Thanks to Duke Uni­ver­si­ty, you can now access a dig­i­tal archive of vin­tage tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials dat­ing from the 1950s to the 1980s. Even­tu­al­ly, this col­lec­tion will fea­ture close to 12,000 dig­i­tized com­mer­cials, and it will let you see how Amer­i­ca’s tra­di­tion­al brands (IBM, Maxwell House, Amer­i­can Express, Avis, etc) evolved through the medi­um of main­stream com­mer­cial tele­vi­sion. You can learn more about this col­lec­tion called Adviews with this intro­duc­to­ry video or via the Adviews web­site, and you can watch the vin­tage com­mer­cials through iTunes. (Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I don’t see a way to access these clips via oth­er means. Sor­ry about that.) Via @LibrarySecrets

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Aus­tralian Screen Archive

Rewind the Video­tape: Mike Wal­lace Inter­views 1950s Celebri­ties …

The Free Music Archive

As many may now know, David Car­ra­dine was found dead this morn­ing in Thai­land. Above, we fea­ture him act­ing in the pop­u­lar 1970’s tele­vi­sion series Kung Fu. “In this clip from the pilot episode of Kung Fu, Caine (David Car­ra­dine) is dis­cussing life with a fel­low expa­tri­ate. Their dis­cus­sion touch­es on the uni­ty of oppo­sites, which is sym­bol­ised in Tao­ism as the yin-yang. The yin-yang is the most impor­tant con­cept in Tao­ism.” The Guardian has also assem­bled a nice col­lec­tion of clips trac­ing Car­radine’s act­ing career. Find it here.

Above, we fea­ture Frank Lloyd Wright, who appeared on What’s My Line?, Amer­i­ca’s longest-run­ning game show, back in June 1956. Dur­ing its eigh­teen sea­sons, the show fea­tured many cul­tur­al VIPs, includ­ing Alfred Hitch­cock, Sal­vador Dali, Grou­cho Marx, Carl Sand­burg and oth­ers.

Along sim­i­lar lines, it’s worth not­ing that YouTube now hosts a series of old-time tele­vi­sion shows. With­in this archive, you’ll find the com­plete episodes of The Lone Ranger, Bonan­za, You Bet Your Life, Burns and Allen, and Star Trek.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Radio Archive: The Lone Ranger, Abbott & Costel­lo, and Bob Hope

Here Bill Moy­ers sits down with David Simon, exec­u­tive pro­duc­er of The Wire, the stun­ning HBO pro­duc­tion. As any­one who has watched the show knows, The Wire is not just a splen­did dra­ma. It is, as Simon has once called it, “a polit­i­cal tract mas­querad­ing as a cop show.” It takes a pen­e­trat­ing and aes­thet­i­cal­ly rich look at some of Amer­i­ca’s most vex­ing social issues. And it’s why Moy­ers says, “What Edward Gib­bon was to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, or Charles Dick­ens to the smokey, mean streets of Vic­to­ri­an Lon­don, David Simon is to Amer­i­ca today.” To access this 40 minute inter­view, you can watch it on the web or on iTunes. You can also grab an audio mp3 here.

Final­ly, as a quick aside, the video below recaps The Wire’s 5 sea­sons in 5 min­utes. It hard­ly does the show jus­tice, but it gives you a quick feel for things. If you haven’t watched the show, do your­self a big favor and get your­self a Net­flix sub­scrip­tion and spend the new few months watch­ing it from begin­ning to end.

A light (and, for me, nos­tal­gic) way to ease into the week­end…

Over at Marvel.com, they’re stream­ing episodes from the orig­i­nal Spi­der-Man TV series that hit the air­waves back in 1967. A new episode will be post­ed every Thurs­day. Above, you’ll find Episode 1, and see where it all began.