The day begins with the CBS special Four Dark Days (10:30 a.m. CT), an hour-long retrospective of the events one year ago, including the assassination, the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, and the President's lying in state and funeral. It's not to be confused with "The Four Dark Days," a much longer recap that the network aired on the evening of November 25, 1963; however, it's safe to assume that everything airing on the Sunday morning special can be found in this much longer broadcast.
ABC's special, "John F. Kennedy: His Two Worlds" (5:30 p.m.), focuses on Kennedy's private as well as public life. In addition to films of Kennedy and his family in leisure hours, the special incudes interviews with those who played a role in Kennedy's life, from his seventh-grade teacher, Mrs. Irene Guiney, to Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg.
In addition to these specials, several regular programs offer tributes to the late president: Directions '65 (1:00 p.m., ABC) looks at the effect of Kennedy's leadership on people throughout the world in "A Figure of the Possible." NBC's Sunday (3:00 p.m.), hosted by Today newscaster Frank Blair, devotes the entire hour to a Kennedy tribute. And on The Ed Sullivan Show, Pat O'Brien recites "What Is A Little Girl?" dedicated to Caroline Kennedy, Victor Borge recites a tribute to JFK while pianist Leonid Hambro plays an overture by Strauss, and a group of Irish boy singers from County Wexford, Kennedy's ancestral home, perform one of his favorite songs, "The Boys of Wexford."
One year after Kennedy's death, it would have been impossible to disassociate Thanksgiving from the assassination; November 22 was less than a week before Thanksgiving in 1963, and while the Macy's parade went on as scheduled, many of the floats bore bands of black mourning crepe. It's likely, I'd think, that the holiday season in 1964 was not nearly as somber as it was in 1963; after all, life goes on, and Lyndon Johnson had been elected president in a landslide earlier in November.
Nonetheless, Fall is an evocative time, and the memory of those days certainly must have hung over the tranquility of these.
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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 guests include Victor Borge, singers Tony Bennett and Leslie Uggams, actor Pat O'Brien, the folk singing Women-folk and the clowning Cairoli and Company. A group of Irish boy singers from County Wexfort, John F. Kennedy's ancestral home, pay tribute to the late President by singing two of his favorite songs: "The Boys of Wexford" and "Kelly, the Boy from Killane."
Palace: Host Arthur Godfrey welcomes comedian Shelley Berman, singer Dorothy Collins, Dwight Moore and His Mongrels, singer John Gary, the comedy team of Gaylord and Holliday, and the Dalrays, mimes.
The informal tribute to President Kennedy offered on Sullivan isn't something that Palace could be expected to match; setting that aside, Tony Bennett and Leslie Uggams provide star power, and pianist Leonid Hambro, mentioned in the lede, was a regular foil for Victor Borge. As for Palace, a lot of its appeal is going to depend on how you feel about Arthur Godfrey. John Gary and Dorothy Collins are tops, and Shelley Berman is almost always funny. If you include the JFK tribute, then it's almost impossible to vote against Sullivan; without it, I think this week is a Push.
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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. We've often discussed "wheel" series, ones which consist of three or four different shows that appear on alternate weeks; think of the NBC Mystery Movie, for example. But this week Cleveland Amory looks at a wheel of a different shape, NBC's 90 Bristol Court, which isn't three-shows-in-one as much as it is one-show-in-three. It is, in essence, a 90-minute program consisting of three separate sitcoms—Karen, Harris Against the World, and Tom, Dick and Mary—all set in a Southern California apartment complex called, appropriately, 90 Bristol Court. None of the shows interact with each other, but they're all loosely connected through the presence of the complex's handyman, whose presence is confined mostly to making asides to the viewers. What all this really accomplishes is the opportunity for Cleve to take on three shows at once, and that's very bad news for at least two of them.
The best of the three, Harris Against the World, stars Jack Klugman, and while he "has always been good, and sometimes wonderful," the show itself is praiseworthy in that it "can be very funny." Mrs. Harris, played by Patricia Berry, is fine, and the supporting cast includes Hope Holiday, Elliott Reid, Hans Conried, and Joyce Jameson, all of whom provide fine foils for Harris. It is, says Amory, the only one of the three that can be recommended "with real confidence." As for the other two, the night begins with Karen, starring Debbie Watson as the title character, and Amory's conclusion is that "In none of the episodes we've seen has there been a single redeeming feature, ecept the song about Karen at the beginning [performed by the Beach Boys], and even that is reminiscent of a number of other shows." And the 90 minutes wrap up with Tom, Dick and Mary, with Don Galloway, Steve Franken and Joyce Bulifant, and without going into details, the show does, at least, "have the temerity to make fun of the medical profession." There are also some good nonsticky slapstick moments. Faint praise, indeed.
None of the shows, Amory says are terrible by themselves, but taken as a whole, "the plain fact is that running three none-too-original and all-too-similar half-hours into one hour-and-a-half total not only doesn't make a good three-act comedy, it doesn't even let you fully appreciate the occasional half hour that is good." That half hour, of course, is Harris. Based on the above, you can rightly assume that 90 Bristol Court, as a concept, doesn't last the season. One of the segments does manage to survive on its own; however, and sadly for Cleve, that one is Karen, which survives until April; the other two, as well as the concept itself, is foreclosed in January.
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Thanksgiving issues, along with those from Christmas, are unquestionably my favorites. It was always a time of great anticipation, to get the TV Guide and see the listings for the parades, the football games, the specials, and anything else that might be on. Thanksgiving, 1964, is no exception, and once again it doesn't let us down.
Things get started early; on The Today Show (7:00 a.m., NBC), Hugh Downs airs interviews taped last week in Europe, in which he reports on how American GIs will be spending Thanksgiving Day. On Captain Kangaroo (8:00 a.m., CBS), the Captain talks about the Pilgrims, and Mr. Green Jeans reads "The Doubtful Pumpkin Seed." They'll be sticking around after the show to anchor CBS's coverage of four Thanksgiving Day parades, with Bud Collyer and Carolyn Mignini, Miss Teenage America 1965, covering the Macy's Parade in New York; Allen Ludden and Shari Lewis reporting on the Gimbels Parade in Philadelphia; Arthur Godfrey and Bess Myerson doing the honors at the J.L. Hudson Parade in Detroit; and Canadian-born Art Linkletter hosting taped coverage of Eaton's Santa Claus Parade. Coverage runs until 11:00 a.m., leading up to football. I always enjoyed the CBS parade coverage; I'd sit there watching the parade and looking through the toy catalogs from Sears and Penneys. Ah, a child's life.
At NBC, Lorne Greene and Betty White host the Macy's Parade, including exclusive coverage of the entertainment staged at Herald Square. The balloons have always been the featured attraction, and this year Bullwinkle, Elsie the Cow, Popeye, Donald Duck, and Dino the Dinosaur are joined by Linus the Lionhearted; the Rockettes, Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis from The Munsters, Bil Baird, Soupy Sales, and Fess Parker are also part of the fun. Interesting note: NBC's coverage runs 90 minutes, far preferable to the bloated and commercial-laden three hours that we now get.
A couple of entertainment specials round out the day; first, Dean Martin, Eydie Gorme, and Al Hirt unite for Your All-Time Favorite Songs (6:30 p.m., NBC), chosen by a Reader's Digest poll. The choral director for the hour is Dick Williams, one of the famous Williams Brothers, the most famous of which being Andy; Oscar nominee Jerry Fielding serves as musical director. You can see a clip of it here. And singer Jo Stafford welcomes actor Kenneth More and song-and-dance man Roy Castle to her hour-long special. (7:00 p.m., WISN in Milwaukee) It's a day and night of entertainment that the whole family can enjoy.
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In industry news, Los Angeles DJ Bob Crane, who plays the next-door neighbor on The Donna Reed Show, will be leaving the series after this season, possibly for one of his own. It's true: the series is Hogan's Heroes. There's also talk that Milton Berle is working with Danny Thomas to return to television with a half-hour series: one that isn't Jackpot Bowling. That never materializes, but following a number of successful guest spots, Berle does come back with The Milton Berle Show in 1966, but it's a brief one. Peter Jennings has become the second Canadian correspondent to be added to ABC News, joining Baden Langton, with whom Jennings anchored the CTV National News. Langton returns to Canada in 1967, two years after Jennings takes over ABC's evening news. And that NBC special about John F. Kennedy that I mentioned in the lede—more than 24 countries have signed up to air it.
Meanwhile, NBC plans a new musical show for January in the event of a vacancy in the schedule. The series is Hullaballoo [sic], and it debuts on Tuesdays when The Man from U.N.C.L.E. moves to Mondays. Another series scheduled to debut in January is Branded, a new Western starring Chuck Connors, which will take the place of NBC's The Bill Dana Show, the first cancelled series of the season. Branded will be unique in that it's the only half-hour Western on network television.
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How about just a little more football? It's possible that nothing, save perhaps politics, has been changed by television more than sports. And the sport that has benefitted the most from television is, without doubt, football. In January, CBS paid the National Football League the princely sum of $28,200,000 for the right to televise games for the next two seasons.* For that kind of money, the network figures they have the right to call the shots, and William C. MacPhail, CBS's vice president in charge of sports, is the man to do it. He is, as the cover states, "Pro Football's New Boss."
*This in answer to NBC's five-year, $36 million contract with the American Football League, scheduled to start in 1965.
The announcers, on the other hand, didn't like it much; it broke up a team that was used to working together—a team that viewers, in many cases, liked—and the value of the information they picked up on the sidelines was questionable. Besides, if they happened to be in the vicinity of the losing coach, they might pick up some colorful language in the process. Neither did many coaches, a noticeably circumspect group. However, when it was explained that each team was making roughly $1 million a year from the TV contract, the coaches' objections were overcome. The system was quickly put to the test when the cameras cut unexpectedly to sideline reporter Pat Summerall, who ad-libbed with some pertinent information he'd been given by the New York Giands head coach. Summerall neglected to mention that the coach had given him this information several days earlier, during a production meeting. (In fairness, Summerall never claimed it was something he'd just been told.) The network said it was merely poetic license.
Then there was the idea that the sideline reporter would speak with the game officials turing time outs to get their explanations on various calls they'd made. Mark Duncan, the league's supervisor of officials, thought that was a terrible idea, and said so in so many words. Until, that is, CBS expressed its disappointment. Duncan agreed to ask the head officials at each game to make themselves available to reporters. Finally, the league wanted the scoreboard clock to show the "official" game time; presently, the official time is kept by one of the officials on the field, and the scoreboard clock only indicates the "unofficial" time. CBS pointed out, quite reasonably, that being able to show the official time in the last moments of the game would add to the drama and suspense. The league said they'd see what they could do.
A lot has happened since this article was written. Sideline reporters are a staple of modern television coverage, although coaches still don't like talking to them and the information they impart is frequently trivial. The referees don't talk to the sideline reporters, but every network has its own in-house rules expert, a former official, to try and explain what the officials are doing. The scoreboard clock is now official, and has been for many years, but it's not used on broadcasts; instead, the networks' graphics are now synchronized to the game clock, and shown continuously on the screen.
One other thing has changed as well: there are more commercials, and more commercial interruptions, than ever. Cash, after all, speaks louder than words.
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