January 31, 2025

Around the dial




We'll begin the week with couple of blog updates. First, if you read Wednesday's article on Combat!, you'll notice that I've added the series to my Top Ten favorites. With this, the revised Top Ten is now complete; you can view the list here, or through the link on the sidebar.

Speaking of updates, I've also updated the links to my podcast appearances, which you can find on the "Video and Podcasts" tab on the top; they're also available on the It's About TV YouTube playlists page. I'm hoping to add more material to that in the future, by the way.

Finally, I've been pleased to publish several excellent guest essays here over the nearly fourteen years, of this blog. If you have something you'd like to share, please email me, and we'll talk. As I get closer to completing my latest book, your contribution not only entertains our readers, it helps me devote more time to the book.

Now, on to something more interesting, beginning with the latest look at private detective series from John at Cult TV Blog. The series is The View from Daniel Pike (a series that sounds like it's right up my alley), and the episode is "The Manufactured Clue." Try it; I think you'll like it.

At The Horn Section, Hal is back on the F Troop route, with "The West Goes Ghost," Am I giving anything away by saying that it involves another scheme courtesy of O'Rourke Enterprises? And that said scheme is doomed to failure? Probably not.

A week or two ago I mentioned the passing of baseball "legend" Bob Uecker; this week, Inner Toob takes a look at some of the Ueck's more memorable TV appearances, both as himself and as an actor. I'm not sure there was much of a difference; what you see is what you get, and it's always funny.

Roger is back at A View from the Junkyard with another in his continuing series of reviews of The New Avengers, and this time it's "Cat Amongst the Pigeons," which plays very much like an episode from the Emma Peel era, but done in the style of the new series. 

At The Hits Just Keep On Comin', JB has a nice remembrance of the famed NBC radio program Monitor; if you're not familiar with it, I urge you to check out the links JB provided, or to read my review of the definitive book on the program, Dennis Hart's Monitor.  

At Television's New Frontier: The 1960s, it's the 1960 episodes from the single-season sitcom Angel, with Marshall Thompson and Annie FargĂ©. It comes off somewhat as an imitation of I Love Lucy, but with somewhat less success. However, thanks to Classic Flix, it's out on DVD; take advantage of it. TV  

January 29, 2025

The New Top Ten, #7: Combat!




You have to understand something about the way I watch television to fully appreciate why Combat! makes it onto my Top Ten list, besides the fact that it's a consistently superior program.

Just because we spend our evenings watching television, it doesn't mean that's the only thing we're doing. For instance, I'm frequently working on this blog with the television on; for all you know, I may be writing these very words while Mannix is suffering yet another concussion. There are some shows that lend themselves to multitasking more than others; it's not a criticism, just a fact. 

On the other hand, some shows absolutely demand your attention—they engage all your senses, and don't let go until the episode is over. Combat! is one of those; I look forward to watching it each week, and it has my undivided attention for the full hour. That's a measure of how good it is: the dialogue, the cinematography, the framing of each shot, the music: it all becomes a sensory experience, an essential part of experiencing the show. Combat!, in its intensity, its storytelling, its performances, in the way it makes you think, is such a series; it engages, and it doesn't let go. That doesn't make it unique among the shows in our collection; it does make it good.

Combat!, 
properly understood, is not a war drama; rather, it's a drama about men during war. Without being strident or sanctimonious, as was often the case with a show like M*A*S*H, it manages to be both a forceful antiwar statement and a reminder of why war is sometimes necessary. It's also a tribute to the bravery of those men who put their lives on the line, often in situations that seem to make no sense, in defense of their country.

Oddly enough, I don't have any specific memories of having watched Combat! while I was growing up, unlike other shows that were set in World War II, Twelve O'clock HighThe Rat Patrol, Hogan's Heroes, and McHale's Navy. And yet I must have been familiar with it; I recognized the ads for it in the old TV Guides, and when Vic Morrow was killed while filiming the Twilight Zone movie, I immediately associated him with Combat!. It wasn't until the show was featured on the late, lamented KXLI, which branded itself as "TV Heaven." Combat! was a part of the regular schedule, as well as the subject of occasional weekend marathons, and that's where I became reacquainted with it. Still, it took until I bought the box set for it to make the final impression that puts it on the list. 

Combat! tells the story of an American unit, beginning with its D-Day landing on the beaches of France and continuing as they make their way toward occupied Paris, and it has to be one of the grimmest, grittiest programs to air on television during the 1960s. It surrounds you with war: when the shells fall, you feel yourself flinching; when the soldiers are covered with muck and grime, you want to scrub it all off your face and hands and feet, if you can even remove the boots that you feel like you've lived in for half your life.* Most of all, it puts you in the middle of a line of American soldiers running toward German lines, running straight at guns that are shooting at you. It makes you wonder what you'd do. It makes you wonder how they did it, day after day, living in a kind of boring anxiety where you have to fight off hours of routine knowing that a bomb or a mine or a sniper could appear literally at any second. How do they relax, you wonder. How do they live their lives with such a heightened sense of danger constantly hanging over them? Why would you wish this on anyone?

*One of my favorite stories, according to the always-reliable Wikipedia: "During the battle of Hue during the Vietnam war US troops trying to retake the city, not having been trained in urban combat, resorted to using tactics for assaulting buildings and clearing rooms they learned from watching Combat!, reportedly to great effect."

At the same time that Combat! takes you into the horrors of war, it also takes you into the lives of these men, men who've learned how to do all the things I mentioned because, in James Burnham's words, "When there's no alternative, there's no problem." You learn to do what you have to do, and if you don't exactly become used to it, you do come to terms with it. These are the kind of characters that make it easy for viewers to root for them, to become vested in their welfare, perhaps even to identify with them. And that's before you even get to know them.
 
The alternate leads in Combat! are Rick Jason, who plays the leader of the platoon, Lieutenant Hanley; and Vic Morrow, who plays the veteran Sergeant Saunders. The episodes starring Morrow generally focus on the missions of him and his men, checking out seemingly deserted towns or doing reconnaissance work to sniff out German troop locations; Jason's episodes deal with the challenges of being in command or leading special missions. Each will occasionally appear in the other's episodes, although in a more incidental role, and many of the stories are built around guest stars and their own stories; it's a mark of the excellence of the writing and acting that the stories of rear echelon replacements, played by character actors, can be as engrossing as that of a tank commander, played by Jeffrey Hunter, who before the war was a failed priest.  

It's often the case with a superior show that one episode typifies its sustained excellence, and in the case of Combat!, that episode comes from the very first season, the Robert Altman-directed "I Swear by Apollo," which finds the squad holed up in a French convent with a gravely injured member of the Resistance. Their mission is to get him to French intelligence so he can give them vital information. Without a doctor of their own, they are forced to kidnap a Nazi doctor to perform life-saving surgery. Virtually the entire final act is conducted in silence—no music, no dialog, only the sound of the Frenchman’s labored breathing. Altman’s hand is evident in the way the story cuts between scenes of the surgery, the soldiers watching as burning candles drip wax, the contemplative nuns silently praying in their chapel, the sweat on the brow of the doctor (Sanders has threatened to kill him if he allows the Frenchman to die) and a large Crucifix mounted on the wall, with the crucified Christ looking down on the makeshift operating room; the blood He sheds may well be the blood of the gravely-injured Frenchman. 

The episode "I Swear by Apollo"
It’s gripping television; there is no guarantee that the patient will survive the operation, and the confidence that viewers have when watching a regular cast member in the same situation is nowhere present here. In the end, the Frenchman livesand as the doctor prepares to leave (it would have been against the rules of engagement to take a non-combatant prisoner), he asks Saunders whether he would have cared about the Frenchman so much if he didn’t have military information; Saunders, in turn, asks him if he would have worked as hard to save the Frenchman's life without Saunders' threat of death. The war takes its toll on the living as well as the dead, a message that comes through in virtually every episode of the series.

Combat! runs for five seasons—longer, as more than one person has pointed out, than the actual campaign that took the troops from D-Day to Paris. For the final season, the show transitions from black-and-white to color, and I don't think the series is served well by that change—warfare, like pool halls, is more fitting when it's done in B&W, not to mention color makes it a bit easier to tell when they're shooting on a backlot. Regardless, there's a weight to the battle scenes and the drama that still comes through, that still makes Combat! television's definitive drama about men in war. And that's enough to earn a spot on anyone's Top Ten. TV  

January 27, 2025

What's on TV? Saturday, January 24, 1970




We've been looking at Northern California editions for some time now, and this week we see a major change, with the Bay Area channels now having their own edition. As a result, Sacramento becomes the major market in the Northern California edition, with Redding, Chico, and Modesto included as outlying areas. (The non-network programming for Bay Area channels continue to be listed in a separate "Cable TV" section of the issue.) On the one hand, it significantly reduces the number of program options for us to look at; on the other, it significantly reduces the amount of work for me. The overall result is a push—wait, that's a different bit of mine, isn't it?

January 25, 2025

This week in TV Guide: January 24, 1970




Ricardo Montalban is, by any measure, a successful man. He's appeared in more than 40 movies in the United States and Mexico, and starred opposite Lena Horne on Broadway. He's become well-known for playing a myriad of roles on television, from the old days of Playhouse 90 to the role which will help define him, that of the brillian but murderous Khan on Star Trek. And his telefilm on the life of the legendary early California outlaw Joaquin Murietta came very close to becoming a weekly series, which would have made it the first series to star a Mexican in the lead.

And there we touch the sore spot. Montalban has never spoken out on the the plight of the Mexican actor in Hollywood, simply because "he has never been asked." But now, relaxing in a Hollywood restaurant with the writer of this unbylined profile, he lets loose with his opinions "with a quiet anger just short of bitterness." The word Mexican, he says, has an image that is less "palatable," the image of the Mexican in the big sombrero, sleeping beside the cactus, or the image of the Mexican bandit, both perpetrated by Hollywood." While he's played Mexican bandits, he's proud that he has never "portrayed a Mexican that was a caricature, a disgrace to my people." 

He continues. "In TV, in films, any time they have wanted me to portray a man of wealth and dignity, the character is always specified as an Argentinean or a Chilean or a Peruvian—almost never a Mexican." And when he does play a Mexican, "he is most likely to be a social worker in East LA." But the Mexican presented on television is never cultured or cultivated, just "the Mexican bandit with the bullets across his chest and the fat wife who complains that he's lazy and the fiery-eyed senorita with hands on hips and a rose between her teeth and all of them speaking with horrible accents you would never hear anywhere from Tijuana down to Tehuantepec."

"I won't accuse Hollywood of prejudice," he adds, "nor even of malice—I charge only ignorance, old-fashioned thinking, myopia." Hollywood assumes "a Latin—actually any foreigner—won't be accepted by the American public as a TV series star, unless he is Desi Arnaz and it is played for comedy." And remember, Lucy had to fight like hell to get CBS to accept Desi. "Once a producer wanted me to do a series and he said to me, 'Ricardo, baby, we'll solve the problem this way. We’ll have you costar with a blond, blue-eyed American boy!'"

What bothers Montalban even more is the paucity of Latin actors playing Latin roles on television. Alejandro Rey on The Flying Nun, Linda Cristal on High Chaparral, but there should be more. "Glance through a week of program listings and see who’s playing the roles with Spanish surnames. You see 'Gomez' played by Ray Danton, 'Senorita Garcia' played by Ina Balin and so forth." Not that he believes only Mexicans should play Mexican roles; that, he says, would be absurd. "I ask only that they be allowed to qualify, to read for a part. I ask only that the Mexican actors here not be ignored."

Few men in Hollywood are more popular than Montalban, who is known as friendly, unpretentious, thoroughly professional. "Only as a performer do I create some illusion of flamboyance. I have a temper, but I usually control it. I’m a Catholic and what I used to accept emotionally from my religion I now acknowledge intellectually as well. Altogether, I am a happy actor." He does wonder, though, when he'll get that one big role that makes him a superstar. "Television has been good to me, but people can never quite remember, with a guest star on TV, where they saw you—was it in a Star Trek, a Name of the Game, an I Spy? They're never sure." He is sure, however, that the best is yet to come—and he's right. He reprises his role as Khan in the big-screen Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and he stars for seven seasons as suave, mysterious Mr. Roarke in Fantasy Island. It's virtually impossible to envision anyone else in either of those roles (witness the revival that went nowhere), and that's a testament any actor would be proud of. Not to mention that rich Corinthian leather.*

*Fun fact: Ricardo Montalban was a political conservative, and a subscriber to National Review, the magazine founded by William F. Buckley Jr.—who, as you can see from the cover, has an article in this week's issue.
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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: Tentatively scheduled: Patti Page; New York City Ballet dancer Jacques d’Amboise; Sly and the Family Stone; comics Robert Klein and Norm Crosby; singer B.J. Thomas; and the Jovers, novelty act. (The actual lineup included Little Anthony and the Imperials, while Jacques d’Amboise did not appear.)

Palace: The focus is on coupies as Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme welcome Sid Ceasar & Imogene Coca, Steve Allen & Jayne Meadows, and Roy Rogers & Dale Evans. Sketches: the Allens take a second honeymoon; three suburban marrieds take sides, the men vs. the women.  

I appreciate all of the guests on Hollywood Palace, but the "battle of the sexes" schtick has never been my cup of tea. On the other hand, Ed has a solid lineup; I was never a big fan of B.J. Thomas, but we've got Patti Page, Robert Klein, Norm Crosby, and a surprise appearance—at least if you're depending on the listings in TV Guide—by Little Anthony. Taking all this into consideration, you can hardly be surprised to find that Sullivan takes the prize this week.

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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

The Andy Williams Show was not a continuous thing; the first iteration—the one many of us may be familiar with—ran from 1962 to 1967. Andy then decided to take some time off, appearing only in occasional specials, before returning to the weekly grind in 1969, with a show that placed a greater emphasis on comedy. It is this version that Cleveland Amory is reviewing, and it is this version to which Cleve refers when, quoting Prof. Irwin Corey, he asks, "What is this mess?"

Not that it's all a mess, but "it is, generally, messy." The problem lies with that comedy bit. "Way back," he explains, "someone evidently got the idea that it would be screamingly funny to have Andy sing in the foreground very seriously, and then in the background, have something screamingly funny going on—at which Andy would first stare glassy-eyed, then. bravely attempt to carry on, then finally break up." All this was tolerable at first, when Marty Pasetta was the director, because you could be reasonably sure there'd be stretches where "there would be no funny business." But since Art Fisher took over as director, there are no such assurances. For instance, there are "a whole host of so-called 'Williams’ weirdos'—which include, as we glassily recall, a basketball player, a midget German general, a plaster-of-Paris man and a large bird—and now you aren’t even safe watching the show, let alone being in it." In one recent show, featuring Ken Berry, Peggy Lipton and the Temptations, "Mr. Berry, who tried to be funny, wasn't; Miss Lipton, who tried to sing, couldn't; and as for the Temptations, they weren't." Don't blame them, though; blame the weirdos. And that doesn't even include the Cookie Bear.

It's too bad, because Andy Williams is not only one of the most likeable personalities on television, he's a "first-rate city singer— one of the very few who has the ability to take other people's songs and sing them so well they seem to belong to him." The blame belongs to the producers, one of whom is an ex-Laugh-In writer, but now "he's just an ex-laugh." How many times have we seen this, though, where the people running the show don't know how to utilize the talent they have? Too many times. As Cleve concludes, Andy is "no mean hand at humor—real humor, that is. But from this show you'd never know it."

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I've come to the conclusion, after reading this week's Doan Report, that there's no time when ratings are not a concern for network executives, and now they're faced with the prospect of cancelling their favorite shows. At a recent industry luncheon, each of the program chiefs was asked to name the new series he's "proudest of," and the results weren't promising. NBC’s Mort Werner chose My World and Welcome to It, CBS's Mike Dann picked Medical Center, and ABC’s Marty Starger opted for Room 222; Doan notes that according to the latest Nielsens, the three programs rank 46th, 52nd and 61st, respectively, among more than 80 primetime series. All is not lost, however; while My World does, indeed, get the ax after 26 episodes, Room 222 rallies to wind up 35th for the season, and lasts five seasons in all, and Medical Center comes out the big winner, running for seven season, with a high Nielson ranking of #8 in its second season. 

Speaking of ratings, Sesame Street has now become so popular in its first season that it's outdoing CBS's daytime reruns of The Beverly Hillbillies in Chicago. There's no demographic breakdown in the story, but one would have to assume that there are a few adults included in that viewing audience—perhaps even some without children. I regularly watched Sesame Street after school during my last couple of years residence in the World's Worst Town™, even though I was a junior in high school, so dismal were the choices on the one commercial station we received, the NBC affiliate. (I didn't even have younger siblings I could use as an excuse.) It was a fair trade-off; I learned how to count to 20 in Spanish, and I became a lifelong fan of the Muppets, much more so than from having watched The Muppet Show. It's true for television viewing, just as it is for the rest of life, that desperate men do desperate things.

And speaking of children's programming, it certainly couldn't be due to Sesame Street's popularity that all three commercial networks suddenly and simultaneously announced top executives dedicated exclusively to children's shows. NBC president Julian Goodman warned that the supposedly dismal state of kiddie shows won't change overnight; "Good children's programming takes time," he said. 

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The American Basketball Association, upstart competitor to the established National Basketball Association, makes its network television debut on Saturday, as CBS covers the third annual ABA All-Star Game from Indianapolis. (11:00 a.m. PT) It's the first sign of progress on the TV front since Jack Dolph, former director of CBS Sports, became the league's commissioner last year in an express bid to land a national television contract for the league. The fact that the ABA never succeeded in achieving the same kind of TV exposure as the NBA isn't entirely Dolph's fault, given that the NBA's own TV deal didn't eactly set the world on fire (remember how the NBA finals were shown on tape delay in the 1980s?), but it does cause one to wonder what might have been had the sports television landscape been different. Witness the Harlem Globetrotters, making their annual appearance on CBS in prime time on Saturday night (7:30 p.m.), in a documentary-style look at the Trotters' tour through Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and Mexico. I'm sure the ABA would have done anything to get a prime time slot of their own.

On Sunday, CBS debuts the Sunday edition of the CBS Evening News with Roger Mudd (6:00 or 6:30 p.m., depending on the market), acknowledging the fact that the news doesn't stop just because it's the weekend. Teevision has always treated weekend newscasts differently from weekday ones; only the Huntley-Brinkley Report ever made an incursion into the weekend, with a Saturday evening edition featuring Chet and David alternating as sole anchors. In fact, many local stations either produced abbreviated newscasts or skipped the weekend altogether. If you'd brought up the idea that in the future there would be networks devoted to nothing but news 24/7, they'd probably have laughed at you.

Bette Davis makes a rare television appearance on Monday, appearing as the one-time "queen of lady thieves" on It Takes a Thief (7:30 p.m., ABC); that's followed by the 1959 shocker Suddenly, Last Summer (8:30 p.m., ABC), starring Elizabeth Taylor, katharine Hepburn, and Montgomery Clift. Compared to the rest of the movie week, Judith Crist finds its "perversion, psychosis and cannibalism" relatively restful to watch. Well, it is by Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal, after all. Better to look elsewhere, such as The Carol Burnett Show (10:00 p.m., CBS), which features an appearance by California governor Ronald Reagan; or The Tonight Show (11:45 p.m., NBC), which includes among its guests Jack Valenti, former aide to LBJ and currently president of the Motion Picture Association of America.

I Dream of Jeannie
and The Debbie Reynolds Show are preempted on Tuesday so that NBC can present the annual highlights show of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, celebrating its 100th year. (7:30 p.m.) Dale Robertson hosts the performance, held in St. Petersburg, Florida. The hour-long broadcast leaves plenty of time to catch NET Festival and its profile of composer David Amram, one of my favorite composers (9:00 p.m., NET). In addition to composing the music for movies such as The Manchurian Candidate, Amram has written music for televison, theater, and the concert hall, including "Three Songs for America," which blends music to the words of JFK, RFK, and MLK, and "A Year in Our Land," a cantata with words from American writers including James Baldwin and Walt Whitman; he's also performed with musicians from Pete Seeger and Lionel Hampton to Steve Martin and Thelonious Monk. David Amram is still alive, by the way, at age 94.

There's something for everyone on Wednesday, depending on your likes. If you're into country music, Loretta Lynn and Merle Haggard guest on Hee Haw (7:30 p.m., CBS); Eddy Arnold hosts Kraft Music Hall, with an eclectic lineup featuring Florence Henderson, Sid Caesar, and Sacha Distel (9:00 p.m., NBC); and The Johnny Cash Show welcomes Glen Campbell, Nancy Ames, and Marty Robbins. For those looking for laughs, Danny Thomas hosts an all-star musical-comedy look at "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow," with Juliet Prowse, Carol Channing, Tim Conway, Dionne Warwick, Marjorie Lord and Angela Cartwright from Make Room for Daddy, and the inevitable appearance by Bob Hope (9:00 p.m., CBS). For drama, Then Came Bronson visits Amish country, where Michael Parks and his motorcycle promise to shake things up (10:00 p.m., NBC). And for intellectual pursuits, it's back to The Tonight Show, with scheduled guests William F. Buckley Jr. and David Susskind (11:30 p.m., NBC).

It's all about stars on Thursday; Angie Dickinson is the guest on Pat Paulson's Half a Comedy Hour (7:30 p.m., ABC), Bob Cummings stars as a priest on The Flying Nun (8:00 p.m., ABC), Lucille Ball and Tom Wolfe are among the guests on The David Frost Show (8:00 p.m., KTXL in Sacramento), Paul Anka and Joni Mitchell are on This Is Tom Jones (9:00 p.m., ABC), and Michael Landon, Pat Crowley, Shecky Greene, and Charles Nelson Reilly join Dean on The Dean Martin Show (10:00 p.m., NBC).

On Friday, former McHale's Navy stars Tim Conway and Joe Flynn debut The Tim Conway Show (8:00 p.m., CBS), a sitcom about two men trying to make ends meet with a struggling one-plane airline. (It airs for the requisite 13 weeks.) On The Name of the Game, Robert Stack is the week's star, as he tries to expose a fradulant psychiatrist played by Richard Kiley (8:30 p.m., NBC). And the winner of the ironic casting of the week award goes to Love, American Style, as one of its sketches features Paul Lynde "as an executive cracking under the strain of working with an ultrasexy secretary" played by Carol Wayne. At least they got her part right. (10:00 p.m., ABC)

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MST3K alert: The Phantom Planet (1961) An astronaut encounters a mysterious society on a distant asteroid. Dean Fredericks, Coleen Gray, Anthony Dexter, Richard Kiel. (Friday/Saturday, 1:00 a.m., KGSC in San Jose) This one plays like a bad episode of Star Trek, with the requisite problems about giants and gravity thrown in, but on the other hand, this is at least the third Richard Kiel movie we've seen on MST3K. After all that, do we really have the right to expect anything more? TV  

January 24, 2025

Around the dial




In case you missed it, I appeared in back-to-back episodes of "American TV" with Dan Schneider, both featuring staples of 1960s and '70s Saturday morning television; the first is about Sid and Marty Krofft, the second looks at the work of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Fun to do and, I hope, fun to watch. 

At Bob Crane: Life and Legacy, the authors provide evidence to refute some of the many false claims about Bob's life, particularly his marriage to Patricia Olson (Sigrid Valdis); it's all part of their continuing efforts to tell the true story.

Jack's Hitchcock Project at bare-bones e-zine continues with "The Motive," a third-season story written by Rose Simon Kohn, featuring Skip Homeier, William Redfield, Carl Betz, Carmen Phillips, and an extremely effectve ending.

At Cult TV Blog, John's private detective "season" continues as well, and for once it's a show I've actually watched! It's the gritty series Public Eye, with Alfred Burke outstanding as a Rockford-type P.I. just trying to make a living; this week, it's the excellent episode "The Bankrupt." 

David's countdown of his 50 favorite classic TV characters proceeds at Comfort TV, and this week he turns his attention to Maxwell Smart, played so memorably by Don Adams; could you even imagine anyone else plausibly in this role?

Jordan's in-depth review of The Twilight Zone Magazine returns at The Twilight Zone Vortex, with Volume 3, Number 6, from January/February 1984. Included is an interview with Stephen King, a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, looks at TZ and The Outer Limits, and more!

At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence looks back at the sitcom The Jeffersons on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the show's debut. After an 11-season run on CBS, it's maintained a comfortable home in syndication, and remains one of television's groundbreaking sitcoms.

Travalanche commemorates the birthday of Ernie Kovacs with something I certainly wasn't aware of, not that I'm any kind of Kovacs scholar. It's about the time Ernie and Buster Keaton formed a comedy team, and it's well worth checking out.

Roger's review of The New Avengers continues apace at The View from the Junkyard, with the third episode of the series, "The Midas Touch," which has to do with a contagious disease threatening society, and features another outstanding performance by Joanna Lumley as Purdy. TV  

January 22, 2025

The golden age of religious television




Over the last 50 or so years, we've become used to seeing, periodically, reports of a religious "revival" on television, and here I'm not talking about the televangelists who've carved out their own piece of the television pie. (That's a topic for another day, and, quite possibly, another forum.) No, what I'm talking about are movies, miniseries or series that, in one way or another, are actually about religion.

This talk starts whenever a series with a vaguely "spiritual" theme becomes successful—it's seldom prompted by an unsuccessful series.* And it's true that there have been a number of series over the decades that have succeeded in crossing over from the niche religious audience to wider ratings success, from Jesus of Nazareth to The Chosen, Highway to Heaven, Touched by an Angel, Seventh Heaven, Joan of Arcadia, and the like. Some of them are more traditionally religious than others, and some could probably be more properly categorized as "family-friendly" rather than religious. 

*Think McLean Stevenson's sitcom In the Beginning, or Nothing Sacred, a bomb about a progressive Catholic priest.

But whenver one of these "revivals" happens, the cover of TV Guide trumpets the news that God is back on television. You'd be forgiven if you didn't remember these occasions, coming as they did sandwiched between pictures of ever-more-scantily dressed starlets displaying their décolletage while promoting their latest hot series or movie.

Admit itwhich one of these covers are you more likely to have noticed?

But in the 1950s and '60s, actual religious programming—not spiritual, not religious-themed, but Bible-type religion—was a far-more frequent occurrance on television, something as ordinary as a sitcom or police drama. You probably know about heavy-hitters such as Bishop Fulton Sheen and Billy Graham, fixtures on network and syndicated television throughout television's mid-century era; many episodes of Bishop Sheen's Life is Worth Living are available on YouTube, and historic Billy Graham crusades can be found on TBN, as well as on YouTube

But one site I want to bring to your attention today is Gospel Film Library (also available on Roku), where you can now acquaint (or reacquaint) yourself with many of the religious programs that were mainstream staples of television's early decade. Their website describes Gospel Films Archive as "a repository of films that chronicle how the Bible, faith and Christianity was presented to 20th century audiences through the medium of film and television. Our mission is to track down, digitize, and restore hundreds of Christian films that have renewed relevance in the modern era."

What I appreciate about GFL, in addition to the content, is the role it plays in preserving an underappreciated part of television history, one that reflects how American culture has shifted over the decades. Whereas so many of today's "God" programs are primarily based either on an appeal to emotions or a religion-free discussion of ethics, the programs included in the Gospel Film Library "reflect Biblical history and Christian ideology, while addressing topics that remain relevant to contemporary audiences. Many of these rare, neglected, historic films were crafted by talented Hollywood filmmakers expressly for Christian organizations. Other films with strong spiritual themes were produced by traditional studios for mainstream theatrical and television audiences." 

The film library includes many 30-minute programs that were seen frequently on local stations throughout the '50s and '60s, especially at Christmas or Easter, and are going to be familiar to anyone acquainted with TV Guides of the time. There are also three series that ran either on network television or in syndication: Crossroadsa multidenominational program that dramatized the experiences encountered by clergymen; This is the Life, produced by the Lutheran Church, which ran in syndication from 1952 to 1988; and The Christopher Program, created by Catholic priest Fr. James Keller. Episodes of these shows were run and rerun in syndication for years, and attracted loyal and appreciative audiences. Thanks to GSL, you can now see episodes of these programs, which featured both familiar faces and up-and-coming actors, including a very young James Dean.

Graphic courtesy Gospel Film Library

There have been other religious programs on network television throughout the years. Perhaps the best-known, as well as the longest-running, was Fr. Elwood Kieser's creative and dynamic Insight, which aired in syndication from 1960 to 1985, and featured top talent from Hollywood actors, writers, and directors, many of whom donated their time and talent to work on the program. (Thanks to my friend Tony Pizza for the reminder!) There were also the Sunday morning programs Look Up and Live and Lamp Unto My Feet, both of which ran on CBS until 1979; For Our Times, a combination of the two programs that continued until 1988; and Directions, which aired on ABC from 1960 to 1984 and featured cultural presentations as well as dramas and documentaries. 

Today, there are a plethora of cable stations devoted to religion (EWTN and TBN), as well as syndicated televangelist programs that still dominate Sunday mornings in some markets. But as for the types of programs that you can see on Gospel Film Library—well, good luck finding anything like that on network television.

What happened? Well as early as 1954, Leonard Goldenson, head president of ABC (the network most heavily invested in religious programming) decided that "a television network was not the place for religious programs," and cancelled both Billy Graham's Hour of Decision and This is the Life. While Goldenson cited low ratings "hurting the 'flow' of ABC's entertainment programs," that argument doesn't really hold water, given that Hour of Decision was the last program on ABC's Sunday night lineup; according to one historian, Goldenson "simply felt uncomfortable about organized religion." (It also didn't stop ABC from picking up Bishop Sheen's Life is Worth Living from DuMont.) The times were also a-changing as the '50s gave way to the '60s; I probably don't need to go any further on that. There's a very good article about the history of religious programming on TV during this era, which discusses the rise and fall of religion on network television, which I would happily recommend.

I'd also happily recommend Gospel Film Library to those of you interested in finding out more about some of these programs, and to see yet another aspect of television's often-ignored heritage. If groups like GFL don't preserve this history, nobody else will. TV  

January 20, 2025

What's on TV? Monday, January 19, 1959




Even NBC, the color network, has very few color shows in 1959, though two of the three color broadcasts today are for daytime quiz shows. That probably had a lot to do with the ability of various studios to handle color broadcasts; non-color studios will continue to be converted throughout the early and mid '60s. It's also been said that daytime color broadcasts allowed shoppers to see demonstrations of them in department stores, thus encouraging purchases. On the other hand, CBS has but one colorcast, Lowell Thomas' special High Adventure, seen at 9:00 p.m. on three of the four CBS affiliates in this issue. That will end as the network becomes convinced of its viability (and also gets over losing the initial color technology battle to NBC). The listings today are in living black-and-white from the Minnesota State Edition.

January 18, 2025

This week in TV Guide: January 17, 1959




Xe start off the week with Bob Johnson's very amusing article on James Garner and Jack Kelley, the "Maverick Brothers" of ABC's Sunday night series.

The two stars maintain separate lives; Johnson suggests that "the boys don't like to discuss each other," although I'm not sure that there's any particular animosity between them. Certainly Garner, who was the first Maverick, is also first among equals; his episodes have higher ratings, and his appearances outnumber Kelly's through the course of the season (of the 20 episodes so far this season, nine have starred Garner, six for Kelly, and five have featured both of them.

It's not hard to dissect Garner's popularity: his easy-going manner, the implicit humor he brings to the role, are all products of his acting talent—or, as he puts it, his lack of same. He's no actor, he insists, but a personality; in fact, he can't act. "I'll learn if I have to, but I haven't had to yet. I'm playing me. Bret Maverick is lazy. I'm lazy. I like to get the bit over with at the studio and get out of there. I like being lazy." He adds that he's never taken a script home to study, "and I don't plan to."

You might be familiar with the story behind Maverick, of how the first few episodes were played straight—stock Westerns—until bored scriptwriter Marion Hargroves inserted a stage direction that changed the series forever. "Maverick," he wrote, "looks at him with his beady little eyes." Garner loved it. "You can't say that about a star," the research department told Hargroves. Nonsense, replied Hargroves; he'd met Garner, and he does have beady little eyes.

Soon the series had made the transformation to a comedy, and the Maverick boys "have been subjected to more house gags, in stage directions by Hargrove and other writers, than any two other actors living." For example, when Kelly leaves the saloon, he doesn't just leave. "He sees his horse. He smiles. His horse sees him and just nods." Garner is described  as "ahr hero" or "an itinerant clergyman," and when he considers a problem, "we can see his flabby little mind make a small connection." There's even a situation where "His face shows resentment, frustration, anxiety and anything else the director thinks he can get out of him." These directions don't explicitly show up on screen, of course, but it influences the way Garner and Kelly play their roles, and more important it indicates the spirit that has infected the entire show.

Interestingly, Kelly thinks the show can go three more seasons after this one, but "Garner has other ideas." As to what those ideas are, Johnson doesn't really say; instead, he captures Garner talking about the recent satire the show did on Gunsmoke. ("It's a classic.") Garner's other ideas, however, don't include three more seasons of Maverick; he quits the series in 1960 in a dispute with Warner Brothers, a case he wins in court. He's replaced by, at various times, Roger Moore and Robert Colbert; ultimately, in the fifth and final season (as Jack Kelly predicted), reruns of old Garner stories alternate with Kelly's new shows. Maverick ends its run with a secure place in TV history, and a warm spot in viewers' hearts.

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One of Ed Sullivan's first great on-air challenges came from Steve Allen, who left Tonight to take over an NBC variety show which, at the beginning, aired opposite Ed. It didn't run as long as Ed's, of course, but then Allen said his goal was never to conquer Ed, but to coexist with him, which he did for three seasons. Let's see who gets the best of the contest this week.

Sullivan: Ed's guests are actress Celeste Holm; French singer Edith Piaf; musical-comedy star Pat Suzuki; operatic soprano Antonietta Stella; musical-comedy writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green, currently appearing on Broadway in a two-man show; comedian Alan Drake; and juggler Francis Brunn.

Allen: Steve's guests are actress Esther Williams and singers Vic Damone and Jennie Smith. A large part of tonight's show takes place in and around a swimming pool located in the studio. Steve dons a bathing suit to join Miss Williams in an aquatic comedy routine.

As far as stars go, it's hard to top Celeste Holm, Edith Piaf, and Comden and Green. As far as entertainment, Steve Allen in a bathing suit with Esther Williams, cavorting in a studio swimming pool—that says it all. It depends on what turns you on, which is why this week is a push.

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That man in the baggy blue uniform is Bob Keeshan, aka Captain Kangaroo, whose show stands out "amid the cacophonous carnival of TV attractions for children" featuring broad slapstick comedy and raucous peanut galleries. Instead, the good Captain (his name comes from the enormous pockets on his jacket, vaguely resembling a kangaroo's pouch) treats them to "beautiful music, dancing, unusual games and toys, live animals, amusing cartoons, simple studies of nature, and tips on how to make things." 

Keeshan's entire television career has been about children. For five years he played the voiceless Clarabell the Clown on Howdy Doody, and followed that up with two local kids' shows in New York. Talking about the philosophy behind his series, Keeshan stresses the importance of his "gentle lessions" he presents to his young viewers, which mirror those he's imparted on his own children. "One important lesson I try to teach my own kids is that gentleness in a person doesn't necessarily indicate weakness; and that good manners and thoughtfullness are necessary to a happy life."

He's an ambassador for UNICEF, and creator of the "Trick or Treat" campaign that encouraged kids to collect coins, rather than Halloween candy, for the UN organization. (He's pictured above talking about UNICEF with three of Sir Winston Churchill's grandchildren.) Its success had led him to travel to other countries, including a stop at the Brussels World's Fair, encouraging similar ideas. He has a long-term goal of creating a news show for children, explaining the issues of the day in a way that they can understand. (A forerunner of In the News, perhaps?) Says Keeshan, "Children are an important part of the world—today's world. We owe them an honest explanation of what's happening to it."

Reading this brief article, one sees many of the same qualities and concerns that Fred Rogers would teach to later generations of children, and it's unfortunate, I think, that Captain Kangaroo often gets overlooked amidst the deserved praise that we've lavished on Mister Rogers over the years. Is it because of the Captain's episodes (the show ran on CBS from 1955 to 1984) were, as was too often the case back then, wiped? Or did Mister Rogers' Neighborhood come along at a time when children's programming was even worse, relatively speaking, than it was when Captain Kangaroo started? I'm not sure which, but the two men were great admirers of each other, and the shows themselves were never in competition. I've written about Captain Kangaroo before, noting the irony that the "Love Generation" that viewed his program often displayed attributes directly at odds with those he strove to teach them. Regardless, it's good to remember the genuine concern Bob Keeshan had for his young viewers, and the lessons he worked so hard and so long to teach them.

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Lest we get too caught up in the panacea of the 1950s, Wednesday reminds us of the decade's downside, with Edward R. Murrow's The Lost Class of '59 (7:00 p.m, CBS), a report on six high schools in Norfolk, Virginia, that the state ordered closed rather than submit to a federal court order to integrate. Murrow interviews local and state officials, segregation leaders and their opponents, and four local students to get their views on the situation, which affects some 43,000 students, including the "Norfolk 17," 17 black students whose attempt to enroll sparked the crisis. 

The Lost Class of '59
turns a national spotlight on Norfolk, bringing "unwanted" attention to the school crisis. Shortly after the broadcast, a group of 100 business leaders take out ◀ a full-page ad in the Virginian Pilot, urging that the schools reopen; they concede that while they prefer segregated schools, it's time to acknowledge and accept the "new reality." A week later, on February 2, the schools are reopened; by that time, however, many of the affected students had scattered to other schools in other cities and states, while others stayed home, married, or joined the military. On the 50th anniversary, honorary diplomas were awarded to 1,300 seniors who lost the experience of their senior year in high school. 

Murrow and producer Fred Friendly receive a Peabody Award for The Lost Class of '59, "for their concise reporting and compassionate insight into the plight of the group most seriously affected by the struggle for integration.  

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On a very quiet Saturday, I'll give the nod to Perry Como's show (7:00 p.m., NBC). Perry's guest stars are Nat King Cole, the McGuire Sisters, and Dick Van Dyke. At 11:30 p.m., KDAL in Duluth has the movie Michael Shayne, Private Detective, starring Lloyd Nolan. It's actually a pretty good movie if you forget both the novels by Brett Halliday and the series starring Richard Denning. Opposite that, on WTCN, is I Led Three Lives, and this week "Herb Philbrick becomes embroiled in a Communist plot to infiltrate a labor union." What a shock.

Returning to the news beat for a moment, Meet the Press expands to an hour on Sunday afternoon (5:00 p.m., NBC) for an appearance by Soviet First Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan, next to Khruschev the most powerful man in the Soviet Union. Mikoyan was a survivor if nothing else, serving Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev, and was one of the rare top Soviet officals to retire rather than meet a violent death at the hands of a rival; although he was forced out by Brezhnev, he was "allowed" to die of natural causes in 1978. In the great panoply of Communist figures, Mikoyan was thought to be friendlier to the United States than most, one reason why was sent to represent the USSR at the funeral of John F. Kennedy. He's being interviewed here on the occasion of his second trip to America.

The second half of Meet the Press runs into competition from ABC, with the final round of the Binbg Crosby Pro-Am golf tournament from Pebble Beach, California. (4:30 p.m.) Then, as now, the stars are part of the attraction, and this year's batch is expected to include Bob Hope, Phil Harris, Desi Arnaz, James Garner, Bob Crosby, Fred MacMurray, Randolph Scott and Dennis O'Keefe. And then there's Der Bingle, of course. It's as fine a lineup of stars as you'll see anywhere on TV this week.

There are a few stars left over for Sunday evening, though, as Nina Foch stars in a special presentation of Agatha Christie's famed mystery Ten Little Indians. (6:00 p.m., NBC) In today's politically correct times, it would probably be known by its alternate title, "And Then There Were None." Fine with me; the original title of the story is even more problematic. At 8:00 p.m., it's G.E. Theater on CBS, starring Tony Curtis, in the David and Goliath story, "The Stone." (8:00 p.m., CBS)

An ad in this week's issue proclaims CBS's hour-long block of The Danny Thomas Show and The Ann Sothern Show on Monday as the "funniest hour on TV." I wouldn't know about that, not being a particular fan of either one—which leads me to ask whether, aside from us classic TV aficionados, anyone really remembers them anymore. I'm not being sarcastic in asking this question, just wondering what kind of a cultural footprint either of them left. Danny Thomas, of course, is probably best known for St. Jude Children's Hospital, but how many know that at one time he was considered "one of television's greatest comedians"? Just a thought. At any rate, Danny's guest tonight is Tennessee Ernie Ford (8:00 p.m.), which counts for something. Meanwhile, Ann Sothern (8:30 p.m.) resurrects the old question facing women of the time: do you choose a career, or marriage? To find out, though, you'll have to pass up Peter Gunn on NBC and The Voice of Firestone on ABC. 

If one night of Steve Allen (Sunday) is good, two nights must be better, right? Tuesday is the second night, and The Bob Cummings Show* is the occasion (8:30 p.m., NBC). Tonight, Bob tries to get rid of his girlfriend Betty (Joyce Jameson) by telling her that he can get her a job on Steve's show. Have you seen that one, Hal Horn? Even more significant than a second night of Steve, though, is the first night of Alcoa Presents (9:00 p.m., ABC), which you'll probably recognize by its subtitle: One Step Beyond. The much-loved supernatural cult series, presented by John Newland, will stick around for three seasons, joining a panoply that includes The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.

*Fun fact: According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, The Bob Cummings Show was the first series to debut as a midseason replacement. There's no citation to prove it, though. 

Lawrence Welk is one of the few stars to enjoy the distinction of two weekly prime time programs running each week; besides his better-known Saturday night extravaganza, he also has an hour each Wednesday. Initially known as Lawrence Welk Presents Top Tunes and New Talent, it now carries the title The Lawrence Welk Plymouth Show (6:30 p.m., ABC), and it has a distinction of its own: according to the always-reliable Wikipedia, the Welk Plymouth Show is the first television program to be aired in stereo; this was accomplished, "by ABC simulcast the show on its radio network, with the TV side airing one audio channel and the radio side airing the other; viewers would tune in both the TV and the radio to achieve the stereophonic effect." As corroboration, the program description notes that viewers watching the show on WTCN, the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis-St. Paul, "can hear this program in stereophonic sound by also tuning to radio station WTCN, operating on 1280 kilocycles." 

On Thursday, Cesar Romero guest stars as "The Gay Caballero" (not to be confused with Guy Caballero) on Zorro (7:00 p.m., ABC). I'll bet he steals the show. At 8:30 p.m., CBS's Playhouse 90 presents "The Velvet Alley," a Rod Serling play about a struggling writer who may have finally gotten his big break when he sells a script to—Playhouse 90. Art Carney makes a rare dramatic appearance as the playwright who has to ask himself whether success is worth selling your soul.

Speaking of show-stealing and meta stories, Phil Silvers is well-positioned to steal Friday in an expanded one-hour edition of his series (8:00 p.m., CBS) which is wonderfully, bizarrely meta. In it, Sydney Chaplin (actor and son of Charlie), playing himself, plans to use Bilko's life story for an Army musical. Bilko travels to Hollywood to meet the actor chosen to play him: Phil Silvers! Diana Dors, also playing herself, guests; later this year, she'll marry an actor who'll do pretty well in an Army sitcom himself—Richard Dawson.

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A word about the changing face of television production. While the movie studios have tried, once they realized that television wasn't going anywhere, to enter the TV production industry, the three studios that today dominate television are all independent from the movie moguls: Desilu, Screen Gems, and Revue. Together, as Dan Jenkins reports, the three of them will do an estimated gross of $100 million in this fiscal year, all of it in television. And their output far dwarfs that of their big-screen counterparts.

As an example, the three networks use an average of 36 hours of film in prime time each week, the equivalent of 24 feature films. Over the course of a 39-week television season, that amounts to an equivalent of 936 movies, more than four-and-a-half times the number of movies turned out by studios in 1958. And keep in mind that these figures don't include syndicated series or shows broadcast outside prime time.

Of the three, Screen Gems is the oldest, having started out in 1949 as a subsidiary of Columbia. Desilu represents "the ever-lengthening shadow of one man, Desi Arnaz," who has gone from being virtually shoved down CBS's throat by his wife, Lucille Ball, to become television's most successful producer, with three former motion picture studios and more soundstanges than are owned by MGM.* Revue, the third of the big three, grosses an estimated $40,000 per episode, multiplied by 39 episodes, for each of the series in its stable. Together, the three turn out 32 network and syndicated shows, representing 17 hours of television per week, "more than twice the footage of all the major and indpenedent movie companies combined." 

*And this is how, as the cover notes, Lucy and Desi became "America's Favorite Tycoons." 

There are, however, challenges on the horizon. Warner Bros. currently puts out four hours of television per week on ABC alone, including the aforementioned Maverick. Walt Disney has three film shows of his own on the same network, while other studios, including Ziv, "sausage-grinder of the syndication field," and George Burns' McCadden Productions.

For the most part, Jenkins notes, members from the motion picture industry have had little to do with the rise of television productions. Even when the studios have jumped into TV, they've chosen TV-trained executives, such as Harry Ackerman at Screen Jems, and Martin Manulis at Fox. Even in the case of rising contender Four Star Films, which was founded by movie actors Dick Powell, David Nive, and Charles Boyer, the organization was put together by radio-TV agent-producer Don Sharpe. 

Times will change, though. Remember not that long ago, we read about Lucille Ball selling out Desilu to Paramount. WB will become more and more prominent in television, and Disney will come to control just about everything. But in the meantime there is no question that the big three are part of Hollywood's new elite, in an industry that didn't even exist ten years ago.

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And now a moment to mention this week's starlet, 23-year-old Nancy Malone: 23, "red-haired and blue-eyed and freckled and pert." She's been acting since she was 11, and left school at 17 to appear in the Broadway play Time Out for Ginger. Since then she's appeared on many of the New York-based dramatic anthologies (Studio One, Armstrong Circle Theatre, Robert Montgomery Presents, the Hallmark Hall of Fame) and is currently a regular on the CBS sudser The Brighter Day, along with her dog, Miss Madrigal (five years old, half beagle, half dachshund, likes to chase squirels). 

Next year she'll take on her best-known role, that of Libby Kingston, aspiring actress and good-hearted girlfriend of Paul Burke's Detective Adam Flint, in Naked City. She'll remain on Naked City for three seasons; later, she'll be one of the stars on ABC's The Long Hot Summer. After that, she'll work her way up the entertainment ladder, moving into producing and directing (where she wins an Emmy and is nominated for two others), and does a stint as vice-president of television at 20th Century Fox. Always a pleasure to watch, she's an example of a starlet who makes good.

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Finally, some notes from the TV Teletype:

Bill Lundigan's new series Moon Flight, which is billed as a "new semidocumentary series abou tman's exploration of space," has gone into production. It will emerge with a new name, Men Into Space, when it airs this September on CBS. You can catch reruns of it on Comet if you're so inclined. And speaking of new series, that guest appearance by Tennessee Ernie Ford on Monday's Danny Thomas Show made an impact on the producer, who liked the character Ernie played on the show and thought it was a great idea for a new sitcom—not for Ernie, but for Andy Griffith. They're working on it now, and when it premieres as The Andy Griffith Show in October 1960, it will find a place in television history.

Dwayne Hickman is leaving the aforementioned The Bob Cummings Show at the end of this season for his own series, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, good for four seasons on CBS starting this fall. The detective series Peter Gunn, which debuted last September on NBC, has been picked up for the rest of the year—a full 39 episodes. And Dave Garroway has postponed his trip to Paris from April until early May; there's a funny ancedote about that trip in my interview with Jodie Peeler.

Finally, a note from the local section that Miss America 1959, Carol Ann Mobley, "is in town to crown the North St. Paul Jaycee Queen," and will be appearing with Arle Haeberle on her WCCO afternoon show Around the Town. I don't see any "Carol Ann Mobley" as Miss America, in 1959 or any other year. There is, however, a Mary Ann Mobley, who happens to be Miss America 1959. I hope the Jaycees that were expecting Carol weren't too disappointed. TV