In the slew of moon landing retrospectives, the ordinary faces watching TV are the most intriguing

The Washington Post

"Next to NASA itself, television has every claim to the event — as well as its subsequent anniversaries," Hank Stuever says of the July 20, 1969 moon landing. "The TV is what everyone on Earth who was alive at the time remembers about that night. They remember it (or think they remember it) right down to the kind and size of the TV set and the late hour on a summer Sunday evening (in U.S. time zones) when (Neil) Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent a couple of hours walking around the Eagle landing module at Tranquility Base, gathering samples, planting the flag and taking photographs, while a live black-and-white camera on the module beamed their shadowy movements to viewers back home. For some reason, in this slew of retrospectives, I am most drawn to the images and footage of ordinary people watching TV in that moment — gathered around store windows, sitting in living rooms. There is more than enough footage of all those engineers at Mission Control watching the astronauts’ moonwalk (and I do admire them so, in their nerdy manliness; the Don Draper haircuts, short-sleeved dress shirts and horn-rimmed intensity). There’s also plenty of wide shots of crowds in Florida watching Apollo 11’s liftoff. But there is seemingly less interest in documenting the faces and reactions of Earthlings watching the big reveal....Time goes on, and fewer of us really know what that meant. I would watch an entire documentary made from footage of just the faces of people across the country and around the world struck dumb, seeking words to match their feelings, welling up with tears as it happened. But that one has so far eluded the schedule."

ALSO:

• The idea that the moon landing was faked (and directed by Stanley Kubrick) has its roots in TV: CBS hired Kubrick’s special effects whiz Doug Trumbull from 2001: A Space Odyssey who created a visually stunning moon landing set.
• Television was born as a live medium, but by the 1960s, few things happened live on it, making the live moon landing coverage all the more special
• The Apollo 11 moon landing was a moment of national unity because television made it so
• Watch CBS' coverage of the moon landing, complete with the commercials from July 1969
• Check out NBC News' ad promoting its moon landing coverage: "Such coverage is, for television, not merely a responsibility. We take it as a unique privilege."