Good question! Possibly a little of both? How many amputees did we see on 1960’s tv outside of The Fugitive? (The infamous One Armed Man wasn’t even in every episode.) Even regularly appearing handicapped characters seem to be rare at the time. Raymond Burr’s Ironside was likely the first wheelchair bound character to be a main character on a tv series in 1967.

Silent film star Harold Lloyd lost a thumb and a forefinger in when a prop bomb he was handling for a photo shoot exploded, and wore a flesh colored glove in his films to conceal it.