Entertain Us... 1960s Style! Trivia Quiz

Playboy was an organization that was aimed at men in society and the opening of their clubs offered them a "bachelor-pad" style of fantasy. They also came to reflect the 1960s' changing attitude toward sex and permissiveness and they placed Playboy at the forefront of what was fast becoming the "sexual revolution".

The scene of the opening of the first Playboy Club was Chicago, and the date was February 29, 1960. The club's set-up included a living room, and a Playmate's Bar, where members were served food and drink by women, known as Playboy Bunnies. It would not be unusual for some of these women to have appeared in the Playboy magazine. Additional features of the club included a dining room and a club room.

Entertainment on the opening night was provided by seventeen year old singing sensation Aretha Franklin and noted US comedian Dick Gregory. It didn't take long for the club to gain popularity, to the point that, in the period between October 1 and December 31, the following year, the club drew an estimated 132,000 patrons. The club soon became known as "the busiest nightclub in the world", and membership of it rapidly became a status symbol. However, times change and so do social standards. What once looked like a glamourous set-up in the 1960s, came to have a sleazy feel about it in the 1980s. All of the clubs in the franchise soon felt the pinch. The Chicago club closed down in 1986 and, by 1991, the franchise had become defunct.

Set during the World War II years, lying between 1942 and 1944, Joseph Heller's satirical novel follows the story of Captain John Yossarian, a bombardier in the US Army Air Force. Using a non-chronological style of narration, where the events are described out of order, but the time-line eventually evolves into the plot-line, that is drawn from the points of view of several characters, the story takes a close look at the absurdity of war and the lengths that soldiers would go to, to simply to complete their duties and return home with their sanity intact.

Whilst the novel was set in the 1940s, and was predominantly written in the 1950s, its anti war and anti-authoritarian principles somehow seemed to anticipate the sensibilities that would permeate throughout the 1960s. Heller's novel was met with mixed reviews on its release and did not garner any awards, but it is now considered to be one of the most significant works of the 20th century.

Edward Albee's play centres around George and Martha, a middle aged couple whose long relationship can best be described as bitter and frustrating. They meet a young couple, Nick and Honey, at a university faculty party whom they invite home as their guests and soon, the young pair, are unwittingly drawn into their struggles.

On the surface the play looks at a broken relationship but to find the its true meaning would require digging deeper. Albee, who was one of the main advocates of the Theatre of the Absurd, an organization that flourished in the 1950s and 60s and used dark humour to reflect a pessimistic view of society, uses the play as an analogy of the Cold War. George and Martha became the United States and the Soviet Union, embroiled in a psychological war that could only result in fear and tension.

"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" would become the one of the most revived plays of the 20th century and would also become the basis of a 1966 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The first production of the play, which was staged in October of 1962, would win the Tony Award for Best Play in 1963.

"Astro Boy", the manga series, was launched in 1952 and ran as a serial until 1968. Known in Japan as "Mighty Atom", Astro is an android who possesses human emotions. He was created in the laboratory by Professor Umataro Tenma as a replacement for the son he'd lost in a motor vehicle accident. When Tenma realized that the android could not be a replacement for a human, he discarded him. Astro is sold to a circus to compete in gladiatorial contests with other, more primitive, robots. He is rescued from that fate by another scientist, Professor Ochanomizu who, in a twist of fate, sees Astro as a surrogate child.

Mushi Productions would adapt Osamu Tezuka's creation for television and the first episode would be screened on Fuji TV on New Year's Day of 1963. The programmes's popularity grew rapidly, mainly because Astro's principles of peace and love were the same totems that were representatives of the times. These were borne out of his creator's own anti war feelings which, in turn, grew from his experiences in surviving the fire bombing of Osaka during World War II. In fact, Astro appears as a supporting character in Tezuka's first comic, "Ambassador Atom" (1951) as a peace negotiator. The television series also plays on Astro's desire to be seen as a real boy, a touch of "Pinocchio-ism", that inadvertently mirrored man's growing fascination with machines during the 1960s.

The following line appeared in an article in Life Magazine in early 1964 "In 1776 England lost the American colonies. Last week, the Beatles took them back."
The article was referring to the Beatles earlier appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" (February 9, 1964), an episode that was seen by an estimated 73 million (or 45%) of American TV viewers. It was an appearance that put the stamp on what would soon become known as the "British Invasion".

This would be a cultural phenomenon that saw, not just music, but other aspects of British culture capture the hearts and minds of Americans. Whilst the Beatles were at the forefront of the music scene, other acts such as the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Animals, Dusty Springfield and the Moody Blues (among others) soon followed.

The British fashions of the Mod and Carnaby Street style became a hit, in particular the mini skirts displayed by the likes of supermodels Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton. Television shows like "The Saint" (1962-69) and "Danger Man" (1960-64) began to appear on American screens and would be an influence in their creation of spy dramas. On the big screen came "Mary Poppins", which immediately became Disney's most Oscar nominated film and the man with the "License to Kill", James Bond, who'd launched in 1960, was soon to become a giant of the screen.

It seems almost ironic now that all of this was sparked by a young band's appearance on what is often described as "a comfortable hearth and slippers" type television programme.

The 1972 film version of "Fritz the Cat" opens with the words "Hey Wow, the 1960s. Happy Times. Heavy Times.", which makes a succinct summary of what the comic strip represented.

Robert Crumb was an artist who would make a significant contribution to the underground comics movement of the 1960s. Founder of the first successful underground publication, Zap Comics, he would introduce, to the world, a range of great characters such as Mr. Natural, Eggs Ackley, that Keep on Truckin' guy, but, his crème de la Crumb was the cat with the tormented soul... Fritz.

Whilst Fritz was not an alter ego of Crumb's he was certainly influenced by the environment that Robert was in. Crumb was not comfortable with the counterculture of the 1960s but he was a keen observer, and his Fritz's adventures soon became a parody of what was happening at the time. There were revolutions in music, art and fashion, the Civil Rights Movement was gathering steam, there was, not just, free love in the air, but also drugs, flowers and protests... so it was easy to see how Fritz could be such a tormented soul. Fritz was a student, a drop out, a revolutionary, a radical and, in the eyes of Ralph Bakshi, the man who would turn him into an X-Rated animated feature in 1972, "a phony". Happy times, heavy times indeed.

"To boldly go where no man has gone before" was a catchphrase that was launched in 1966 and would continue to echo in the decades beyond. It hailed the opening of a television science fiction series, "Star Trek: The Original Series" in 1966 and, much like the phrase, the series would become a pop culture phenomenon that would spawn several subsequent television series, a film franchise and numerous other adaptations in various forms of media.

Created by Gene Roddenberry, who envisioned it as a "western in space" and billed it as the "'Wagon Train' to the stars", each episode followed the escapades of the crew of the Starship USS Enterprise and was created on two levels - one, a suspense filled adventure story, and the other as a moralistic tale. Many of the stories, in each decade, were allegories of the issues society was facing at the time. That same ideology would be extended to all the series that followed.

The song was called "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)", and it was released in 1967. Scott McKenzie sang it and John Phillips, of the Mamas and the Papas, was the man who wrote it. The song wasn't a random exercise, it had a purpose... to promote the Monterey International Pop Festival. The fact that it (the song) became an international hit was a bonus.

Phillips, at the time, was one of the architects of the festival, along with record producer Lou Adler, Alan Pariser (event coordinator) and publicist Derek Taylor. Their vision was to use the event and the gravitas of the reputation of the famed Monterey Jazz Festival as a means toward providing rock and roll music a greater sense of legitimacy or standing.

The event, which boasted the first major appearance in America of Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Who and Ravi Shankar, ran for three days, was seen by, on some counts, as many as 90,000 people, kick started California's "Summer of Love" and became the inspiration of a number of similar events, most notably the Woodstock festival which arrived two years later.

Hosted by comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin "Laugh-In" was a sketch comedy programme that ran on the NBC network for six seasons from 1968 to 1973.

Whilst there was a fair amount of vaudeville within the construction of the show, it also drew great inspiration from two other TV shows. The first was the BBC's "That Was the Week That Was" (1962-63). This British programme was hosted by David Frost and it made everything and everybody "fair game" for lampooning... that included the office of the Prime Minister. The other was "The Smothers Brothers Country Hour" (1967-69) which beautifully blended popular music with political satire.

In a similar vein, "Laugh-In" was built on rapid-fire gags and sketches that took aim at political figures and the fads that were prevalent in the day. These were generally sprinkled with irony, sarcasm and a healthy dose of sexual innuendo. It became the most popular programmes on US television in only its second season on air and it became the forerunner of that long-running breeding ground of American comics, "Saturday Night Live", which commenced in 1975.

"Staggering, shattering, heartbreaking, hilarious, tragic, raw and absurd" were some of the superlatives that were aimed at "Midnight Cowboy", upon its release in 1969, by Miami Herald's film critic John Huddy. Such a remarkable way to welcome in a film that told the story of a would-be gigolo (Joe Buck played by Jon Voight) who forms an unlikely bond with a down and out loser (Ratso Rizzo played Dustin Hoffman).

In the same year that we got to witness the glitzy "Hello Dolly" and the "much too cheery" "Paint Your Wagon", in rode the gritty and radical "Midnight Cowboy", a film that had the courage to take us into the uncompromising underground of New York's gay life. A film that that dared to buck (pun not intended) against Hollywood's constraints, that shouldered aside the superficial glamour that the industry revelled in, that kissed goodbye to the cowboy of the western genre and ushered in the sordid cinema of the street - it's no accident that this film's cowboy heads east to find his place. Yet, it still managed to cast doubts into the heart of its director John Schlesinger... on the last day of filming, he looked at his lead actor, Jon Voight, and asked "What have we done?" He was reassured by midnight's cowboy "we will live the rest of our lives in the shadow of this masterpiece."