi was friends with William Frawley and Lucy was friends with Vivian Vance.
@@dennisraatz3406 Dennis, you are right. Frawley was a drunk and showed up on set drunk. Arnez told him that if he kept it up he would be fired. And as he story goes Frawley did clean up his act somewhat.
@@charlesclager6808 Frawley white knuckled his performances. The tiny B & W sets of the 50s covered his shakes. Remastered prints on large monitors show this, like when they were in the Paris cafe, his menu is shaking hard. Remasters reveal Desi's acne scarring as well
Frawley overheard Vance saying " who would believe I'm married to that old coot?" when I Love Lucy first started. He shouted out " Hey. Desi! Where did you find that dried up cunt?" It was fireworks from that time on. While Vance was young and glamorous in her mind only, the truth is she really wasn't the type to play Frawley's wife- who was suppose to be a hard-bitten NY landlady. Lucy knew it and said so but Desi found Vance for the show and by the time Lucy saw her, the first episode was about to go on. Lucy wanted an old battle-ax type to make her look younger. But Desi was used to show girls so Vance must have struck him as dumpy enough. In time Lucy came to respect Vance's professional hard work and the two became friends. When Bill Frawley died in the 1960's, Vivian Vance exclaimed " Champagne for everyone!!!!" Frawley was the opposite of the type Vance liked. She went for campy theater guys and her last husband was gay.
@@Ephemeral2023 I'll tell you an even BETTER one. My father, who is still alive and in his 90's bought a brand new RCA flat screen TV about 8 or 9 years ago from Sears. It didn't work right out of the box. He immediately called Sears (within an hour of him leaving the store) and they refused to replace it, saying it was a 'warranty issue.' I got on the phone and they said we needed to deal with the manufacturer because once it leaves the store, its a warranty issue. I said "you want me to call CHINA?" They gave me a number in California (we're on the east coast) who gave us the runaround. Then they wanted us to ship the TV to them so they could see if it was 'repairable.' My father got so disgusted he bought another TV (an LG) and we ended up throwing the other one away.
This goes further back! These aren’t “Boomers” (with the possible exception of “Little Ricky”). This is the “Greatest Generation” with the exception of “Fred” who was part of the “Lost Generation.” Great actors from a truly groundbreaking show.
@@trey87 i think you mean Desi lol. The original comment was referring to lil Ricky being in the boomer generation as he (Keith) was born in the early 1950’s
That was a very modern looking refrigerator. I remember going to someone's house in the 70s and they had a dishwasher on wheels that was hooked to the sink faucet when in use. These are priceless promos. Thanks for posting.
The '70's? Come to MY house dude. I STILL have one! LOL I inherited/still live in my family home. My parents bought their first dishwasher around 1970ish. It was a top loader like this one. They replaced it around 1991 and that's the one I'm STILL using! Only its a front loader. A Maytag. And it still works like the day they bought it! I've only had ONE repair done to it! I can't see losing cabinet space to put a permanent one in under the counter!
@@retroguy9494 That's cool. Sometime in the late 70s my Dad got me and my brother to join him in giving my mom a dishwasher for Christmas (or birthday- I forget). It was an under-counter Kitchenaide. If the new owners haven't renovated the kitchen I bet it still works today.
@@MillerMeteor74 Awesome! I remember after my parents got their first dishwasher, my step grandfather gave my grandmother a dishwasher for Christmas. A portable one like ours. I still remember him taking my mother to help him pick it out. That was back when most people dealt with a sole proprietor small appliance store before all the big corporate box stores put them out of business!
I've always had great luck with Westinghouse appliances. My parents bought a Westinghouse dishwasher when they moved into their first house in 1963 and it gave them 40 years of nearly trouble free service.
Well, my parents only had TWO in 50 years. I'm in my family home and STILL using the 2nd one and its over 30 years old. Still works like the day it was bought! Only its a Maytag.
My grandmother had a Frigidaire that she bought right after WW2, and it was still running just fine when she passed in 1981. My mom took it and hooked it up in her garage, and it ran into 2005, when she donated it to the thrift store. I didn't know she had gotten rid of it or I would have taken it. I'm 60 and I miss the old folks. True story...
I heard a psychologist on a TEDtalk about 3 years ago who said, "Anyone who tends to use phrases such as "honest to God," "to tell the truth," and "True story" are almost always lying.
Johnathan, I'm 66 and I miss the old folks to. I miss the furniture and the appliances of that era. I really miss the old black & white television shows and commercials. Gee, I wish I could go back to the old niegborhood and ride my bike. 😥
Yep. Back when corporations stood for American pride and quality. Now its all about nothing but profit and making the commies in China wealthy with their cheap parts!
Love this. I have a couple of tattered copies of the Betty Furness Westinghouse Cookbook. It was a bestseller in the early 1950s, filled with classic recipes for all-American food.
I got up in the middle of the night to get myself a midnight snack. I opened the refrigerator and found a squirrel inside. "What are you doing inside my refrigerator, Mr. Squirrel?" I asked. "This is a Westinghouse, isn't it?" he replied. "Yeah. So?" "I'm westing."
After going through, I can't tell you how many blenders, in a few years, I remembered my parents had one made by Waring. I looked up one on eBay, circa 1952, and got it. Glass, metal, no plastic. It's a beast and still working great - 15 years later.
I don't know what happened with women. If you look back through history, even back to ancient Rome/Greece/Egypt women always dressed nice. Unless you were of a lower class and did some kind of laborious work. Today, we get stretch pants, tees and sweatshirts, hair like rats nests, no makeup, etc. When and why did women stop taking pride in their appearance?
Not a tattoo in sight. Multi colored hair, nose, face rings, leggings that look like they were painted on 400 lb tubs of lard, to boot. 200 lbs in the caboose alone. Not an F bomb every 5 minutes, and not a MAJOR self centered attitude in sight. Wow . How the good ole USA has gone down the 💩
On the other hand, Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock had it in their contracts that they would NOT directly "shill" for their sponsors during the program. In fact, Hitch turned his disdain for being interrupted by his sponsor's messages into a memorable part of his program.
They were actors and they deserved to be paid for their applying their professional skills in the commercial. So did Keith Thibodeaux (a.k.a. Keith Richard) in the follow-up.
I remember them too. The major problem was those removable inserts with the lever you had to pull up to get the ice cubes out. Half the time, the lever was frozen to the ice/metal and if you DID get it up, sometimes the ice STILL came out in one big chunk! LOL I think I might still have one or two of those lying around my parents house somewhere!
@@retroguy9494 i would invariably scrape my knuckles on the cold metal trying to pry that lever .... great idea ON PAPER, but in practice they were terrible.
@@Jayce1701 YES! I remember doing that too! I forgot all about that until you mentioned it! LOL As a little boy, you know how kids are; curious. I always wanted to operate it and if I scraped my knuckles (and BOY did it hurt) my parents had zero sympathy. They always told me to "watch was I was doing and pay attention!"
I remember when my mother used to have to defrost our refrigerator. She would have to take all the frozen food out, put it in a picnic cooler, and she removed the cork plug so that water could drain out and she used a pan to collect the water.
I'm old enough to remember frost unfree refrigerators and believe me, they were terrible. You had to unplug the thing to wait for the frost to melt. Some people would hack at the ice build up with a pick and puncture the metal. The longer you waited to defrost the worse it got.
We had a Frigidaire and defrosting that was an ugly job no one wanted to do. It took my mom all day and when she was all finished, my dad used to yell at us not to stand there with the refrigerator door open deciding what to eat. I think I did this job once and then frost free came out, They were much better but an awful lot of really warm air came out of the bottom. It really heated up the kitchen!
That refrigerator in the opening scene that Vivian is struggling with reminded me of the one my parents had until my sister broke it when defrosting it in 1970. Yet, up to that time my dad spent thousands on a hi-fi stereo console system and newer upscale cars to impress the neighbors, but, up until 1970 he deprived the family of the modern convenience of a refrigerator with a fully separate frost-free freezer compartment. It was paradoxical until one understood that some American men, of that era, were prone to be flashy with showing-off material items; where a newer model refrigerator/freezer was not flashy to show off.
Now, THAT was great! Took me back. Had NO idea Fred, Ethel and Little Ricky did plugs for Westinghouse -- good old Betty Furness -- always impeccably dressed and could sell water to a pool company! lol Great video
Oh man! I'm old enough that as a kid when we were poo'h back in the early 80's I had to defrost refrigerators from the 1940's and 50's. That we had. The landlord supplied refrigerators back then. The 40's one was a GM/Frigidaire and the 50's one was a Sears Coldspot. It really sucked to do that. I would get a hair dryer to melt the ice and a butter knife to get the hard-to-get iced areas around the miniscule freezer without messing up the back tubes. That really sucked man. Ethel Mertz is so right.
@@mrpoohbearlvr We got frostfree fridge in 1998 and a few months later we had a fire in our apartment building and believe me that the only thing I missed was that fridge because it meant that I didn't have to defrost anymore. It was labor intensive an all day job for Saturdays. We ended up in a older building with a 1940's fridge no more free Saturdays.
HAHA! I remember my grandparents had a Coldspot refrigerator! As a real little boy, I remember thinking how cheap it looked compared to my parents General Electric. And as I recall, one of my aunts had a Hotpoint. Which was also a Sears product. Of course, that was back when Sears was reliable and sold good stuff!
@@garymattscheck9066 I actually have a small upright freezer which still needs to be defrosted. I had it in a small beach house I used to own and when I sold it, I moved it to my regular house. I just didn't want to pay the extra money for a frost free. I have a big upright, but I keep this one as backup.
Remember the fridge we had when I was little 70 years ago. The freezer was this little Tony box that hung down in the middle of the fridge. No bulk buying then. Couldn't even out a chicken in there. Ice tray and pint of ice cream.
A rare commercial featuring William Frawley & Vivian Vance for Westinghouse appliances. Nowadays, we're lucky to catch celebrities in prescription drug commercials. 👩🏼⚕️
Those were the days when things were made to last also... I had used the same toaster my parents had when I was little until I was almost 60 myself... No BS! Try that with anything these days... Add to that it was almost all American-made... Corporations got cheaper and cheaper as time went on and then we got screwed along the way... We did our part also buying cheaper and cheaper crap...
During the 1990s I was watching an episode of FATHER KNOWS BEST (1954-60) and they had our electric Sunbeam Mixer that we were still using! (My parents married in 1956)
Those early frost-free refrig/freezers were energy hogs. My parents had an early 1970s model in avocado green that lasted 20 years. Upon replacement with a 1990s model, their monthly electric bill averaged 50 percent less.
My parents bought a turquoise frost free refrigerator In the late 60s and in 1968 we moved into our new “modern house” my mother wanted avocado green appliances in the kitchen so my dad took the refrigerator to a automotive paint shop, and had it painted avocado green to match the other appliances in the kitchen. I moved out of the house in 1979 and that refrigerator was still going strong. I don’t remember what brand it was but it was a good one. I think they had it about 18 to 20 years.
I bought a house which had two of those refrigerators, one in the house and one in the garage. I replaced both with a new energy efficient refrigerator and one freezer, and my light bill came down $80. That was in the 90's.
I call BS the new models they have today will save you some money on energy yet will they last 20/25 or longer years? & that is where the bigger saving comes into the picture - Some of you may think these vintage units will be energy hogs. But the models of the late 30s to late 50s were mostly not "frost-free" or "self-defrosting" and also remember that electricity was relatively expensive back then, so they DID try for efficiency in those days. The trick is that while the unit will draw a little more power when running and especially during start-up for about 3 seconds, it runs a lot less overall than newer units. Only in the mid-1960 when everyone wanted "frost-free" units did energy consumption soar. The units made after 1960 or so are much more square-shaped. The inefficiency continued until the late 1970s or early 1980s after the second oil and energy crisis. If the fridge was frost-free or frostless, it could easily use 60% to 70% more power in that era, often defrosting and recooling even if no one opened the doors much. Then, mandated by the federal government, the manufacturers began to make the units more efficient. After 2000 the units became really efficient, but the trade-off is the new compressors are cheaply made, mostly overseas, they run hotter, have cheap start relays that malfunction and the compressors rarely last more than 10 years, regardless of what you spend on a new fridge... $400 or $3500. So keep in mind that you'll either be replacing a fridge every 10 years or paying for a costly (average $750.00) compressor replacement. Which is why I like the old refrigerators and freezers so much... 6o years later they still keep on quietly running and there is no reason they can't make it to 100 years if you treat them well! Most of the older units do very well, as long as the doors close well and are airtight and the insulation( usually fiberglass ) is dry. The unit should not run more than about 50-60 percent of the time at 70 degrees F ambient for older fridges. I have one that runs for 5 minutes, and then stays off for another 18 minutes, and sold another one that ran for 7 minutes and stays off for almost half an hour, and that's with the fridge holding at about 34 degrees inside! I tested several older refrigerators and freezers with an amp meter and found them using only 1.6 to about 3 amps! That means 180 to 360 watts at 120 volts. Figure that the average unit runs about 35% to 60% of the time and you can see the power usage is low. Many units from the late '60s to 1980s pull higher overall amperage, around 4 amps or even close to 5 amps. Note that you cannot rely on the metal tag or paper sticker, almost any fridge shows at least 5 amps and is quite meaningless. If the temperature is too cold even after adjusting the thermostat it may be broken, or if it is a single-door fridge there should be a flap or baffle to control freezer airflow into the fridge portion to help regulate temperature.
This Westinghouse frost free fridge would be the beginning of frost free REFRIGERATORS. The very first refridgerators used Ammonia for the freon/gas . Later R12 came into the scene which is cfc. Damaging to the ozone. Now days there is R134a. And other types of ozone safe refrigerants.
That was the only kind of ice trays my grandpa would ever use. And he would only drink out of a metal cup. I think it was metal. But the only cup he would ever use
This stuff is priceless! A real little piece of America right here.... for all of us to still enjoy, after all these years. Still great stuff, & a lot of fun to see Fred & Ethel going at each other, as it should be. They were great together - even though, apparently, in real life they hated each other's guts!
Philip Morris originally sponsored "I LOVE LUCY" from 1951 through '55. At the end of those episodes, Lucy and Desi would do a little business for their sponsor, telling viewers how tasty and mild Philip Morris was......and there were plenty of scenes of them and the Mertzes smoking during the episodes.
They DO. I deal with a sole proprietor appliance repair shop that my family has used for the last 50 years. The original owner retired and his long time assistant bought the business from him. He tell me stories all the time of doing minor repairs to these old machines. Some of them the original owner sold to them back in the day because he also used to have a store.
Our family had a top loading portable dishwasher, I don't remember what brand it was, a utensil or something fell into the impeller stage during use, jammed up the motor. Back to doing dishes by hand.
That's one long commercial! They are definitely selling it to the public. They explain everything. This is like a class in where technology was back in that time period!
Life cereal commercial still stick in my head after 50yrs.............."Did you try it?" I'm not gonna try it"."You try it"."I'm not gonna try it"..Let's get mikey!! "Yea"! "He wont eat it".He hates everything!".."He likes it".."Hey mikey!"When you bring LIFE home","Dont tell the kids its one of those nutritional cereals you've been trying to get them to eat".Your the only one who has to know"...
Thanks for these! I have seen some of the Lucy-Desi-Fred-Ethel Westinghouse long commercials, but not these! Now I can die happy. Now that I watched the 2nd commercial with Fred and Little Ricky, that portable dishwasher seems like a pain in the ass! You gotta roll it over to your sink, attach the hoses, and plug it in each time you wash your dishes? As Little Ricky would say, "YEESH!"
I MUST SAY THIS: TV WAS A LOT OF FUN BACK IN THE DAY. THERE WAS ALWAYS SOMETHING GOOD ON. EITHER FIRST RUN OR RERUN.AS MY MOM USED TO SAY IF TV WERE AS BAD THEN AS IT IS NOW IT NEVER WOULD HAVE LASTED.
This is a hoot, thank you for finding it! The 'plot' confuses me. So Fred and Ethel know Betty Furness well enough to just walk into a commercial studio? They seem as well-connected as Ricky in Hollywood! :) HMM. Of course I don't blame Fred for giving in... this is certainly better than the infamous walk-in freezer Lucy got stuck in! Too bad they weren't able to compare that episode. Also I must (jokingly) object to a depiction of Fred--even famously cheapskate Fred--washing dishes by hand on his own volition without having lost a wager or some other inducement. He usually let Ethel do all the housework because 1950s. (Plus, Fred's a bit of a schmuck anyway. I can see Ricky helping especially if Lucy's taking care of Little Ricky.) But seriously... thanks so much for the upload. Love this stuff!
Also I love that Little Ricky is roped in to market the dishwasher. Surprised they didn't trot out Mrs. Trumbell while they were at it. (Since clearly Westinghouse was too cheap to shell out for Lucy and Ricky!)
Yes, I remember that episode. And baking bread, the candy factory, Lucy getting a loving cup stuck on her head and on the subway, an of course, Vitameatavegimen.