Oct. 30, 1967: Arthur Treacher Loses It on the Merv Griffin Show Over Cheap Suits

"We are all idiots for tolerating this nonsense." Arthur Treacher (1894-1975) (left) broods while Hippie Fashion Expert Howard Smith (right) talks to Merv (unseen). Comedian Rip Taylor is in the middle.

1967 is the year the Sexual Revolution went mainstream within Pop Culture, at least as portrayed on television. Merv went to color that year (I think), in his fifth year. Treacher had been his announcer since the beginning. He treated Merv's New York show as a classy affair when guests came dressed smartly, as if out on the town for the evening. Here he is, feeling betrayed, as Merv interviews Howard Smith, a Village Voice columnist billed as a "youth fashion expert." His first words: "I have an electric flower in my lapel." There is a giddiness among the guests, as if everyone feels that the rules are loosening, and everyone is going to have fun. Multiple jokes about LSD, coming from nowhere, making one wonder if they had passed around tabs before the show.  Smith begins bragging about how he bought his suit at a thrift store, proclaiming such second-hand purchases to be in the new trend. "It's the latest thing, to go shopping in a thrift store." Treacher is having none of it, and confronts Smith with genuine anger at one point.  "I don't want to discuss this," he warns Merv, who backs off. Later Smith hands around bells as the new trend for male necklaces. Treacher to the audience, "We are all idiots tolerating all this nonsense!" It is everything about the Sixties in one moment.  The network wanted to dump Treacher in 1969. Merv fought to keep him, and won, but Treacher quit when Merv moved the show to L.A. in 1970. Like many men of his generation, he couldn't make the transition to what was happening.

Just one month earlier, on Sept. 25, Merv had interviewed Robert F. Kennedy. Bobby spoke in his soft mumbling cadence about the need for social justice and also the need to do something about Vietnam. Merv leaned in and practically worshiped Bobby as he spoke.  Boddy said he wasn't going to run for president. It was a very classy evening. Maybe the last one.

1967 (late Sept.)  Magical Mystery Tour filmed. LSD supplied to the Beatles by Owsley Stanley. "The film was unscripted and shooting proceeded on the basis of a mostly handwritten collection of ideas, sketches and situations, which McCartney called the "Scrupt". Magical Mystery Tour was ultimately the shortest of all Beatles films, although almost ten hours of footage was shot over a two-week period. The core of the film was shot between 11 September and 25 September 1967."

1967 Term "Summer of Love" originates in San Francisco with the formation of the Council for the Summer of Love during the spring of 1967 as a response to the convergence of young people on the Haight-Ashbury district. The Council was composed of The Family Dog, The Straight Theatre, The Diggers, The San Francisco Oracle, and approximately twenty-five other people, who sought to alleviate some of the problems anticipated from the influx of people expected during the summer. The Council also assisted the Free Clinic and organized housing, food, sanitation, music and arts, along with maintaining coordination with local churches and other social groups.

1967 Monterey Pop Festival (June 16-18)

1967 Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park (January 14).

1967 Aretha Franklin signs with Atlantic Records. choosing not to renew her Columbia contract after six years with the company, Franklin signed to Atlantic Records. That month, she traveled to Muscle Shoals, Alabama to record at FAME Studios to record the song, "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)" in front of the musicians of the famed Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. The song was later issued that February and shot up to number-one on the R&B chart, while also peaking at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100, giving Franklin her first top ten pop single. The song's b-side, "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man", reached the R&B top 40, peaking at number 37. In April, Atlantic issued her frenetic version of Otis Redding's "Respect", which shot to number-one on both the R&B and pop charts and later became her signature song and was later hailed as a civil rights and feminist anthem."

1966 Ronald Reagan elected governor of California, defeating incumbent Pat Brown (Nov.)

1966 (Jan 1) "The Sound of Silence" No. 1 single on Billboard Hot 100.

1965 200,000 Marines now in Vietnam (Dec.)

1965 (Sept.) Owsley Stanley becomes the primary LSD supplier to Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. By this time, Sandoz LSD was hard to come by, and "Owsley Acid" had become the new standard. He was featured (most prominently his freak-out at the Muir Beach Acid Test in November 1965) in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)

1965 Battle of Dong Xoai (Jun. 9-13). Army of the Republic of Vietnam troops overwhelmed by Viet Cong. "The fight for Đồng Xoài began on the evening of June 9, 1965, when the Viet Cong 272nd Regiment attacked and captured the Civilian Irregular Defense Group and U.S. Special Forces camp there. In response to the sudden Viet Cong assault, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) Joint General Staff ordered the ARVN 1st Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, to retake Đồng Xoài district. They arrived on the battlefield on June 10, but were quickly overwhelmed by the Viet Cong 271st Regiment near Thuận Lợi. On June 13 U.S. Army General William Westmoreland decided to insert elements of the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade into a major battle for the first time, because he feared the Viet Cong could secure a major base area in Phước Long Province. By that time, however, the Viet Cong had already withdrawn from the battlefield, so the U.S. paratroopers were ordered to return to base without a fight."

1965 Griswold v. Connecticut decided by U.S. Supreme Court. Argued Mar. 29.. 381 U.S. 479 (1965), ^"is a landmark case in the United States in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Constitution protected a right to privacy. The case involved a Connecticut "Comstock law" that prohibited any person from using "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception." By a vote of 7–2, the Supreme Court invalidated the law on the grounds that it violated the "right to marital privacy", establishing the basis for the right to privacy with respect to intimate practices."

1965 (May 22) Vietnam Day Committee formed in Berkeley. LBJ burned in effigy. The VDC was formed by Jerry Rubin, Paul Montauk, and a number of others including Abbie Hoffman and Stew Albert, between May 21 and May 22, 1965 during a 35‑hour‑long anti-Vietnam war protest that took place inside and around the University of California, Berkeley, and attracted over 35,000 people. The VDC laid out three main objectives: to achieve national and international solidarity and coordination on action, to take part in militant action, including civil disobedience and to work extensively in the community to develop the movement outside of the university campus.Attending the event were several notable anti-war activists, including Dr. Benjamin Spock, however the State Department declined to send a representative, despite the burning of an effigy of president Lyndon Johnson."

1965 (May) The Merv Griffin Show begins in syndication."After a short run on NBC, Merv Griffin launched a syndicated version of his talk show produced by Westinghouse (Group W) Broadcasting, which made its debut in May 1965. Intended as a nighttime companion to The Mike Douglas Show, this version of the Griffin program aired in multiple time slots throughout North America (many stations ran it in the daytime, and other non-NBC affiliates broadcast it opposite The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson). Stations had the option of carrying either a 60-minute or a 90-minute version. Griffin's announcer-sidekick was the veteran British character actor Arthur Treacher, who had been his mentor. Treacher would introduce Griffin with the phrase: "...and now, here's the dear boy himself, Meeeer-vin!" after reading off the list of guests for that evening's show."

1965 (Apr. 15) "What the World Needs Now is Love" released. Lyrics by Hal David and music composed by Burt Bacharach. First recorded and made popular by Jackie DeShannon, it was released on April 15, 1965, on the Imperial label. The song reached number 7 on the US Hot 100 charts in July of that year. The song was originally offered to Dionne Warwick, who turned it down at the time."

1965 (Mar. 23) Launch of Gemini 3. First U.S. space mission with two astronauts. 

1965 (Mar. 8) 3,500 U.S. Marines are dispatched to South Vietnam. "This marked the beginning of the American ground war. U.S. public opinion overwhelmingly supported the deployment"

1965 (Mar. 2)  Large-scale U.S. bombing of North Vietnam commences following attack on the U.S. Marine barracks at Pleiku,. "The bombing campaign, which ultimately lasted three years, was intended to force North Vietnam to cease its support for the Viet Cong by threatening to destroy North Vietnam's air defenses and industrial infrastructure. As well, it was aimed at bolstering the morale of the South Vietnamese. Between March 1965 and November 1968, "Rolling Thunder" deluged the north with a million tons of missiles, rockets and bombs"

1965 (Jan. 20) Johnson gives first and only inaugural address as elected president ."I do not believe that the Great Society is the ordered, changeless, and sterile battalion of the ants. It is the excitement of becoming-always becoming, trying, probing, falling, resting, and trying again--but always trying and always gaining."

1964 (Dec. 28-Jan. 3, 1965) Battle of Binh Gia."Over a period of four days, the Viet Cong 9th Division held its ground and mauled the best units the South Vietnamese army could send against them, only breaking after intense attack by U.S. bombers."

1964 (Dec. 27) Cleveland Browns win NFL championship.

1964  (Dec. 2) Between 1,500 and 4,000 students at Univ. of Calif. got in to Sproul Hall to re-open negotiations with the administration on the subject of restrictions on political speech and action on campus.

1964 The Sound of Silence, 2nd album of Simon and Garfunkel. "Released in October 1964, the album was a commercial failure and led to the duo breaking apart, with Paul Simon returning to England and Art Garfunkel to his studies at Columbia University. In spring 1965, the song began to attract airplay at radio stations in Boston, Massachusetts, and throughout Florida. The growing airplay led Tom Wilson, the song's producer, to remix the track, overdubbing electric instrumentation with the same musicians who backed Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone". Simon & Garfunkel were not informed of the song's remix until after its release. The single was released in September 1965."


1964  (Oct. 1) Jack Weinberg arrested by University of California campus police, starting the Free Speech movement in Berkeley.
1964  (Aug. 7) Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
1964  (Aug. 2) Incident with USS Maddox
1964  (Feb. 9) Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show .

1963 (Nov 22) Aldoux Huxley dies. "On his deathbed, unable to speak due to advanced laryngeal cancer, Huxley made a written request to his wife Laura for "LSD, 100 µg, intramuscular". According to her account of his death^[47] in This Timeless Moment, she obliged with an injection at 11:20 a.m. and a second dose an hour later; Huxley died aged 69, at 5:20 p.m. (Los Angeles time), on 22 November 1963"

1963 Sandoz patent expires on LSD.  "Several figures, including Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, and Al Hubbard, began to advocate the consumption of LSD. LSD became central to the counterculture of the 1960s. In the early 1960s the use of LSD and other hallucinogens was advocated by new proponents of consciousness expansion such as Leary, Huxley, Alan Watts and Arthur Koestler, and according to L. R. Veysey they profoundly influenced the thinking of the new generation of youth."

1962 (Oct. 1) Debut of the Merv Griffin Show on NBC. Runs until May 1963.