Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1967’s The Hippie Temptation! It can be viewed on YouTube.
“This is a hippie,” a sober and serious voice says over the image of a rather clean-cut young man sitting in a park.
So starts the 1967 CBS news documentary, The Hippie Temptation. Hosted by a white-haired and distinguished voiced journalist named Harry Reasoner, The Hippie Temptation takes a look at the subculture that, in 1967, was taking the youth of America by storm. Reasoner walks through the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, followed by a group of hippies who hang on every word.
Hippies, Harry explains, their very name suggests that they are hip!
Harry Reasoner talks about how the hippies are predominantly liberal and say that they are dropping out of a society that they consider to be hypocritical. They have no interest in what their straight parents are concerned with. Harry’s tone goes from being gently condescending to rather alarmed as he explains that hippies use a new illegal drug called LSD to try to open up their minds. The bad trip, Harry says, is always a possibility and suddenly, the screen is full of Dutch angle images of San Francisco.
The majority of this documentary focuses on the dangers of LSD. A pipe-smoking scientist shows a diagram of a chromosome of a repeated LSD user. The repeated use of LSD is compared to having epilepsy. Harry says that LSD is illegal in California but it’s still easy to find in San Francisco. No mention is made of marijuana or heroin or any of the other drugs that may have been a part of the Haight Ashbury scene.
Harry is a bit surprised that the hippies are not particularly concerned about what the scientists think about LSD. The Hippie Temptation is to not care about consequences and to instead do whatever you want. Harry discusses how the hippies claim not to care about money or material things but, as he points out, some people are getting rich in Haight Ashbury. He drops in to visit a local band called the Grateful Dead “who appear to be living in affluence.” The members of the band admit that they also use LSD and other drugs. Harry shows us a performance of the Grateful Dead performing and comments on how the light show is designed to imitate a psychedelic experience.
(Along with the Grateful Dead, future actor Peter Coyote also appears briefly, giving out free food as a member of a collective called The Diggers.)
Hippies can make money, Harry says, if they can find an employer who doesn’t mind long hair and strange clothing. It’s hard not to smile at this comment because, by today’s standards, the hippies in this documentary look remarkably preppy and almost conservative. Turtlenecks, colorful shirts, and neck length hair no longer come across as being the height of rebellion. The majority of the hippies that Harry talks to look like they could be accountants.
This is one of those documentaries where the older generation tries to figure out why their kids are so weird. It’s hard not to smile at the sight of a clearly uncomfortable Harry Reasoner being surrounded by a bunch of future accountants and middle managers. That said, this documentary was an interesting time capsule. It was a chance to see a firsthand account of what people were worried about in 1967.
Through the Shattered Lens 