Popular Misconceptions

To start this blog off, I’ve been going through a list of list of ‘facts’ that has been circulating by e-mail. Third on the list is the apparent piece of trivia that:

The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV was Fred and Wilma Flintstone

A quick search shows that this bit of information has been repeated hundreds of times across the internet. Whether it’s true or not is harder to ascertain. There are few qualifiers missing from the statement. It presumably refers to American TV, and prime-time presumably the bulk of the evening. Nevertheless, the main message of the story, that couples weren’t originally shown to share the same bed on TV, is true.

The novelty of early movies and television, and their ability to appeal to large audiences, did cause great concern to the authorities, who were quick to impose rules of censorship. This was true in both America and Britain, although different systems of censorship arose. In America, The Motion Picture Association even went so far as to write a ‘code’, which explicitly defined what was and wasn’t permitted. Although this had somewhat dubious legal right of enforcement, the ideas within the code were largely followed, by the film and television industries. (Incidentally, I’ve often heard it reported that the code specified that if a man and woman were shown in the same bed together, they must each be seen to have one foot on the floor! However, as I can’t find any evidence of this so far, I’m wondering whether this might, too, be a popular misconception.)

The full text of the 1927 Code includes showing ‘man and woman in bed together’ as being something over which ’special care be exercised’. The revised 1930 code suggests that ‘the treatment of bedrooms must be governed by good taste and delicacy’.

It was this context that caused early American sitcoms and dramas to show husband and wives sleeping in separate beds, odd as this may seem today.

The question of this post, though, is whether Fred and Wilma Flintstone really were the first to break this taboo? Well, the Flintstones originally aired on ABC, in ‘prime time’, from 1960-1966. And it seems that Fred and Wilma were shown to share a bed (presumably made of rock, in ‘Bedrock’). But the Internet consensus (whatever that’s worth) suggests that they weren’t, in fact, the first.

Instead, it appears that this liberal distinction goes instead to Mary Kay and Johnny, which aired between 1947 and 1950. Indeed, this is said to be the very first sitcom, which came so early in television’s history that it had to be broadcast live, as there was no easy way to pre-record it. According to a snopes.com’s page, they shared a bed, and a single one at that! The page goes on to ask why this was, when so many of the sitcoms that followed it had separated sleeping arrangements.

How do we explain this lack of the squeamishness about bedroom (if not bathroom) functions that was soon manifested in the television industry? Who knows? Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the show was on Dumont, that it was live, or that in those days the production of shows was financed by sponsors rather than by the networks. Perhaps the medium was just too new for anyone to have grown uptight about such concerns yet. All that matters is that Mary Kay and Johnny were there first.

Whilst there appears to be no recorded evidence for this, enough people seem to have remembered it for it to be considered true.

Still, The Flintstones can still claim to have been the first animated show to depict a couple in bed together on prime time television. Although, as the first animated prime time show full stop, it did have a slight head start.

So why is this such a popular misconception? I guess this it’s down to the surprise factor marriage bed-sharing being such a late phenomenon to arrive on TV, and the sheer joyous triviality of The Flintstones having apparently been the first to cross this moral boundary.