A wonderful satire about the King Family appeared on the Carol Burnett show.

I would’ve been eight years old when this type of thing appeared on TV at my grandparents’ house. They would watch and enjoy it because that’s what TV did for them – provide enjoyable content. Only when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show did they object. My parents, born in the mid-to-late twenties, were stuck between wholesome fare like the King Family, which they could watch with only a trace of cynicism, and disruptive iconoclasts like the Beatles, who they were already too old to adopt as their own. Myself, I would look from face to face in my family members, wondering who liked what and why. I would not have enjoyed the King Family.

Tina Cole, best remembered as Robbie's wife, Katie, on "My Three Sons," is a King family member, too. Her mother, Yvonne King, married actor and composer Buddy Cole. Tina sang several times on MTS. In the early years of MTS, she appeared three, perhaps four, times -- briefly -- as various neighbor girls who knew the Douglas family and as a student at the college Robbie attended.

Alvino Rey (born Alvin McBurney) was more than a somewhat famous guitarist of the era. He popularized the talk box effect in the late 1930s, used with a steel guitar, a throat microphone and his wife, King family member Luise. She stood offstage while a puppet, named Stringy the Talking Guitar, would appear onstage and "sing" with Rey. It's a little complicated, but if you remember how Peter Frampton sounded ("Do you feel like I do?"), you know the sound.

One last thing: Alvino Rey, known by many as the father of the electric guitar, is the grandfather of Arcade Fire's Win and William Butler.

The oldest person in the photo (holding a studded cane on the left, seated) is the father of the six "King Sisters" (and a couple of brothers), William King Driggs. He died in April 1965, three months after the show's first episode.

Although the show was a great advertisement for hair coloring products, there is one unaltered brunette among the older adult women -- an in-law, Hazel Driggs (wife of Karleton King Driggs), at far right.

The King Family Show, which had a loyal following but was never especially successful in the ratings, was an obvious attempt to create something in the category of "The Lawrence Welk Show" or "Sing Along With Mitch," but appealing to a younger demographic. Beyond that unlikely prospect, it reflected growing desperation in the entertainment industry, as well as general-interest publications like Look, to hold on to wholesome "family" content at a time when the culture was fragmenting. (1965 was also the year that "Up With People" was formed out of elements from the Moral Re-Armament movement. UWP's most famous veteran is probably Glenn Close -- before 'Fatal Attraction,' of course.)

is probably best known for his appearances on the '60s run of "Dragnet." He usually played a businessman who'd done something terrible such as run down a child on a trike.

He was the star of 1960's "Beyond the Time Barrier," a rather odd but sincere movie in which the X-15 Clarke is piloting breaks the time barrier, and he winds up in a desolate 2024. Everybody's dying because the layer of atmosphere that protects us from cosmic radiation was destroyed by nuclear testing.

The man playing banjo is Alvino Rey, a somewhat famous guitarist of the era who was married to one of the King sisters. A vintage guitar shop is actually offering one of his guitars for sale, the rare custom color 1960 Fender Telecaster shown below.

And by the way, the headline is lifted from a line that I will always remember from the original 1960s Batman TV show with Adam West.

I'm old enough to remember groups like this that were weird and square.

Everything is so ... white ...