My wife and I are going to a friends party that has a mandatory 60's costume requirement. I am not even a little bit creative with this stuff. Anyone have any good 60's character ideas other than JFK and Jackie O? Thanks
Just show up in a tie-died T-Shirt and bell-bottom jeans. You'll be fine. Make sure to share your grass with everyone!
I suppose this would all depend on whether this is a "'60s party" for people who remember the '60s or for people who don't remember the '80s. Original '60s: John Glenn (crew cuts); Neil Armstrong (moon suit), Beatles (narrow ties), Man from U.N.C.L.E. (radio pen), Kent State (more of a horror theme), Green Berets (John Wayne style), Haight-Ashbury (worn, grunge jeans, dirty toes in sandals, wilted sunflowers), Berkeley (Baby blue riot helmets), Twiggy (non-transparent plastic mini dresses), Rowan and Martin: (characters galore ... including "Tiny Tim"; "sock it to me", "one ringy-dingy", "wanna bite of my walnetto?", "here come the judge", "verrry interestink", go-go girls with decorative (and joke) paint), The Prisoner (No.6, The Village, "Rover"). Revised '60s: Austin Powers. (Bell bottoms and tie-dies were '70s, actually, but who's counting?) Oh, and Original '60s: Captain Kirk! (and Spock) (Convenient that today's "flip phones" resemble Communicators -- but PDAs are much smaller than tricorders). Lost in Space. (Danger Will Robinson, "oh the pain!") Oh yes: 1966: "Grand Prix" For a couple: "Tyrone F Horni" and Gladys, the uptight little old lady with the whacking purse. "Get Smart" (and "99") -- (sorry about that chief, cone of silence)?
You like flying, don'tcha? Saaaaaaay... we haven't landed on Earth's Moon yet, you're Neil Armstrong in an orange jumpsuit and she's an Astro-Wife or Groupie. Apollo 11 landed July 20, 1969, which affords plenty of room for disparaging comments like "The Moon? Ha!" from Squares or "Far out" from Hippies. As the evening wears on, you'll find plenty of opps to improvise on this. A few years ago, when John Glenn went back up in a Space Shuttle around Halloween, I went as Juan Glenn, Primero Astronauto de Mexico. Laff riot ensued.
Just go to the Goodwill Store and get a Frank Sinatra or Jack Webb/Joe Friday suit and be done with it. And don't forget the hat.
What about the dame, though? "All we know are the facts, Ma'am" I've always referred to Friday & Gannon as "Mannequins on Speed."
Alas, the '60s were pre-women's lib. There's the Goldie Hawn / painted gogo dancers from Laugh-in, "I dream of Genie", Bond Girls, and the minidress or green orion slave girls of Star Trek. Not a lot of deep roles for women in the '60s. (Roddenbury wanted a female second in command for 'Trek, but NBC nixed it as "unbelieveable" -- so the "Nurse Chapel" character was invented for the actress instead. Of course, NBC also thought Spock was "too satannic" to be a popular character, too.) There's always "Mrs. Robinson" from "The Graduate". (Technically, even Lily Tomlin's "Ernestine the phone operator" was into the '70s.) For a couple, there's Arte Johnson's Tyronne F Horni (dirty old man) and Ruth Buzzi's "Gladys" (little old lady), unless the lady *wants* to show off a bit. Aha!: Steed and Mrs.Peel! (Those jumpsuits were called "Emma Peelers" in the day ...)
Here you go have a Shagadelic party & dont spare the Fembots Hef was at his peak in the 60s too Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Star Trek rules, the original was awesome Capt Kirk got laid on almost every planet, Picard & Archer almost never got any Image Unavailable, Please Login
If you get Stephen Whitfield's book, "The Making of Star Trek" (it was the textbook for my college TV production course -- back when Trek was still on the air), there are tons of stories about painting Susan Oliver green for that sequence (from the first pilot): There was the Desilu film lab that kept compensating for the "camera error", the doctor called on set for a green patient, ... And all the stories about what "crazy Gene" wanted next, for futuristic plants, for getting defense contractors to design the Enterprise bridge, etc. (They got salt shakers for that salt monster episode that were so futuristic that nobody would recognize them as salt shakers. So they used a salt shaker from the cafeteria .... and used the futuristic salt shakers as McCoy's medical instruments. ) lol. It gets to me when the greenies lambast the space program -- because the whole earth day movement was launched by that picture of the "big blue marble" from Apollo 8 ("Earthrise") from lunar orbit in the first place. I still remember the laugh they got on "Laugh-In" "News of the Future" when they referred (in 1968) to a 1988 "President Reagan". Their "20 years from now" news also predicted the removal of the Berlin wall in 1989 (although they then predicted that it would be replaced by a moat of alligators). I expect we'll be seeing kids, in a few years, referring to the historical "Berlin WalMart".
Yep, go as Jimi Hendrix. Dont forget to take your Jimi Hendrix lookalike dog with you. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Actually, most modern day images of the 60s are Hollywood stereotypes. If you look back at any old news film that was taken of a crowd of people in the 1960s, (other than a college protest or anti-war rally) most of the men will have very short hair cuts and the women will all be wearing dresses. Many older guys in the 1960s still wore hats as part of their everyday attire. Back in the 40s and 50s, every man wore a hat. So the older guys still wore them into the 60s. There were NOT long haired hippies on every street corner in the 60s. Most schools still had stiff dress codes that required girls to wear dresses instead of jeans or pants suits. If the principal didn't like what you were wearing, you were sent home and most likely did NOT call your lawyer on the phone and file an instant lawsuit against the school system! The radical 60s were a much more subdued changing time throughout most of the country in comparison to Woodstock or Berkley or Kent State. Saying that long haired hippie flower children represented the people of the 60s is like saying that a 435 HP 1967 Corvette is a good representation of the cars of the time. Not really true.
