Albright plays Edie Hart, the singer who's also Gunn's girlfriend. She works out of a bar called Mother's, which doubles as the place where Gunn meets his clients and conducts his business. She's a smart, sassy character* who's graced with some snappy dialogue, every bit Gunn's equal in the scenes in which they're matched. She has a fine singing voice, doing her own vocals in the occasional set pieces at Mother's. She exudes an adult sexiness that makes it impossible to take your eyes off of her when she's on screen. And she's a likable character, as is Gunn, making this one of the easier private eye shows to watch.
*Gunn's nickname for her was "Silly."
Off screen, Lola Albright has some things to say about what she sees as an unreasonable invasion of her privacy since her divorce from actor Jack Carson. "To tell the truth, I'm sick and tired of the line 'Does Lola get what Lola wants?'* Every magazine and newspaper seems to leap on it as though discovering it for the very first time. I am equally sick and tired of the line 'Lonely Lola.'" Such are the curses of having an alliterative name, it would appear. "If my name were Betty, I'd be two cliches to the good." She struggles with the line between personal and public; while she understands the sacrifices of privacy that are part of stardom, she wonders "why does the press have to go so far? Why do they print things you never said, things they make up out of a blue sky? Why do they twist what you say into meanings you never meant?" Lola also denies she's dissatisfied with her role on Gunn; she likes how Edie got her own place in the third (and final) season, a plot devise that gives her a chance to sing more. "I don't want to dominate the show and I certainly don't want a series of my own."
*If you're unsure of the origin of the line, watch this.
People who work with her have nothing but good things to say. Frank Stempel, who was her ex-husband Carson's manager, says that "Even now that she's making good money, she doesn't really know what it is. She goes out of her way to help people. She'd give away her last dime if she thought it would help somebody." Press agent Bill Stein remembers how when his wife was in the hospital, "Lola must have called me a dozen times offering to come out and take care of the two kids while I was working. If you know her, you like her."
Peter Gunn, which ends its three-year run at the end of the current season, is probably the high point of Lola Albright's career, although she's hardly a recluse once the series ends, appearing in several big-screen movies and is a steady presence in guest roles on TV through the 80s. But there's no disagreeing that in a genre that often produces more than its share of annoying characters, Peter Gunn's Edie is one of the most enjoyable; in fact, after you've watched her in a few episodes, you'll probably be singing these words as well:
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I've mentioned in the past the snarkiness of TV Guide writers like Richard Gehman, and the Letters to the Editor section this week shows I'm not the only one who picks up on this. Apparently Gehman did another of his hatchet jobs a couple of weeks ago, this time on Bobby Darin, to coincide with Darin's upcoming network special. Carol Tuman of Great Neck, NY writes that Gehman's profile of Darin "is . . . full of unprecedented nastiness," while Donna Ott and Joyce D'Ambrosio of Fair Lawn, NJ say that "We have never read or heard so many degrading comments on this terrific star," and make the point that "we are not teen-agers; we are a single girl of 20 and a married woman of 23," possibly in response to a comment about the demographics of Darin's fanbase.
Now, it might be that Gehman's article is a fairly accurate portrait of Darin; Kevin Spacey's Darin biopic Beyond the Sea certainly demonstrated that Darin had a his share of warts, and maybe Gehman really does capture how the people who work with Darin feel about him. And clearly, Gehman is among the vanguard of writers turning TV Guide away from the studio-driven fan-type articles of its first few years towards more of a critical appraisal of the medium andits stars, and I think we should be grateful for that. But at the same time there's clearly something about Gehman's writing style, his choice of words and turn of phrase, that rubbed readers the wrong way.
In Glenn Altschuler and David Grossvogel's excellent Changing Channels: America in TV Guide, the authors write that "Gehman believed that creative people were often emotionally insecure because of an unhappy childhood, and that those who became celebrities in the entertainment industry sometimes did so because their insecurity motivated them to succeed." I'm not surprised to read that; it's fairly typical of the amateur psychoanalysis that was so prevalent in the journalism of the time.
One could be tempted to suggest that Gehman was projecting his own insecurities onto his subjects; according to his entry in the always-reliable Wikipedia, he was married five times and fathered at least nine children, and wrote under a variety of pen names—all before his death at age 51. Perhaps he had an identity problem tied to a basic inferiority complex, causing him to tear others down in an attempt to elevate himself. Perhaps his experiences in the entertainment industry left him jaded and cynical, and ascribed those same motives to those he met.
I don't know, and it's not my place to say anything. Richard Gehman was also a talented and interesting writer who lent a much-needed seriousness to TV Guide. He was prolific to say the least; not only did he write 20 books, his friend Maurice Zolotow tells a story about how Gehman once wrote three of the principal articles for an issue of Cosmopolitan, each one under a different name, plus a record review and possibly another column. Now that takes something. And his daughter Pleasant, an artist, author and dancer (among other things) has had quite the career herself, both as herself and under her stage name.
You meet the most interesting people in TV Guide. Some of them even have articles written about them.
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Let's meet some more of those interesting people that fill the pages of this week's issue. Ed Sullivan leads off the star wars on Sunday night (7:00 p.m., CBS), with a fine lineup that includes Peggy Lee, Paul Anka, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, comedian Myron Cohen, the Wanderers vocal quartet, the Martelli Trio acrobats, and dancer Carmen de Lsvallade. I think Hollywood Palace would be hard-pressed to stand up to that. Next, G.E. Theater has some star power of its own; Ernest Borgnine stars as a has-been Hollywood director in the drama "The Legend that Walks Like a Man" (8:00 p.m., CBS), with Zsa Zsa Gabor, William Schallert, and Jason Robards Sr., and a script by Budd Schulberg. And on The Loretta Young Show (9:00 p.m., NBC), Darryl Hickman makes his television writing debut with "The Golden Cord," in which he also stars.
*Also among the presenters: Dean Martin, Dana Andrews and Ronald Reagan; obviously afterthoughts.
This didn't become an annual tradition (there are a lot of one-and-done sports awards shows in the history of television), but Bob did return with another version of the Bob Hope Sports Awards from 1973 through 1975. Hopefully, they didn't wait so long for an encore because the first one had been such a dud. . .
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He gets by with a little help from his friends |
We shouldn't be too surprised; the medium loved JFK, and he loved to use the medium. The reporters loved him as well, for he was great copy: witty, quick, engaging, informative without necessarily saying anything. There's been a good deal of controversy over the amount of press access given by recent occupants of the White House, but there's little question Kennedy made himself much more accessible. And the viewing audience responded.
I would never make the link between a Kennedy and the playboy philosophy, so it's purely by chance that our next stop is Playboy's Penthouse (Thursday, 11:00 p.m., KMSP),where Hugh Hefner's guests are Tony Curtis (playing the flute!), Ray Charles, Gene Krupa and his trio, Phyllis Diller, and Frank D'Rone. I'm no fan of Hefner or his lifestyle, but the man certainly did a lot to give jazz musicians, especially black musicians, a media platform that they had a hard time getting otherwise.
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Thursday night's Ford Show with Tennessee Ernie Ford (8:30 p.m., NBC) offers a real change of pace: an adaptation of Bizet's opera Carmen. Ernie, who loved to play "The Ol' Pea-Picker," had in fact been classically trained at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and he uses that rich bass-baritone of his to good use tonight in the role of the flashy torreador Escamillo. Karen Wessler plays the title role, John Guarnieri is Don Jose, and Ernie's house singers, the Top Twenty, provide the chorus. It's not the only time opera features on The Ford Show; in previous years, Ernie and the gang had done the Gilbert and Sulliven operettas The Mikado and HMS Pinafore.
On the other hand, you'd expect classical music from Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, and on Sunday's Young People's Concert and on Sunday you'll get it, with a tribute to the great American composer Aaron Copland, who celebrated his 60th birthday last November. (3:00 p.m., CBS; you can see a clip from the show here.) I loved watching these concerts when I was young, although I doubt that, at nine months, I tuned it for this one. Bernstein, whatever his other faults, was an engaging and often brilliant teacher: in these telecasts (53 of them, which ran on CBS from 1958 to 1972) he never talks down to children, never dumbs the material down for them. He treats them, instead, as intelligent beings capable of understanding and appreciating music, and he does a wonderful job of making classical music accessible and exciting without resorting to gimmicks. If it is true that the audience for classical music is dying off (literally), much of the blame can be laid at the feet of an educational system that no longer values music appreciation classes, and an industry itself that thinks Star Wars-themed concerts and hyperactive experiences are the way to introduce kids to the classics.
It was the young people's concerts of the Minneapolis Symphony that first introduced me to classical music, and helped foster a lifelong interest in the classics. True, I didn't really develop this appreciation fully uintil the last 25 years, when I learned to embrace opera, but who knows if I would have been open to it at all without learning about it at a young age?
I'm put in mind of all this because of another letter this week, from Paul Winterhalter of Lincoln, NE, decrying the disappearance of Voice of Firestone. "The television 'brains' who presume to do all the thin king for the millions of viewers said that the Voice of Firestone lacked the quality for prime time, so we lost a fine program." Mr. Winterhalter said this in the context of criticizing Jackie Gleason's infamous You're in the Picture flop—"the most awful bunch of garbage*"—which those "brains" obviously considered a superior, or at least having the potential to be a more popular, show.
*Ah, but was Voice as entertaining as Gleason's apology the following week?
It's true that acclaimed music programs such as Voice of Firestone were never ratings hits, and it's also true that television—a medium designed primarily as a vehicle for moving the products of its advertisers—can't pay the bills solely from Peabody awards. Nonetheless, as I mentioned a while back, the Golden Age referred to more than the quality of programs; it had to do with the variety as well.
This Friday, opposite the post-You're in the Picture Gleason show, NBC airs The Bell Telephone Hour (8:00 p.m.), one of those shows probably on Mr. Winterhalter's hit parade (as well as being a favorite of mine), presenting "The Sounds of America," a salute to American music taped at Disneyland and produced (and conducted) by Gordon Jenkins. The show features not only musical pieces but "sound-effects 'essays'" that bring, literally, the sounds of America—the West, the river, Main Street. There's a heavy emphasis on dance, with Gene Nelson, Jacques d'Amboise and the Earl Twins dancing to choreography by Hermes Pan, who collaborated so successfully for so many years with Fred Astaire.
It's true that acclaimed music programs such as Voice of Firestone were never ratings hits, and it's also true that television—a medium designed primarily as a vehicle for moving the products of its advertisers—can't pay the bills solely from Peabody awards. Nonetheless, as I mentioned a while back, the Golden Age referred to more than the quality of programs; it had to do with the variety as well.
This Friday, opposite the post-You're in the Picture Gleason show, NBC airs The Bell Telephone Hour (8:00 p.m.), one of those shows probably on Mr. Winterhalter's hit parade (as well as being a favorite of mine), presenting "The Sounds of America," a salute to American music taped at Disneyland and produced (and conducted) by Gordon Jenkins. The show features not only musical pieces but "sound-effects 'essays'" that bring, literally, the sounds of America—the West, the river, Main Street. There's a heavy emphasis on dance, with Gene Nelson, Jacques d'Amboise and the Earl Twins dancing to choreography by Hermes Pan, who collaborated so successfully for so many years with Fred Astaire.
There's a sad irony in all that, don't you think? A program about America's long-gone past, told by a television genre on the way to being long-past itself.
TV
Mitchell,
ReplyDeleteI was wondering, were those young people's concerts from the Minneapolis Symphony the same concerts that Charles Schulz would parody in his comic strip Peanuts. To elaborate, in the late 1980 and 1990's, Schulz would have Peppermint Patty and Marcie attend these "Tiny-Tots" concerts periodically. Almost invariably they see "Peter and the Wolf" and Peppermint Patty usually complains, especially being called a "Tiny-Tot".
It wouldn't surprise me a bit, Sean. I'm not sure exactly when they started here, but the programs were certainly similar. (Although I do remember hearing Britten's "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" there.) I don't recall if they called us Tiny-Tots, but that wouldn't surprise me, either!
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