This week in TV Guide: September 23, 1967

That's a great cover, isn't it? So vivid and alive with color. Television loved color in the 1960s, in a way it doesn't today. It's natural, considering how the networks were transitioning to full color in the late 60s, but programs exploited it, made the screens burst it a technicolor swirl that automatically anchors those shows in the decade. 

But we're not here to talk about the cover—it's the group on the cover that counts, that group being The Monkees; and this week Dwight Whitney takes us behind the scenes to document the Prefab Four's battle with the Powers That Be over control of their own music, their careers, their lives. For as Whitney points out, "the marvelous alchemy of TV converted them into the hottest new act in show business—an accomplishment rendered all the more remarkable by the fact that the boys could not play their instruments well enough to record the hit tunes that made them famous. Someone else did it for them." 

That is, of course, the story, Not as scandalous as the Milli Vanilli lip-synch scam would be, because it would be an open secret that The Monkees didn't do their own playing. And it wasn't as if the boys themselves were trying to pull one over; they were the ones pushing to do their own thing. As Whitney points out, "what they really craved was that good old-fashioned 'straight' attribute—acceptance." They were successful, to a point: they were producing hit records, they were making money for everyone concerned: the studio, record producer Don Kirshner, series creators Bert Schneider and Robert Rafelson, the network. Even the boys themselves—"corporate pawns," as one record producer describes them—make money, a whole $500 a week. And at first, they were content. But as they looked at their peers, groups like The Beatles, The Byrds, The Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, and The Mamas and the Papas, groups that were admired by the musical world, they felt like clowns.

An incident in late June, 1966, demonstrates the challenges the series faced even before it hit the airwaves. It was an NBC affiliate gathering held at Hollywood's famed Chasen's restaurant. The head writers had written a sketch for them to perform before the executives, but the boys, whom Whitney describes as "Young, frightened, confused, [and] entirely unschooled in the nuances of handling a big success," decide to do something else entirely. Dolenz finds the restaurant's switch box and turns off all the lights. They horsed around with the microphone. They didn't sing, since they didn't have any instruments—"we were afraid to let 'em try to play," explains a behind-the-scenes participant. The affilates, already in a bad mood because things were running late, weren't impressed by "a bunch of smart-aleck kids." One executive was overheard to say on the way out, "That's The Monkees? Forget it." As a result, Whitney says, at least five key stations failed to pick up the show, with a resulting impact on the ratings.

That was only one of their problems. Kirshner relates his thoughts on first hearing the gang's sound. "They were loud. It was not the right sound, Not a young, happy, driving, pulsating sound of today. I wanted a musical sex image. Something you’d recognize next time you heard it." Davy, he felt, was good "for musical comedy," while Mike was the weakest singer of the four. On "Last Train to Clarksville," the music was performed by songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart and a handpicked group of professional musicians. Micky did the lead vocals, while Davy and Peter sang some background, Mike wasn't on it at all. When they tried Mike on the lead for "I'm a Believer," Kirschner remembers, "We had to take him off." 

By September, "Last Train to Clarksville" was at the top of the charts, while the series itself was near the bottom of the Nielsens. Tension was palpable at the studio, where Schneider had succeeded in alienating employees and reporters alike with his autocratic attitude. The New York Times was about to write a story on the boys' "musical ineptitude." Kirshner was, in Whitney's describes as "[apparently unwilling] to treat them as anything but overgrown children," and was making a ton of money off of them in the process. 

And the boys themselves were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the whole thing. They were tired of being called "corporate pawns," tired of being taunted by musician friends and ridiculed by the press as "the rock ’n’ roll group that didn’t rock and didn’t roll." They had four Gold Records to their credit, each one representing a record that had sold a million copies, but, as Nesmith complained, "The music on our records has nothing to do with us. It’s totally dishonest. We don’t record our own music. Tell the world we’re synthetic because, dammit, we are! We want to play our own."

A showdown was inevitable. By January 1967, the boys had made their demands: from now on, they wanted to play their own music and choose their own songs, reducing Kirshner's role to than of an overseer. Kirshner tried to tell them the facts of the business, but Mike retorted with his own facts: "Donny, we could sing 'Happy Birthday' with a beat and it would sell a million records. [Your argument] is no longer valid because we are The Monkees and we have that incredible TV exposure." Absent this, he threatened to "pack up my gear, go to Mexico or Tahiti, eat coconuts and let everybody sue me." The other three fell in line behind him; as they left, Nesmith smashed his fist through the wall of Kirshner's bungalow. Later, he would say, "[I]t's horrible to be No. 1 group in the country and not be allowed to play your own records." 

The "ever-realistic" Kirshner didn't believe the group's threats. But Schneider did. The studio did as well. And less than a month later, Kirshner was out, albeit with a $35 million lawsuit to show for his estimation of how much he was worth to them. They returned from vacation to a sound-recording stage, where their new album, "Headquarters," would be, "for better or worse, all theirs." And, sure enough, it's right there at the top of the charts, one notch below The Beatles. For Nesmith, the moment came when he heard "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" on the car radio. He honked the horn for his wife and friends to come out. "Hey," he yelled, "want to sit in on a moment in history?"

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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 scheduled guests: the Mamas and the Papas, comedians Jack Carter and John Byner, singers Florence Henderson and Ed Ames, balancers Jorgen and Conny, balancing act Jean Claude, and puppet Topo Gigio.

Palace: Host Sammy Davis Jr. presents Diana Ross and the Supremes, comedians Jack Burns and Avery Schreiber, actress Raquel Welch and jazz dancer Baby Lawrence. Sammy engages in a tap-dancing duel with Baby Lawrence, whom Sammy appeared with in the Forties at Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater. Jack and Avery do a take-off on TV talk shows,

As most of you probably know, The Ed Sullivan Show was generally shown live (except for reruns), which means that the guest lineups are subject to change right up to the time of broadcast. Despite knowing this, I've simply copied the listings from TV Guide into this feature. Well, after all, this is about TV Guide, so what would you expect. But no more! Starting this week, I'm deferring to the online episode guide to provide you with the official Ed Sullivan lineup, and a more accurate matchup against the prerecorded Hollywood Palace. Why, you may ask, am I changing my ways after nearly 15 years? To tell you the truth, I don't know. Maybe I'm just bored. As it is, there was only one major change to this week's lineup, with Ed Ames appearing instead of Jerry Vale, and the additions of balancer Jean Claude and Topo Gigio. It's not enough to catch up to Sammy Davis Jr., the Supremes, Raquel Welch and Baby Lawrence, though. This week, Palace dances away with the prize.

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Throughout the 60s and early 70s, 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 shows of the era. 

Based on what we know of Cleveland Amory's likes and dislikes, you might have expected him to have some harsh words about ABC's new sitcom, The Flying Nun. And if you'd expected that, you would have been wrong, because Cleve finds it to be "an altogether delightful fantasy," thanks to the best maker of television comedies around, Harry Ackerman (Bewitched, Occasional Wife, and Love of a Rooftop to name three).

The Flying Nun is a difficult program to assess in retrospect. It is very much of its time, said time being a very dark one for the Catholic Church. Sally Field's flying Sister Bertrille is, as Amory describes her, a "new nun," one who has already been arrested for joining in various protests; that new nun and her focus on social justice rather than spirituality exemplifies the near-total collapse in religious vocations worldwide since the close of the Second Vatican Council. (There were more than 180,000 nuns in the United States alone in 1965, the approximate time during which Sr. Bertrille would have begun her discernment; today, there are fewer than 42,000.) We're not here to discuss theology, though; that's for another time and another place; it is, however, interesting to catch a series that so utterly captures a moment in history. Except, that is, for flying nuns; I'm not sure even the most liberal orders were able to accomplish that, especiallyt after they got rid of their good habits and picked up some bad ones.

But I digress, as I am often wont to do. The success of The Flying Nun rests in large part on Field, who plays her role "cunningly, if sometimes too cutely," and she's aided by Madeleine Sherwood as the crisp Mother Superior, Marge Redmond as Sister Jacqueline, and Sister Sixto, played by Shelley Morrison. And we can't forget about Carlos, the island's playboy, who is "extremely well portrayed" by Alejandro Rey. The production values are top-flight (I couldn't resist that), the stories are charming and played relatively straight, and Field has added a fine singing voice to her other talents. The only flaw Amory can find: the pilot was a full hour, whereas regular episodes are 30 minutes, "which, in our judgment, in a show as good as this, is too short." You can take the premise or leave it, but it you take it, The Flying Nun will give you quite a ride; as Cleve says, "This has lift and thrust, and it never drags."

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Speaking of flying nuns and other oddities, the first returns on the new season are in. Networks don't put a lot of stock in these overnights, given that many viewers are still sampling the new shows; one network researcher called them "just garbage." Ad agencies, dealing with millions in clients' money, are inclined to wait a month or so to start pronouncing winners and losers; nonetheless, the Doan Report delivers the initial takes on the newcomers, delivered off-the-record from one savvy ad exec. Like Cleveland Amory, he sees The Flying Nun as "one of the sure hits," along with the "extremely well-done" Ironside, Garrison's Gorillas ("thanks to the movie The Dirty Dozen"), and N.Y.P.D. On the down side, The Carol Burnett Show "Hasn't got a prayer," nor does Dundee and the Culhane, Off to See the Wizard, and The Jerry Lewis Show ("A bomb, despite a good rating.") The influential BBD&O ad agency, using computerized data, concurs on Gorillas and Ironside as likely hits, and adds The High Chaparral, Good Morning World, and He & She. The misses include Carol and Jerry, Dundee, The Second Hundred Years, The Mothers-in-Law, and Hondo. 

It's always easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to make fun of these pundits. The Carol Burnett Show turned out to be one of television's all-time variety hits, revered to this day, but it's good to remember that Cleveland Amory wasn't all that sold on it when it premiered either. A lot of critics praised He & She, but viewers didn't; today, it's considered to have been a show ahead of its time. Garrison's Gorillas only ran for one season, one of the series hurt by the backlash against television violence, while The Jerry Lewis Show and The Mothers-in-Law at least made it to two seasons. Of the shows mentioned, the biggest hits turned out to be Ironside, which ran for eight seasons, and The High Chaparral, which survived for four. The Flying Nun? Well, that flew along for three seasons, even though it never made it into the Nielsen top 30.

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Another hallmark of the new season is the rollout of big-money theatrical movies, for which the networks shelled out plenty of dough, and there's plenty of evidenc of that this week, starting with NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies, which premieres the debut of Peter Sellers as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther (9:00 p.m.) Clouseau isn't the focal point of this initial offering, which features a big-name cast including David Niven, Robert Wagner, Claudia Cardinale, and Capucine; it's Sellers who makes the impact, though, with Judith Crist calling him "a comic genius" who plays "one of the most ingratiating and funny fools to have come our way." He enlivens "an otherwise faltering film" in which "everything seems wrong" whenever he's not on screen.

The 1962 remake of Mutiny on the Bounty, with a three-and-a-half hour running time, is too big to fit into ABC's regular Sunday Night Movie slot, so it's been labeled as a "special", with a starting time that's an hour earlier than normal. (8:00 p.m.) The problem with this troubled production, says Crist, is the performance of Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian—"uneven, foppish, hitting dramatic high spots too seldom"—but you'll be impressed by Trevor Howard's Captain Bligh, with "a bite and brutishness beyond Laughton’s pudgy sadism" of the original.

CBS, not to be outdone, rolls out a pair of relative "oldies" making their television debuts: 1958's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Thursday, 9:00 p.m.), featuring intense performances by Paul Newman and Elizbeth Taylor, and a dominating performance by Burl Ives as Big Daddy; Ives missed out on a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Cat only because he was too busy winning Best Supporting Actor that same year for The Big Country. The network's second premiere, the following night, is of Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 masterpiece, North by Northwest (9:00 p.m.), starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Mount Rushmore, and a very nasty crop duster. And don't forget Martin Landau as the very nasty bad guy trying to knock Cary off Honest Abe.

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There's more than just movies to the week, starting Saturday with The Jackie Gleason Show (7:30 p.m., CBS) and an hour-long "Honeymooners" musical that sees the gang in trouble after Ralph helps catch a wanted criminal. Sheila MacRae, who plays Alice, tells Edith Efron that it hasn't been easy taking over from the legendary Audrey Meadows: "I just couldn’t get Alice Kramden at first. Does she have nothing to do all day but yell at Ralph?" she says. "It’s the antagonistic quality against men I can’t get. I'm a worshipper of men. Audrey could look Ralph in the eye and give him hell. I can’t do that. To me, the male image is not to be torn down. I have a hard time saying some of those lines." She's been criticized for being "over-sweet" in the role, but Jackie himself is pleased; "The very fact that I’ve rehired her means that I like her very much. She can continue to play Alice as long as she wants to."

Sunday, G-E College Bowl returns for its 10th season, as the University of Wisconsin takes on Valpariso University; Robert Earle brings you all the live action (5:30 p.m., NBC). Later, as a warm-up to Mutiny, JonathanWinters hosts Holiday on Ice (7:00 p.m., ABC), the touring ice show; you'll be familiar with this kind of show if you remember those Ice Capades shows that NBC used to present. Whether or not you consider Winters to be the highlight of the show depends on how big a fan you are of ice skating.   

On Monday, Danny Thomas's drama anthology series (which our anonymous ad exec pronounced "Very disappointing") presents "The Scene" (9:00 p.m., NBC), with Robert Stack as a successful businessman who takes an opportunity to return to his first love, art, and finds himself immersed in the "now" world of hippies and bohemians at an art colony. Geraldine Chaplin, Charlie's daughter, plays the single mother he befriends, while Michael J. Pollard and everybody's favorite beatnik, Victor Buono, co-star. It's hard to know whether or not the show's portrayal of "the scene" is as wince-inducing as is usually the case in shows like this, but I wouldn't be surprised. If that concerns you, don't hesitate to skip it in favor of tonight's episode of The Big Valley (9:00 p.m., ABC), which features guest star Milton Berle.

Berle's back on Tuesday in an I Dream of Jeannie filmed in Hawaii (7:30 p.m., NBC), where he plays a conman trying to bilk Jeannie out of her scarab pin that was a gift from King Tut. Meanwhile, it's an all-Jerry Lewis night on NBC; first up is the comedian's eponymous variety show (8:00 p.m.), with guests Nanette Fabray and Al Hirt; that's followed by Jerry in The Errand Boy (9:00 p.m.), a movie which he directed and co-wrote in addition to being the star. Judith Crist, never a Lewis fan, says it "gets off to a funny start and then settles into the sort of self-indulgence that made Lewis the darling director of the French critics." Don't agree with her assessment of Jerry, but I love the slam on the French.

We're out of Milton Berle appearanes on Wednesday, which means we'll have to settle for Joan Collins as "The Lady From Wichita" in The Virginian (7:30 p.m., NBC); actually, she's one of two ladies, the other being played by Rose Marie. Doug McClure's Trampas stars in this episode, which sounds appropriate for its whimsical tone. That's followed at 9:00 by Kraft Music Hall's tribute to the Hollywood musical, hosted by Rock Hudson, with Connie Stevens, Bobby Van, and Michele Lee; you can see a clip of it here.

Ready for more Joan Collins? Besides The Virginian, she's also on Thursday's Batman (7:30 p.m., ABC) as The Siren, who's hypnotized millionaire Bruce Wayne; Batgirl and Robin try to break the spell. And thus we can crown Adam West as the luckiest man of the week, having Joan Collins and Yvonne Craig fighting over him. Later, we get a chance to see Jack Lord commiting crimes instead of fighting them; a year before Hawaii Five-O, he plays a crime czar (or is that tsar?) in Ironside (8:30 p.m., NBC) And on F. Lee Bailey's short-lived interview show Good Company (10:00 p.m., ABC), the lawyer interviews Sean Connery. 

In case you were hoping to see someone else double-dipping this week besides Milton Berle and Joan Collins, you're in luck: on Friday, Ironside's Don Mitchell guest stars on Tarzan (7:30 p.m., NBC) in a tale of two escaped convicts out to kill Tarzan and a native chief; George Kennedy and Yaphet Kotto round out a pretty impressive guest cast. And if you've got the stamina to stay up late, the second half of KRON's late-night double feature (1:00 a.m.) is Zero Hour!, the war drama that served as the basis for the all-time comedy classic Airplane!, with Dana Andrews as Lieutenant Ted Stryker.

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MST3K alert: The Thing That Couldn't Die (1958) The severed head of an Elizabethan sailor is found in a centuries-old chest—still alive and exercising an evil power. Andra Martin, William Reynolds, Carolyn Kearney. (Saturday, 1:10 a.m., KXTV in Sacramento) I won't deny it; you're in for a long, hard road with this one. Fortunately, William Reynolds, who plays our hero, goes on to a long and successful career with Efrem Zimbalist Jr. in The FBI. It just goes to show that good things come to those who wait, and bad things can die—just not quickly enough. TV