This week in TV Guide: December 28, 1963

There's something about the cover of this issue I really like. It's colorful and cheerful and fun (the picture at left really doesn't do it justice), and perhaps after the grim last month, it was meant to suggest a bright and hopeful future.

But as we all know, looks can be deceiving. Take the young woman on the cover, 17-year-old Patty Duke, Academy Award winner and star of The Patty Duke Show, in which she plays twin cousins Patty and Cathy Lane. This show was a modest success, running for three seasons and producing a well-remembered theme song. The article itself (written by an unbylined author) wasn't particularly flattering, commenting on Duke's lack of personality; one might say, as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, that there was no there there. The most common explanation comes from her "rags to riches" story, and some "unhappy" experiences "which have since been amply covered with sugar." In the words of "sophisticated" observers (who prefer to remain anonymous), she seems "just too surgary," the kind of girl "who just isn't there." Says one, "God knows, she's nice enough, but I always have trouble remembering what her face looks like." I wonder if, today, we'd recognize the face of the person who said that?

Duke's horrific childhood is vaguely alluded to in the story, which refers to her having been "abandoned by her father and partially relinquished by her mother," leaving her to a set of " 'make-believe' parents [John and Ethel Ross, her managers and guardians] who, despite their devotion ("They've built my whole life," Patty says, "in and out of acting." have "stressed her career." That "devotion," we now know, included sexual abuse, financial manipulation, changing her name, and plying her with alcohol and drugs while keeping her a virtual prisoner. Nor does it take into consideration her 1965 marriage to director Harry Falk (likely done to escape the Rosses), a marriage during which she "had repeated mood swings, drank heavily, became anorexic, and overdosed on pills a number of times." Given all this, plus a later diagnosis of bipolar disorder, it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that she came across as little more than a programmed robot with no independent thoughts of her own. This really is one of those articles that becomes so much more interesting when you know the rest of the story.

Victimization has become something trendy over the years, but there seems to be little doubt that Patty Duke was a victim: of her parents, of her managers, of the industry, of many of the men in her life. I wonder how much of this information would have been available to an enterprising reporter back in 1963? I know we didn't like to talk about things like that back then, and perhaps there wasn't any particular source that could have shed light on all the goings-on in her personal life. And yet, it seems as if it would have been more productive to do a little more digging than to be free with the snide insinuations and comments that make up so much of this story.

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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. 

To round out Cleveland Amory's first year as TV Guide's critic, we take a look at a program that's been on—well, it seems as if it's been on forever, even though its star is younger than Cleve. Only 39, if you're to believe him, but then he was 39 as well when the show started, so believe what you want. But, to quote Fred Allen (as Cleve does), there are two kids of jokes: "funny jokes and Jack Benny jokes." And to criticize the Jack Benny jokes is almost as unkind as "criticizing old friends." Not just unkind, but wrong.

The best way to enjoy The Jack Benny Program, according to Amory, is to "guess the joke and, when you've got it, go along with it—the way you go along with a gag." And if you don't get it the first time around, you'll have another chance, because "nothing is ever thrown away." And why not? There's an old saying that an old joke is old because it's also a good joke. Whether we're talking about Jack's age, his stinginess, his vanity, it's all been built on a solid foundation of Benny's character development that has been honed over some 30 years. And, in fact, we don't even need jokes to make the point; his pause, his hurt stare at the audience, invariably accompanied by "Well!" would be meaningless without the viewer's familiarity with Jack's stage persona. And Benny himself says it couldn't have happened deliberately; "My show-business character developed into a person who is a sort of composite of all the faults of everybody. If my writers had set out to make me into that all at once, 30 years ago, I don't think I'd have lasted two months."

Besides the writers, with whom Jack was always generous in sharing credit, that "character" includes a team that's been with him almost as long as he's been on the air: announcer Don Wilson for 30 years, musical director Mahlon Merrick for 29 years, Rochester 26, and Dennis Day 24. And two of those writers, Sam Perrin and George Balzer, have served over 20 years. You don't have that kind of longetivity, that kind of success on both radio and television, without doing something right. And Jack Benny has more than just something going for him. He's been at it now for 180 times two months, and, as Amory concludes, "it seems fitting to say, if he will pardon the expression, Happy New Year, Jack."

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For college football fans, this is the week of weeks.  The appetizer is served on Saturday, with the Air Force Academy taking on North Carolina in the Gator Bowl (12:30 p.m. CT, CBS); we've also got one of the premier all-star games in football, the East-West Shrine Game from San Francisco (3:30 p.m., NBC), for those players whose schools didn't find their way into one of the year's nine bowl games—meaning there are a lot of good players in it.

The real deal comes Wednesday, with the New Year's Day quad-fecta (is that a word?), featuring the de facto de facto showdown for the national championship between Texas and Navy at the Cotton Bowl (12:45 p.m., CBS). Now, let me explain that peculiar description: in 1963, the final Associated Press and United Press International polls, which determined the unofficial national champion (there being no tournament back then to crown an official champion), were taken at the end of the regular season. The bowl games were seen as exhibitions, rewards to the players for a good season. They were put on by chambers of commerce, held in warm-weather locales where people could go to have fun, and watch a football game as part of a festival that often included a parade, a college basketball tournament, and other events. So entering New Year's Day, the season was over and the title race had already been decided. The de facto national champion was Texas, having finished the season undefeated at 10-0.

But there's a twist: their opponent, the Naval Academy, is the nation's #2 ranked team, with a record of 9-1, as well as the Heisman Trophy winner and most exciting player in the country, quarterback ◀ Roger Staubach.* Exhibition game or not, if Navy defeats Texas, there are going to be a lot of people looking at the Midshipmen as the true de facto national champions. So there you have it.  The game doesn't really count, but it does. The championship has already been decided, but it hasn't. Had Navy won, there would have been no little bit of controversy.

*Staubach was to be on Life's November 29, 1963 cover.  AfterFK's death, the magazine scrapped 300,000 already-printed copies.

And there were a lot of people rooting for Navy. Remember, the Naval Academy, alma mater of the late President Kennedy, is travelling to the city in which he was assassinated less than six weeks ago. Emotions are running high (as part of the trip, the Middies were taken to the sixth floor of the School Book Depository to see where the assassination happened), and Big D, suddenly the most hated city in the most hated state in America, is desperate to regain its self-esteem, which can only be helped by having its state university win the national title.

In any event, the whole thing is an anti-climax; Texas wins the game handily, 28-6.

In these times before prime-time football, the Cotton Bowl has to share the spotlight with the Orange Bowl in Miami, pitting #5 Auburn vs. #6 Nebraska (12:30 p.m., ABC) and the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, between #9 Alabama and #7 Mississippi (12:45 p.m., NBC), all of which were joint opening acts for the Granddaddy of Them All, the Rose Bowl, from Pasadena, with #3 Illinois and unranked Washington (3:45 p.m., NBC) which ended the college football season. As an added bonus, both of NBC's games are broadcast in color! Good games, good times.

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But to get to New Year's Day, you have to go through New Year's Eve, which culminates with Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians. (Tuesday, 11:15 p.m., CBS, shown on a one-hour tape delay in Minneapolis to coincide with midnight in the Central time zone.) He's joined by Allen Ludden, Dorothy Collins, and the Willis Sisters. They're not in their traditional stomping grounds at the Waldorf Astoria, though—for the first time, they're broadcasting from Grand Central Station in New York City, as part of the Bell Ringer Ball for Mental Health. 

Plenty of New Year's cheer earlier in the night as well, with all the action coming at 9:00 p.m.: Garry Moore celebrates the Eve with a party featuring Chita Rivera, Roy Castle, and singer Melodye Condos. (CBS) Over on NBC, Andy Williams, for his last special of the year, welcomes Fred MacMurray and the Williams family. And on ABC, it's coverage of the King Orange Jamboree parade, taped earlier in the evening, with Jim McKay and Olympic champion figure skater Carol Heiss reporting; according to the Miami News, a half-million spectators lined the parade route for the festivities. 

Speaking of parades, if you want 'em on New Year's Day, you've got 'em. CBS kicks things off at 10:00 a.m. with the Cotton Bowl Parade from the State Fair grounds in Dallas (which is where the Cotton Bowl stadium is located), hosted by Chris Schenkel and Pat Summerall; Schenkel will be back later in the day to broadcast the game. At 10:45 a.m., the network switches to coverage of the 75th Rose Parade from Pasadena, where the Grand Marshal is former president Dwight Eisenhower; future president Ronald Reagan and Bess Myerson return as hosts. NBC's broadcast begins 15 minutes earlier, with Arthur Godfrey and Betty White doing the honors. ABC joins in the fun with coverage of the Mummers Parade from Philadelphia (11:00 a.m.), the first time ever on national TV for the legendary parade. Although ABC's broadcast runs for 90 minutes, that's only a small segment of the all-day parade, which lasts for most of the day before it's done. Parade coverage is in color on all three networks, and their coverage continues until the football starts.

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Saturday night, filling one-half of the time slot of the recently departed Jerry Lewis Show, it's the Hollywood Deb Star Ball 1964 (8:30 p.m., ABC), in which we meet "the lovely Deb [for debutante] Stars, slated for future stardom by major Hollywood studios." There are ten altogether; let's take a look at how well they did. There's Meredith MacRae, daughter of Gordon and Sheila MacRae, who just happened to be the hosts of the show; she did pretty well for herself. There's Katherine Crawford, daughter of Roy Huggins, creator of The Fugitive, The Invaders, and other TV hits, who is profiled elsewhere in this week's issue. There's Chris Noel (who had been profiled in the previous week's issue), whose remarkable life led her from a modest Hollywood career to her vocation as a radio host and entertainer stationed in Vietnam for the Armed Forces Network, travelling to locations considered too dangerous for Bob Hope and other celebrities. There's also Susan Seaforth, who as Susan Seaforth Hayes remains one of the queens of daytime dramas on Days of Our Lives. One of her Days co-stars, Brenda Benet, perhaps as well known for being Bill Bixby's ex-wife, is there as well. There's Linda Evans, future star of The Big Valley and Dynasty. And there's Claudia Martin, Deano's daughter, Shelly Ames (daughter of actor Leon Ames), Anna Capri, and Amadee Chabot, who all scored minor successes. See if you can match them with their pictures on the right!

On Sunday, it's the television premiere of the documentary The Making of the President 1960, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winner by Theodore H. White, with narration by Martin Gabel (7:30 p.m., ABC). The documentary was completed prior to Kennedy's death, and is being presented unchanged except for a brief prologue by White. Documentary versions of his 1964 and 1968 books were made as well, but not the 1972 edition, which itself ended the series.

We often see changes to the daytime television lineup around the start of the new year, and Monday sees one such debut: the venerable Let's Make a Deal (1:00 p.m., NBC), with Monty Hall hosting this series where "[c]ontestants can win prizes by answering questions or trading—with the chance that any prize may disguise something much more valuable." You'll notice that there's no mention of outrageous costumes, signs, or other flamboyant behavior from potential contestants; that evolved organically, as a way to increase one's chances of being chosen. As you can see from the original pilot, things started out quite differently. 
On Tuesday morning, author Richard Condon is the guest on Today (7:00 a.m., NBC). Condon is most famous, of course, for his novel The Manchurian Candidate, written in 1959. The movie version, which came out in 1962, was rumored to have been withdrawn from circulation following JFK's assassination, though that was an urban legend. Condon is likely promoting one of the two books he'll have published in 1964: either An Infinity of Mirrors or Any God Will Do.

With the football done for the day, CBS has a live news roundtable Wednesday evening called Years of Crisis (6:30 p.m.), in which CBS correspondents gather to discuss the events of the past year and their probable effect on the future. In case you were wondering, those events included the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, the death of Pope John XXIII and election of Pope Paul VI, the overthrow of the Diem regime in South Vietnam and the escalation of American involvement in the war, the continuing Ecumenical Council in Rome (Vatican II), Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech in the March on Washington, and more. Yes, 1963 was quite a year, and yes—it will have far-reaching effects on 1964 and beyond. Even to this day.

Victor Borge's annual "Comedy of Music" special (Thursday, 8:00 p.m., ABC) preempts Jimmy Dean this week; the Great Dane's guests are tenor Sergio Franchi and frequent Borge foil Leonid Hambro. It ought to be a fun show, and here's a clip from it. After that, Kraft Suspense Theatre (9:00 p.m, NBC) presents "The Deep End," the story of a woman who suspects the death of her twin sister was not an accident; Ellen McRae, Aldo Ray, Clu Gulager, and Tina Louise head a fine cast, and if you're wondering who Ellen McRae is that she'd get top billing (besides playing the dual role of the sisters), you might recognize her from the name she adopted later: Ellen Burstyn. 

Friday, you'll be drawn, as I was, to The Jack Paar Program (9:00 p.m., NBC), where Jack's guests include "the Beatles, Britain's top rock 'n' roll group" (clip here) along with Paul Lynde, Peggy Cass, and Jack Douglas and his wife Reiko. We're still a month away from the Fab Four's appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, and it was just the past November that they started to get significant airplay on United States radio. They're coming, though; we just haven't felt the blast yet.

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A couple of weeks ago, Richard Gehman had Jerry Lewis on the analyst's couch to look at why his series was a failure. This week, he's got an appointment with Joey Bishop, who has quickly earned a reputation as one of the most difficult people in Hollywood. His sitcom, The Joey Bishop Show, has started its third season, and the question being asked by most people is "Why is it on?"

Bishop has insisted from the start on doing things his own way; "I didn't come here to Hollywood to learn comedy. I came to expose mine," he says. His attitude has caused writers, actors, directors, and others to flee his show, and by insisting on running things, he has made more mistakes than people had expected. "His first season was a disaster, the second not much better. Thne fact that there is a third season mystifies many people in the industry." And yet—ratings are up, and after witnessing first-hand how a scene was changed at Bishop's insistence, Gehman admits that the retooled scene—done Bishop's way—was much funnier than it was before.

Problems persist. One actor told Gehman that "[t]he Bishop program was the most unpleasant experience of my life." During the first season alone, a director and four actors left, and in the second season a comedian and a writer-director departed the scene. Danny Thomas, the executive producer, reportedly threw up his hands in exasperation, unable to find anyone who would work with Bishop. What is it about him that rubs people the wrong way?

Gehman looks at the influence of Bishop's show-business idols, specifically Frank Sinatra, who discovered him, and Jack Paar, who gave him television exposure. "Some of their arrogance—the necessary cockiness of deep insecurity—has rubbed off on him," Gehman notes, using them as Freud might treat a patient's parents. He also looks at those who've worked successfully with Bishop; he stops short of calling them sycophants, but does not that they tend to be "those upon whom he can depend, meaning those who will do exactly as he says." Moody and sometimes misanthropic, he can sit for hours at a time, concentrating; "no one in television tries harder for perfection." People on the show seem to understand this a little better now.

Bishop comes across as a man who, for years, has learned to depend on himself more than anyone else. He has confidence in his own talent, and his ability to know the best way to utilize it. He is, by his own admission, a worrier by nature, and he's spent plenty of time worrying about the success of his show, and his career. He rightly points out that it's his neck on the line, after all. Is it the best way, how he handles people and conflicts and situations? Maybe not. But, as Bishop points out, "Is there anybody in this industry who does it any different?"

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MST3K alert: The Rebel Set (1959) The operator of a Hollywood coffee house hires three beatniks to assist him in a robbery. Gregg Palmer, Kathleen Crowley. (Thursday, midnight, WCCO) Missing from that sparse list of credits is the coffee house operator, played by none other than Edward Platt! Chief as a bad guy! You can't depend on anyone, I guess. It also features Don Sullivan, whom we last saw in The Giant Gila Monster. Anyway, it's also a bad movie, with some very funny riffs involving assassins, train robberies, Scott Baio, and Hercule Poirot. TV