Lee Marvin is one angry man. Not the Last Angry Man; that was Paul Muni, and anyway, this issue is 65 years old and there have been a lot of angry men since then. Angry women, too, for that matter. But Lee Marvin is, in fact, angry, although it's hard to say what, exactly, he's angry about. Or perhaps it's better to ask: what isn't he angry about?
Bob Johnson catches up with Marvin on the set of M Squad, now beginning its second season. The ensuing article—well, I can't really call it an interview, since aside from the first and last paragraphs, there's no evidence that Marvin actually answered any questions from Johnson. Instead, he conducted a very entertaining two-page stream-of-consciousness monologue. The following excerpts are, I can assure you, exact quotes.
The article begins with Marvin leaving the set for the lunch break. "'It's moving,' he said, stomping and muttering through smaller billows of the claylike material he was brushing out of his crew cut with both hands. 'If it's moving, baby, I say grab it. Look at this filthy mess. Let's go.'"
The topic turns to M Squad.
"Who knows? You tell me. It's a cop series, what else? The guy's a cop. Who wants the truth? It's like an artist. He's got this painting. He says, 'But don't you see, it's yah-foo-lah-lah-lah. You notice how that yellow shines?
"I dunno, it's moving. Lieutenant Ballinger—who knows—he's a cop. You tell me. We took Chicago. It was all that was left. I know Chicago cops. Rough. They have to be. The whole city would explode. It's like a bomb, Chicago. I know. Look at the setup."
After spending some time on Chicago police politics, he continues:
"We shoot locations, twice a year. No permit, no co-operation. They don't want any part of us. We're going next week again. Shoot and run. It finally came down to: 'Okay, any public building, but nothing else, no stopping traffic.' I stay back, out of sight. Hat pulled down. Director says okay, walks through what I do, says, 'Like that, Lee.' I do it, we shoot it and blow. Kids come along, see the crowd, it's always the same thing in Chicago. Right away, 'Who got killed?' That's what a crowd means to most Chicago kids.
"One time we're up on a roof. On the edge over the sidewalk. Me and this actor, struggling over a gun. I thought I'd hoke it up a little. We can't carry sound equipment, have to move too fast. Dub it later. I saw these two gals walking along. Right under us. I yelled, 'Gimme that gun, I'll kill you!' They looked up, yah, hoo, whu, hmm? Two men on a roof, killing each other. And these girls went right on. They didn't even break stride.
"Lieutenant Friday, Dragnet, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Lineup. What's their problem? No problem. It's routine. It's static. But not Chicago. They stop it before it happens. They have to.
"Chicago'd go like a bomb, the whole place. I know. I spent a year there, going to secretarial school. After the war, out of the Marines, wacked up, shot near the spine, whoo lah, hero. I couldn't do anything. Nothing. I didn't know ho. High school, no training. Navy ROTC school in New Jersey, 14 years old and they pulled rank on me. This old admiral, 61, still in uniform, and a kid 14 years old. I cut out and sold my uniform.
"Yeah, typing, shorthand, I didn't know. And then back to New York, digging ditches. Septic tanks. A guy digging ditches or a plumber wiping a joint, you know? It solves problems. Says, 'Dig this hole, so wide, so long, so deep,' you dig it. That's it. You climb out and say, 'Boy, I don't know what it was, and loo-foo-fah-foo, but I solved it today.' Good therapy for my back. Plumber in New York, fixed pipe up in Woodstock. They were doing a play, who knows? Said why didn't I give it a try. So? I tried it. One line, walk on, walk off, deep voice, big shoulders, and back the next night. And so on.
"It's like M Squad. The M doesn't stand for anything. It's any dirty job. Let's face it, we're the Storm Troops. A lone cop, Chicago, what else? M Squad. I liked The Loop. That's what somebody wanted to call it. I wanted to do a lot of things. I talk to myself, driving along, who doesn't? You come out of a conference, you sit there at a stop light, say, 'Yeah, fah-loo-dee-doo, BUT, you say."
There's more to the article, but you get the idea. You wonder if Bob Johnson had to do anything other than take notes. After starting Marvin off, he doesn't return again until the final paragraphs, when the two men return to the set ("Three steak sandwiches later."), Marvin talking all the way. As they part, he says, "If it's moving, baby, grab it."
M Squad, which runs for three seasons, will be Marvin's only television series (other than appearing as narrator in the 1963-64 true crime series Lawbreaker). In an interview later in his career, he refers to doing the series as something akin to a box he had to tick off before he'd be allowed to progress to bigger roles in movies. And they do get bigger, culminating in his Oscar-winning performance in Cat Ballou, and his acclaimed role in the neo-noir classic Point Blank. But, as good as those performances are, could they have been any more entertaining than his "interview" with Bob Johnson?
The World Series continues this week, though we don't really know when or where. The National League pennant had not been settled at press time, and so the specifics depend on which of three teams came out on top. If the Milwaukee Braves won the National League pennant, Saturday's Game 4 will begin at 12:45 p.m. CT on NBC, in black-and-white. On the other hand, if the pennant went to either the Los Angeles Dodgers or San Francisco Giants (and how strange those names must have seemed in 1959!), the first pitch will be at 2:30 p.m., and in color. What we do know for certain is that the opponent will be the American League champion Chicago White Sox, playing in their first World Series since the Black Sox scandal of 1919. The Series continues Sunday with Game 5 (if necessary; same time, same channel), before returning to the Windy City* for the final two games (noon, in color).
*I wonder if they saw Lee Marvin while they were there?
At least that's what TV Guide says. In fact, there was no game on Saturday; the Dodgers and Braves finished in a tie for first place, and the resulting three-game playoff (won by the Dodgers two games to none) delayed the start of the Series to Thursday. The Dodgers and Sox split the two games in Chicago, and after using Saturday as a travel day, the Dodgers won two out of three in Los Angeles and closed out the Series with a 9-3 victory in Game 6 in Chicago.
If you have your heart set on sports on Saturday, you'll have to make due with the college football game of the week, pitting the California Golden Bears and Texas Longhorns from Austin (3:15 p.m., NBC), or the NFL's Saturday night tilt between the Chicago Bears and Baltimore Colts from Baltimore (9:30 p.m., ABC, tape-delayed).
Last season saw the premiere of the Warner Bros. detective series 77 Sunset Strip, starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Roger Smith, and Edd Byrnes; the show's success spawns a succession of similar "assembly line"-style detective shows from Warner, all employing exotic locations, handsome young stars rotating as the leads, and a variety of guest stars from the WB stable of talent*. First up is Bourbon Street Beat (Monday, 7:30 p.m, ABC), starring Richard Long, Andrew Duggan, Van Williams, and Arlene Howell. Although it only runs for one season, it's perhaps the best of the Sunset Strip clones; Richard Long's character will wind up on Sunset Strip after Bourbon Street Beat's cancellation, while the character played by Van Williams will be spun off into yet another series, Surfside 6, which will debut next season.
l l l
The World Series continues this week, though we don't really know when or where. The National League pennant had not been settled at press time, and so the specifics depend on which of three teams came out on top. If the Milwaukee Braves won the National League pennant, Saturday's Game 4 will begin at 12:45 p.m. CT on NBC, in black-and-white. On the other hand, if the pennant went to either the Los Angeles Dodgers or San Francisco Giants (and how strange those names must have seemed in 1959!), the first pitch will be at 2:30 p.m., and in color. What we do know for certain is that the opponent will be the American League champion Chicago White Sox, playing in their first World Series since the Black Sox scandal of 1919. The Series continues Sunday with Game 5 (if necessary; same time, same channel), before returning to the Windy City* for the final two games (noon, in color).
*I wonder if they saw Lee Marvin while they were there?
At least that's what TV Guide says. In fact, there was no game on Saturday; the Dodgers and Braves finished in a tie for first place, and the resulting three-game playoff (won by the Dodgers two games to none) delayed the start of the Series to Thursday. The Dodgers and Sox split the two games in Chicago, and after using Saturday as a travel day, the Dodgers won two out of three in Los Angeles and closed out the Series with a 9-3 victory in Game 6 in Chicago.
If you have your heart set on sports on Saturday, you'll have to make due with the college football game of the week, pitting the California Golden Bears and Texas Longhorns from Austin (3:15 p.m., NBC), or the NFL's Saturday night tilt between the Chicago Bears and Baltimore Colts from Baltimore (9:30 p.m., ABC, tape-delayed).
l l l
Last season saw the premiere of the Warner Bros. detective series 77 Sunset Strip, starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Roger Smith, and Edd Byrnes; the show's success spawns a succession of similar "assembly line"-style detective shows from Warner, all employing exotic locations, handsome young stars rotating as the leads, and a variety of guest stars from the WB stable of talent*. First up is Bourbon Street Beat (Monday, 7:30 p.m, ABC), starring Richard Long, Andrew Duggan, Van Williams, and Arlene Howell. Although it only runs for one season, it's perhaps the best of the Sunset Strip clones; Richard Long's character will wind up on Sunset Strip after Bourbon Street Beat's cancellation, while the character played by Van Williams will be spun off into yet another series, Surfside 6, which will debut next season.
*Classic TV fans will recognize this technique from the WB stable of Westerns, including Maverick, Cheyenne, Bronco, and Sugarfoot. You'll see it again next season, when, in addition to Surfside 6, the studio introduces the period drama The Roaring 20s, with Rex Reason, Donald May, and Dorothy Provine.
And that's not the only WB detective series to debut this week; on Wednesday night, it's Hawaiian Eye (8:30 p.m., ABC), starring Anthony Eisley, Robert Conrad, Connie Stevens, and Poncie Ponce. Hawaiian Eye is, next to Sunset Strip, the most successful of the WB detective shows, running for four seasons (Sunset Strip goes for six), although there's a notable drop in quality after Anthony Eisley leaves following the third season. The plots in all of these series are more or less interchangable, but that makes them no less entertaining. The characters are interchangable as well, sometimes literally; they all exist in the same universe, with each of the detective teams making at least one appearance on at least one of the other series. After all, why mess with success?
l l l
Although we're now into October, we're still seeing the debuts of new series, as well as the return of old standbys. Let's take a look a some of each.
This week Dan Jenkins reviews Dick Clark's weekly output, and I put it that way because the man seems to be on TV all the time. In fact, says Jenkins, we haven't seen anyone like Clark since the heyday of Arthur Godfrey: "an appealing personality, the 'soft-sell' commercial approach, and a back-breaking eight and a half hours a week on network TV." For starters, there's American Bandstand, which airs from Philadelphia, at 90 minutes a day, five afternoons a week. On Saturday night, he hosts The Dick Clark Show (6:30 p.m., ABC) from New York. And just last Sunday, his third series, World of Talent, debuted at 9:30 p.m., again on ABC. Clark sets a good example for the youth of America: "he dresses conservatively and neatly, is unfailingly polite, speaks quietly with an excellent command of English and has poise not often associated with is clamorous following." If Jenkins could add one thing, it would be to raise the music-appreciation level of his audience by throwing in a classical piece once or twice a week, "exposing the younger generation to music that is not a mixture of odd lyrics and monotonous chords." I think he's serious about that, by the way. And after all, if you can't get down and boogie to Wolfie Mozart, you just aren't rad, man.
Sunday presents us with a trio of new programs, all of which are available on DVD: Dennis the Menace (6:30 p.m., CBS), based on the popular comic strip, starring Jay North as Dennis; The Rebel (8:00 p.m., ABC), the post-Civil War Western with Nick Adams as Johnny Yuma, a Southern army vet looking for the meaning to his life following the war; and The Alaskans (8:30 p.m., ABC), yet another WB adventure series, starring Roger Moore, Jeff York, and Dorothy Provine in tales of the Alaskan gold rush of 1898. Interesting note: all three of these series are available on DVD. They join some returning favorites: Lawman (7:30 p.m., ABC), The Dinah Shore Show (8:00 p.m., NBC), and The Jack Benny Program (9:00 p.m., CBS).
The rollout of new series continues on Monday with James A. Michener's Adventures in Paradise (8:00 p.m., ABC), starring Gardner McKay. Michener's creditentials for creating a series based in the Pacific are impeccable; a decade ago, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Tales of the South Pacific, which was made into the musical South Pacific; in an article written by Michener for this week's issue, he talks about having spent years on proposals for such a series (including, although he doesn't mention it, a weekly series based on South Pacific), but it's only now that all the pieces have fallen into place. He credits producer Martin Manulis for converting his ideas into reality, and heaps praise on leading man McKay: "He not only looks the part of a South Seas skipper. He is one. . . rugged, ready for a fight, yet reserved and marked for considerable self-control." Michener adds, "There is a bigness about all he does. He is small neither in size nor manner, and to serve as master of a schooner in the waters I know best requires a certain bigness of spirit." We've read McKay's views on his experience doing the show, so we'll let Michener have the last word on the prospects for his series: "A man and his boat have, since the beginning of history, been symbols of high adventure, and we want to keep it that way."
Tuesday sees the premiere of Ford Startime (8:30 p.m., NBC), a big-name weekly anthology series that includes, comedy, drama, and variety presentations. For tonight's debut, Rosalind Russell hosts "The Wonderful World of Entertainment," a musical revue featuring Polly Bergen, Maurice Chevalier,Eddie Foy Jr., Eddie Hodges, Ernie Kovacs, Arthur O'Connell, Jack Paar, and Kate Smith. Startime was billed as "TV's finest hour," and its history is worth spending another minute or so; Alfred Hitchcock directed the drama "Incident at a Corner," Ingrid Bergman starred in an adaptation of "The Turn of the Screw," Dean Martin hosted a couple of variety hours, Jerry Lewis starred in "The Jazz Singer" (available on DVD), and Mitch Miller hosted "The Mitch Miller Variety Show," which, of course, became Sing Along With Mitch the following season. Unfortunately, the ratings for Startime didn't quite live up to the billing (it was up against, among other programs, The Red Skelton Show), and Ford pulled the plug on its very expensive investment after a single season. Another single-season series starts tonight: Phillip Marlowe (8:30 p.m., ABC), based on Raymond Chandler's famous private detective, starring Philip Carey. This series seems as if should have been a natural; Marlowe is one of the great characters in detective fiction, and Carey is a capable actor. Marlowe's a unique character, though, and it takes an actor like Dick Powell* to fully realize it. It was probably too generic in its delivery, wasting its potential.
*Whose wife, June Allyson, appears on the cover of this week's issue.
Although Men in Space (Wednesday, 7:30 p.m., CBS) is classified as "Adventure," it's one of the first series to deal with manned spaceflight in a serious manner, as opposed to shows such as Rocky Jones, Buck Rogers, and Captain Video; think of it as Wyatt Earp ushering in the era of adult Westerns from shows like Roy Rogers.* The series stars William Lundigan as Col. Edward McCauley, America's most distinguished astronaut, and as the series begins (it debuted last week), he's preparing to lead the first manned flight to the moon. But complications arise, as a senator questions the expense of the flight.
*In Britain, on the other hand, the show was marketed as a children's series; the timeslot it occupied was later filled by Doctor Who.
The Big Party debuts Thursday (8:30 p.m., CBS), and in this case, when they say "Big" they mean it: a 90-minute variety show (a tough sell; ask Jerry Lewis how well those work), alternating every other week with Playhouse 90. I've seen it described as "a perfect melange of the television variety show genre and high camp": each week, a celebrity guest host invites various celebrities to their penthouse or hotel suite for a party, where everyone is supposed to act completely natural until they break into song. (Imagine that alternating with a show that once brought you the likes of "Requiem for a Heavyweight.") Tonight, Rock Hudson decides to throw a party and calls his friend Tallulah Bankhead to "get on the phone and invite some friends." The "friends" include Sammy Davis Jr., Matt Dennis, Lisa Kirk, Carlos Montoya, Mort Sahl, and Esther Williams. (You can see it here.) It sounds kinda similar to the scenario employed by Hugh Heffner's Playboy's Penthouse, and if it's anything like that, my advise is to ignore the camp for 90 minutes and just enjoy the performances. And you'd better hurry; although it's supposed to be on for a full season, it ends with the New Year's Eve party.
It's a good week for Red Skelton; not only does he appear in his regular Tuesday night slot, you can also see him on Friday's Red Skelton Chevy Special (8:00 p.m., CBS), an hour-long colorcast celebrating Red's 30th anniversary in show business. He's joined by Gunsmoke's James Arness, Burl Ives, Rhonda Fleming, Tommy Sands, and Lionel Hampton—and, of course, some of Red's most famous characters, including Clem Kadiddlehopper and Freddie the Freeloader. Afterwards, flip over to NBC for the premiere of The Bell Telephone Hour (9:00 p.m.), making its transition from a radio series that had started in 1940. Tonight's opener is headlined by musical-comedy stars Alfred Drake and Sally Ann Howes, the Kingston Trio, violinist Zino Francescatti, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Red Nichols and His Five Pennies jazz combo, and siner Connie Boswell. The Telephone Hour remains a mainstay on TV until 1968.
l l l
Finally, since we've spent a fair amount of time writing about Warner Bros. this week, it seems appropriate that we wrap things up with Adele Mara: WB contract actress, wife of WB producer Roy Huggins—and barber. "It's true," she says gleefully. "I cut Roy's hair, and I like it." Adele started out as a dancer with Xavier Cugat's band, before signing her fierst movie contract in the 1940s. She starred in 30 movies for Republic, and set a studio record by posing for 4,000 publicity photos, for all of which she wore only a bathing suit (see right). She and Huggins have been married for six years; they'll remain married until his death in 2002. While Huggins was producing Maverick, he fielded a complaint from a viewer about "a half-dressed woman I saw dancing on the bar." Replied Huggins, "That was no half-dressed woman. That was my wife." TV
THE BIG PARTY is included in Bart Andrews' book, THE WORST TV SHOWS OF ALL TIME. His writeup mostly mentioned the silliness of this debut episode, where Ms. Bankhead "showed us how to use the telephone".
ReplyDeleteJust from reading the description in TV Guide, I thought it had to have been as much. Those setups never seem to work.
DeleteThe first episode of the second season of M-Squad was remade almost scene for scene in the first episode of Police Squad!
ReplyDeleteHilarious, isn't it? Love them both!
Delete