When Americans were first getting TV sets in their homes, Norman Rockwell was there to capture the moment perfectly.
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My name is Ron Thompson. My wife Ann Thompson won your cover contest in 1983, and subsequently painted two more cover pictures in 1984. We just received your offer for subscriptions and will send our money in.
Oh what a surprise awaited my brother and I when we came home from school one autumn day in 1951. Our eyes were as big as saucers as we plunked down on the living room sofa and gave a newly installed console small-screen TV full attention, mesmerized by Dad playing with the controls. It felt like Christmas. I remember Uncle Milty and Texaco’s singing gas station attendants, Howdy Doody and Bozo the Clown.Then there was the pattern on the screen as the channels signed off for evening. We felt like the luckiest kids in the world.
What a great cover choice for the newest ‘Rockwell Minute’. Again he utilized a source in Los Angeles to make the cover perfect with the proper aging techniques on the home to ‘Victorian-ize’ it.
The elderly man knows the value of the past, but has his thrilled eyes on the future: television. He probably saw the first episode of ‘I Love Lucy’ in October 1951. It had to do with her unwittingly getting on the cover of Look magazine “not looking her best” after a stunt she pulled REALLY backfired.
Who knew it would air 20 years to the week before Look folded, in large part to television’s draining it of advertising; LIFE just a year later. I’d never seen Rockwell do a commercial before. Who wouldn’t want a beer after hearing him endorse it? He exudes the same likability and sincerity on TV that always comes through on his covers.