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  

1 comment:

  1. Montalban had a reputation as one of the nicest actors in Hollywood. Never got into Fantasy Island, but his performance in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan will be forever remembered.
    He was a devout Catholic (I remember watching a documentary he did about Our Lady of Fatima.) He was also married to the same woman for over 60 years.

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