Back in the 1970s, though, the game was the thing, to paraphrase Shakespeare, and over the first seven editions, the "ultimate game" hadn't really delivered much. Several of them had been blowouts, the two games won by the AFL had been huge upsets but not all that interesting, and the closest game—Baltimore's 16-13 victory over Dallas three years ago—had been so full of mistakes by both teams pit was called the "Blunder Bowl."
That doesn't stop CBS from offering up today's contest as the "ultimate game," utilizing 14 color cameras and six miles of cable, and "[n]o fewer than 15 experts will be trotted out, or roughly one expert for every five players who'll see action." But, then, who says it's about the game? "The past seven Super Bowls have sold 543,852 tickets, taken in $25 million and paid $8.7 million to the athletes. NBC and CBS, investing $17,750,000 for telecast rights since 1967, now reach 28 milion homes and some 75 million people. A cool 10 million words have been filed from Super Bowl press boxes." That's what the Super Bowl is all about, Charlie Brown.
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.
Two of television's definitive rock music shows, NBC's The Midnight Special and ABC's In Concert, faced off on Friday nights in the early '70s. Whenever the two slug it out, we'll be on hand to see who's better, who's best.
It's a big week on the movie front, dominated by a trio of John Wayne classics, foremost among them being with the second showing of The Duke's Oscar-winning turn in True Grit (Sunday, 7:30 p.m., ABC). Judith Crist finds it irrestible, "one of the rip-roaringest, snortingest (and belchingest) entertainments in a long time." It is, she says, "early John Wayne in spirit, the latter-day Wayne in the flesh." The previous night, on the same network, we're treated to the fourth telecast of The Sons of Katie Elder (Saturday, 8:30 p.m.), "still as good-natured and simple-minded as ever," with Wayne as the eldest of the Elder boys, and Dean Martin next in line, "and you can write the script yourself." The week wraps up with the third showing of The Undefeated (Friday, 8:30 p.m., CBS), with Rock Hudson sharing the bill. It's "spiced by brawls, massacres, murders and executions. Just a good clean all-American entertainment." Hey, it works for me.
Sunday features one of the most popular episodes of Columbo, "Publish or Perish" (8:30 p.m., NBC), in which the consummate Columbo villain, Jack Cassidy, returns as a publisher who hires a hitman to bump off his his leading writer (Mickey Spillaine!), who's preparing to move over to another publishing house. Meanwhile, Watergate is going to play out in a big way in 1974, and on Firing Line (10:00 p.m., PBS), host William F. Buckley Jr. and presidential aide Patrick Buchanan discuss the subpoenaed White House tapes, plus media coverage of the scandal.
We'll turn to late night for Wednesday's highlight, a 90-minute roast of Steve Allen on ABC's Wide World of Entertainment (11:30 p.m.). The occasion is Allen's 25th year on television, and many former co-stars from his various shows are on hand, including Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, Jayne Meadows, Louis Nye, and Tim Conway; George Burns, Buddy Hackett, Rowan & Martin, Jack Carter, and Zsa Zsa Gabor are also on hand. Milton Berle is the roastmaster. I'm happy to report that you can catch it all here.
The Woman's Lib movement is in full swing in 1974, and perhaps the most dramatic television example comes on Friday, when Boston's WBZ devotes the entire day—not just prime time, but 16 hours, from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., to a live special, Yes, We Can!, "entirely produced and staffed by women, with only women appearing on air, discussing women’s concerns." As you can see from the ad at the left, there's no topic off limits; it sounds much like the kinds of day-long seminars conducted nowadays, with main speakers, breakout sessions, vendors, demonstrations, and various activities from which attendees can pick and choose. A live variety show hosted by entertainment critic Pat Mitchell, featuring only female entertainers (including Helen Reddy and The Labelles) precedes the special at 10:00 p.m. on Thursday.
MST3K alert: The Human Duplicators (1964) Outer-space aliens pose as humans in their plan for conquest. George Nader, Barbara Nichols, George Macready, Richard Arlen, Huge Beaumont, Richard Kiel, Dolores Faith, Tommy Leonetti, Lonnie Satin. Good cast in a so-so sci-fi movie. (Saturday, 11:30 p.m., Channel 5) The description isn't exactly accurate; Richard Kiel plays an alien plotting to create android duplicates to use in the takeover of Earth. But the movie doesn't really matter; what you want to see is the second appearance of "Hugh Beaumont" (Michael J. Nelson), this time griping about how it's always "How's Beaver?" but never "How's Hugh." Worth the price of admission. TV
Al Stump uses the "Super Bore" line in his preview of Sunday's Big Game between the defending champion Miami Dolphins and the NFC champion Minnesota Vikings, from Rice Stadium in Houston (3:30 p.m. ET, CBS). Even in its infancy, the game had a feeling approaching "near-lunacy," with the game being the last thing on anyone's mind; Washington defensive back Mike Bass recalls having to attend three team press conferences, photo events, program signing parties, team busses stalled in traffic jams (last year's game was played in Los Angeles), besides practicing for, you know, the game. "Things are so wild that you're distracted—to the point where you can't perform normally on the field. At the kickoff, those 22 cats out there are in trouble, man." Not surprisingly, the game itself was "dull and a letdown, with some spectators walking out before the Dolphins finally beat the skins 14-7."
Stump calls these past games "a bore, and, at times, a farce," where the teams "make an abundance of errors and do little scoring." Coaches, feeling the pressure and fearing defeat, run ultra-conservative game plans and use even tighter defenses than the regular season. There have been few spectacular plays in Super Bowls (only four times has a runner gained 20 or more yards on a single run), and no last-minute comebacks. And in those seven games, a total of only 12 touchdown passes have been thrown. (In fact, there have only been 25 touchdowns in total scored in the game's history.)
As I mentioned at the outset, the Super Bowl has come a long way since these early days. The networks spend more and more money to broadcast the game to more and more viewers, while commercials sell for extraordinarily obscene amounts of money (in 1974, 30 seconds sold for $103,000, while last year, a half-minute commercial would cost you $7 million.) The game was played in the afternoon back in 1974 (preceded by an NBA game), and the pregame show was only 30 minutes long. The half-time entertainment was provided by the University of Texas Longhorn Band, with Miss Texas, Judy Mallett, playing the fiddle. Networks didn't bother to try and introduce a promising show in the coveted post-game timeslot; Super Bowl VIII was followed by the local news.
As for Super Bowl VIII? Well, it fit the pattern to a T; the Dolphins dominated early and often with its ground game; Miami quarterback Bob Griese through only seven passes (completing six, for 63 yards total), while the Dolphins rushed for almost 200 yards on 53 attempts. No touchdown passes were thrown by either team. The final score was Miami 24, Minnesota 7, and it wasn't even that close.
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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. James Stewart's transition to television as star of his own series has not, Cleveland Amory says, been a smooth one. In his previous try, the "unlamented" Jimmy Stewart Show, he played a college professor "with all the authority of a nervous giraffe." Now, as a high-powered country lawyer in the 90-minute Hawkins, airing as part of CBS's new Tuesday Night Movies wheel series, he returns to "the kind of role that made him famous—the barefoot boy with chic." And while he has all the gestures down pat, it's the kind of character that has always had a limited range; "At its best, it makes you nostalgic for some of Mr. Stewart's old films. At its worst, it makes you wonder what you ever saw in them."
We could just stop right here, because this gives you the jist of Cleve's thoughts on Hawkins, but we continue because 1) he has more to say about why he feels this way, and 2) I have two more paragraphs to fill. The problem with a series like Hawkins, is that it plays to all the cliches we've come to expect from shows with a cornpone sense of things. Take Stewart's character, for instance, whose name is Billy Jim Hawinks. (He has a cousin, "R.J.," played by Strother Martin, and a nephew, "Jeremiah," in case we didn't get the point.) As the series is structured, Hawkins is often retained to travel to the big city to defend big shots, which gives it the fish-out-of-water trope of McCloud, plus the aw-shucks jurisprudence that Andy Griffith would put to more effective use in Matlock. Hawkins plays up this angle, which we know is false to start with because otherwise he wouldn't have such a reputation that the big shots hire him instead of, say, F. Lee Bailey.
The plots don't help out. One involved one of Billy Jim's kinfolk who's killed in a Civil War recreation, and Hawkins not only has to defend the man accused of the crime (who happens to be thoroughly unlikable) but also has to prevent an old feud from flaring up. Even Lew Ayres, who played a Civil War historian, couldn't save this one. Neither could Julie Harris, in another episode that involves a rich old man who's murdered by his much younger wife; "there is," Amory observes, "one time when Billy Jim gets driven off the road," but as far as suspense goes, "that was it." It's all too bad, because James Stewart, throughout his career, gave ample evidence of being able to play a character with a very sharp, and vary dark, edge. Something like that might have helped Hawkins make it past one season, although Stewart himself asked that the show be cancelled becaue he didn't believe the scripts could measure up to the quality he'd been used to working with. It's another case, I fear, of what might have been.
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Midnight: Host Smoke Robinson welcomes blues group Paul Butterfield's Better Days, soul artists Eddie Kendricks, Johnny Taylor, Edwin Starr and Ann Peebles, and rock group Grin. Smokey sings "The Tracks of My Tears," "The Tears of a Clown," "Mickey's Monkey," "Show and Tell."
Concert: An all-oldioes show featuring Jerry Lee Lewis, Del Shannon, Little Anthony, Freddie Cannon and Rufus Young. Songs include "Great Balls of Fire," "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On'" (Lewis), "Runaway," "Handy Man" (Shannon), "Hurt So Bad" (Little Anthony).
The emphasis is on the oldies this week, and the winner depends in large part on what suits your taste. As for me, it'll be tough to beat Del Shannon and The Killer, so the summary is short and sweet: Concert has the fire this week.
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Having looked back at last Saturday's writeup, I think I fell short when it came to looking at what was actually on TV. That doesn't mean it was bad; I wouldn't have given it to you if I'd thought that. But let's see what's up besides the Super Bowl and our rock shows.
It's a tribute to John Wayne's star power that this triple-header relegates to second place the network television premiere of From Russia with Love, the second of the James Bond adventures (Monday, 9:00 p.m., ABC, and what a movie week they're having!), with Sean Connery as dynamic as ever as the superspy, Robert Shaw and Lotte Lenya as the heavies, and Daniela Bianchi as "the major sexpot" (although I don't think that's how she appears in the credits. Crist calls it "vintage grown-up nonsense," which is a compliment coming from her. And as if it weren't already a big week for ABC, Wednesday night sees a repeat of 1972's The Night Stalker (8:00 p.m.), "that diverting tale of a vampire stalking Las Vegas," starring Darren McGavin, Simon Oakland, and Carol Lynley in the first of two TV-movies leading to the much-loved Kolchak series.
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And now for the rest of the week, and though I've mentioned this before, I'll say it again: Saturday night used to be a prime night for television, and on a week-to-week basis nothing surpasses the Murderer's Row CBS schedule, with All in the Family at 8:00 p.m., M*A*S*H T 8:30, Mary Tyler Moore at 9:00, The Bob Newhart Show at 9:30, and The Carol Burnett Show at 10:00; Carol's guests tonight are Eydie Gorme and Paul Sand. Add to that The Sons of Katie Elder on ABC and another Western, The Way West, with Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, and Richard Widmark on NBC 9:00 p.m.), and you can see why people used to stay home. Why that changed, I'm not sure.
Avid readers (as well as fans of Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry) will remember P.G. Wodehouse as the author of the wonderfully witty Jeeves and Wooster stories (35 short stories and 11 novels, written between 1915 and 1974). Despite their being set in a world that is long gone, however, Wodehouse is still alive and writing at age 92, and on Monday night he's the guest of Bob Cromie on Book Beat (10:30 p.m., PBS), where he reflects on the disappearance of humorous writing and recalls some of his contemporaries, including James Thurber and Dorothy Parker.
The Super Bowl isn't the only stare-studded sports event this week; Tuesday night sees the NBA All-Star Game, live from Seattle (9:30 p.m., CBS). The West Coast locale is, in part, responsible for the late hour of the game's start, but it's also true that the low-rated NBA is no substitute for CBS's regular prime-time lineup, and so the start time allows the network to fit in episodes of Maude and Hawaii Five-O. I doubt that most people remember the game (it was won by the West, 134-123), but they will remember the series that premieres that night on ABC as part of the network's second season: a 50's-inspired sitcom called Happy Days (8:00 p.m.). That's followed at 8:30 p.m. by yet another ABC TV-movie, Mrs. Sundance, a sequel to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Elizabeth Montgomery in the title role, with future husband Robert Foxworth as the man trying to track her down.
Thursday sees the debuts of two half-hour dramas on ABC; first, it's Chopper One (8:00 p.m.), with Jim McMullan and Dirk Benedict playing cops in helicopters, and Ted Hartley as their boss. It's a formula good for 13 weeks. That's followed by Firehouse (8:30 p.m.), a modification of that formula, starring James Drury, Richard Jaeckel, and Michael Delano as L.A. firefighters; think Emergency! without the paramedic bit. It's also primed for a 13-week run. Better, I think, to go local with WKBG's airing of the political thriller Seven Days in May (8:00 p.m.), starring Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Frederic March, and Ava Gardner.
If you're looking for an alternative to The Duke on Friday night, you can return to ABC for the premiere of The Six Million Dollar Man as a weekly series (8:30 p.m.); formerly, it had been a rotating part of ABC's Movie of the Week, with three telemovies airing in 1973. And, speaking of roasts as we were a moment ago, the final season of Dean Martin's weekly variety series, now on Friday, is best known for the "Man of the Week" celebrity roast; this week, the honoree is baseball's Leo Durocher, with Maury Wills, Dizzy Dean, Bobby Riggs, Alex Karras, Gene Kelly, Chuck Connors, and Foster Brooks among the roasters (10:00 p.m., NBC). Gladys Knight and the Pips are the musical guests. Next season, the celebrity roasts will expand to a full hour and appear as occasional specials.
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It wasn't that long ago that we were marveling at ABC's Africa documentary that took up an entire prime-time in September, 1967, but that was only four hours, not an entire day. The only thing I can think of that compares to this is a telethon, but when you think of it, that's what this amounts to: a telethon raising not funds, but awareness.
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Finally, to answer the question posed on the cover: why TV is having a crime wave. The answer, according to Paul Klein, is a simple one: it normally takes two years for a show to go from idea to treatment to script to sale. Two years ago, two of the big hits on television were Columbo and Cannon. Producers and networks took notice. And here we are today, with crime shows all over teh place. There's more to it than that, of course, but why make things more complicated than they already are?
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