Happy Birthday to 1962!
All this year, 1962 is 50 years old! So a lot of people and things we’re familiar with today are also 50 years old. If you like music, for example, you can celebrate the birthdays of Trace Adkins, Axl Rose, or Paula Abdul. And, Stevie Wonder had his debut performance at age 12 at the Apollo Theater in New York in 1962. The variety of musical genres was just as broad in 1962, with music on the radio spanning country, surf, movie themes, doo wop, and even comedy. Lots of music you hear every day on oldies stations, in television ads, and while shopping comes from 1962. Popular songs included “Limbo Rock” by Chubby Checker, “The Locomotion” by Little Eva, “Return To Sender”, by Elvis Presley, and “Do You Love Me” by The Contours. And if you’ve ever done the Twist, you can thank the year 1962. "The Twist" was so popular there were eight Twist songs becoming hits that year!
Music highlights the changes in technology between 1962 and today well. Back then, we had only two options for music: the radio and vinyl records. Today’s mp3 players, personal computers, and even CDs were not yet available. Even such ancient formats as 8-track and cassette tapes were not yet around. And, there was also no cable TV in 1962! The first pay-TV test in the United States happened in Hartford, Connecticut that year. About 300 families tested paying $1 to tune in one of last year’s movies.
A quick look at the movies of 1962 finds many classic films to celebrate and watch. The first James Bond movie, Dr. No, was released that year. This first one grossed $16.1 million: only two other films took in more than $10 million in 1962. Some other classics from the year were Days of Wine and Roses with Jack Lemmon and music by Henri Mancini, Lawrence of Arabia with Peter O'Toole, Mutiny on the Bounty with Marlon Brando, the very last of the Bob Hope / Bing Crosby "road" films, The Road To Hong Kong, To Kill a Mockingbird with Gregory Peck, and Lolita with Peter Sellers and directed by Stanley Kubrick. Robert Redford made his movie acting debut in 1962, in War Hunt, and Robert Duvall debuted in To Kill A Mockingbird.
Going back to people born in 1962, the following television personalities are 50: Mike Rowe, Alton Brown, Jon Stewart, and Craig Ferguson. Among world political figures, we find Felipe Calderón (president of Mexico), Chris Christie (governor of New Jersey), King Abdullah II (King of Jordan), and Kim Jong Il (the recently deceased North Korean dictator). World politics of 1962 helped form the world we live in today. The United States sent military advisors to Vietnam. President Kennedy said that if they were fired upon, they would return fire. This was the beginning of our ill-fated war in Vietnam, opposition to which would fuel much of our domestic unrest for the remainder of the 1960s.
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati