I Saw What I Saw When I Saw It - Growing Up in the 1950s & 1960s with Television

"I Saw Was What I Saw When I Saw I"t is a memoir of growing up in New Jersey in the post-World War II era. Author Frank Dello Stritto grew up happily addicted to television. His true extended family was not the ocean of Italian-American relatives living near his parents' apartment in Hoboken, but the characters he watched on television. On his TV, Frank saw the world unfold: the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement, the explosive growth of the suburbs. The Dello Strittos joined the migration, moving 20 miles from Hoboken to North Arlington in 1958. The only old friends Frank could bring with him were Abbott & Costello, Superman, and other TV friends. Television aired old movies, and the local movie theatre played matinees aimed at young boys. Frank's Saturday afternoons became a war between watching old movies on TV and going to new movies at the Lincoln Theatre. Horror movies most attracted him. TV helped with "The Twilight Zone," "One Step Beyond," "Thriller" and "Outer Limits." Seeing "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein" made Frank a dedicated "Monster Boomer," one of his generation fascinated with old horror films. He joined the "monster culture" of fan magazines, conferences, and paraphernalia. Frank watched all the horror movies he could, and adopted Dracula-portrayer Bela Lugosi as his new hero. Frank's first heroes kept him in front the TV; his new one demanded that he go out into the world. Lugosi became an obsession. Frank read all he could on Lugosi. Then he went to libraries and archives to find what he could, and to museums and revival theatres that played rare films. Surprising adventures found him along the way. All in an effort to learn as much as he could of an actor who died when he was 6 years old. "I Saw Was What I Saw When I Saw It" is a unique history of the post-War World II decades, and of how television and the Baby Boomers shaped America.