This week in TV Guide: June 16, 1962

A few years ago the concept of "six degrees of separation"* was coined, the idea being that everyone in the world could be connected to everyone else by no more than six degrees.  The same could be said, I suppose, for articles in TV Guide.  To test this theory, let's take a look at this week's issue, and see if we can bring it all the way from 1962 to today in six steps or less.

*Or "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," if you prefer.

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1.  Right doctor, wrong role:  Westinghouse Presents was an occasional series of dramas sponsored by the electronics giant, previous sponsor of Studio One.  On Wednesday evening Westinghouse Presents  features Margaret Leighton in "The First Day," the story of a woman returning to her former life after having been hospitalized for a nervous breakdown.  Leighton's husband in the play is played by Ralph Bellamy, who the next year would star as Dr. Richard Starke in NBC's psychiatric drama  The Eleventh Hour.  I would presume that everything turns out all right for Leighton but, if not, perhaps she could make an appointment with Dr. Starke.

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2. Speaking of which:  The Eleventh Hour was a spin-off from NBC's enormously successful doctor show Dr. Kildare,* starring Richard Chamberlain as the young intern James Kildare, with Raymond Massey as his mentor, the veteran Dr. Leonard Gillespie.  The two men share the cover of this week's issue, with the feature article focusing on Massey, whose signature role prior to Kildare was Abraham Lincoln, whom he portrayed several times on stage, screen and television.  (There's a wonderful story from Wikipedia of how a fellow actor joked that Massey wouldn't be satisfied with his Lincoln impersonation until someone assassinated him.)

*The Eleventh Hour ran for only two seasons, but was still more successful than ABC's similar drama Breaking Point, which itself was a spin-off from the Kildare clone Ben Casey.

Massey won plaudits for his portrayal of Gillespie, a much more nuanced and less caricaturish performance than those rendered in the movies by Lionel Barrymore.  He was a distinguished actor, with two stars on Hollywood's Walk of Fame - one for movies, one for television, and Dwight Whitney's article highlights some colorful aspects of his life: an uncle was a bishop, his older brother was Governor General of Canada, and the Massey family owned the Massey-Harris Harvester Company, which we would recognize today as the manufacturing giant Massey Ferguson.  His first Broadway role came courtesy of Noel Coward and Norman Bel Geddes (mid-century design icon and father of Dallas' Barbara Bel Geddes), and his movie career started with an offer from Sir Gerald du Maurier, father of the famed novelist Daphne.*

*Who, as far as I could tell, never wrote a work adapted into a movie in which Massey appeared.

Massey was a dignified actor - sadly, not too many of those around anymore.

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3. Since you mentioned it:  In addition to his several portrayals of Lincoln, Raymond Massey also played the abolitionist John Brown in a pair of movies - Santa Fe Trail and Seven Angry Men - and onstage in a dramatic reading of Stephen Vincent Benét's Pulitizer Prize-winning poem John Brown's Body.  And it's that very story - John Brown's Body that CBS has on Thursday night at 7:30, preempting the police drama Brenner.  This one doesn't have Massey, but it does feature Richard Boone as the Narrator, with Douglas Campbell as John Brown.  In a couple of seasons, Boone will star on NBC in The Richard Boone Show, an anthology series with a rotating repertory cast.  Despite critical praise, it will only run one season before being canceled, replaced by The Man From U.N.C.L.E.   Boone finds out about it not from the network, but from the trade papers.

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4. Her stock is rising:  Actress Diana Millay, as it happens, appeared in both The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Eleventh Hour.  But that is in the future - today, in addition to being one of the hardest-working actresses in New York (nearly 100 live shows to her credit), the 23-year-old is also making her mark as a day trader in the stock market.  While most actresses are concerned with their reviews, Millay can be seen pouring over Forbes and The Wall Street Journal between takes.  Later she'll find more success in commercial real estate and fine art.

This article is typical of so many that have run in TV Guide over the years, and you might wonder if anything ever happened with Millay or if she faded to obscurity like many a starlet from previous profiles.  But in this case, Diana Millay did all right for herself, assuring lasting fame as Laura Collins in Dark Shadows.  No word on how much of a killing she made in the market.

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Paul Anka and Friend

5. Did someone say "young star"?  Any discussion of talented young performers has to include Paul Anka. At the time of this writing Anka is still 20 - three years younger than Diana Millay, but in that time he's accomplished - well, let the statistics speak for themselves.  At 15 he signed a contract with Don Costa at ABC/Paramount, and had his first hit: "Diana," which sold 8,500,000 copies.  He followed that up with "Lonely Boy" and "Puppy Love," each of which were million-sellers.  He's appeared as an actor in movies, most recently in the war drama The Longest Day, for which he also wrote the theme.  According to the famed musical writing team of Comden and Green, "it is not too early to mention Paul Anka in the same breath with musical immortals."  He's accessible, appearing constantly on variety shows: Sullivan, Como, Shore. He's a mean Password player.  He makes well over a million dollars a year.

And he isn't even old enough to vote or drink.

The unbylined article portrays Anka as a driven businessman.  He has little time for personal relationships, other than those that are part of the business.  He has little time for girls, even though the broken romance is a staple of his songs.  He's insecure - "I care about being liked.  I want everybody to like me," he tells his interviewer.  He's angered by those who resent his early success, and those who ridicule rock music in general.

What's particularly interesting about this article is that although Anka is already established as a major star in records, television and movies, his biggest hits are still ahead of him: "My Way," the Sinatra hit for which he wrote the English lyrics; "She's a Lady," the Tom Jones hit, and "Johnny's Theme," the Johnny in question being Johnny Carson.  And the guy's still only 71 - not bad, huh?

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6. What's old is new again:  Paul Anka was payed a royalty every time the theme for The Tonight Show was played - over 1,400,000 times by one estimate.  Every night Johnny's monologue began with that theme, and ended with Johnny's golf swing.  And that brings us to the present day, and the highlight of the sporting week.

The U.S. Open golf championship, or the National Open as it was frequently called back in the day, is - then as now - this weekend's Big Event.  Then, as now, it's being shown on NBC; then, as now, it's being played in Pennsylvania, but whereas this year's tournament is at Merion, just outside Philadelphia, in 1962 its across the state, at Oakmont, outside of Pittsburgh.  There's another difference in 1962: the tournament is scheduled for three days, concluding on "Open Saturday" with a 36-hole marathon.

Golf's reigning superstar, Arnold Palmer, is the hometown hero (from nearby Latrobe), and having shared the lead after the second and third rounds, everything seems to point to his second Open championship.  However, at the end of 72 holes Palmer finds himself tied with a rising star: the 22-year-old Jack Nicklaus, who had been the low amateur at the last two Opens.  The two meet in a playoff on Sunday, in front of a raucously pro-Palmer crowd.  Jack leads Arnold by four shots after six holes and goes on to a three-shot victory.  It's the start of the Nicklaus dynasty: his first professional win, and the first of his 18 major professional championships.  Palmer, who had won the Masters earlier in the year and will add the British Open in July, takes his third Masters in 1964, but after that never wins another major title.

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And there you have it: from Margaret Leighton in "The First Day" to the U.S. Open in the present day, all in six steps.  Not bad, hmm?

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Notes from the Teletype and more:  In the works for the coming season: The Patty Duke Show, Lee Marvin's Lawbreakers, and Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol.  All of them made it to the small screen, and all of them are available on DVD. . . Future Oscar winner Marvin stars this week in The Richest Man in Bogota, based on the sci-fi story by H.G. Wells . . . NBC announces that 68% of its prime-time programs for 62-63 will be in color, compared with 57% this season and 41% a year ago.  NBC remains the dominant player in the color television market . . .I wrote about the TV Guide Awards here; the 1962 version will air next week, headlined by Judy Holliday, Art Carney and Dave Garroway. . .Premiering this week on CBS daytime: To Tell The Truth, which adds the daytime component to its long-running nighttime run, now in its sixth season.  The prime-time version will run until 1967, daytime ends a year later.  Longtime soap The Secret Storm expands from 15 minutes to a half-hour, leaving only The Guiding Light and Search For Tomorrow in the old radio-era length.  Both will finally go to 30 minutes in 1968, bumping - To Tell The Truth.

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By the way, if you really do want to play this game with Kevin Bacon, then step 6 is as follows: Paul Anka was in Mad Dog Time with Diane Lane, who was in My Dog Skip with Kevin Bacon.  See how easy?

The kitchen of the future

We spend a lot of time looking back at the past in an effort to understand it, but it can be just as enlightening to consider how the past viewed the future.  Does our present look anything like the future that was imagined in the past?

For example, the computers in Star Trek look laughably primitive when compared to the technology of today (which is probably one reason why the remastered versions of the series have upgraded special effects).  In fact, today's technology has far surpassed what Gene Roddenberry & company imagined - there's probably more power in an iPhone than there was running the Enterprise.  Sometimes it seems as if we're afraid to let our imaginations truly run wild and imagine the possibilities.  On the other hand, we still don't have the flying cars from The Jetsons.

Before pro football completely took over Sunday afternoons, CBS had a long-running documentary series called The 20th Century, which took a look back at the major historical events of the century.  In January 1967 the show changed both its title and focus; renamed The 21st Century, the program now looked forward to what the future might have in store.

In that light, I'm reminded of David Gelenter's book 1939: The Lost World of the Fair, in which Gelenter reminds us that much of the scientific progress on display at the 1939 World's Fair was designed for one purpose: to make our lives easier.  Not that there weren't world-altering inventions on display, but we shouldn't underestimate the importance attached to such technological marvels as the washer and dryer or the refrigerator.  We may take them for granted now, but these were major accomplishments.

With that in mind, let's take a look at this episode of The 21st Century from March 1967, in which Walter Cronkite hosted this preview of the kitchen in the year 2001.  How much do you think they got right?

This week in TV: five days in June

This week, rather than my regular "This Week in TV Guide" feature, I'm going to focus on a specific series of days: June 4-8, 1968.  And I'll be dealing not only with television, but with radio as well.

It was the middle of the night when Robert F. Kennedy was shot following his victory in the California primary - arguably the biggest American news event ever to occur during the overnight hours.  Kennedy gave his victory speech at a quarter past midnight PDT - after 3am on the East Coast - and in those wee hours of the early morning, many people would get their first news of the shooting not from television, but from radio.*  In the days before 24/7 television, it's not hard to imagine people lying in bed with the radio on, unable to sleep, listening to a late-night music program when the news broke, and thereafter continuing to lay their in the stillness of the dark, listening to disembodied voices describing what had happened in far-away Los Angeles, unwilling or perhaps even afraid to turn on the lights, preferring the shelter of the night.  I wonder how many were able to go back to sleep?  I would have found it somewhat frightening to do so, myself.

*According to a contemporary poll, 56% first received the news on radio.  And most people didn't even find out until they'd gotten up that morning - less than 20% had heard the news by 5am EDT.

Frozen in time: the last television image of Kennedy
alive, as he turns to leave the podium.  (KTLA)

In Minneapolis, Franklin Hobbs was hosting his popular overnight music program "Hobbs House" on clear channel WCCO-AM, and he presented wire-service reports until CBS came on the air with network coverage.*  One thing that stands out from these contemporary bulletins is how fresh in the memory the assassination of JFK still was - RFK is often referred to as "the brother of the assassinated President John Kennedy."  One report talked of Kennedy's eyes being "open but unseeing," and Hobbes - perhaps trying to keep things under control - cautions that this might be an "overly-dramatic" report.

*Those early reports had Kennedy being shot in the hip - I've never been sure if someone originally misunderstood "head" as "hip," or if they confused the wounds with those of one of the other bystanders who'd been shot.

As the primary results were close, television networks had stayed on the air far past their regular cutoff time, not calling the race for Kennedy until shortly before the senator's victory speech.  According to various sources, CBS had already ended their coverage at the time of the shooting; at NBC, Frank McGee, having received rumors, vamped for a few minutes, keeping the studio coverage live until the report could be confirmed.  ABC was in the process of signing off on their report in favor of Joey Bishop's show, when Howard K. Smith interrupted the closing credits to update people with the news.

WPIX, New York, broadcast the single word "Shame"
for 2½ hours on Wednesday morning while Kennedy
underwent surgery. (WPIX/Corbis)

Kennedy underwent surgery early that Wednesday morning; expected to last less than an hour, it instead ran for almost four hours.  The networks maintained continuous coverage throughout the morning; in ABC's case, devoting Dick Cavett's morning talk show to commercial-free discussion of the breaking story.

It's a temptation to analyze coverage of RFK's assassination in light of that of his brother's five years ago, but there were significant differences.  Whereas John's death followed shortly after his shooting, Robert clung to life for over 24 hours, and his passing, like the shooting itself, came in the middle of the night.  Therefore, throughout Wednesday afternoon and evening, networks provided periodic medical bulletins and special reports, but not the saturation coverage that had accompanied the assassination of JFK.  Networks maintained a semblance of their regular programming, albeit with subtle changes: ABC cancelled a planned repeat of the murder mystery Laura, and on Thursday substituted episodes of The Avengers and The Flying Nun* that were deemed "too violent" with less controversial stories.  The Joey Bishop Show, like that morning's Cavett show, was devoted to commercial-free coverage of the story.

*The Flying Nun too violent?  Perhaps - in the episode in question, "A secret meeting of mobsters blows sky high when Sr. Bertrille is forced down in their midst."

Prior to the Mass, Ted Kennedy memorably eulogizes
his brother.  Joe McGinnis claims Ted didn't write the
eulogy himself, but he certainly felt the emotion. (ABC)

Once Robert's death was announced, coverage again ramped up.  Kennedy's body was flown to New York later Thursday, where it lay in state throughout Friday in St. Patrick's Cathedral.  The funeral mass was held there on Saturday, and then the body was taken by funeral train to Washington, D.C. where he was buried next to John on Saturday night.

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I mentioned earlier that I'd be focusing on radio coverage as much as that of television.  Although plenty of coverage exists on YouTube, an amazing treasure trove of radio coverage exists from CBS through their Minneapolis affiliate WCCO, and listening to hour after hour of this was something of a revelation to me.

I'm no stranger to the charms of radio, although the medium was certainly on the decline by the time of my birth.  Still, for someone who was raised on television, this CBS radio coverage is fascinating, and to my thinking strangely appropriate.  While television is a communal experience, radio tends to be much more personal, more one-on-one.  Television reporters talk at you, their words providing a backdrop to the dominant pictures, while radio reporters talk to you, and the effect can be far more intimate.*  And so, lacking the images that television could provide, radio reporters were forced to paint word pictures for their listeners, and these disembodied voices, speaking in that lonely darkness of Wednesday morning, create an unreal, almost surrealistic atmosphere.  Again, imagine listening to the reports as you lay in bed during those small hours, your bedside alarm clock silently glowing.  Perhaps you were agitated, you had to get up and walk around, slipping on your robe, trying to comprehend this latest horror in a year of horrors - as you looked out your window was the neighborhood shrouded in blackness, with only the radio voices breaking the dead night? Or did lights begin to snap on in houses up and down the block, as the news spread?  Did you share your agitation with others, or was your agony a silent and solitary one?

*As any baseball fan can tell you.

Leonard Bernstein conducted the Adagietto from
Mahler's Fifth Symphony during the Offertory of the
Requiem Mass. (Look Magazine/Paul Fusco)

This amazing collection of radio broadcasts continues throughout the early morning hours on Wednesday, to the announcement of Kennedy's death early Thursday morning, and the funeral and burial on Saturday.  Particularly interesting to me is an excerpt from Arthur Godfrey's CBS morning show on Thursday.  Then, as now in the wake of every tragedy, there were calls for tighter laws, for elimination of guns, for restrictions of freedom - and people will say that "there ought to be a law." But, Godfrey continues, "We can only hope and pray that reason will continue to prevail...the danger at hand, it seems to me, is that men of questionable purpose will find an excuse in what's happened to alter our system, to use our emotional state as a cover for rushing through some repressive laws that purport to cure the ills of society.  In my view it's not a time for hysterical action or pejorative oratory."  Godfrey was a master of communication, it's true, but even so it's difficult to imagine that a television commentator (other than, perhaps, Ronald Reagan), could make the same connection to an audience.

In much the same way, radio coverage of Saturday's funeral and burial provides a dimension different from that of television.  Without the fillers that TV pictures provide, the announcers were forced to describe the unfolding events, and during the many times when nothing at all was happening, their commentary provided nothing so much as an insight into their own hearts. During the funeral, covered on radio by Douglas Edwards and Maury Robinson, the men struggle with the unfamiliar "new" liturgy of the Catholic Church (a hybrid between the old Latin Tridentine rite and the soon-to-be-revealed Vatican II Novus Ordo), all the while explaining the significance of the words and gestures occurring in front of them.

Cameras on the funeral train capture a passenger
train coming from the other direction, killing two people
lining the tracks in Elizabeth, NJ.  (CBS/AP)

Without the pictures, the listener is forced to remember not the sights, but the sounds, of those events: the quivering voice of Edward Kennedy eulogizing his brother; the mournful strains of Mahler accompanying the procession of Kennedy youngsters as they brought the Communion offerings to the altar, the smooth voice of Andy Williams singing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" as the pallbearers prepare to remove the casket from the Cathedral.  Amazingly, near the end of Kennedy's funeral, a news update informs us that James Earl Ray, accused of assassinating Martin Luther King a mere two months before, had been apprehended in London.

The funeral train taking Kennedy's body from New York to Washington was both a tribute and, in some respects, a fiasco.  Two people were killed in Elizabeth, NJ by an express train travelling in the opposite direction.  The train itself was almost five hours late, travelling slowly to afford the crowds, estimated at perhaps one million people, a better chance to view it.  It had been expected that the burial would occur early Saturday evening, and Major League Baseball had rescheduled the day's games to the evening, to start after the ceremony.  Instead, the first pitches were thrown as the train continued its slow progress; the actual burial didn't occur until after 10pm EDT.  On television the black-and-white remote images showed the train pulling into Washington's Union Station; on radio, one hears only the lonely ringing of the train's bell.  As the motorcade processes down Constitution Avenue to Arlington, a radio reporter apologizes for not being able to provide better coverage, but the darkness combined with the leafy canopy formed by the trees lining the street served to obscure her view.  George Herman, anchoring CBS Radio's coverage, mentions the Kennedy people asking CBS to pass along a request to those lining the funeral route and listening to transistor radios that they light a match as the cortege passes by.

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Hours behind schedule and in near-total darkness,
Kennedy's casket is brought to the gravesite next to
his brother at Arlington.  (ABC)

I was eight years old in 1968, and I have more of a personal memory of Robert Kennedy's death than that of John's.  I watched the coverage the day through, not really understanding or appreciating what I was saying.  I was upset that the baseball game had been preempted, and as the day and night wore on I hung in there, waiting for the Bedtime Nooz, Channel 4's late-Saturday night satiric comedy news show.  When it did air, as the hour approached midnight, it was done straight, without humor.  Again, I was disappointed.

Watching and listening to the events from that week (covered in fascinating detail in this issue of Broadcasting magazine) has provided an opportunity to reflect on everything that happened, and how it was broadcast.  1968 had already been an eventful, grim year: the Tet Offensive, Eugene McCarthy's challenge to President Johnson and LBJ's subsequent decision not to seek reelection, the assassination of Martin Luther King, race riots, war protests, and now this.  Still to come was the tumultuous Democratic convention in Chicago and the election; one of the few bright spots was Apollo 8's memorable Christmas Eve trip around the moon.

As such, I think the American people were a more cynical lot, numbed somewhat to the events that seemed to cascade, one after another, throughout the year.  Whereas JFK's assassination was truly shocking, if not incomprehensible, by June of 1968 the assassination of Robert Kennedy was all-too believable.  And perhaps that's what made it such a deeply sad event for so many, for without the anesthesia of shock to cushion the blow, the emotions that had been rubbed raw were there for the taking.  It was so stunning, so unexpected, so quick.  I freely admit that I am not now and never have been a fan of the Kennedys; politically we're about as far apart as we could be.  But the events of that week in June worked on so many levels - the political, the personal, the familial.  And as the day drew to an end, and the country worried about what might come next, ABC's summary of the day - one of "stunning tragedy" and "unique, painful events" - combined the best of the elements we've discussed, picture and sound.  It was, indeed, a painful week.


This piece, with a publication date of June 8, did not go live until June 11 due to technical failings having to do mostly with yours truly.

Home is where the heart is

It's good to be back to live blogging, as opposed to the pre-recorded (so to speak) pieces you've been reading for the last few weeks.  It's still going to take awhile for everything to find its place, but I think we've found ours.

The picture at the left is from the iconic opening to Dallas.  I have to admit I was never much of a fan of that show (although Victoria Principal always provided a couple of good reasons to tune in).  There's no question, though, that Dallas was one of the landmark shows in TV history - it brought back the successful prime-time serial circa Peyton Place, created one of the most memorable television characters ever (J.R.), and with his shooting provided us with one of the great cliffhanger endings of all time, against which all future cliffhangers would be measured.  Not only in its greatness but in its campiness (Bobby in the shower), Dallas left its fingerprints all over the television landscape.  Judith Crist once wrote of the movie Shane that it was "the original source for many of the cliches of subsequent Westerns," and the same could be said of Dallas; anyone viewing the series for the first time (through DVD or reruns) might find it littered with TV cliches, but they should remember these weren't cliches back then - they were new.

One thing I can tell you is that the city of Dallas has changed somewhat since those opening credits.  For one thing, there's a lot more concrete - the freeway overpasses form an almost beautiful tapestry of concrete ribbon.  The skyline has filled in, Texas Stadium (in Irving, not far from where we now live) has long since been replaced by Jerryworld in Arlington, and fashions have changed with the times.  But a lot of it remains pertinent, none more so than the overwhelming sense of the vastness of Texas, a place unlike any other part of the United States.  Texas is many things, but to me it feels like home.

There's a lot to be said for home - Rod Dreher, in his new book The Little Way of Ruthie Learning, speaks of home as a place and a people, someplace to which you're inevitably drawn.  Television is the same way - to me it represents both a chronological and a metaphorical time and place, one that reminds me of a time and place in my own history.  Some people might take issue with that description, their eyebrows may be raised by my putting fictional people on celluloid on a par with real communities full of real people, but there's no denying the fact that television (or movies) can create that sense of place, and I oftentimes find myself far more at home in that world than in the world of today.  The past is never what we remember it to be; nevertheless, the essays you read on this blog are often my attempts to return to a past that I lived in but was not old enough to be a part of.  In that sense, it could be said that these journeys are my attempt to return to my own past, much as people might attempt a return to an old love, applying what they know now to what they wish they'd known then.  In a way, television provides us all with that sense of comfort, of home cooking.

And just as television draws us to our past, Texas has drawn us to our future.  It should, in fact, be an interesting experience.

This week in TV Guide: June 5, 1965

By the time you read this, I may - emphasize may - be unpacked.  I might have at least found the box with the TV Guides in them.  Of course, there's no assurance of that, as indeed is the case when talking about life in general.  But as I write this, weeks in advance, all that is in the future.  And I've taken care to make sure my readers aren't left out in the cold - aren't I a thoughtful blogger?

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When political satirist Art Buchwald was funny, there were few writers who could touch him.  And his droll article on The Fugitive in this week's TV Guide is Buchwald at his best.

The Fugitive has just finished its second season, the most successful (ratings-wise) of the show's four seasons, and its success spelled the end of CBS' The Doctors and the Nurses, which I wrote about here.  Buchwald relates a story about how The Doctors and the Nurses could have won back the Fugitive audience:

In the first show of the season, a man [is] wheeled into the emergency room of the hospital, and as one of the doctors took the sheet off him, the audience would discover he had one arm.  Just before he dies on the operating table he would gasp, "I am the one-armed man the Fugitive is looking for.  Richard Kimble is innocent and I killed his wife."

The network didn't take the suggestion, however, and so the show was doomed.

Buchwald is a faithful Fugitive viewer, but he has some hilarious problems with the show.  For one thing, he thinks Kimble is guilty, and each week he bets his wife $20 that Kimble's going to be caught.  He now figures he owes his wife $480, "which only adds to my determination to see Richard Kimble put behind bars."  Kimble's nemesis, Lieutenant Gerard, is a bungler who ought to be taken off the case.  "One of the things that makes me livid is that every time Gerard is close on the trail of Kimble, he never bothers to look in the kitchen," where the doctor is invariably hiding behind the door.  "Sometimes I get so infuriated at Gerard I start screaming at him, 'Dope, why didn't you have the back door covered?'  This gets the neighbors pretty mad."

Buchwald has a simple solution for catching Kimble.  For one thing, Kimble is a do-gooder, always stopping to help people in need.  Therefore, the first thing he'd do is find the 100 neediest cases in every city he thought Kimble might be in, and have them staked out.  The dramatic necessities of the show demand that he has to stop at one of these house, or the ratings will drop to zero.  He'd then have NBC and CBS each put up $50,000 rewards for the capture of Kimble dead or alive.  "It would be worth it to them to get The Fugitive out of circulation."

Most of all, he's mad at ABC.  "It's obvious to anyone who watches the show that neither the producers nor [ABC] is making any effort to see that Richard Kimble is brought to justice.  If they were sincere in their efforts, they wouldn't have a dummox like Gerard on the case."  And Buchwald wouldn't be out $480 to his wife.

Funny, funny stuff.  You can read the whole thing here.

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During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premiere variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup..

Ed Sullivan: Scheduled: musical-comedy star Tommy Steele, doing numbers from his Broadway show "Half a Sixpence"; Metropolitan Opera soprano Roberta Peters; singer Trini Lopez; Herman's Hermits, rock 'n' rollers; comics John Byner and George Kaye; Mr. Cox, magician; and the Malmo Girls, gymanists.

Hollywood Palace: In a repeat, host Victor Borge introduces former motion picture star Alice Faye; pop singer Nancy Wilson; the Swingle Singers, French vocal group; Japanese comic Pat Morita; the tap-dancing Nicholas Brothers; bicyclist Rih Aruso; and De Mille, a 15-year-old high-wire performer.

Interesting week.  The Swingle Singers, who are still around, are an incredibly talented a capella  group, as you can see here; and the jazz great Nancy Wilson just retired from club dates a couple of years ago.  You'll remember Pat Morita* from Happy Days and his Oscar-nominated role in The Karate Kid.  The Nicholas Brothers were without peer - "tap-dancing" doesn't seem nearly adequate enough.  And of course, Victor Borge was one of the funniest comics around.

*I love the description - "Japanese comic Pat Morita" - presumably so the audience won't be shocked by his appearance. Seems very odd, doesn't it?

On the other hand, Ed has Roberta Peters, one of the greatest opera singers America ever produced - and his most frequent guest, appearing on his show 65 times.*  She made her debut at the Met when she was 20 years old, which is just another little something to make you feel inferior, and if I'm not mistaken she might still do recitals.  John Byner remains active and funny; Trini Lopez just did an album with Andre Rieu.  Herman's Hermits was a very big deal at the time, and they too remain active, albeit in two versions: one featuring lead singer Peter Noone, ("Herman's Hermits starring Peter Noone") and the other led by longtime member Barry Whitwam ("Herman's Hermits starring Barry Whitwam").

*You'll win a few bets with that information.

I'm calling this one a push, but for those of you who don't like ties, I'll give you an alternative winner: Thursday night's Jimmy Dean Show on ABC, which featured the Mills Brothers, Norm Crosby, and Buck Owens.  And of course there's Rowlf the Muppet.  The star wattage on this week's programs is immense.

***

Gemini IV was the second manned Gemini spaceflight and the first American spacewalk, and was a crucial step in the American race for the moon.  As each phase of the space program became more successful, the public became more blase about it, but the early flights were filled with excitement and drama.  The networks have extensive coverage throughout the mission, which began with the liftoff the previous Thursday and is scheduled to end with live non-stop coverage of the splashdown Monday morning.  ABC planns 60-second updates on the hour; CBS counters with five-minute reports throughout the day; and NBC has a one-minute report prior to the start of each prime time program.  In addition, all three plan half-hour daily progress reports.  I would have watched as much of this as I possibly could.

Here's some of ABC's coverage, anchored by Peter Jennings, and including animated simulation of Ed White's spacewalk.

***

Teletype highlights: The new CBS series originally entitled Country Cousins is now The Eddie Albert Show.  But you probably know it by its final title - Green Acres.

Screen Gems is working on a pilot for a Western called Lazarus, which would be the first dramatic series to star a Negro.  Some additional research turns up a quote from actor Jackie Cooper, who's a Screen Gems executive, that "The Old West had lots of Negro gunslingers," and that this series would be based on the real-life Negro gunfighter Lazarus Benjamin.  However, if the pilot ever made it to air, I've yet to find it.

And ABC has big plans for the new Early Bird satellite, including live coverage of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which would be won by Masten Gregory and Jochen Rindt.  More important, the 1965 race marks the beginning of Ford's challenge to Ferrari, and although the GT40s would fail in 65, they would be back the next year, and would finish 1-2-3.  For all you racing fans, here's some vintage footage of the live broadcast from French television.  I would have watched this as well - that footage brings back vivid memories for me.

***

We're No Angels, starring Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, Peter Ustinov and Basil Rathbone,  is NBC's Wednesday Night movie, and I find that strange, since it takes place at Christmas and, just a couple of years ago, was run during Christmas pre-week by NBC.  it's a Christmas movie.  It's kind of like watching It's a Wonderful Life on the 4th of July - which, come to think of it, is just about the time of year when I first watched it.

***

We've talked about both game shows and soaps in the past.  Many of them are legendary: General Hospital, As the World Turns, Another World, Password, Jeopardy, Match Game.  But what about the rest - the ones that don't stick in the memory, that aren't readily available on YouTube, that produce not fond memories but puzzled looks?

In the midst of their legendary game shows Truth or Consequences, Jeopardy, You Don't Say! and Concentration, NBC has three games that don't mean much to me: What's This Song?,  which ran for one year and was the first game show hosted by Wink Martindale (known then as Win); Call My Bluff, hosted by Bill Leyden, which was in the middle of its six-month run; and I'll Bet, hosted by Jack Narz, which started and was cancelled on the same dates as Call My Bluff.  As for "daytime dramas," NBC had some heavyweight soaps like Another World and The Doctors, but they also had lesser-knowns like Moment of Truth, a Canadian soap that ran on NBC for most of 1965*.  Of the three networks, only NBC stayed away from airing reruns of their prime-time shows.

*Sample listing: "Lila embarrasses her daughter."  With plotlines like that, it's no wonder it only ran a year.

Bill Cullen, who had polio as a child,
was seldom seen from the waist down

ABC, which was not much of a daytime presence in the mid-60s and filled much of their time with reruns of Father Knows Best, Donna Reed, and Wagon Train (aka Trailmaster), had a pair of soaps you might not have heard of: A Flame in the Wind, which actually ran for two seasons; and The Young Marrieds, also a two-year runner.  They had an interview show hosted by newswoman Lois Leppart, a Concentration-wannabee hosted by Art Linkletter's son Jack called Rebus, and a game show with a very familiar name, but a much different format: The Price Is Right, hosted by Bill Cullen, which in its ABC incarnation included a celebrity player.

Only CBS has a thoroughly familiar look, but even there you can see differences if you know where to look.  Their soap schedule is a heavyweight one: Love of Life, Search for Tomorrow, The Guiding Light, As the World Turns, The Edge of Night and The Secret Storm, but Search and Guiding Light run for only 15 minutes each, a carryover from their radio days. CBS rounds out its daytime schedule with more familiar faces: I Love Lucy, Andy Griffith, and The Real McCoys (renamed The McCoys for daytime) in the morning, and Password, To Tell the Truth and Art Linkletter's House Party in the afternoon. 

***

Finally, here's another of those "news quizzes" that double as ads for KSTP, Channel 5.   It's another fascinating look at how times have changed - at least in the case of Question #1, literally.

Question #3, regarding the 1965 tornado, hits home on a number of levels.  I remember that storm vividly, one of the most famous ever to hit the Twin Cities, although the tornado didn't touch down in our part of Minneapolis.  It did hit Fridley, a Minneapolis suburb, where my best friend lived.  She remains somewhat traumatized to this day, remembering how she and her family huddled in the basement while the tornado mowed through their neighborhood.  This is how it sounded, and it looked like this:

As for the other two questions - yes, it's true that in 1965 Minneapolis and St. Paul didn't observe the same rules on Daylight Saving Time.  I've written about how in the 1950s Minnesota was considering allowing the Twin Cities and Duluth to go on DST while the rest of the state remained on Standard Time.  In 1965 St. Paul started "early," with the rest of the country, while Minneapolis started "late," per state law.  This meant that, at least for a time, it could take you an hour to cross the street.

And it's also true that there was no sales tax in Minnesota in 1965.  It started in 1967, at 3%.  It's now the sixth-highest in the country, at nearly 7%.  Ironic also that Governor Rolvaag, a Democrat, vowed to veto the tax; it was Republican Harold LeVander who pushed it through.  I guess some things actually do change.

This week in TV Guide: May 25, 1968

As you're reading today's piece, I'm likely in our new home, waiting for our furniture to catch up with us. Fortunately, thanks to the miracles of technology, I've written this post weeks in advance!  Let's hope that the movie wasn't as big a fiasco as the story that follows.

***

In the long and occasionally glorious history of television, there have been many fiascos. Some of them, such as Turn-On and You're In the Picture, each of which ran for only one episode, have become synonymous with failure.  The program which we are about to discuss, which TV Guide calls "The worst disaster of the TV season," is not one of them.  In fact, it's likely you've never even heard of it.  That doesn't make Edith Efron's autopsy of a story any less fascinating, though - after all, most train wrecks are.

The program, a television play entitled Flesh and Blood, aired on NBC on January 26, 1968.  There were high hopes for the program, "a powerful and  compassionate drama of a contemporary American family": written by award-winning Broadway playwright William Hanley, directed by Oscar-nominee Arthur Penn, and starring Oscar-winner Edmond O'Brien and Emmy winners E.G. Marshall, Kim Stanley and Suzanne Pleshette, along with a very young Robert Duvall.  NBC had paid Hanley $112,500 for the script - the largest amount ever for a television script - and touted the coming special for the better part of a year.

In case the article's title didn't give it away, the show did not go over well.  I love the quotes the feature - "a compression of enough emotional depression and disaster to sustain a soap-opera series through 1970" (New York Times), "a grim, depressing piece" (Boston Record American), "a catalog of calamities" (Philadelphia Inquirer), "an unrelieved chronicle of human misery" (Denver Post), "a numbing two-hour tirckle of unsjpeakable secrets" (Time) - well, you get the idea.

So, Efron asks - what went wrong?  A number of things, as it turns out.  NBC wanted a prestige program, and thought they could get it by outbidding Broadway itself - except, as Hanley himself points out, the show never was headed to the Great White Way.  With its depressing subject matter, Hanley says, "[i]t wouldn't have lasted five minutes on Broadway."  The network executives saw Hanley as an award-winning playwright, but his awards had been for off-Broadway work, and he'd never had a box-office hit.  The cast, many of whom were going through personal problems of their own, never really learned the script, and often ad-libbed their lines.  Most important, perhaps, was the grim story itself.  Hanley, refreshingly candid about the whole thing, says that "I do have a very dark vision of life" that is not for everyone.

The whole thing's a prime example of how network executives, through ignorance, hubris, arrogance, stupidity - for starters - can foul things up.  One executive tells Efron, "Some people thought we shouldn't put it on.  But we thought we could get away with it.  What the hell, we'd paid for it, we'd publicized it.  And any special will get you some praise."  And they did get some - at least the critic Rex Reed liked it.  Soon after, NBC would announce a policy change regarding their dramatic programming, signing an agreement with Prudential Life Insurance to produce "five original 'upbeat' dramas" in the coming season - dramas that will be "exciting, hopeful and affirmative."

And here is where we come to the moral of the story.  Clearly we have a disaster here, and although there are many reasons why, pretty much everyone would agree that William Hanley wrote a flop.  Conventional wisdom might suggest that this would signal the end of Hanley's career, at least when it comes to television.

But you'd be wrong.

William Hanley went on to write over two dozen TV scripts, winning two Emmys and being nominated for three others.  He wrote the landmark TV movie Something About Amelia with Ted Danson, as well as adaptations of Tommy Thompson's bestseller Celebrity and Shana Alexander's bestseller Nutcracker: Money, Madness and Murder, and The Attic: The Hiding of Anne Frank.  When he died last June at age 80, his New York Times obituary describes him as an "uncommonly gifted writer" who "received critical acclaim as a Broadway and Off Broadway playwright in the 1960s and who later won Emmys for television scripts."  Of Flesh and Blood, the newspaper that had described it as " emotional depression and disaster" merely mentioned that it had received "mixed reviews."

So let that be a lesson to you: failure does not have to be permanent.  Time can heel all wounds, and people have short memories.  Flesh and Blood did not ruin William Hanley's career; it merely disappeared into the ether.  He didn't give up, and neither should we.

***

There are some great things teased on the cover of this issue (if you can get past the picture of Diana Hyland - more on that later).  We're given a preview of "Patrick McGoohan's puzzling, intriguing new summer series," and unlike so many promises, this one actually lives up to the billing.  The series in question is The Prisoner, McGoohan's legendary cult-fav that's part espionage, part sci-fi, part mystery, and completely compelling.

"It would be a grave error to pretend that this is anything other than a piece of entertainment of a certain type," McGoohan tells interviewer Joan Barthel, but at the same time it's clear McGoohan has something he wants to say about modern society.  "I've always been obsessed with the idea of prisons in a liberal democratic society," he says of the series, in which a former intelligence agent is kept captive by an unknown authority in an unknown place where people are known not by name but by number.*  "I believe in democracy, but the inherent danger is that with an excess of freedom in all directions we will eventually destroy ourselves."

*Many afficianatos of The Prisoner (including yours truly) believe that McGoohan's character, Number 6, is in actuality John Drake, the secret agent of McGoohan's previous series, Danger Man (the hour-long version of which was known in this country as Secret Agent). McGoohan always denied this, quite possibly because, since he didn't create Danger Man, he didn't own the name "John Drake" and would have had to share credit for it.

Speaking of America's obsession with opinion polls, McGoohan says that "[t]he reason we're so concerned with these polls is that we're so desperately concerned with saying, 'We're free!'  And I want to know, how free are we?  I think we're being imprisoned and engulfed by a scientific and materialistic world.  We're at the mercy of gadgetry and gimmicks; I'm making my living out of a piece of gadgetry, which is a television set, and anyone who says there aren't any pressures in it has never watched a commercial."

The Prisoner was one of the most puzzling, most controversial television programs ever shown.  Its ambiguity and its failure to provide a definitive end to the series outraged many, enthralled others, and confused most everyone.  And McGoohan wouldn't have had it any other way.  "I just hope there are a couple of thoughts in it somewhere that relate to the things that are going on around us, to our situation at the moment.  It will be interesting to see what viewers thing the symbols are.  I will say this: There are, within it, answers to every single question that can be posed, but one can't expect an answer on a plate, saying, 'Here you are; you don't have to think; it's all yours; don't use your brain.'"

***

During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premiere variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup..

Ed Sullivan: Scheduled: Mike Douglas; Nancy Sinatra; Spanky and Our Gang; comedians Scozy [sic] Mitchell, Bobby Ransen, and Hendra and Ullett; the acrobatic Trio Rennos; the roller-skating Bredos; and the Muppets Puppets.

Hollywood Palace: Co-hosts Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme (Mrs. Lawrence) introduce comics Tim Conway and Corbett Monica, dancers Szony and Claire, and the Mascotts, German head-balancing act.

Perhaps these lineups are indicative of the beginning of the end of variety shows, for neither is very strong.  The Palace, airing on Thursday night for a spell instead of its traditional Saturday night timeslot, is a rerun; Sullivan's show just sounds like a rerun, because we've seen it all before.  One point for Ed due to the Muppets, and Mike Douglas is always pleasant, but Steve and Edie, along with the very funny Tim Conway, are enough to carry the day.  The verdict: The Palace, somewhat indifferently.

Better to go with Dean Martin, airing opposite the Palace.  Deano's guests are singer Eddy Arnold, Phil Silvers, Janet Leigh, the Mills Brothers, and comedian Jeremy Veron.  I think that one would be hard to beat.

***

In 1968, Memorial Day was still celebrated on May 30; the holiday wasn't moved to its current fourth-Monday-in-May status until 1971. Then, as now, Memorial Day meant one thing for many people: the Indianapolis 500.

Besides the date, there were other things different about 1968. The race wasn't televised live, but instead was presented in highlight form on Wide World of Sports a couple of weeks later. No, if you wanted to follow the race, there were only two ways to do it: either on the radio, or via closed-circuit in a movie theater. And if you did, you'd have seen and heard how Joe Leonard, in one of Andy Granatelli's legendary turbine cars, leads the race only to have his car fail with 10 laps to go, leading to the first of Bobby Unser's three 500 victories.

In lieu of live race coverage, Channel 11 has something else in store: the Indianapolis 500 Festival Parade, taped Tuesday evening, with Garry Moore alongside Sid Collins, the famed radio "Voice of the 500." Unlike so many things, the 500 Festival Parade is still around, and still on TV - it will be on NBC Sports Network the day before this year's race.

***

Well, ABC is at it again.  How many times have I written that ABC's talking about moving their evening news broadcast to prime time?   Several times, at least.  They even did it once, though that didn't last long.  This latest idea is to move the broadcast to 9:30pm CT, and to start their prime-time programming at 6:00pm rather than the then-starting time of 6:30.  It "could be fully competitive with the morning paper," says Bill Sheehan, second-in-command at ABC News.  It never happens, though.  ABC's news remains in the traditional time slot, against Walter Cronkite and Huntley-Brinkley.  It won't be until ABC Sports head honcho Roone Arledge takes over the news department and introduces World News Tonight in 1978 that the network finally catches up - and passes - the rest.

***

This week's cover girl, as we mentioned earlier, is Diana Hyland, currently appearing as "the nymphomaniacal drunk minister's wife" in ABC's prime-time soap Peyton Place, and author Burt Prelutsky is in love with her.  She's got it all - a dazzling smile, lovely blue eyes, and legs that won't quit.  She's interesting, too - she believes in flying saucers, said good evening to Nikita Khrushchev at the UN and was winked at by Fidel Castro, and has remained 27 for the last five years*, the previous time when she was interviewed by TV Guide.  "I lied then," she tells Prelutsky.

*According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, Hyland was born in 1936, which means she was in fact 27 - in 1963.  She told the truth then; she's lying now.

She's a dedicated actress, and a successful one - "everything I've ever tried I've done well," she says.  Her Peyton Place director, Walter Doniger, calls her "an elegant, brigt, witty dame" who's also svelte, sophisticated, and a nonconformist.  In fact, she only has two vices - she owns 200 pairs of shoes, and she smokes three packs of cigarettes a day. 

I don't know if that last vice is significant or not.  Flash forward to 1977: she's in a happy relationship with John Travolta, she's signed to play Dick Van Patten's wife in Eight Is Enough - and she's diagnosed with breast cancer.  She dies in March of that year, aged 41. 

***

The Teletype tells us that Elvis Presley will be highlighting a special for NBC.  I suspect they're talking about this.  The rest, as they say, is history.

***

Finally, is it possible that the most interesting item in this week's issue is not an article, but an advertisement?

Hmm.  Could be.