Then: Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner as Mr. Spock and
Captain Kirk in Star Trek. Courtesy NBC/Photofest.

Director J. J. Abrams, whose Star Trek Into Darkness opened May 2013, is not counting on the sci-fi special effects (although there will be plenty) to guarantee the success of the sequel to his huge 2009 hit Star Trek. “I want it to be real and relevant,” he says, speaking of the 12th film based on the iconic ’60s TV show. “Cool as they are, the spaceships and the gadgetry aren’t what really matters.”

For Abrams, the crew of the Enterprise is paramount. “You want to be cruising with them on an amazing and fun adventure,” he says, echoing the words of Star Trek’s late creator, Gene Roddenberry, who famously pooh-poohed the technology component of his stories: “I wrote my daydreams,” he said. And his late wife Majel Barrett-Roddenberry pointed out: “He wrote about things that he understood, and that wasn’t science, it wasn’t technology.”

Maybe Roddenberry put his other interests before science, but there are countless concepts and tools we first encountered on Star Trek that have since become, not only real, but a part of our lives.

“Their Universal Translator? Today we’ve got an app for that,” notes Linda Wetzel, who teaches a course at Georgetown University on the philosophy of Star Trek. “We may not have phasers, but we have lasers and tasers. And we can talk to computers now, and they understand us.”

But the show was never really about the gear: “The original series tackled burning issues of the day,” says Wetzel. “It explored big ideas—philosophical, political, and scientific. Star Trek asks ‘What if?’ and just runs with it.”

The show first beamed into millions of living rooms in the tumultuous ’60s when visions of Armageddon danced in our heads; the U.S. and the Soviet Union were uneasy adversaries in a nuclear stand-off. Space exploration had become a priority after the Russians one-upped us with the launch of the Sputnik satellite followed by Uri Gagarin’s historic flight into space. We responded with a huge and expensive effort to put a man on the moon.

Against this dark, historical backdrop, Star Trek broke new ground with a racially diverse spaceship crew that included Nichelle Nichols as communications officer Uhura and George Takei as helmsman Sulu. It held out the possibility that an uncertain future could have a happy ending as The Federation tried to contain the vicious and violent Klingons, whose homeworld Kronos was a superpower not unlike the Soviet Union, while the Enterprise discovered life on other planets. And the series explored timeless questions about where we were going—not just in outer space but in our lives as human beings.

As William Shatner, the original Captain Kirk, explains, “A wonderful story is something people can relate to—whether it’s a search inside or an exploration of our future in space. I think the real, lasting connection is that we entertain people. I never came to the set thinking ‘Today I save the universe.’ I usually would say, ‘Where are the bagels?’”

Professor George Slusser, curator of the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy at University of California, Riverside, agrees. It’s important, he notes, that Roddenberry never let the values he promoted stand in the way of entertaining his audience. “A person who has a hard day isn’t interested in reading about philosophy or hard science,” Slusser says. “But they will sit down with a beer in their hand and watch Star Trek and encounter some grand ideas. And they may not even realize they’re getting them.”

Now: Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine reprise the roles of Mr. Spock and
Captain Kirk in Star Trek. Courtesy Paramount/PhotoFest.

As the late James Doohan who played Scotty once put it, “We knew about the lessons in Star Trek, and we knew as actors how important it was that we get them across. I remember Roddenberry once said to me, ‘If we think it’s going to be difficult for the audience to believe something, we’ll just cut to your close-up.’ I thought that was marvelous.”

Leonard Nimoy, who became legendary as Mr. Spock, says that Roddenberry’s perspective on life changed his own. “I was much more emotional before I started to play him,” he remembers. “Spock had a big impact on me personally. It made me understand better how to approach a difficult situation without the emotion taking over. And I hope some of that was passed on to the audience.”

What could have been the end of Star Trek turned out to be a new beginning. After three seasons on NBC, the series was cancelled because of low ratings. But in a serendipitous twist, reruns in TV syndication became more popular than the series had been on NBC and also attracted a coveted younger audience. That led to the first Enterprise venture on the big screen, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The flick got mixed reviews for drawing mainly on previously produced television episodes, but it scored huge at the box office with ticket sales of $82.3 million domestically, thanks in large part to Trekkers who returned to see it countless times.

The movie’s success jump-started a string of sequels, which were basically review-proof as Trekkers rallied around the box office—although many claimed, in a strange calculation with which a lot of critics seemed to agree, that the even-numbered sequels were always better than the odd-numbered ones.

Roddenberry had little involvement in Star Trek on the big screen but, nearly 20 years after the TV series had debuted on prime time, he re-imagined his vision in the syndicated Star Trek: The Next Generation, or TNG for short. An entirely new cast was led by Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who had the emotional control that was often missing in the impulsive Kirk, and the series’ trademark diversity included Whoopi Goldberg as an alien bartender and LeVar Burton as the blind engineer.

The series reflected a new time in America. While Captain Kirk’s Enterprise was always pressing on to a new planet and another conflict, Captain Picard headed a calmer and more sophisticated ship, complete with chamber music concerts. There was not much fighting but a lot of negotiating. The Klingons had been tamed and were now allies of The Federation. Everything was running pretty smoothly except for frequent technical turmoil ranging from dangerous radiation leaks to warp jumps that had to be calculated to the nanosecond.

To Boldly Return The Saturday Evening Post

It wasn’t always this way. Back in the early 1960s, many Americans were deeply concerned over what they saw as a lack of quality in television programming.

They had allowed television into their homes because it had promised them art, information, and entertainment. But after a decade of network broadcasting, most of what they got was mindless entertainment. Or so Newton Minow believed, and he was the head of the Federal Communications Commission. In 1961, he invited the country’s broadcasters—

“to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day… Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.”

Originally, that line in the speech read “a vast wasteland of junk.” That’s how Minow’s speechwriter, John Bartlow Martin, had expressed it after watching an entire broadcast day of a Chicago station. In those 15 hours, he saw little more than cheap, unimaginative programming and an endless torrent of advertising.

The commercials, loud and frequent and long, seemed stupefying. One commercial asked, “Would you prefer this kind of whiteness?”… [When another] inquired, “Is your bathroom guestroom-fresh? Just one light whizzer whoosh in your bathroom.…” nearly 3,000,000 of us watched.

[By mid-morning, I had] witnessed some seventy commercials.

In the preceding nine hours, except for the news broadcasts and two brief interviews on the Today Show, nobody on Channel 5 had discussed a single idea.

The game shows of the morning were succeeded by soap operas in the afternoon.

We were entertained by Young Dr. Malone, a somewhat mystifying program to a one-time watcher, because so much seemed to have gone before, and From These Roots, which presented the same difficulty, though it did contain one memorable line… “Why, I’m in better shape now than I was before my brain operation.”

By the time he reached prime time, he wasn’t enjoying anything, not even the program called “the hottest show in television”: Sing Along With Mitch.

Mitch said, “Hi. Here we are again—to stir up the fires of memory,” and invited us in 11,700,000 homes to join him in singing “By the Light of the Silvery Moon.” The author did not join him and has no way of knowing how many of his fellow watchers joined him. Mitch introduced elaborate production numbers, with costumed dancers and singers and what looked to be a live horse. He was sponsored by cereal, eye make-up, wine and a soda drink. Near the end he said. “At this point anyone out there who’s not clutching the hand of someone he loves has a cold, cold heart.”

Which, after 15 hours, was Mr. Martin.

After wading through the trite violence of detective shows and the vapid chatter of talk shows, he thought the shows well deserved the description of “junk.”

Many intellectuals think it may be making idiots of us and destroying American culture.

Parents and educators deplore its effect on children.

Denouncing television is a national pastime.

The quality of television was a serious concern to Americans who’d seen the influence of television grow like nothing before it.

In 1946, 8,000 homes had television sets. Today 47,000,000 homes have them. In addition 5,500,000 homes have second sets, and public places have 1,500,000. Television is virtually inescapable.

In one month this year the average American home television set was turned on for six hours a day. Maybe some of that time nobody is watching. Advertisers doubt it; they spent more than $1,5000,000,000 on television in 1959.

All that money, Martin suggested, was pressuring the networks to churn out programs with no merit other than to generate large clumps of viewers.

But Americans still expected the networks to live up to a standard of good taste and service that would earn them the license to use the “public airwaves.” But public good was being outweighed by the desire to attract advertiser with the biggest viewership possible.

"The Government to the TV industry; FCC Chairman Newton Minow said, in effect, 'Clean your house or I will.'"

From this arises the “tyranny of ratings.” The A.C. Nielsen Company… attached an electronic device, to television sets in each of 1200 homes… mintended to represent a true sampling of American families…

Ratings have been hotly attacked.

Critics complain bitterly that ratings are abused. Ratings determine which programs stay on the air
and which go off. An evening show whose rating falls below 17 is likely to be dropped—it simply is not reaching enough people. Yet critics point out that such a program reaches more than 8,000,000 homes—can such a program be called a failure? And many things affect a program’s rating—how many local stations carried it, what programs it competed with, what program preceded it, even the weather.

LeRoy Collins, president of the National Association of Broadcasters, has said, “Ratings are a maze of statistics built from scanty facts. And they are like dope addiction in this industry. There is too much equating with the public interest what interests the public.”

One network producer was still promoting quality of programs over quantity of viewers. Fred Friendly, who would later become president of CBS, thought the FCC should be concerned that television might become a “vast wasteland.”

[Television] will get like Times Square. Times Square real estate used to have great value. But today it’s all gaudy and trashy, with jukeboxes and popcorn and junk, and much of it has lost property value and gone down, down, down. And television could go the same way.

He couldn’t have known then how prophetic was his next statement:

“If you breed a generation of Americans that wants to see excitement and violence all night, that’s all the audience you’re going to get.

POST script:

Just how bad were the prime-time programs of 1961? Some critics now consider the wasteland year to be the golden age of television, e.g.,

• Ed Sullivan
• Jack Benny
• The Andy Griffith Show
• Cheyenne
• Peter Gunn
• The Rifleman
• Wyatt Earp
• The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis
• Wanted Dead or Alive (with Steve McQueen)

• Hawaiian Eye (with a young Robert Conrad)
• Wagon Train
• The Untouchables
• The Real McCoys
• Bat Masterson
• 77 Sunset Strip
• Route 66
• Leave It To Beaver
• The Lawrence Welk Show
• Have Gun—Will Travel

• Gunsmoke
• Perry Mason
• Bonanza
• Rawhide
• The Flintstones
• Walt Disney Presents
• The Dick Van Dyke Show
• Alfred Hitchcock Presents
• My Three Sons
• The Twilight Zone

The Vast Wasteland The Saturday Evening Post

Dark Shadows… the top-rated daytime attraction with females between the ages of 12 and 34… has become something of a national fad. Barnabas Collins board games, posters, Halloween costumes, masks, capes, coloring books, and bubble-gum cards are being rushed on the market. One entrepreneur is even preparing Barnabas Collins plastic fangs, adjustable to any juvenile mouth.

Until the character of Barnabas was introduced last year, the program’s darkest shadow of all was a cancellation notice lurking in the wings. Surveys made early in 1967 showed that it was being watched in only 2,750,000 homes, as against a whopping 4,480,000 today. The story had originated as a straight “‘soap” with Gothic trappings and old, dark house on the Maine coast; a young governess menaced by unspecified evils, etc. Topping the cast was former movie actress Joan Bennett.

“We were really bombing,” admits Dan Curtis, the independent producer who packages the show, “so I figured, to hell with it. If I’m going to fail, I’ll at least have a good time. I went wild, tossed in witches and ghosts, you name it. But that vampire made the difference. Two weeks after he came on, the ratings began to climb.”

“That vampire” is, in reality, a 44-year-old Canadian actor named Jonathan Frid, a tall, attractively homely man with a face like a gardening trowel.

I first met him in the Dark Shadows studio.

Frid was in full costume: black Inverness cape; long hair plastered down in spiked bangs; tombstone-white skin; large, slightly cruel gray neyes. He was asked if he had any personal theories on why his character bad become such a success. “To be frank, I haven’t thought about it much.” he said in his somber, dramatic voice.

Paradoxically, his off-screen mannerisms—sweeping gestures, eyebrows arching almost to the hairline—are more florid than his acting style. Frid’s vampire is restrained almost to the point of rigidity, as if fighting to hold himself back from some dark, nameless act. “There is the fan mail, of course,” he went on. “It’s up to two thousand letters a week now, mostly from women. They even send me nude pictures of themselves.

“I suppose women see Barnabas as a romantic figure because I play him as a lonely, tormented man rather than a Bela Lugosi villain. I bite girls in the neck, but only when my uncontrollable need for blood drives me to it. And I always feel remorseful later. In the story,

I was murdered and turned into a vampire by a jealous witch back in 1796. Actually, my main interest is curing my condition. It’s even happened occasionally, like the time I was given massive transfusions by mistake. They made me a normal human. Unfortunately, there was a side effect—I actually looked 172 years old. It was either bite girls in the neck again or die of old age. , ,

The scripts of Dark Shadows are tailored to make Barnabas Collins sympathetic in spite of his more antisocial tendencies. “He does terrible things,” says Gordon Russell, one of the writers, “but we always give him a good reason ”

“Personally, the success of the show hasn’t meant all that much,” he said… “The trouble, I guess, is that soaps are rather subterranean. The people you want to impress are working while you’re on. Somehow, this sort of thing just isn’t real…”

If Jonathan Frid can’t quite come to grip with his offbeat celebrity, it’s understandable. Born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario, trained m his craft at London’s Royal Academy and the Yale Drama School, he’d spent nearly two decades as one of the hundreds of New York-based actors who, somehow, just never make it. Respected by other professionals, they fill out the years between Broadway roles in regional theaters, touring with road companies, playing small parts in Shakespeare summer festivals.

During the four days I’d followed the shooting, he bad been in virtually every scene, a feat requiring countless hours of rehearsal and memorization. “The worst part is that I’m a slow study,” he said, “You can’t always be looking at the Teleprompter. The audience notices.”

On Monday, after a weekend’s rest, be had delivered his lines with energetic authority. By Thursday, the accumulated strain showed in slurred or misread speeches and ill-timed movements. “I was awful today,” he said. “We never retape, no matter how many fluffs the cast makes. Not even when scenery falls over. Costs too much.”

He collapsed into an armchair. His face was still pale and haggard, his eyes shadowed. It was the first time I’d seen him without makeup.

He looked remarkably the same.

Next month, Johnny Depp will play Barnabas Collins in a movie version of Dark Shadows. Fans of the old soap opera—who, of course, don’t look nearly old enough to have been alive back then—will be measuring his performance against the high standards set by Mr. Frid.

Jonathan Frid 1924 – 2012 The Saturday Evening Post

10.) A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella is possibly the most enduring and familiar Christmas story of all time. It has been adapted for TV and film hundreds of times, including the latest 3D animated version released by Disney this year. Collectively, they are all our number-ten pick. Some of our favorites include Scrooge (1951), Scrooged (1988), starring Bill Murray, and Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983) (TV), starring Scrooge McDuck as Ebeneezer, of course. Two we could do without, both from the late 1990s, are Patrick Stewart’s A Christmas Carol (1999) (TV) and Ms. Scrooge (1997) (TV), starring Cicely Tyson as “Ms. Ebenita” Scrooge.

9.) Love, Actually (2003)

The most modern movie to make our list, Love, Actually, was an unexpected surprise. The British romantic comedy weaves together a number of love affairs into one well-wrapped holiday package. Sure to spark a dialogue among its viewers, as it did with our staff, this hip Christmas movie is actually loved.

8.) Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) (TV)

Developed in 1939 by Robert May for the department store Montgomery Ward, Rudolph remains one of the most recognizable Christmas characters. It’s hard to not feel sympathetic toward the lovable, red-nosed quadruped, and it’s nice to know that even he has a place at Christmas.

7.) How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966) (TV)

The Grinch is the most famous holiday villain, and Chuck Jones’ 1966 cartoon is Seussean to a degree the big-budget, live-action Christmas movie just couldn’t achieve. Christmas isn’t Christmas without Cindy Lou, roast beast, and this TV classic, and we’d all do well to see our own hearts grow three sizes in a day.

6.) White Christmas (1954)

Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, is the lone musical to make our list. The popular song by the same title actually first arrived on the American scene in 1941 when Crosby performed the song on his popular NBC radio show, The Kraft Music Hall. The rest, as they say, is history. In 1942, the song was released as part of an album from the film Holiday Inn. In 1954, White Christmas, the film, was released, building on the song’s popularity, which subsequently became the top selling record of all time, selling more than 50 million copies.

5.) National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)

No holiday family function is complete without the dysfunction of Clark W. Griswold Jr. and clan. Unequivocally quaint and quotable, our number-five pick is already a classic in its own right. It’s hard to not feel right at home at the Griswold’s table, and the disaster that is the Griswold family makes us all feel a little better about our own.

4.) A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) (TV)

The first animated TV special based on the popular Peanuts comic strip by Charles Shultz is also arguable the best. It is easy to see a little of all of us in the downtrodden Charlie Brown as he attempts to see past the secularism of Christmas to find true meaning.

3.) It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)

The bells still ring for this 1946 black-and-white classic starring Jimmy Stewart. As one of Stewart’s most memorable achievements as an actor, the flick delves into darker and more dramatic themes than most Christmas movies, including financial woes, troubled family life, and suicide. Still poignant today, especially in the midst of the current economic climate, this tale of retribution, family, and community captures the true spirit of the holidays.

2.) A Christmas Story (1983)

It’s Americana, nostalgic, and an almost perfect Christmas classic. In many minds, A Christmas Story is the quintessential Holiday tale. What is more American than spending the holidays with one’s family under the warm glow of a gleaming, Italian, sex-exuding “major award”—complete with fishnet stockings?

1.) Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, New York City, and Santa—it’s Christmas in America, and our number one Christmas movie of all time is sure to make almost any Christmas curmudgeon believe.

Best Christmas Movies Ever The Saturday Evening Post

Today, drive-in movies seem like the essence of American entertainment in the 1950s. However, they date back to the Great Depression. The first drive-in opened for business near Camden, New Jersey, 66 years ago this week (June 6).

Drive-ins proved popular enough to stay alive and inspire a few imitators. Over the next 16 years, hopeful businessmen built about 100 drive-ins in the United States. But outdoor movie theaters remained just another novelty trying to coax money out of the pockets of Depression America.

It was the postwar society, and its booming economy, that launched the rise of drive-in theaters — also called “ozoners” for their open-air atmosphere. Americans were at a loss to explain the explosive growth of drive-in theaters. As a Post writer observed in a 1950 article:

Chicago's Starlite Drive-in circa 1950's.

“Most conventional theater owners, who despise the ozoners and battle them at every turn, say the thing is a fad, that it’s going too fast, and, anyway, the places are no more than parking lots for petters. Variety, the bible of show business, calls them “passion pits with pix.” Needless to say, there are no figures on petting frequency in drive-ins, but I can offer the result of a one-man nonsnooping survey made by myself. I talked with dozens of exhibitors, and all firmly state that no more went on in the cars than in the rear seats of the conventional theaters.

“According to one drive-in manager, ‘Sure, a fellow slips his arm around his girl in the drive-ins,’ he said. ‘The same as in the regular theaters or on a park bench. No more than that. And there’s one thing you don’t get in the drive-ins that you get inside. That’s the guy on the prowl, the seat changer who molests lone women. There’s none of that in the drive-ins.’

“But what disproves the [romantic reputation] more than anything else is the type of audience that fills the drive-ins today. It is by far a familiar audience, with a probable 75 percent of the cars containing children who, incidentally, are let in free by most drive-ins if they are under twelve. This is the main reason the ozoners have been so successful — their appeal to the family group. They are the answer to parents who want to take in the movies, but can’t leave their children alone at home. No baby-sitters are needed. And the kids are no bother to anyone in the audience. There’s no vaulting of theater seats, running up and down the aisles or drowning out the dialogue by yapping.

“The ozoners have struck a rich vein of new fans. Leading the list are the moderate-income families who bring the kids to save money on baby-sitters. Furthermore, they don’t have to dress up, find a parking place, walk a few blocks to a ticket booth, and then stand in line. The drive-ins make it easy for them and for workers and farmers, who can come in their working clothes straight from the evening’s chores, and for the aged and physically handicapped. They are a boon to the hard of hearing and to invalids, many of whom never saw a movie before the drive-ins. They draw fat men who have trouble wedging themselves between the arms of theater seats, and tall men sensitive about blocking off the screen from those behind. Add the teen-agers to these people, and you have a weekly attendance of about 7,000,000, an impressive share of the country’s 60,000,000 weekly ticket buyers.”

Managers of outdoor movies claimed that no more necking went on in their ampitheatres than in the back rows of the indoor houses, and that there was considerably less opportunity for prowling mashers. Photo by Frank Moss, circa 1950's.

Another factor behind the wild success of drive-ins was the equally successful automobile industry. During World War II, America’s auto production had been shut down. With the end of the war, Americans were eagerly looking forward to buying new cars. The first postwar year’s figures were promising: nearly 70,000 cars were sold. The next year, though, sales shot up to 2,000,000. In 1955 Americans bought nearly 8 million automobiles.

They were not cheap, but they were affordable in the new economy, and gas was less than 20 cents per gallon. Moreover, the new automobiles were luxurious by the standards of most 1930s sedans. The front seat of your car was roomier and more comfortable than most theater seats, and more private.

Six years after this article appeared, the Post took another look at the still growing popularity of drive-ins.

“By 1956, Box Office, the trade magazine that styles itself ‘the pulse of the motion-picture industry,’ reported that there were more than 5,000 of the drive-in movies in the United States and Canada. Last year, when only a dozen or so new conventional theaters were opened in the entire country, 389 new drive-ins were launched at a cost of $79,880,000 according to the Box Office survey.

“As the older picture houses are abandoned, few are being replaced because it costs $500 per seat [in 1956 dollars] to replace them, and only half that much to provide space for the bring-your-own-seats of the drive-in movie patrons, who, incidentally, spend as much for food and soft drinks at the concession stand as they do for entrance tickets.”

Drive-in owners developed new attractions to build their attendance numbers. They built children’s play areas with swings, slides, and pony rides. Some built miniature railroads in which children could ride. More prosperous operations offered picnic grounds, swimming pools, and even a “monkey village.”

“While the youngsters disport themselves as these elaborate plants, their parents can have a go at miniature golf courses and driving ranges or they can play shuffleboard, pitch horseshoes and dance before live bands … One chain … holds auctions before show time and invites patrons to bring in anything they want sold; another runs bingo games based on speedometer mileage, and a third has a charge-account system open to anyone with means of identification at the gate.

“Several Texas drive-ins … operate laundries as a side line. The housewife, who might otherwise be spending the evening at home with the washing machine, drops her washing at the gate as the family enters the drive-in, and picks it up freshly laundered as she leaves – for a small consideration, of course. Some drive-ins offer warmed milk for babies, and fresh diapers, if their infant patrons forget to bring along a spare pair of pants. Others maintain nurseries and playgrounds for small fry, driving ranges for bored dads, open-air dance floors for teen-agers.”

As fads go, the drive-in went, though it lasted longer than anyone expected. Attendance declined gradually, and the number of theaters slowly began disappearing from the countryside in the 1960s. The automobile culture faded as America became weary of spending to much time inside a car. As the average American spent more time behind the wheel, driving to work or to stores, the joy of the open road was surpassed by the thrill of finding a good parking spot.

Several hundred drive-ins are still in operation, though, so it’s not too late to enjoy the experience of watching the stars under the stars. In addition, several cities across the country present outdoor cinema during their summer festivals. And in Plymouth, Michigan, the vast parking lot outside the Compuware Sports Arena is turned into a drive-in with a hydraulically raised screen, a projector housed inside a truck, and the soundtrack broadcast to car radios.

You can find the drive-in closest to you online at driveinmovie.com and drive-ins.com.

"The Movies Take to the Pastures" Oct. 14, 1950

"Big Boom in Outdoor Movies" Sep. 15, 1956

June 6, 1933: America Goes Out to the Movies The Saturday Evening Post

Here’s what he’d say: “Tis the price of fame.”

In future blogs, I’ll discuss Ben Franklin’s interesting relationships with certain French women while he represented the United States at the Court of Louis XVI. He was, at the time, a widower for 10 years and sought the companionship of several notable French ladies.

French women greatly admired Benjamin Franklin. They treated him the same way today’s groupies behave when the object of their fantasies makes a live appearance.
Franklin never objected to this veneration.

At one soiree, it’s said, 300 French women mobbed Franklin, placing a laurel wreath on his head and having the prettiest of them kiss our nation’s first ambassador on the cheeks.
A Franklin neighbor noted that women “flocked to see him, to speak to him for hours on end without realizing that he did not understand much of what they said because of his scant knowledge of our language.” The neighbor also remarked that Franklin “greeted each of them with a kind of amiable coquettishness that they loved.”

Whenever a French damsel asked Franklin if he liked her the most, the great scientist offered a Newtonian reply, “Yes, when you are closest to me, because of the force of attraction.”

On October 25, 1779, Franklin, responding to his sister’s inquiry about his friendship with French women, wrote:

Perhaps few strangers in France have had the good fortune to be so universally popular … This popularity has occasioned so many paintings, busto’s, medals and prints to be made of me, and distributed throughout the Kingdom, that my face is now almost as well known as that of the moon. But one is not to expect being always in fashion. I hope, however, to preserve, while I stay, the regard you mention of the French ladies, for their society and conversation when I have time to enjoy it, is extremely agreeable.

Franklin and the Academy Awards Red Carpet The Saturday Evening Post