What's on TV? Tuesday, February 15, 1966

Pre-empting The Fugitive this week is The Anatomy of Pop: The Music Explosion, a  look at the roots of popular music, with an all-star lineup of performances and interviews including the Supremes, the Temptations, the Dave Clark Five, Marty Robbins, Tex Ritter, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa, Billy Taylor, Richard Rodgers, and Tony Bennett; the narrator is ABC News anchorman Bob Young. Since it survives on YouTube, it's well worth an hour of your time. That, and more goodies, are in today's listings from the Northern California edition.

This week in TV Guide: February 12, 1966

This week's Teletype brings us some news on upcoming projects hoping to make it to the fall schedule. As usual, these items are hit-and-miss, usually miss. For instance. James Farentino and Fabian are part of a proposed series called Sullivan's Place, "about three brothers who search for their missing father (Sullivan) and in the meantime run his trading post on the Amazon River." We're also told that ABC has a possible winner called Silver Springs, starring Kevin Brodie as a youngster who befriends a mermaid, played by Jeri-Lynne Fraser, and there's a pilot in the works for Li'l Abner, featuring Robert Reed as Henry Cabbage Cod. The show didn't make it, but Reed would be back two years later, in The Brady Bunch.*

*Reed was said to be the second choice for the show, after Gene Hackman turned it down. Imagine it for a moment: Mike Brady hunting down the French Connection. Kinda makes you pause, doesn't it?

On the other hand, ABC also has a pilot in the works for a series called The Time Tunnel, starring James Darren and Robert Colbert. That one absolutely did make it, along with its two stars. Also successful was Truman Capote's upcoming adaptation of his short story A Christmas Memory, which wins an Emmy.

Oh, one more thing. King Features Syndicate is hoping to convert the animated Mandrake the Magician into a live-action series made in England. It never came to pass, but in 1979 a made-for-TV version of Mandrake did appear on NBC. It didn't do very well; the critic for The New York Times said that "viewers can try a magic trick of their own. By turning the dial, they can make Mandrake disappear." The plot involves Mandrake coming to the aid of an amusement park owner being terrorized by a psychopath. The owner of the park? None other than Robert Reed.

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

Sullivan: Scheduled guests: Ethel Merman, who sings selections from "Annie Get Your Gun"; the rockin' Rolling Stones; singer Wayne Newton; actor Hal Holbrook; José Colé, a balancer; comic Eddie Schaffer; and the Rumanian Folk Ballet. (According to the episode guide, comedian Sandy Baron was on in place of José Colé.)

Palace: Song-and-dance man Donald O'Connor introduces actor Edward G. Robinson, who reads an excerpt from Aaron Copland’s "A Lincoln Portrait"; pianist Roger Williams; singers Jane Morgan and Paul Anka; comedian Shecky Greene; and two acrobatic acts: the Three Bragazzis and the See Hee Troupe of Formosa. 

It's dueling tributes to Abraham Lincoln this week; while Eddie G recites "A Lincoln Portrait" on Palace, Sullivan has Hal Holbrook reading Lincoln's second Inaugural Address, the famous "With Malice Toward None" speech. (I wonder if youngsters today even know who Lincoln was?) And while Palace has a fine lineup overall, I'm afraid the Merm and the Stones make it very difficult to go any other way. This week, Sullivan is presidential in 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 they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era.

Nowadays, Cleveland Amory says, "we not only have good guys and bad guys, we also have bat guys." And if that isn't a tip that this week's review is of ABC's new sensation, Batman, I don't know what else I can do. And Cleve seems not quite sure what to do about Batman, either. "It is, after all, trying to be all things to all men. Still, it is the season’s most talked about offering. Children, bless their evil little hearts, are apparently supposed to take it at face value, while us old folks are supposed to like it because it’s so far “out” it’s “in,” and also—sort of the way we go to bat for old movies—for its nostalgic value."

The show's strengths are obvious: it is, says Amory, "technically superior" to any of the Bond imitators currently on television: in color, pace, and direction. The technology is ingenious, "all the way from the batmobile to the batzooka and the batarang (boomerang, of course. Are you OK in the belfry?)." The writing is also superior, guaranteed to appeal to both young and old, and the off-screen announcer ("What foul trickery are the fiendish Riddler and his evil Molehill Mob up to now?" and "Oh, the irony of it! The horror!") adds to the fun.

You'll recall, however, that I mentioned Cleve didn't know quite what to make of it all, which suggests that, after all this praise, there has to be a downside. And that would be the acting. "Adam West may be excused by the fact that it isn’t easy to be convincing as millionaire Bruce Wayne and Batman—and at the same time convince half the viewers you’re for real and the other half you’re for fun." No such excuses exist for Burt Ward as the Boy Wonder, who has a far easier role and "is far less easy to excuse." Neil Hamilton, as Commissioner Gordon, and Madge Blake, as Aunt Harriet, are old pros who help bolster the show. And then there are the guest villains, "possibly the best thing about this show." Amory thinks that Frank Gorshin plays The Riddler "as if he had done one too many impersonations," but Burgess Meredith is "superb" as The Penguin, and the other various villains are in fine form. That leaves but one concern in Amory's eyes: TV executive Hubbell Robinson said that the history of television could be written as, "What's New, Copycat?" "If this is so, can’t you just see those "creators" at CBS and NBC now that the word has gone out? Not just copycat, of course—but copybat."

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Something you don't much see anymore is the telethon. While Jerry Lewis' Labor Day extravaganza was the best-known, there were others, both nationally and locally, throughout the first few decades of television, and we get an example of the latter on Saturday, with the start of the March of Dimes Telethon, live from the California State Fair Grounds in Sacramento (11:00 p.m., KCRA). The show, which runs until 4:00 p.m. Sunday, boasts quite the lineup, including James Drury (The Virginian); Michael Landon (Bonanza); Philip Carey, Peter Brown and William Smith (Laredo); Ed Ames and Patricia Blair (Daniel Boone); Bill Burrud (Traventure Theatre); and Jackie Coogan, state chairman, and Brenda Benet, teen-age chairman, March of Dimes Foundation.

I've never been ashamed of admitting that I enjoy Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, despite the show's descent (no pun intended) into fantasy and monster horror after a first season that was mostly dedicated to Cold War drama. Sunday presents a typical episode that's sure to give you that sinking feeling, as the crew of the Seaview go back in time and find themselves victims of a pirate curse, with Albert Salmi as the chief pirate. Aargh, me buccos (7:30 p.m., ABC). 

Monday gives us plenty of entertainment, beginning with The Andy Williams Show (9:00 p.m., NBC), and the guest lineup is a singular testament to how agents jockey to get billing for their clients. The show "stars" singer Nancy Wilson, with "special guests" Peter, Paul and Mary, and "added attraction" Bob Newhart. I'd like to think this is all tongue-in-cheek, but one can never know. That's followed by Gene Kelly's song-and-dance tribute to New York, New York (10:00 p.m., CBS). The city's legendary landmarks form the backdrop for performances by Woody Allen, Tommy Steele, singer Damita Jo, and dancer Gower Champion. (No word on whether they were all guest stars or if some were special featured added attractions.) Kelly himself is responsible for the choreography.

How times have changed: CBS Reports takes an in-depth look at "The Divorce Dilemma" (Tuesday, 10:00 p.m.), described as "one of the major social problems in the U.S., where one out of every four marriages will end in the courts." The current divorce rate is about 40 percent, which is actually down from the commonly-cited 50 percent rate in the 1980s. Part of the reason for that, of course, is that there are fewer marriages in the first place. The program, hosted by Walter Cronkite, also takes a look at the rising trend toward "no-fault" divorce in some states, as opposed to New York state, where adultery is the only ground. 

Bob Hope is back with one of his comedy specials on Wednesday, with an all-star lineup that includes Martha Raye, just back from entertaining the troops in her own tour of Vietnam; the Righteous Brothers, Jill St. John, and "special guest" Danny Thomas. (9:00 p.m., NBC) You can get a double-dose of the lovely Miss St. John, as she's also on The Big Valley (9:00 p.m., ABC), as "Barbary Red," a waterfront saloonkeeper who plays a role in Nick (Peter Breck) being drugged and kidnapped. George Kennedy and John Hoyt are part of the conspiracy.

A fascinating time-capsule episode of David Susskind's Open End (Thursday, 9:00 p.m., KVIE), where Gore Vidal and Washington columnist Max Freedman discuss "Is There a White House in Robert Kennedy's Future?" The speculation centers on the 1972 presidential election; in February of 1966, the assumption is, of course, that President Johnson will routinely be nominated for a second full term. And that's the power that history has to crush those who become caught it its trap; scarcely two years later, Johnson will have announced that he's not running for reelection, and Robert Kennedy will be dead.

One of the main reasons that Johnson and Kennedy find themselves caught in that trap can be seen on Friday, in an NBC special report on the Vietnam crisis (7:30 p.m.), with David Brinkley, Elie Abel, and Sander Vanocur reporting on the peace conference in Geneva, Switzerland. And on a lighter note, Carol Channing hosts her first television special, appropriately called, An Evening with Carol Channing (8:30 p.m., CBS), with George Burns and David McCallum guesting, and Carol performing songs from some of her Broadway hits, including "Hello, Dolly." 

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Care for a starlet? How about two? Neither are exactly unknown; each is a regular on a current show. First up is Debbie Watson, 16-years-old and the titular star of ABC's sitcom Tammy. It's a role that's been played on the big screen by Debbie Reynolds and Sandra Dee, but, says Jane Wilkie, Debbie Watson hasn't let it all go to her head. 

Not that people haven't been waiting for it to happen. Debbie started out in the Long Beach Community Playhouse, appearing in Bye Bye Birdie and Brigadoon, and from there graduated to Karen, the only segment of NBC's ill-fated 90 Bristol Court to survive the entire season. There was no second season for Karen, but Debbie had another gig waiting for her. It's been bittersweet for her parents; while they're proud of her, mom Kittie has to accompany her on the one-hour drive to the studio (due to her age), where Debbie alternates between acting and attending school on the lot, while her mother literally has nothing to do. And after a long day, and a longer drive home, there's dad Eugene, home from work and waiting for his dinner, joined occasionally by Debbie's dates, "who are also waiting." 

It seems to work, and Debbie takes it all in stride, but, as Wilkie writes, "there has been a change, subtle and unsettling. It is not easy for a parent to tell any 16-year-old what to do; it is an age of emerging independence, and this is compounded when the daughter is working at a full-time job in a world completely alien to her parents and earning more each week than most adults do in a month." It's not easy, and Debbie herself knows what she's missing at Buena Park High School (she continues to hang out with her friends, who look to "mature" Debbie for advice). On the other hand, a couple of months ago she became engaged to 21-year-old Richard Orshoff, a student at USC.

What lies ahead for Debbie Watson? Wilkie cynically speculates on when Debbie eventually moves into her own apartment, closer to the studio, and "the cynics say the apartment will be in posh Bel-Air, that Debbie will soon drip with sables and eventually will even hire a press agent. And Kittie and Eugene Watson, although they will not admit it, must have some second thoughts." In fact, Tammy, like Karen, runs for only one season; Watson continues her acting career until 1971, including taking on the role of Marilyn Munster in the movie Munster, Go Home! in 1966. She married young Richard Orshoff later in 1966. She's still with us, at age 77; according to Wikipedia, so is Richard. And later this year, they will have been married for 60 years.

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I mentioned another starlet this week, and that's Nina Wayne, who can be seen in NBC's sitcom Camp Runamuck, and who is the younger sister of Carol Wayne, the Tea-Time Lady on the Art Fern skits that Johnny Carson does. The Wayne sisters began their career as figure skaters with the Ice Capades. It's interesting that when you watch the footage of Carol's first appearance on The Tonight Show, Johnny mentions that her sister has been on the show several times in the past, so at this point Nina is probably the better-known of the two.

And there's good reason for her to be known here, with this display of the latest in terrycloth fashions. It's a pleasant thought on these cold winter days.

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MST3K alert: The Leech Woman (1959) Bay Area TV Debut. A woman discovers that she is to be the guinea pig for her husband’s weird experiments. Coleen Gray, Grant Williams, Gloria Talbott, Philip Terry. (Wednesday, 5:00 p.m., KGO in San Francisco). As Crow has said many, many times, this really isn't a very good movie, although Grant Williams is fine. And this isn't the only time you'll see him this week; he's also in the much-better movie, The Incredible Shrinking Man, 90 minutes earlier, on KHSL. TV

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Around the dial

We lead off this week's edition at The Twilight Zone Vortex, where Brian discusses an excellent episode from the show's final season, "Night Call," written by the great Richard Matheson, and starring Gladys Cooper in an outstanding performance.

The "Tony Wright Season" continues at Cult TV Blog, with John looking at one of my favorite British imports, The Saint, and not one, not two, but three episodes in which Tony Wright appears: "The Arrow of God," "The Crooked Ring," and "Where The Money Is." Great stuff!

I don't know about you, but I was a big fan of Roller Derby when it was on local TV in the 1960s and 1970s, and that's my excuse to link to Classic Film & TV Cafe, where Rick's talking about Raquel Welch in Kansas City Bomber. I think that's good enough, don't you?

Along those same general lines, at Classic Film and TV Corner, Maddy reviews the 1956 movie Anastasia, which represented Ingrid Bergman's return to Hollywood (as well as an Academy Award), and look at that picture of her: there's a beauty there that is hard to top in today's movies.

Did you watch the Super Bowl on Sunday? We did not, for something like the twenty-fifth consecutive year, but Bob Sassone did, and he's got thoughts about some of the commercials, as well as some random observations that are, as always, well worth your time.

Terence has some fine content at A Shroud of Thoughts; not obituaries, but: a tribute to Leslie Nielsen on his 100th birthday; a look at Margaret Hamilton (the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz) on Sesame Street; Get Christie Love!, and happy 95th birthday to Mamie Van Doren!

At Television's New Frontier: The 1960s, we're at the 1962 episodes of the perennial favorite, Ozzie and Harriet, and while the show may be running on fumes at this point, it's interesting to look at some of the best episodes, such as how aging parents deal with adult children who have their own lives. 

You may recall that last week at The View from the Junkyard, The A-Team was involved in drama involving firefighters. This week, in the episode "Timber," it's lumberjacks! With a little bit of Bigfoot thrown in, how can you possibly say no?

My latest appearance with Dan Schneider in our American television history series is a look at the decade of the 2000s, and while I don't find this a terribly compelling decade for TV, it does raise some interesting questions about trends, psychology, and all kinds of interesting things.

Finally, it's never too early to start looking forward to my upcoming novel, The Book of Revelations. Want to know more about it? You can check out the teaser page here. TV

If you enjoy the content here and want to support my broader creative work, please consider making a donation at my Ko-fi page. Any amount you contribute helps me continue writing, researching, and sharing these articles and projects. Thank you!

The return of MST3K

A gentleman at one of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 message boards wrote to say that in the last couple of years, he'd lost his wife and had been diagnosed with incurable brain cancer. When he found out that new episodes of MST3K were on the way, he said, "if this isn’t a reason to fight to keep living, I don’t know what is."

That may be an extreme example, but it's clear that last week's news about Rifftrax preparing to make four new episodes of the series, featuring Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett (the trio responsible for the last few seasons of the original series), along with Mary Jo Pehl (the evil Pearl Forrester) and many of the original crew, was met with virtually universal acclaim, and the only reason I add that qualifer is because I'm sure that someone somewhere must have had a discouraging word about it.

The news was completely unexpected, which made the surprise all the more welcome. The original series ran for ten seasons, and a few years ago, the program's creator, Joel Hodgson, raised enough money to fund three additional seasons. These new episodes included an all-new cast, however, given that so many of the original cast and crew were currently working with Rifftrax; and while I've no doubt that they tried their best, the new episodes were, in the opinion of many (including me), sadly lacking in what made the original MST3K so beloved. The sets were more elaborate, thus losing some of the charm of the "garage" feeling engendered by the original. The actors, both on camera and providing the voices, never quite seemed to fit the personalities of the robots; perhaps had there been all-new robots to go along with the all-new humans, it would have been different. There was something about the riffs that seemed off as well; some viewers said they felt there were too many of them, that they didn't seem to be generated spontaneously from the movie itself; others felt that the jokes weren't quite as pop culture savvy, which wouldn't be a surprise given that pop culture itself isn't as funny as it used to be.

Whatever the reason, the new episodes received less-than-unanimous praise, and a project to fund a fourth season fell short of its goal, due in part to complications resulting from the writers' strike. It seemed at that point that MST3K had finally come to an end. But when Hodgson sold out to the parent company of Shout! a couple of weeks ago, the company quickly contacted their collaborators at Rifftrax, and the shocking announcement soon followed, combined with a Kickstarter campaign with an announced goal of $20,000, which was passed in the first hour or so; the most recent figures show that it's raised nearly $1.8 million, 

Considering that I've got MST3K in my list of top-10 favorites, and I write about it frequently in my TV Guide pieces, it won't surprise you to see that I'm spending some time on it this week. During the last five months while I've been working on my new book, MST3K was an almost constant companion in the background; even when I wasn't really paying any attention to it, it was comforting to know that it was on, and I was always able to pause long enough to appreciate a good punchline (and there were many of those). For me, MST3K is the ultimate comfort (TV) food.

Of course, it doesn't pay to go overboard; after all, plenty of people were excited about the first revival as well. And just to be fair, many people like those new episodes; just because I'm not one of them doesn't mean that my opinion is any more important than theirs (except to me, of course). But look; Mike Nelson was the head writer for MST3K for virtually its entire run, as well as being on-camera for the last few years. Kevin Murphy played Tom Servo for every season but the first. Bill Corbett, the voice of Crow T. Robot for the last three seasons (as well as the albino alien Brain Guy) is a very funny guy. Mary Jo Pehl, as the evil Pearl Forrester, was one of the most inept villains anyone's ever seen. Not every episode of the original series was a gem; sometimes the movies were so bad that it was a real challenge finding anything funny or clever to say about them. Sometimes, the jokes misfired, or the skits just weren't that good. That was the exception more than the rule, though. 

If anyone is to be trusted with reviving the legacy of classic MST3K, it's this crew. They've been very successful for 20 years doing Rifftrax, but there's something about teaming their voices up with the characters that fans have known and loved for so many years that makes this singularly irresistible. (Not to mention the announcement of appearances by Trace Beaulieu and Frank Conniff in the final new episode of this series, the evil henchmen tormenting our heroes for most of the show's run.)

The reason this is notable, and why it's important to me, is that it marks a moment of genuine excitement about an upcoming project. Granted, MST3K will never have the ratings of the more prestigious series of the past (although it does have a Peabody Award), and I'm sure there are many more viewers for whatever shows happen to be the latest flavor of the month. But, in an era when it's hard to work up any real enthusiasm for what television has to offer, it's wonderful to see that something which brought so much happiness to people in the past still can create such joy among its fans today, especially when such a part of its appeal is grounded in throwing back to the show's simpler roots. No expensive gadgets, no super-spectacular CGI, just the kindsof things that were created in Joel Hodgson's garage many years ago. When we're constantly reminded of how much innocence we've lost in our modern world, we could do with a little bit of it today. TV

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What's on TV? Tuesday, February 11, 1969

This afternoon's main event is the Pillsbury Bake-Off from Atlanta (why it wasn't in Minneapolis, the company's home city, is a mystery to me), hosted by Art Linkletter. The Bake-Off used to be a big deal- I can remember watching it when I was younger. I don't even know if they have the Bake-Off anymore, and if they do, whether or not it's on television (Pillsbury itself is only a brand name, the company having been absorbed years ago by General Mills), and perhaps I'm the only one around who doens't know the answer; maybe all of you know the answer and think I'm hopelessly out of touch, which would be right, but such is the state of television today that something even the casual viewer would have been aware of back then is a mystery today. It's hardly anything new, I know, but it seems as if we're always being reminded of it. This week's listings are, obviously, from the Northern California edition.