This week in TV Guide: December 14, 1963

We all know how the minefield that is television is littered with the bodies of various flops, bombs, disasters, and other fiascos. Their tombstones are inscribed with various synonyms for failure: Turn-On. The Tammy Grimes Show. Flesh and Blood. Now it's time to add to that dubious pantheon one of the most infamous of them all: The Jerry Lewis Show. And it falls to Richard Gehman to write the obituary, even though the body, while moribund, is still breathing.

The Jerry Lewis Show was the result of a bidding war among all three networks, and came on the heels of some very well-received specials over the years, as well as a successful stint as guest host on The Tonight Show in that interim period between the departure of Jack Paar and the arrival of Johnny Carson. As befits the stature of one of the biggest stars in the business, The Jerry Lewis Show was big: two hours long, telecast live each Saturday, from the newly-renamed and refurbished Jerry Lewis Theater (at a cost of $1,000,000). ABC was spending, chairman Leonard Goldenson said, "more money than we own" on the show. And people were excited; "Everybody's rooting for Lewis," said Jack Elliott, music director for the Edie Adams show. "Everybody wants him to make it."

But now, only seven weeks into its run, the show is in Big Trouble, with a captial T that, if it doesn't rhyme with R, can best be summarized with the word ratings. It has fallen into third place for the night, trailing both NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies and CBS's venerable Western duo of Have Gun, Will Travel and Gunsmoke. The critics are using harsh words to describe the show's star: "egocentric" and "boor." ABC's president, Tom Moore, will only say that "We are committed to The Jerry Lewis Show for 40 weeks." The whispering in the industry is that "Jerry Lewis, LIVE from Hollywood, soon would be DEAD from Hollywood." And the question that everyone's asking: what happened?

According to Gehman, the problems are varied, but insiders point to one overriding conern: nobody really knew what Lewis wanted out of the show, what his vision was. It was as if he was completely detached from the project: unavailable for consultation with the network on guest stars, working on the script for his next movie instead of damage control on the show, opening for a week in Las Vegas in November. The problem, says Gehman, isn't confusion as much as it is a "complete lack of communication." 

Opening night didn't help. Lewis was nervous—"terribly nervous"—and things were only made worse when the huge screen above the stage stopped working, which meant most of the people in the theater couldn't see him. Cameramen lost communications with the control room. The red lights on the cameras went off, meaning nobody on stage knew which one to face. Commercials came and went without warning, or at the wrong time. Lewis, "a fearfully nervous persormer [whose] apparent ego masks a frightened and inescure little boy," hates surprises, and opening night was filled with them. He looked awkward, and the audience didn't understand some of his comments. Things went downhill from there. (You can see the opening to that show here.)

Gehman had been given unusual access to Lewis; the next year, he would write a biography of Lewis, That Kid, that, some said, caused Lewis to regret having given him that access. When it came to the show, however, Gehman found it difficult to get him to talk about things. He was more interested in talking metaphysically about God ("I think He sits up there in a big chair going har-har-har at all of us. I think He looks like Kriss Kringle. And I think He's makin' all of us do all this as a kind of audition.") and shrugs off press criticism ("The minute the critics are for me, I know I'm in trouble."). 

Which leaves it up to Gehman to analyze the failure, the first one that Lewis has had since a brief radio venture with Dean Martin that was almost immediately followed up by a successful turn into television. Lewis, Gehman says, is "a man whose deepest basic motivion—he once said to me—is fear." It may be, Gehman thinks, that "hurt and fear" have kept him detached. It may be that we was so cocky he didn't take into account how difficult two hours of live television each week could be, that he just had to "show up." It could be that, like his friend Frank Sinatra with his own ill-fated ABC series a few years ago, he had contempt for the television audience. All anyone knows is that when his press agent, Jack Keller, asked if there was anything he could do for Jerry, Lewis replied "Yeah—get me off this show."

It is, Gehman says in conclusion, as if Jerry Lewis was still auditioning, that, as he put it, God was going har-har-har while Lewis ran around frantically "and mainly running away." 

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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. 

I tried watching a couple of episodes of East Side/West Side a few years ago. Well, actually, I did watch a couple of episodes; I tried to like it, but I don't know that East Side/West Side is the kind of show that one actually likes, but the lack of a likeable character, combined with an excessive preachiness, meant I turned it off before it could turn me on. The fact that I tried it out, though, meant I fulfilled the obligation set out by Cleveland Amory in this week's review.

To be fair, Cleve had a few nits to pick as well, chief among them that East Side/West Side can be a little, well, humorless. The show is "a pretty depressing concept for evening 'entertainment' to begin with," perhaps "a bit seamier, it seems to us, than it has to be." A show like this doesn't have to have humor, but "more of a light touch would, if nothing else, help to illumine the dark spots." In crafting the role of welfare worker Neil Brock, played by George C. Scott, the producers "have failed to create a character with whom we can identify", and that goes as well for his two colleagues, played by Elizabeth Wilson and Cicely Tyson. There's also the fact that much of the dialog falls into the "unreal" department, which isn't the best thing for a series that promotes its realism.

All that said, Amory praises East Side/West Side as "undoubtedly the boldest, bravest and most original new series now on your screen this new season." CBS deserves credit for actually putting it on the air. And "you owe it to your conscience not only to see it but also to see that it stays on." At least I met Cleve halfway. 

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This week is a kind of limbo for Christmas programming—the quiet before the storm, as it were. We're in the time before the barage of animated Christmas specials that come early in the month (Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol premiered in 1962), and the variety shows and weekly sitcoms that air special Christmas episodes are just beginning to run theirs. (More of them will be on next week.)

With that said, two of the best-known and best-loved sitcom Christmas episodes air this week. On Tuesday, The Jack Benny Program (9:30 p.m., CBS) presents the famous 1960 episode "Jack Goes Christmas Shopping," featuring a performance by Mel Blanc that will crack you up, as it does Jack. On Wednesday, it's "The Alan Brady Show Presents," on The Dick Van Dyke Show (9:30 p.m., CBS), with Dick, Laura, Buddy, Sally, Mel, and Ritchie performing their hearts out. No Christmas viewing schedule is complete without either of these. And Saturday's Lawrence Welk Show (8:30 p.m., ABC) celebrates a holiday show with the Osmond Brothers.

Sunday's always a good time for holiday programs, and this Sunday is no exception, starting with CBS's religious program Look Up and Live (10:30 a.m.), which focuses on "Three Views of Christmas," including songs and spirituals appropriate to Advent. We continue at WNAC in Boston, with the second half of the noon double feature, Remember the Night, with Barbara Stanwick as a shoplifter remanded to the custody of the prosecuting attorney (Fred MacMurray) over the Christmas holiday. (Only in the movies, right?) That finishes in time for you to switch over to the Hallmark Hall of Fame's Christmas presentation, "A Cry of Angels" (4:00 p.m., NBC), the story of Handel and how he came to write "Messiah." Walter Slezak plays the troubled composer, who faces mounting debt, dwindling audience interest, and crippled pain in his hands, as well as the emnity of the Prince of Wales (Hurt Hatfield); Maureen O'Hara costars as Susanna Cibber, the singer who assisted in the efforts to get "Messiah" published. Lassie (7:00 p.m., CBS) presents the first of a two-part Christmas story, in which Timmy and Lassie bring home an elderly toy mender for Christmas. And over on ABC, The Ernie Ford Show (Monday-Friday, noon), Ernie sings at least one Christmas hymn each day.

Locally, WMUR in Manchester airs a charming little program Monday through Friday at 7:00 p.m. called Santa Claus, with the studio transformed into Santa's Workshop at the North Pole, and Santa (kids' show host "Uncle" Gus Bernier" reading letters from kids. You can see a clip from that here. On Thursday, WBZ offers a Boston Christmastime tradition, the play Black Nativity (7:30 p.m.), by American poet Langston Hughes, set to traditional Chrismas carols sung in gospel style; Hughes himself provides the narration. At 8:00 p.m. the same night, WGBH has Dylan Thomas's prose poem A Child's Christmas in Wales, recited by Thomas, against the backdrop of photographs of Thomas's homeland. If you have to choose, I'd choose Black Nativity simply on the grounds that WGBH will probably repeat A Child's Christmas sometime in the next couple of weeks.

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There's plenty more to look forward to this week. Saturday is the final day of the regular season in college football, with Alabama taking on Miami at the Orange Bowl (1:30 p.m. ET, NBC). If you're like me, you might have wondered that the regular season extended so deep into December, until you see the notation "Postponed from last week." The accordian effect of November 22 really does have a long reach, doesn't it? 

On Sunday afternoon, NBC Children's Theatre (3:00 p.m.) presents a kind of alternative to CBS's Young People's Concerts, as conductor Igor Buketoff and the NBC Orchestra demonstrate the range and variety of sounds made by a symphony orchestra. And who wouldn't want to see the conclusion of Pollyanna on Disney's Wonderful World of Color (7:30 p.m., NBC), with the delightful ◀ Hayley Mills, Jane Wyman, and Karl Malden. 

If you wake up early enough on Monday, you'll catch an interesting lineup on Today (7:00 a.m., NBC), with the focus on "second-generation actors" James Mitchum and Peter Fonda. One of them becomes a big star, one of them doesn't (but he's still more successful than I'd ever be). And if you can stay awake long enough, Sing Along with Mitch (10:00 p.m., NBC) has a tribute to World War II and the London Blitz, with Leslie Uggams, Bob McGrath, Deirdre Damon and Sandy Stewart joining in. 

The younger set should be excited by Mr. Novak (Tuesday, 7:30 p.m., NBC), with singer Frankie Avalon as special guest star. And we're in for an eclectic evening on The Bell Telephone Hour (10:00 p.m., NBC), with Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé, plus opera great Birgit Nilsson, pianist Lorin Hollander, and dancer Eleanor Powell. Talk about a variety show. 

Wednesday, CBS Reports (7:30 p.m.) features members of President Johnson's cabinet sharing their views on various issues facing the new president, less than one month into his administration. It must still have taken some getting used to seeing the phrase "President Johnson" in print. And on The Danny Kaye Show (10:00 p.m., CBS), the aforementioned Dick Van Dyke is Danny's special guest; among the skits, Dick plays a best man trying to talk Danny out of leaving his bride standing at the altar.

On Thursday, Lauren Bacall makes a rare television appearance in Dr. Kildare (8:30 p.m., NBC) as a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist faced with a serious illness. And on Kraft Suspense Theatre (10:00 p.m., NBC), Mickey Rooney stars in "The Hunt" as a sadistic sheriff who plays a variation of "The Most Dangerous Game" with his prisoners—first he lets them escape, then he tracks them down and kills them. The unfortunate prisoners are James Caan and Bruce Dern.

Friday gives us a case of what might be called "Dueling Serlings," starting with The Chrysler Theatre presentation of "It's Mental Work" (8:30 p.m., NBC), Rod Serling's adaptation of John O'Hara's short story, starring Lee J. Cobb, Harry Guardino, Gena Rowlands, and Archie Moore. After that, you can flip over to CBS for Serling's Twilight Zone story "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" (9:30 p.m.), starring Ed Wynn. When that's over, you've got a choice: The Jack Paar Program (10:00 p.m., NBC), with Jack's guest, BIshop Fulton J. Sheen; or the Fight of the Week (10:00 p.m., ABC), with welterweight champion Emile Griffith moving up a class to fight Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. Remember Carter's long and ultimately successful fight for justice back in the day? This was when he was simply known as a boxer.

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On the cover this week is a program that looks as if it should be one of Bing Crosby's star-studded Christmas specials, but in fact The Bing Crosby Show for Lever Brothers, starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bob Hope, Rosemary Clooney, Kathryn Crosby, and Peter Gennaro, isn't scheduled until February 15 of next year.* But these shows have to be shot sometime, and this one has just wrapped production.

*Bing had done Christmas variety specials on ABC in 1961 and 1962; in 1963, he narrated a program called The Promise, made by Father Patrick Peyton's Family Theatre Productions, which told of the events leading up to the birth of Christ. 

Deano welcomes Rosie to the set.     

One of the challenges in putting together an all-star show like this is getting everyone together at the same time, and as fate would have it, Hope is in and out before Sinatra and Martin have even arrived; Bob is suffering from an eye ailment, and left early for treatment. There's only a brief discussion as to whether or not to replace him with another star, and it's decided that they'll tape his segement at a later date and splice it in. Crosby explains to the audience that Hope picked up a slight cold, "and you know at his age, old Skinose has to take care of himself." 

The special represents "Kathy" Crosby's first television appearance with Bing (as well as her first singing appearance on television), and Crosby's pride in his young wife is evident, kissing her as she sits on his lap. Anyone who's ever watched Bing in action knows how smooth, how practiced and at ease, he always appears ("utterly nervless"), and even his wife is moved to comment on it; at one point, while he was out of earshot, she commented to Rosemary Clooney that "I had no idea he was such a pro. If I had known, I'd have married him sooner." 

Incidentelly, when Kathy Crosby was still Kathryn Grant, she appeared in a 1957 science fiction movie called The Night the World Exploded, and that's airing this Friday overnight at 1:00 a.m. on WBZ.

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MST3K alert: Lost Continent (1951) A rescue mission discovers a "Lost Continent." Cesar Romero, Hillary Brooke. (Sunday, 9:00 a.m., WGN) This brief description hardly does the movie justice, and editing it down to fit a one-hour Sunday morning timeslot doesn't help things. But without the interstitial MST3K features, you don't have a movie anyway: Crypto-dad Hugh Beaumont as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, rock climbing, and Cesar Romero—really, who could ask for anything more? TV