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| Red, White, & Blue vs. Blue & White |
I watch a lot of vintage TV, and something occurred to me the other day after watching an episode of Mannix followed by The Streets of San Francisco.
I can usually pin down when an old show originally aired from the hairstyles or clothing, but another way to narrow it down is to note the color of U.S. Post Office mailboxes on streetcorners.
In 1955, the U.S. Postmaster General decreed that all street collection boxes would be painted red, white, and blue—and they stayed that way for 15 years.
Cost-cutting during the Nixon administration mandated a simpler blue-and-white color scheme (eliminating red would save money, the feds claimed). Although the USPS eagle logo has been streamlined, the boxes remain blue to this day.
Mannix aired on CBS from 1967-1975, but as soon as I spotted a red-and-blue mailbox on a streetcorner in the episode I was watching, it was a pretty safe bet that it was filmed prior to 1970 (it turned out to be from April,1968).
The Streets of San Francisco, on the other hand, aired on ABC from 1972-1977, so naturally all the streetcorner collection boxes seen in that show are of the blue-and-white variety.
Anyway, the next time you watch an old movie or TV show, see if you can spot any mailboxes in the street scenes—and if you do, take note of the color scheme.
I suppose you could make a drinking game out of it, but I don't know how fun it would be. Sightings of those boxes in those old shows are infrequent, so you'd probably never empty your first glass.
There's more to come in the next dispatch.
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