You Asked For It

Somebody called it the YouTube of the 50's. We watched it a time or two in "reruns" in Liberia. This was the first one that came up in a search--it was new to me, and a seriously mixed bag. It's good to remember that sometimes there are good reasons that some things aren't made anymore. Although-- quite a bit of YouTube (including professional performers' work) is in execrable taste too, so there's no evidence for moral improvement and uplift.

People wrote in to ask for a wrestling chimp, Ivory Joe Hunter's TV debut, a magician demonstrating card shark tricks, a William Tell shot, and a blackface song with one of the Jolsons.

I remember one episode which demonstrated the power of human temperature management through sweating. A man and a pan of brownie batter went into an oven (wooden seats for the man) for 15 minutes at (I don't remember) degrees. The brownies came out at least superficially cooked, and the man came out a bit dehydrated but OK.