This week in TV Guide: July 10, 1971

Indulge me for a moment in a personal reminiscence. It was the summer of 1971, the year before we moved to the World's Worst Town™, and we were on vacation at a lake resort in Alexandria, Minnesota. We were often in the area during the summer, considering Alex was only about an hour from the town of infamy, and while I have nothing against the place other than KCMT, that doesn't mean I'm in any hurry to go back. But I digress.

I was going through television withdrawal, since our cabin didn't have one, and I was particularly suffering since Tuesday night was the baseball All-Star Game, the Midsummer Classic, played that year in Detroit. (Tuesday, 7:00 p.m. CT, NBC) We were in the dining room of the resort, between dinner and dessert; I heard a shout from the lounge, where there was a TV tuned to the game, and rushed in to see what the fuss was about. (To this day I marvel at how patient my mother and grandparents were with me.)

"What happened?" I asked a man who was watching the game.

"Jackson just hit one off the light tower," he replied.

I'd missed Reggie Jackson's home run, but caught the replay. It was a titanic shot off the light standard on top of the roof of the right field stands at Tiger Stadium, traveling so high that the camera was unable to follow its flight all the way up. (It's been estimated the blast would have gone well over 500 feet had the tower not gotten in the way, and was reportedly still going up at the time.) It was instantly one of the most famous home runs in All-Star Game history, and remains so to this day.

It was an immensely entertaining game, with the American League ending a long losing streak by beating the National League 6-4, with all ten runs scored on home runs. The rosters of the two teams included 25 future Hall of Famers (including both managers), an astounding amount of talent

The only way it could have been any better would have been if I could have seen it all. And if that doesn't mark me as a true child of television, I don't know what does.

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There was, at least, one good thing to come out of my six years in the WWT: Sesame Street.

By the mid-1970s, I'd become so desperate to watch something—anything—besides the bilge on KCMT that I'd taken to watching the show in the afternoons after coming home from high school, courtesy of KWCM in Appleton, the only station other than KCMT that we could get without an antenna. I was, of course, much too old to be part of the show's target audience, so I watched in the detached way that adults did, enjoying the sly humor included for the benefit of parents forced to watch with their kids, jokes that preschoolers would never get.

*Sample: Ernie (to Bert's brother Bart): "I'm aghast!" Bart: "No, I'm aghast—you live here!" 

But all that is in the future; let us return to 1971, when the occasion for Cookie Monster's cover appearance is the second anniversary of Sesame Street's premiere, as Max Gunther takes a measure of the show's first two years. It's difficult to appreciate exactly how revolutionary Sesame Street has been since its premiere, but to fully understand, one has to go back to the state of American education in the years preceding its debut. "Sesame Street began," Gunther points out, "because many people in this country were worried about what happens to poor kids—the so-called 'culturally deprived'—when they start school." They lack the exposure to books and magazines that other children have; thus, "they come into kindergarten or first grade with an often cruel handicap." Letters and words are unfamiliar to them, they don't understand what the teacher's talking about, they fall further behind, and may give up in frustration, winding up on the mean streets of the ghetto. The Head Start program, which was meant to address the situation, fell short. The cost of various early education proposals was often prohibitive. It was then that Joan Cooney suggested television. After all, almost every kid has access to one, and TV has long been adept at selling products. Couldn't it also sell education?

The show has had its share of critics. A Cornell psychologist complains that Sesame Street is part of a dream world, with "no racial tensions; nobody ever gets mad; no sharp words are spoken." How, he wonders, does this prepare children for real life? A school principal says that the show "makes no demands on the kids. Real school and real life aren't like that. If a problem is troubling you, you can't just switch it off and walk away." The show has ten times as many fans, though, who point at dramatic increases in test scores among disadvantaged children who watch Sesame Street often. And Susan, one of the show's humans who was previously a housewife, is now a nurse; "Women's lib has a thing about housewives."

The producers envision Sesame Street as a show continuously evolving to better serve the needs of its young viewers. The research chief of Children's Television Workshop constantly tests kids' reactions, incorporating the findings into future shows; for instance, they've discovered that children are not, as one might suspect, bored by seeing the same thing several times in one broadcast; repetition, therefore, is a key aspect to successful learning. They also tend to remember things when they're able to say or sing it along with the performer on-screen. And fully 20% of the stations showing the program are commercial stations in areas that don't yet have educational television; although CTW won't allow advertising during the show, many station executives know that kids watching Sesame Street will probably leave the TV tuned to the same channel afterward, allowing them to charge a premium for that show. In other cases, corporations and civic groups have bought the time to air the show. And a second show, The Electric Company, is planned for this fall; its target will be 7- 10-year-olds.

Within all this good news, the cloud on the horizon, as always, is funding. Congress will do its best, and new licensing deals will help. "I think we've started something big," Cooney says; her Congressional ally, Sen. John Tunney, agrees. "People are only beginning to understand what early schooling can accomplish." And even I was able to learn something; thanks to Sesame Street, I can at least count to 20 in Spanish.

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You know that I try to be as positive as possible, but the truth is that we've got a case of the summer blahs this week. A couple of movies stand out, and we'll get to them, but between summer replacements and repeats, there's just not a lot to fly at the top of the flagpole. It doesn't mean we can't find a few highlights, though. For instance. . .

I had just started to get an appreciation for golf in 1971, so when I say that the All-Star Game was the big sporting event of the week, it's more a matter of personal opinion. Other eyes are looking toward England, where the 100th British Open, the world's oldest golf tournament, is being contested at Royal Birkdale, with ABC providing same-day coverage of the final round on Wide World of Sports (Saturday, 4:00 p.m.) Lee Trevino, in his greatest season, wins a thrilling duel with Lu Liang-Huan and Tony Jacklin to take his first of two consecutive British Opens; it's also his second consecutive major, having bested Jack Nicklaus in a playoff to win the U.S. Open the previous month. Later that night, NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies presents the touching movie A Patch of Blue (7:30 p.m.), starring Sidney Poitier, Elizabeth Hartman, Shelley Winters (who won an Oscar) and Wallace Ford in what Judith Crist calls "a quartet of brilliant performances" that "make the sentimental melodrama memorable." Sunday belongs to PBS, first with the return of Evening at Pops (7:00 p.m.), tonight featuring an all-Tchaikovsky hour with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. That's followed at 8:00 by Masterpiece Theatre and part one of one of its most famous stories, The First Churchills, with John Neville and Susan Hampshire.

Sticking with PBS, Lorne Greene, Dan Blocker and Michael Landon teach the difference between near and far on Monday's Sesame Street (4:30 p.m.). Turning to the networks, Dave Garroway returns to network television after a nine-year absence with CBS Newcomers (9:00 p.m.), a weekly talent show with professional entertainers from night clubs and theaters around the country. You can read more about that at Jodie's Dave Garroway blog here and here. If you're not in the mood for Tuesday's All-Star Game, ABC has a rare prime time network showing of a classic movie, with 1939's Made for Each Other, starring James Stewart and Carole Lombard. It's classic soap opera as well, Judith Crist says, but with Stewart and Lombard "at the height of their romantic appeal," the mush is "not only palatable but well worth savoring." If you think we've had it bad with the coronavirus, just look at the staff of Medical Center Wednesday (8:00 p.m., CBS)—they're looking for a missing radium implant that could contaminate the entire hospital. Over at NBC, the Kraft Music Hall (8:00 p.m.) has moved across the pond for the summer, with British comedian Des O'Connor and Connie Stevens doing the honors; this week, their special guest is Phyllis Diller.

Thursday, NBC Action Playhouse (6:30 p.m.) has a rerun from 1966 (see what I mean by a weak week?), Massacre at Fort Phil Kearny, a drama about the military inquest into the deaths of 81 U.S. soldiers massacred by Sioux warriors in 1866. It's got a good cast, though, with Richard Egan, Robert Fuller, Carroll O'Connor and Robert Pine. A Tom Jones special (6:30 p.m.) highlights ABC's night, with Nicol Williamson, Tom Paxton and Lulu. Future Oscar winner Joel Grey (he wins next year for Cabaret) plays a jockey suspected of throwing races on Ironside (7:30 p.m., NBC), with former Tarzan Ron Ely, future Paramount CEO Sherry Lansing, and Dana Elcar. Later, Johnny Cash is the honoree on This Is Your Life (9:30 p.m., KTHI). And we'll bring the week to an end with Friday's summer replacement series It Was a Very Good Year (8:30 p.m., ABC); the year is 1939, which was an extraordinary year: the German invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland, Picasso's extraordinary antiwar painting "Guernica," the movies The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, the opening of the legendary New York World's Fair, and the retirement of Lou Gehrig.

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And speaking of Tom Jones. . .

It's not unusual to see Tom featuring in an ad like this, but it's also interesting to see the wide variety of names and styles that were big in 1971: Led Zeppelin; Dean Martin; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Glenn Miller; Mantovani; Loretta Lynn; Emerson, Lake & Palmer; the Bee Gees; Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and more. It's quite a slice of musical life—if you can't find anything there, I imagine you just don't like music. Ads like this were common in TV Guide; most of the time you could find them in the center section where the paper was stiffer, but this one was on the last two pages of the issue. And you can appreciate the latest in technology: records, cassettes, and 8-track!

June and Allan Jefferys' humorous article about being the first family on the block to have a VCR is about technology as well. Being able to show movies without commercial interruption makes the Jefferys a very popular family, and it isn't long before they're hosting movie nights for their friends, complete with popcorn and theater seating! It kind of predicts the home theater experience of today, albeit on a much smaller scale. 

It reminds me of something else though, of how technology used to bring people together in social situations. Having the first VCR on the block wasn't any different from having the first TV, or a radio that could bring in stations from other parts of the country—it became an occasion for having friends over, getting to know your neighbors, just like playing cards or having dessert on the porch. Bars installed TVs and saw their business explode. Nowadays the neighborhoods are virtual, and technology is accused of isolating people, of pushing them apart instead of bringing them together. But things could be a lot worse than our own virtual community here.

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And finally, a word from our friend gracing this week's cover, the Cookie Monster:

 Who says there's no class on TV anymore? TV

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Running out of TV? Nonsense!

I ran across this old article in my digital files from that awful Covid Theater year of 2020, Alison Herman's story "We're Going to Run Out of TV" (complete with the panic headline; exclamation point optional). "[A] drought is upon us," she says. And even though it's dated (she was referring to is the lack of new television due to the virus), the message still pertains today. 

Nonsense! In reality, there's no lack of television out there; between DVD, YouTube, and other sources, there's more TV available than any sane person could watch in a lifetime. Of course, throughout these ten years we've established that sane people do not run this website; even so, there's still a substantial number of TV shows just waiting for viewers to discover them.

And that's the problem: when it comes to television, too many people people limit the scope of their investigation to what's new, what's now, what's dope. Maybe, just maybe, they could be persuaded to look back as far as ten years. And you might as well forget about anything in black-and-white; I'm sure there are plenty of college-age types who refuse to believe there was ever such a thing.

It's their loss. It's reasonable to assume that we all have a bias toward the television of our own time, which is why today's viewers call shows like Breaking Bad "the best drama television has ever had to offer"—which it might well be, but it's pretty hard to make that claim stick by ignoring the first sixty or so years of television's history. "Don’t we lose more than we gain by constantly promoting the new and hip at the expense of the old and unfamiliar?"

In addition to losing our knowledge of television's past, though, we run the risk of losing touch of our own cultural past.  I often point out how the shows of yesterday offer us a window to the world of yesterday—one which is only approximated in period shows such as Mad Men.  I suppose this isn't a real surprise, given that these kids nowadays think history started about ten minutes ago.  But looking at the shows from the 50s and 60s introduces us to a world of wonder, in which walking on the moon was a fantastic dream; a world of apprehension, in which the threat of nuclear annihilation was a real and present danger; a world of comfort, in which the two-parent family was the norm, and neighbors looked out for each other.  We look at the stereotypes of women and minorities and see how things have changed, we see cars and fashions and marvel how technology has evolved.  We see the small towns and byways of America in the 60s, and wonder at how completely different the country has become.  We see travelogues of distant lands, and dream of travel beyond our own homes.

Over in England, someone touched on this with regard to the ongoing controversy over Doctor Who, now on hiatus and perhaps never to return. Considering the poor quality of recent seasons, the commentator offered what seemed to me to be a sensible question: why do we need new Doctor Who at all? After all, there are twenty-five or so years of the classic version out there on DVD. We're watching them again now (and enjoying them again immensely), and depending on your viewing habits, this could keep you busy for years. When you have that kind of inventory, why do you even need new Who? It is, I think, a question for which I'd struggle to come up with a sensible answer.

Brandon Norwalk, in a perceptive 2014 article at the AV Club (which, alas, I can no longer find), referred to this lack of familiarity with the shows of the past as "television's cultural amnesia."

When television fans lose their familiarity with classic television, every little formal discrepancy—from black-and-white to a multi-camera format to more obviously stylized performance—leads to perceptions that older TV is dated. And that, in turn, leads to blanket dismissals.

And that's the point about classic television, and what this blog has attempted to say about it over these many years. For classic television is not only old B&W programming, frequently primitive and sometimes very difficult to watch. It's more than that, though: it is our world—the world that has been shaped by generations past.  When we lose touch of it, we lose touch of ourselves.  It's part of the magic of classic television—the magic of memory.  It's like looking through a family scrapbook, where we can watch ourselves grow, and grow old.  When we suffer from amnesia, when we lose touch with our roots, we are the poorer for it, for as Nowalk writes in conclusion, "To the untraveled viewer, the horizon is endless. I highly recommend exploring." TV

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What's on TV? Tuesday, July 5, 1966

Tonight, CBS Reports, hosted by Charles Kuralt, investigates "The Spring Grove Experiment," a look at two patients given LSD treatment at Spring Grove State Hospital in Maryland. "Films show patients under the effects of LSD: a woman, who suffered a nervous breakdown, and a male alcoholic. Six months later at their homes, they describe the effects the therapy has had on their lives." Hint: many people were involved in these experiments, and the results weren't always good. But what better place to read about it than in the Northern California edition?

This week in TV Guide: July 2, 1966

Whis is the way it is: only now, in July of 1966, is Walter Cronkite beginning to get the credit that would, in years to come, seem to be his by right, or maybe divine fiat. Today we're conditioned to view every landmark in American history through the eyes of the Most Trusted Man in America, and yet just two years before, in August 1964, he had been removed from the lead chair for CBS's coverage of the Democratic National Convention. Back then, rumors were rampant that Cronkite's job was on the line, that he'd either be replaced or teamed with someone more "glamorous." That's life for you.

As Richard Schickel notes in this week's cover story, it's taken years of struggle, but for the first time Cronkite and the CBS Evening News have started to top NBC's powerhouse Huntley-Brinkley Report. Not that he takes any satisfaction from it; for Cronkite, it's all about the news, not the ratings. "Walter is a newsman who has remained a newsman and has never tried to be a television 'personality,'" says Richard Salant, head of CBS News. Cronkite reminds people that it was only last year that he'd worked on television longer than for newspapers and wire-services, and he jealously protects his title as "Managing Editor" of the evening news. Over the years, viewers have come to recognize and trust the passion Cronkite has for the news, "that over the years he has generated a quality of believably no other broadcaster can match." In time, that will translate into becoming "the most trusted man in America."

He's a strong backer of the program's resident pundit, Eric Sevareid, whom he believes is right more often than not in his opinions; he also appreciates the freedom that Sevareid's commentaries have given him from having to interpret the news himself. He's devoted to hard news, which he thinks gives the program an advantage over "the softer Huntley-Brinkley approach." Fred Friendly, the former head of CBS News, puts it this way: "Walter and his staff are better newsmen than the opposition." The night that Luna 9, the Soviet Union's unmanned spacecraft, made the first soft landing on the moon, Cronkite led with pictures from the landing. NBC "doesn't put them on until they are 16 minutes into it."

The Cronk and his son Chip, working on a 
slot car track; a swell gift for a boy in the '60s.

I've made this point before, but it bears repeating: NBC's ratings for the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 were higher than those for CBS and ABC combined. And as noted earlier, Cronkite's position was said to be in jeopardy a year later. Today, thanks to CBS's generous use of the Cronkite library—Cronkite announcing JFK's death, Cronkite overcome by the moon landing, Cronkite proclaiming that Vietnam is lost—one might think that Walter Cronkite was not just America's most trusted newsman, but America's only newsman. In light of that, it strikes me as somewhat disingenuous when Friendly, Salant, Cronkite, and the rest talk about how the ratings don't matter, that to even discuss them is to play NBC's game. On the other hand, the triumph of Cronkite's legacy, like his eventual victory in the ratings race, shows the value of playing the long game. The way it was isn't remembered; what goes in the history books is the way it is.

Which is not in any way intended to cast a shadow on that legacy. Unlike today's newsreaders, Cronkite was a newsman, and never stopped being one. He took the news seriously, and he took his obligation to the viewers seriously. Like the big-game sportscasters I've written about in the past, when you heard Walter Cronkite's voice, you stopped and listened.

In his office there is a quote from a review that Cronkite has framed and hung on the wall. "Viewers rarely recall and relish a Cronkite statement. They believe it instead." That's not a bad legacy either, one that today's television personalities might want to consider.

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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.

Sullivan: Ed's guests are singers Tom Jones, Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello and Mireille Mathieu; actor Ray Milland, who appears in a scene from his Broadway play Hostile Witness; comics Don Rickles, John Byner and Arthur Haynes; puppet Topo Gigio; Los Vegas, singing-instrumental group; and Elizabeth and Collins, knife-throwing act.

Palace: Host Vincent "Ben Casey" Edwards presents an all-female guest lineup: actress Bette Davis, who reads Dorothy Parker's poem "Biographies"; singer-dancers Liza Minnelli and Liliane Montevecchi; comedienne Joan Rivers; Miss Elizabeth, Swiss trapeze artist; the balancing Roggé Sisters; and performing elephants Bertha and Tina.

We're in rerun season, of course, and it's not hard to see why these two episodes were chosen. I suppose Vince Edwards was a natural for hosting an all-female Palace, given that he's displayed his innate animal magnetism for years on Ben Casey. He's got a good cast, too, particularly when Bette Davis is the lead guest. However, even with Liza (with a Z) and Joan Rivers, Palace is not about to compete with Tom Jones, Frankie and Annette, Ray Milland, and Don Rickles, and if Ed feels he still needs a few more stars, John Byner can probably impersonate them. No pretending here; Sullivan for the win.

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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever we get the chance, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the series of the era. 

Bad news for all you fans of The Cleve this week; our erstwhile hero-critic is on vacation. Not to fear, however, for his substitute (I don't think I can ever recall someone subbing for Amory, though I could be wrong about that) is none other than Judith Crist, movie critic for the New York Herald Tribune and film and drama critic of the Today show, and future movie reviewer for TV Guide.

For her subject this week, Crist not surprisingly looks at the state of the movie as seen on TV. Like the farmer and the rancher, she says, "movies and television have been forced into wary friendship and coexistence for economic survival." It is, however, time for "an awareness of what effect television is having not only on movie making but also on movie watching." The effect can be seen most strongly in young viewers, Crist says, those who have been conditioned to short-attention spans from television, delivered "in 12-minute doses of concentrated action zooming to a climax that is suddenly aborted" by commercial time. They don't know about subplots, the intricacies of plotting, and the subtleties of moviemaking. All they know is that they want their movies to be like their TV shows, "a series of exciting episodes and vignettes."

And it isn't just kids; many adults, according to Crist, admit that "their attention wanders after 20 of the 30 uninterrupted minutes Schaefer Award Theater allots its movies as a 'public service.'" Crist acknowledges that "it's a rare movie that can't be pared here and there," but such edits have to be judicious. Too many times, though, the end result is "out-and-out butchery." with film fans left nonplussed by bizarre jumps and stories that fall apart due to the total absence of certain scenes. What, for example, happened to the Marseillaise scene in Casablanca?

Television also needs to take its movie business more seriously. Rather than flooding the airwaves with "pop pap," Crist urges stations to seek out innovative opportunities such as airing a local film festival, or even serving as an art revival house. (An excellent idea, by the way; many PBS stations used to do this.) She suggests that movie hosts share inside information with viewers about then-unknown stars who might be appearing in tonight's flick, not unlike what Robert Osborne would do on TCM decades later. "All it takes," she writes, "is some thought and less money." Ah, we can but dream, can't we? 

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This week's starlet is Leigh Chapman, also known as Napoleon Solo's secretary on The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and despite her cool and chic appearance, she's her own biggest critic. "I despise selling myself as an actress because I don't like my body. There are too many defects," she says. "As writers go I might be good-looking, but as actresses go—"

She's written scripts for Burke's Law, Dr. Kildare, and My Favorite Martian, among other shows, and when asked how a nice girl like her wound up behind a typewriter, she replies simply, "I like words." She wants to prove she can write as well as a man can, and in fact she prefers to take a masculine point of view "because we have a masculine-oriented society."

Looking at Leigh Chapman's later writing career, it all makes sense. She becomes known for action-adventure movies and TV shows: Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, The Octagon, The Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible, It Takes a Thief. She wrote the pilot for Walker, Texas Ranger. "I like larger-than-life characters who do dangerous, heroic things," she said. "And that, to me, means men." She gave up acting after a disagreeable experience with Desi Arnaz, an incident she details in a fascinating interview she does with Stephen Bowie. She dies of cancer in 2014, but not before having taken up underwater photography. With that kind of talent, who needs acting?

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Well, we've gotten this far, and we've barely touched on the week's programs. Let's see what we can do to rectify that.

Did NBC read an advance copy of Judith Crist's article? This week's Saturday Night at the Movies, Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country (9:00 p.m. PT), includes a feature following the movie, with Ken Murray (known for his home movies of life in Hollywood) taking a look at the careers of the movie's stars, Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott. (Pause, repeat "Randoph Scott" reverently.) Networks used to have these featurettes from time to time, when the movie didn't fill the entire two-hour timeslot. And on ABC Scope (7:00 p.m.), "War Comes to Main Street" visits the places where violence and demonstrations aren't taking place on every street corner: "To find out how Vietnam is affecting the less vocal majority, Desmond Smith takes his camera crew to Dodge City, Kan., a prosperous community of cattle ranchers and wheat farmers."

On Sunday, ABC Sports visits close to home with coverage of the final round of the U.S. Women's Open golf championship (2:00 p.m.), from Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minnesota, a suburb of the Twin Cities. Golf fans probably recognize Hazeltine from hosting the Ryder Cup in 2016, but its first brush with fame, or infamy if you will, was as host of the 1970 men's Open. The course, less than a decade old, had yet to mature, and was despised by most of the pros; Dave Hill famously suggested that it only needed "80 acres of corn and a few cows" to be truly complete; Minnesotans, being the proud people we are, serenaded Hill with mooing for the rest of the tournament. Sandra Spuzich, at +9, wins the Women's Open, and a first-prize of $4,000. If you're not in the mood for that, Discovery '66 (11:00 a.m., ABC) takes a look at "The World of Charles Dickens," with host Frank Buxton touring old London and looking in at the home in which Dickens wrote many of his works.

Monday is the 4th of July, which explains why NBC's on the air with the Minnesota Twins playing the Cleveland Indians (4:00 p.m.). It's been a disappointing season for the defending American League champion Twins, but the Indians have stayed near the top thanks to pitching from Luis Tiant, Sonny Siebert, and Sudden Sam McDowell—remember him? That's the only bit of holiday programming for the day, but remember that most people are out, going to parades and fireworks shows, or just enjoying the high point of summer. They probably have better things to do that stay inside watching television. I myself have no idea what I was up to.

Telly Savalas (right) and Beau Bridges guest star in Tuesday's episode of The Fugitive (10:00 p.m., ABC). Beau accidentally shoots the driver of a passing car; he wants to turn himself in, but Telly won't hear of it, leaving Dr. Kimble—who was riding in the car—as the prime suspect. I know I've mentioned things like this before, but how many times as something like this actually happened to you, let alone an innocent man on the run from the law? I wonder.

Wednesday's fun just for browsing through the night and seeing all the guest stars: Frank Gorshin as the Riddler on Batman (ABC, 7:30 p.m.), Glenn Corbett and John Doucette on The Virginian (NBC, 7:30 p.m.), James Brolin and Kim Carnes—yes, Miss "Bette Davis Eyes" herself—on The Patty Duke Show (ABC, 8:00 p.m.), Marilyn Mason in The Big Valley (ABC, 9:00 p.m.), Jack Lord, Dana Wynter, Pat O'Brien and Sheree North in "The Crime" on Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre (NBC, 9:00 p.m.), Pippa Scott on The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS, 9:30 p.m.), and Julie London and producer Sheldon Leonard on I Spy (NBC, 10:00 p.m.). Oh, and Buddy Hackett is one of Johnny Carson's guests on The Tonight Show (NBC, 11:15 p.m.)

The highlight on Thursday is one of the most charming of movies (and star Jimmy Stewart's favorite role), Harvey, on the CBS Thursday Night Movie. (CBS, 9:00 p.m.) And in their pre-Laugh-In days, Rowan and Martin continue as summer subs for Dean Martin. (NBC, 10:00 p.m.)

Decisions, decisions: on Friday's Donna Reed rerun (ABC, noon), "Alex wants a new set of golf clubs, but Donna says that the family needs a new washing machine." Things were different in 1966, we know; still, you'd think that a doctor would be able to afford both. No wonder Carl Betz was so excited to play Clinton Judd—it probably meant a raise in pay. And on Court-Martial (ABC, 10:00 p.m.), Bradford Dilman discovers that his client is innocent of the crime for which he's charged, but guilty of another crime. Why didn't things like this ever happen to Perry Mason?

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MST3K alert: I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) A psychiatrist's drugs turn a youth into a monster. Michael Landon, Whit Bissell, Yvonne Lime, Tony Marshall. (Friday, 5:00 p.m., KGO in San Francisco) "You are not drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic’s, young man, you’re just not old enough." Michael Landon was two years away from Bonanza when he starred in Werewolf, and he remained a fan of the movie for the rest of his life. "I think it's a good movie. I like it. My kids like it. They better like it, their dad's in it."

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That's it for this America 250 Fourth of July, 2026. Not quite like the Bicentennial year was, is it? Here's a hope for happier times ahead, and never forget what this day is all about. TV

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Around the dial

On this day before Independence Day, let's see if we can find some fireworks in the world of classic television.

One of the hallmarks of this country is, at least in theory, free speech, so it's appropriate that we begin at Cult TV Blog, where John looks at the Play for Today, and "Speech Day," a story which, as John says, explores "who benefits and how the structures of society and state aren’t quite real." Very appropriate for today.

Free speech is also a key component of CBS's Lou Grant, with our beloved hero from Mary Tyler Moore running a newspaper. Why do I bring that up? Because David's on to Mondays in 1978 at Comfort TV, which for me meant Monday Night Football, but there's also Little House, WKRP, Kotter, and plenty else to keep us busy.

Whenever I start to worry about a week with light content, I can rest assured tha Roger's going to bail me out at The View from the Junkyard with another A-Team summary, and this week is no exception, with the episode "Incident at Crystal Lake," which does, in fact, occur at a lake, and has plenty to keep us going.

Character actor David Sheiner died last month, age 98, and if the name doesn't mean anything to you, the face likely will, as well as a very impressive list of television and movie credits. At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence talks about his long career, and you're sure to find shows you'll recognize on the list.

It is, I think, appropriate, that we wrap up a light week with a heavyweight miniseries, Centennial, which, as Paul says at Drunk TV, was NBC's "ambitious" 1978 attempt to explore the history of the United States. Based on James Michener's similarly epic novel, the miniseries failed on many levels, as Paul details, but what a cast! It's hard to imagine that there were many unemployed actors left while this was being shot.

I've never cared for holidays like the 4th of July falling on a weekend; it seems to make it too much like a regular day off (of course, when you're retired, every day is like that), but that doesn't mean that it's not still a reason to celebrate, so I'd suggest you go out tomorrow and do just that. And remember to be careful and not go out there and shoot your eye out, as Ralphie's mother might say. TV

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