Memories of 1950's Television ~ "The Millionaire"

I don't care if my age is showing when I do these articles. I grew up with television; were both toddlers and grew into our teens together. If you have such memories as I, then we are a part of living history and should be glad to share this first hand information. When I was little we had fun and carefree programs about the difficult situations we could all get into and the non-earth shattering consequences. None of these were critical, but the innocence of youth is something that today's television has taken away. Hope I can bring you back to the good old days and for those who were not around back then; an appreciation of days gone by.

I remember this show like it was yesterday. Every week the show would open with the voice of Marvin Miller who played Michael Anthony who was the executive secretary to John Beresford Tipton, a multi-billionaire who had the strange hobby of giving away one million dollars tax-free to perfect strangers. They had the stipulation to never tell anyone how they got it.

Each week we would gather around the television set and dream that the doorbell would ring and we would be the next lucky recipients of the windfall. This was long ago; when only Las Vegas had casinos, before lotteries (except for the Irish sweepstakes), before Publisher's Clearing House inundated our mailboxes with tons of junk mail promising untold wealth, and before ordinary and some not so ordinary people could become instant rich celebrities via reality television.

"The Millionaire" was on TV from 1955 through 1960 and we still reminisce about a mysterious stranger named Michael Anthony bringing us a windfall of money that we can do with as we wish. To keep the mystery alive, we never did see the face of Tipton, just the back of his head and his hand when he handed Michael Anthony the check. I remember one evening we were waiting for the program to start and the doorbell rang and we all jumped up expecting that our dreams came true; but no such luck!

Marvin Mueller; his original name was born in 1913 and was an actor and voice-over artist. He played small parts in movies from 1945-1986 and did voice-overs for cartoons and sci-fi shows and played parts in television shows including "Perry Mason," "Mission: Impossible," "Wonder Woman" and was the narrator of six episodes of the hilariously funny "Police Squad!" He died of a heart attack in 1985 at 71 years of age.

Sources:

http://www.crazyabouttv.com/millionaire.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Miller_(actor)