American Dreams - Accuracy

Accuracy

Despite its popularity as a family drama, American Dreams was heavily criticized for its various levels of historical inaccuracy. Several historic events were restaged earlier or later in the show's timeline to fit a plotline, and some of the music and pop culture references do not match up with either historic fact or the show's current timeline. Several arguments between the show's loyal fanbase can be traced to whether the show should be viewed as a chronologically accurate representation of life in 1960s Philadelphia, or is instead an idealized combination of mnemonic images and pop culture references from points throughout the 1960s, much as the film The Wedding Singer was for the 1980s.

Some examples of these disputes include:

• A running plotline is the appearance of Meg and Roxanne as dancers on American Bandstand, which still tapes a daily after-school show in Philadelphia; where in real life the show moved to Los Angeles in February 1964 and was only broadcast once a week, on Saturday afternoons (in real life, the studio used for Bandstand was later appropriated by the stations of public broadcasting operation WHYY after WFIL's donation of them shortly after moving to their new City Line Avenue studios).
• In the pilot episode, Jack makes a reference to Ara Parseghian and Notre Dame. The pilot was set in November 1963 while Parseghian was hired by Notre Dame in December.
• In the first year, JJ Pryor Jr supposedly attended Lehigh University on a football scholarship in 1963 but joined the Marines when injured to pay for college. Lehigh doesn't have athletic scholarships but gives financial grants in aid instead. Thus he would have still had financial aid even if injured.
• The Philadelphia 1964 race riot depicted in the first season finale started at night, not in the daytime, as depicted in the show. Television footage of the riots shown on the episode actually came from the Watts riots of 1965 Los Angeles.
• During the show's first season, the music of several artists, such as the Kinks, Dusty Springfield and Manfred Mann, are heard and referenced in 1963, months before the Beatles' appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show (February 1964) that triggered the musical British Invasion.
• When the Beatles appear on The Ed Sullivan Show, the scene is set up so that the first song the Beatles play is "I Want to Hold Your Hand", which was the Beatles' first American hit, but was not the first song played on Ed Sullivan (that honor goes to "All My Loving").
• In one episode in the show's third season, set in late November 1965, the East Coast Blackout and the Leonid meteor shower were both "rescheduled" so that they would fall on the same day that Beth Mason gave birth to JJ Pryor's son.
• In a first-season episode, Meg and Roxanne gush over meeting the group Jay and the Americans, and Roxanne is especially enamored with "Carl, the drummer" (the group neither had a member named Carl, nor a drummer, in real life). Also in real life, there were two lead singers known as "Jay" - Jay Traynor, who sang on their hit "She Cried", and Jay Black, who replaced Traynor for the group's other hits - yet on the episode, it is assumed that there was only one "Jay" who sang all the hits without interruption.
• In the show's first season, set in November 1963, Meg Pryor and Luke Foley argue over the merits of Bob Dylan, and Luke hands Meg a 45 of Dylan singing "Mr. Tambourine Man." In fact, Dylan did not write or perform the song until 1964, and he never released it on a commercial 45 (it appeared on his "Bringing It All Back Home" album released in early 1965), although the Byrds' rendition of it was a hit single. Note that before Luke hands meg the Dylan record, he specifically says that it is "an advanced copy of the record that won't be released until next year."
• References are made in the show's second season to I Dream of Jeannie, which was still a year away from premiering. On top of that, "the big band theme song" heard, is the one introduced at the beginning of the show's second season (which was a re-creation of the original theme). It was performed & produced by LA guitarist Rick Fleishman, and it also featured LA session drummer Paul Goldberg. (It's the one most viewers were familiar with in 1966).
• The Monkees perform on the Bandstand stage in January 1966, despite their television series not even premiering until September 1966, or the four actors playing the Monkees even performing a live concert until a year later.
• In an episode set in January/February 1965, Nancy Sinatra (Jennifer Love Hewitt) appears on American Bandstand to sing "These Boots are Made for Walking" despite the fact the song was not released until 1966.
• While working at the space suit company, JJ Pryor meets Gus Grissom, and they discuss the Apollo 1 mission. Grissom later says, "Get me back to Cape Canaveral." In reality, the Apollo 1 mission was not designated by that number or name until after the accident that claimed the lives of Grissom and two other astronauts (at the time the mission was known as Apollo/Saturn 204), and the reference to Cape Canaveral would have been wrong, as the area where the space center was located had been renamed "Cape Kennedy" during the 1960s. While the town was officially renamed back to Cape Canaveral in 1973, the space center was (and still is) known as the Kennedy Space Center, and at least three years had passed since the town was renamed from Cape Canaveral to Cape Kennedy; so although it is not impossible that in a casual conversation Grissom would have used the traditional name, it is still unlikely that this would happen.
• Artists such as Blake Shelton, John Ondrasik and Joss Stone are allowed to perform their current pop hits, which in real time would have been 40 years away from ever existing.
• Neither The Who nor Ricky Nelson ever performed on the Bandstand stage in real life (Nelson's father Ozzie refused to allow his performing son to appear on anybody else's TV series, even if such appearance might help increase record sales); but that didn't stop the producers from staging performances by those artists in this series.
• The Who is shown performing on Bandstand in the show's third season, set in 1965–1966. However The Who's first performance in the United States wasn't until the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.
• In an episode that is supposedly taking place in the spring of 1965, two customers at the TV store, played by Days of our Lives actors John Aniston and Frances Reid, were watching an episode of Days of our Lives on a TV (Frances was watching herself on an early episode). Days of our Lives did not premiere until November 8, 1965.
• In an episode purporting to take place in the summer of 1966, a character on "American Bandstand" is asked to rate the Rolling Stones' song "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", despite the song being over a year old.
• In a late third-season episode, Meg, Roxanne and Luke sit outside Connie Mack Stadium with lawn chairs, listening for free to the Rolling Stones, who are playing a live concert at the stadium. Luke makes a reference that he heard a Bob Dylan concert at Connie Mack Stadium for free this way. Bob Dylan did not play Connie Mack Stadium as an outdoor venue in 1966 or earlier.
• In another third season episode that takes place in June 1966, the Mamas and the Papas appear on American Bandstand to perform "California Dreamin'". However, the Mamas and Papas actual appearance on the show was in February 1966, they did not appear again in June of that year.
• Characters are depicted as listening to Cream's "I Feel Free" and The Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'" as early as the summer of 1965, despite neither song being released until late in 1966, after the timeline of the series had ended.