"I don't see anything wrong with the myth of the American father," Young says of his own role as Jim Anderson. "That is, as long as you realize that the American mother is really making most of the decisions." Young had fought long and hard to keep his character from being a typical television dad buffoon, but now he thinks things have evolved beyond that. "All those pat answers I used to give, going back to the old 'FKB' on radio, ar just too ridiculous now. The family unit is too related to the outside world and life is too complicated to get away with those old solutions. I doubt very much that father knows best any longer."
Despite the outward similarities between Anderson and Welby, Young sees a real relevance in his role as the doctor who knows best. He spoke to many doctors in preparation for the role, and has embraced the holistic idea of medicine. "Today you have a headache and you take two aspirins; but you never treat the source of the headache. That's where the really skillful general practitioner can use his intimate knowledge of his patients better than the specialist." He's bullish on the potentials inherent in psychiatry; "I'm very excited that I have such tremendous equipment in the brain to learn and experience so many new things. You could say I'm a nut on mind-expansion." When Diehl mentions that he's starting to sound like a hippy, Young doesn't disagree; "I find that there are similarites in their concern with fuller use of the mind. I think that their motivation is right and their method—I mean drugs—is wrong."
He also sees drug usage as a symptom of something he has intimate experience with. "I think I understand a lot about these kids today because I took a lot of a chemical—alcohol—into my system over the years. I was addicted, but now I don't need it any more, so I don't drink." He's candid, with "a total lack of self-pity" about his long battle with alcoholism. "I've been terribly frightened all of my life. I think I was born frightened. I just reached the point where I was in such a constant state of terror. I couldn't face people. I couldn't face the day without a few martinis." Everyone in the theater, he says, is that way. "They're all terrified, frightened, insecure people who have found this remarkable outlet of playing all these characters who are not themselves." He credits his wife with stabilizing his life: "She married a frightened boy, not a mature man, and without her I might have ended up a destitute drunk on Fifth Street."
Friends say that Young looks younger, rejuvenated, and he agrees; "I feel younger, stronger, better in every way than I've ever felt in my life." In what Diehl calls "an amazing and moving thing," Young says, "I've changed so recently that I feel like I can still go back to the terror in my mind and touch it. It's like visiting an old haunted house. It's as if I live now in the beautiful house on the hill, and I only wander back to the old one occasionally out of curiosity. . . there really is no point in thinking about that, because you've got to live in the here and now. If you concentrate on guilt about the past, all you end up with is fear about the future."
Like Diehl, I found the entire article tremendously moving. Perhaps it's because I can identify with so much of what he says about fear and how it can cripple you, or because of the praise he gives his wife, which mirrors how I feel about my own. It is a remarkably candid and insightful Robert Young that we encounter here. I've always liked him, and after this I find myself admiring him as well.
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Here's a sign of how times have changed: Thursday's Today Show (7:00 a.m. CT, NBC), as baseball writer Leonard Koppett discusses one of the most controversial aspects of the game: the reserve clause.
The reserve clause was a standard part of the player contract, and its very simplicity belied its contentiousness. It stated that once a player's contract with his team expired, the team continued to retain the rights to that player. Although he could not play for them unless he was under an active contract, the team could still trade him, send him to the minor leagues, sell him to another team, or release him. Only in the last case, if he was released, would he be free to sign with the team of his choice. In all other aspects his ability to earn a livelihood was entirely at the whim of the team holding his contract.
Koppett's appearance on Today is likely tied to the ongoing court case of Flood v. Kuhn. Following the 1969 season, Curt Flood, a star center fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals, was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies, one of the worst teams in baseball. Flood refused to report to the Phillies, and sat out the entire 1970 season. In addition, he brought suit against Major League Baseball and its Commissioner, Bowie Kuhn, challenging the constitutionality of the clause. The case, supported by the newly empowered Major League Baseball Players Association and its dynamic leader Martin Miller, went to trial in May 1970, and it continued through June and the time of this issue. Flood lost at the trial level, and the case eventually made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court, where the reserve clause was upheld in 1972 by a 5-3 vote, with an incomprehensible opinion authored by Justice Harry Blackmun, based on baseball's exemption from federal antitrust laws.*
*Blackmun also authored the equally incomprehensible opinion in Roe v. Wade, for what it's worth.
It would not be until 1975 that the reserve clause was essentially abolished, when an arbitrator ruled that any player who played without a contract for one season became a free agent. The players and owners would later agree to the terms of free agency in a future collective bargaining agreement.
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This week's letters section is dominated by responses to an article in the May 16 issue written by Vice President Spiro Agnew*. The article, entitled "Another Challenge to the Television Industry," continues Agnew's attack on the objectivity of television news, which he describes as "manufactured news: revolutionary theater brought into millions of living rooms by the networks." "How much disorder, how many of these illegal demonstrations which pockmark the country would ever take place if the ever-present television camera were not there?" Agnew holds out hope that the networks will eventually understand their implicit obligations to the welfare of American society, that "most of the leaders of this great industry are willing to accept the responsibility of citizenship along with its benefits.
*It's the cover story, with the cover illustration painted by Norman Rockwell, no less.
*An argument similar to some of mine, in which I've cautioned that television is neither good nor bad, but morally neutral. However, I diverge from Butler, who writes that TV "has yet to make" human nature. True, but it has an immense power to shape it.
William H. Race of Palo Alto, California (home of Stanford University) takes issue with Agnew's accusation that television encourages demonstrations: "How then does he account for the past two decades of demonstrations in Latin America and Europe, where TV played little or no role? With that reasoning, one might as well blame television for the war it is covering in every news broadcast." Michael Woodhouse of Ewa Beach, Hawaii agrees, writing that Agnew ignores "the real cause for demonstrations: an immoral war or a polluted environment." Sally Ann Yater of Easton, Maryland counters that her family is living proof of Agnew's argument. "I wholeheartedly agree with the Vice President", she says, and adds that "my family goes for days, sometimes weeks, without finding anything worth-while on TV."
The letters section is usually a representative sampling of the correspondence TV Guide receives, which indicates how divided the country is on the issue and, by extension, illustrates the social turmoil enveloping the nation. Not unlike what we're going through today, perhaps, although the letter writers were a lot more civil about it back then.
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As we know, the Emmys used to be presented at the conclusion of the first-run television season, rather than prior to the beginning of the new season. Therefore, we're not surprised to find the 1969-70 awards scheduled for Sunday, June 7 on ABC. For the last time, the show is bi-coastal, with awards presented both in Hollywood (hosted by Bill Cosby) and New York (Dick Cavett), and it's a most intriguing lineup of nominations. Once again, the categories are Drama, Comedy and Variety series, joined by Best New Series, Best Single Dramatic Program and Best Single Music/Variety Program (the later two comprised of special programs and regular episodes of a series).
Here are the nominees in various categories; I'll give you the winners at the end.
Best New Series:
The Bill Cosby Show (NBC)
The Forsyte Saga (NET)
Marcus Welby, M.D. (ABC)
Room 222 (ABC)
Sesame Street (NET)
Best Drama Series:
The Forsyte Saga (NET)
Ironside (NBC)
Marcus Welby, M.D. (ABC)
The Mod Squad (ABC)
The Name of the Game (NBC)
NET Playhouse (NET)
Best Comedy Series:
The Bill Cosby Show (NBC)
The Courtship of Eddie's Father (ABC)
Love, American Style (ABC)
My World and Welcome to It (NBC)
Room 222 (ABC)
Best Dramatic Actor:
Raymond Burr, Ironside (NBC)
Mike Connors, Mannix (CBS)
Robert Wagner, It Takes a Thief (ABC)
Robert Young, Marcus Welby, M.D. (ABC)
Best Dramatic Actress:
Joan Blondell, Here Come the Brides (ABC)
Susan Hampshire, The Forsyte Saga (NET)
Peggy Lipton, The Mod Squad (ABC)
Best Comedy Actor:
Bill Cosby, The Bill Cosby Show (NBC)
Lloyd Haynes, Room 222 (ABC)
William Windom, My World and Welcome to It (NBC)
Best Comedy Actress:
Hope Lange, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (NBC)
Elizabeth Montgomery, Bewitched (ABC)
Marlo Thomas, That Girl (ABC)
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I've always remembered something my 10th grade social studies teacher said. It was before class, on a day when us students were talking about what we wanted to do with our lives - what colleges we hoped to be attending, what jobs we wanted to have. "You know," he said, "a few years ago you wouldn't have been having this conversation. You'd have been wondering when you'd be drafted, and whether or not you'd wind up in Vietnam."
The military draft was one of the stormiest parts of the antiwar movement, and I think the main reason protests over the Gulf Wars have never reached a critical level is that there is no draft to spread the threat around, to make the prospects of fighting more immediate for every young man and woman of a particular age. That's what having an all-volunteer army has done for us, and as early as 1970 the prospects of such an army were under discussion in this special, as well as various inequities already existing in the draft, and the possibilities of increased future deferments. Roger Peterson, the veteran ABC correspondent who was a native of the Twin Cities and started his television career at KSTP, is the primary reporter for a special that, as much as anything, shows us how much American culture has changed in the intervening 45 years.
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It doesn't seem as if we've discussed much actual TV this week, does it? In addition to the heavy issues we're looking at, it's because we've entered rerun season; almost every series has started showing repeats, while the summer replacement series haven't yet made their debut. Nonetheless, there are still some things to look at with our quick hits.
There are some summer specials: NET presents a "relevant" version of Hamlet, videotaped in Nashville, that attempts to capture both the Elizabethan flavor and the difficulty of taking action in a world that is full of corruption (Friday, 9:00 p.m.) while CBS presents a repeat showing of the latest "Peanuts" special, You're in Love, Charlie Brown (Wednesday, 7:30 p.m., brought to you by the people in your town who bottle Coca-Cola), and ABC gives us the latest in their series of specials on The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau (Monday, 6:30 p.m.).
Of course, we rely on the sitcoms to deal with the issues of the day: The Brady Bunch (Friday, 7:00 p.m., ABC) debates what to do with 94 books of trading stamps, The Governor and J.J. (Tuesday, 8:30 p.m., CBS) investigates dirty books, That Girl (Thursday, 7:00 p.m., ABC) wants to get to the bottom of Don's Las Vegas marriage, and Tom tries to master the art of finger sandwiches on The Courtship of Eddie's Father (Wednesday, 7:00 p.m., ABC). Not to be outdone, dramas get their moment in the sun: Ed gets blamed for a fatal beating on Ironside (Thursday, 7:30 p.m., NBC), Welby deals with a young leukemia patient on Marcus Welby, M.D. (Tuesday, 9:00 p.m., ABC), Vietnamese war victims are treated by Gannon on Medical Center (Wednesday, 8:00 p.m., CBS), and the primetime soap Harold Robbins' The Survivors (Thursday, 9:00 p.m., ABC) returns for summer reruns, giving us all a chance to see if it's as big a bomb as it was in first-run.
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And now the answers to our Emmy quiz. If you're reading this on a laptop or tablet, just turn it upside down. If it's a desktop, turn yourself upside down.
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