What's on TV? Wednesday, April 6, 1955

We're so used to seeing Andy Williams as host of his own show, we hardly ever think of him as a guest on someone else's show, but of course he wasn't always a big star, and he had to start out somewhere. And if you'd had this 1955 issue from Chicago, you'd have known right where to find him. The Williams Brothers had just broken up in 1953, and in 1954 he began a regular gig on Steve Allen's Tonight Show. His first summer replacement show would be in 1957; he would have two others in the following two years. The Andy Williams Show as we know it began in 1962, and the rest truly is history.

This week in TV Guide: April 2, 1955

That's singer Tony Martin front and center on the cover of this week's issue. By his own admission, he's never been up there with singers like Sinatra—"I'm no sensation," he says, "never have been, don't want to be—but in a career spanning nearly 25 years, he's had more hits along the way than most. Enough, to be sure, that he'll never be known simply as "Mr. Cyd Charisse," speaking of his second wife, who happens to have been Fred Astaire's former partner; the two have been married since 1948, and will remain so until her death 60 years later, in 2008.   

His secret, he tells Robert Johnson, is in "making comebacks." After starting out as a singer on the Burns and Allen radio show (where he often played a foil to Gracie), he moved to headlining at nightclubs, and then to movies, before doing a stint in the Army Air Force, where he sang in the Glenn Miller band. His biggest challenge, he says, has been the move to television. Of his early work in the Monday night NBC series bearing his name, "The results were pretty bad." Since then, working out of Hollywood with producer Bud Yorkin and musical director Hal Borne, the show has made strides with its lavish production. "Costume changes, scenery, special arrangements—how many 15-minute shows would go to all that trouble?"

It does seem like a lot for a show that only fills the half-hour that includes the evening news (Dinah Shore and Eddie Fisher alternate the other four nights), but here again, he has no complaints. "I’m not saying I wouldn’t like as much time on the air as Como or Fisher,” Martin says, “but I was so late getting into TV I figure I’m lucky to have 15 minutes a week of it." He'd like to get his wife on the show, "if we can figure out some way to do her dancing justice." (They'll perform together many times, including multiple future stints hosting The Hollywood Palace.) And, above all, he remains confident. Once asked if he'd read The Power of Positive Thinking, he replied, "I don't need it. I rehearse." It will do him well in a career that will last into his 90s, before his death in 2012 at the age of 98. Not bad, I'd say.

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America's Most Wanted wasn't the first series to use television to identify and help capture criminals, of course. But, as Herman Lowe writes, it's only taken a few short years for television to demonstrate its effectiveness as a video wanted poster of sorts. More than 40 stations nationwide air weekly programs that include pictures and descriptions of those wanted by the FBI, and four men have been arrested as a direct result of the programming, including one who was on the Bureau's famed "Ten Most Wanted" list. Remarkably, two of the four came from the same station, WGAL in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which has been airing the weekly FBI program since 1950. Both apprehensions came after viewers had seen pictures of the men on the program. Other apprehensions occured because of spottings on stations KGNC in Amarillo, Texas and KTNT in Tacoma, Washington (Alex Whitmore, the "Most Wanted" arrest; the man was charted with unlawful interstate flight following assault.)

Naturally, FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover is appreciative of television's help in crime fighting. "The four specific instances of arrests brought about by TV to date, portend greater things to come in the alliance between the communications industry and law enforcement, in coping with the desperate fugitive," he tells TV Guide, and he looks forward to continued work between the Bureau and television stations nationwide, especially with help from agent Lewis Erskine.

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In case you hadn't noticed, this issue is made up of several short features, which means today's writeup will be the same, and, in fact, one of them has to do with the subject of writing. It's a look at the current trend of TV stars turning to authoring books. Celebrity books are nothing new, and you'd be right to wonder if each and every star is responsible for writing each and every word that appears between the covers. 

One of those whom I'm willing to believe did, though, is humorist Fred Allen, a man who, although he had a writing staff, always did the final edit and rewrite of the scripts for his radio program always had a way with words. He already has one book, Treadmill to Oblivion, a memoir of his days in radio, and he's working on another, Much Ado About Me, which will be published posthumously next year, following his death in March.

Bennett Cerf, publisher at Random House and Allen's co-panelist on What's My Line?, didn't need to write the words in his Encyclopedia of Modern American Humor, nor did Down You Go moderator Bergen Evans, whose collection of silly notions appears as The Spoor of Spooks and Other Nonsense. Books by Bob Hope, Dale Evans, Martha Raye, and Groucho Marx are among other tombs filling the shelves, and Arthur Godfrey, Frank Sinatra, and Liberace are said to be working on autobiographies. And then there's Jackie Gleason; the Great One, who's already mentioned once in this issue for the celebration in honor of his 39th birthday (that's him on the right, with Marilyn Monroe and her estranged husband, Joe DiMaggio), is working with Jim Bishop, whose last book, The Day Lincoln Was Shot, was a best-seller. Jackie, of course, only works with writers familiar with big subjects.

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It's Holy Week for Christians, which means some special religious programming, starting on Palm Sunday with a Lutheran service of worship live from Tabernacle Lutheran Church in Philadelphia (10:00 a.m., WNBQ). During the week, Milwaukee's WTMJ presents Holy Week Meditations daily at 12 noon; on Good Friday, the meditation is replaced by a one-hour devotional service. Also on Friday, WBKB presents The Shroud of Turin (4:30 p.m.), a documentary on Christ's burial cloth.

It's also a sacred week in the Jewish faith, with Passover falling on Wednesday, and so we have two Passover Plays broadcast on Sunday: "Night of Vigil" (1:00 p.m., WBBM), the story of Jewish immigrants from Brazil ordered to leave New Amsterdam 300 years ago; and "Home for Passover" (1:30 p.m., WNBQ), based on humorist Sholom Aleichem's story of a teacher trying to get home to his family for Passover.

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And the winners are: the Syracuse Nats!

It's a very quiet time in the sports scene this week; the Stanley Cup finals aren't broadcast in the United States; and since the baseball season only lasts 154 games with no league playoffs, Opening Day isn't for a couple of weeks yet. Therefore, what we have is basketball, specifically the second game of the NBA finals between the Fort Wayne Pistons (now located in Detroit) and Syracuse Nationals (now the Philadelphia 76ers) (Saturday, 2:00 p.m., NBC). This game and the sixth game next Saturday are the only two games of the finals to be broadcast, even though the seventh game is played next Sunday. What can I say? Times have changed. By the way, did you know the Pistons might have thrown that series?

Saturday sees the debut of Ziv's syndicated anthology series Science Fiction Theatre (10:30 p.m., WNBQ), hosted by Truman Bradley. Science Fiction Theatre is hard sci-fi, with none of the cheesy, bug-eyed monsters or planet-hopping expeditons you'd see in the movies of the day. It runs for two seasons, with the first in color; thereafter, it becomes a staple on local stations for years.

Without sports, Sunday has been returned to the world of entertainment, and Omnibus (4:00 p.m., CBS) checks in with a 90-minute dramatic version of Homer's "The Iliad," something you wouldn't likely see on network television today. Later, on Toast of the Town (7:00 p.m., CBS), Ed Sullivan has a terrific lineup of guests, including Fred Astaire, the Will Mastin Trio with Sammy Davis Jr., singers Dorothy Dandridge and Julius La Rosa, comedian Jackie Miles, and British strongwoman Joan Rhodes. That would have won the week, no matter what went up against it.

Academy Award winner Greer Garson makes her widely-heralded television debut Monday night in Producers' Showcase's "Reunion in Vienna" (7:00 p.m., NBC), a romantic comedy with Brian Aherne, Peter Lorre, Robert Flemyng, and Cathleen Nesbitt. In an article accompanying the debut, she talks about why she decided to do television: "When I showed up as the mystery guest on What’s My Line? one night, I was just flabbergasted next morning at the number of people who stopped me on the street to talk about it." Having seen her on TV, they were much more comfortable approaching her than what she'd experienced acting in movies. She doesn't have any intentions of acting in a regular series, even though Bing Crosby has been trying to sign her up for his productdion company. She's enjoying the experience, though; "TV offers a challenge, a real opportun—. . .oh, dear, that sounds awful, doesn’t it? But it really is, you know. I think I’m going to like it."

Former First Daughter Margaret Truman narrates a filmed tour of Washington, D.C. on Today (Tuesday, 7:00 a.m., NBC); it's the first in a series of films on travel spots around the world. I don't know when the film was made, but certainly it would have been smart to do it at the end of March, when the cherry blossoms are out. Of course, seeing as how this is black-and-white, it might not have made that much of an impact. And at 6:30 p.m., it's Dinah Shore's 15-minute songfest that takes us up to Plymouth News Caravan with John Cameron Swayze at 6:45 Tuesdays and Thursdays. She's a trooper; according to the Hollywood Teletype; she's playing with two badly burned wrists as a result of having a hot oven door slammed shut on them.

Wednesday's highlight is undoubtedly on Disneyland (6:30 p.m., ABC), in the animated classic Alice in Wonderland (edited for television time, of course), with the voices of Kathryn Beaumont, Ed Wynn, Richard Haydn, Sterling Holloway, Jerry Colonna, and others. It was originally seen as the second episode of Disneyland back in November; prior to that, Walt Disney had used television heavily as a promotional tool. Even though it's been chopped up and it's airing in black-and-white, it's still a treat. Later in the evening, Best of Broadway presents "Stage Door," adapted by Gore Vidal from the Broadway play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman. Diana Lynn, Rhonda Fleming, Peggy Ann Garner, and Elsa Lanchester are among the stars.

Thursday is, I think, a very good example of what an ordinary evening of television looks like in 1955: The Lone Ranger and his nephew fight stagecoach robbers (6:30 p.m., ABC); Claudette Colbert stars in the suspense anthology Climax (7:30 p.m., CBS), with co-star Lorne Greene; Friday and Smith are on the track of a con-man in Dragnet (8:00 p.m., NBC); David Niven stars in "The Collar" on Four Star Playhouse (8:30 p.m., CBS; he's one of the four stars); Reed Hadley (no relation) is the Public Defender representing a model accused of stealing a mink coat (9:00 p.m., CBS); and James Mason introduces "The Browning Version," a TV adaptation of Terrence Rattigan's play, on Lux Video Theater (9:00 p.m., NBC), with Herbert Marshall. Heavy on anthologies, as was typical of the time.

On Friday, Ed Murrow's guest on Person to Person is the famed orchestra conductor Sir Thomas Beecham and his wife, concert pianist Betty Humby. (9:30 p.m., CBS) And in the 15 minutes between the end of Friday Night Fights and the 10:00 p.m. news, The Jan Murray Show (9:45 p.m., NBC) welcomes, among others, singer Tina Louise, who is surely headed for bigger things.

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MST3K alert: Lost Continent (1951) Searching for a missing atom-powered rocket, a plane crew lands in an island-jungle and comes up on a lost continent. Cesar Romero.. (Saturday, 12:05 a.m., WTMJ in Milwaukee) An atomic-powered rocket, rock climbing, and dinosaurs! A good supporting cast that includes Whit Bissell, John Hoyt, Hugh Beaumont, and Sid Melton helps, but the highlight comes from the interstitial MST3K features, with Mike Nelson portraying Beaumont as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse! And did I mention rock climbing? Really, who could ask for anything more? TV  

Around the dial

You might recall me writing a couple of years ago about The Man in Room 17, a British show that I quite enjoyed watching, although I was only able to see the first season. You might even be familiar with it, if you enjoy British shows from the 1960s. If so, you'll be as glad as I was to hear about the first-ever guidbook to the first season, Behind Door 17: An Unofficial Guide to The Man in Room 17, by Martin Gregory. Beside being an episode guide, it includes essays, mini-bios, and insights into a show that I found both intelligent and entertaining, with a liberal dose of humor included. You can read more about it at Martin's Substack, and hopefully we'll be looking at a review of this in the future.

The lastest episode of Eventually Supertrain is now available, in which your erstwhile correspondent joins Dan for another around of Garrison's Gorillas, plus more neat stuff. Please do give it a listen when you have some time, and if you haven't already added Supertrain to your list of favorite podcasts, now's a great time to do so.

Love That Bob returns at The Horn Section, as Hal reviews the 1959 episode "Bob and the Ballerina." We're at a point in the fifth season where the series tries to get back on track after an unsuccessful attempt to domesticize our hero. Find out how successful it was.

The "Sylvia Coleridge Season" continues at Cult TV Blog, and this week John looks at her appearance in the supernatural 1981 movie Artemus 81, a movie that almost defies explanation. Well, almost, but John gives you a pretty good idea of what to expect if you decide to watch it here.

At The View from the Junkyard, Roger's episode-by-episode recap of The New Avengers arrives at "Three Handed Game," the final episode of the first season, a story that blends mind-swapping, people with amazing memories, spies, and, of course, another great performance by Joanna Lumley as Purdy.

This doesn't really have anything to do with television, but Travalanche reviews Danny Fingeroth's book Jack Ruby: The Many Faces of Oswald's Assassin, and given that I've visited the topic of the Kennedy assassination many times here, you know why I'd be interested in this.

Television's New Frontier: The 1960s returns with the 1962 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which follows the successful formula that's kept the show going for seven successful seasons. Is the show in a rut, or is it following the maxim that you don't mess with success?

Speaking of Hitchcock (and isn't it too bad that Jack's Hitchcock Project isn't this week?), A Shroud of Thoughts reviews the fifth season episode "Arthur," starring Laurence Harvey, which Terence ranks as one of his favorites from the entire run of the series.

Television Obscurities has a note that the Paley Center in New York has now opened the Paley Archive at the Beverly Hills Public Library. It's no more likely I'll make it there than I would get to NYC, but I can always hope that they digitize their archives someday.

At The Lucky Strike Papers, Andrew uses the upcoming 24th anniversary of the death of his mother, Sue Bennett, looking back at her career in New York and Boston television. By the way, if you haven't read The Lucky Strike Papers, you should; it's an excellent book about family, television, and the 1950s. TV  

Bonus issue: TV Guide of March 29, 1975

A few months ago, I introduced you to Your 45's Are 50, a weekly syndicated Top 40 countdown program featuring the hit songs and news headlines from 50 years ago.  each week! I've corresponded with Hugh Holesome from time to time about TV information included in the program, and Hugh is now investing in some classic TV Guides of his own! He asked me if I'd be interested in this writeup from the issue of March 29, 1975, and it didn't take me long to say yes; it's always fun to read someone else's take on an issue, especially when it's one we haven't covered here. So without delay, here's Hugh's summary of this issue. Enjoy, and be sure to check out the show each week!

by Hugh Holesome

This edition of the TV Guide for March 29, 1975 has a colorful cartoon cover of Beatrice Arthur and Hermione Baddeley of Maude fame, drawn by Ronald Searle. The cover story on page 18, "The Dating Game: Bad Taste That Pays Off," gets us to a cafe lunch interview with Chuck Barris, after his first novel but before The Gong Show. Dwight Whitney is an eager spectator to the golden yarns Mr. Barris spins. 

Barris, who sends his 12 year old daughter to private boarding school in Switzerland and is torn between collecting Mercedes and Rolls-Royce vehicles, is estimated to be worth between $20 and $40 million at this time. The book he is currently trying to write, The Game Show Man, which he claims is due to the publisher "this month" won’t actually be published until 1993, as, coined in this article, The Game Show King. 

Eric Levin devotes four pages to Elbert Budin, the director who is widely in demand for his food styling shoots. Mr Budin calmly describes every shoot as finding the beauty and sensuality of each product. Budin also likens his work to that of classical French painter, Paul Cézanne, known for his intense study of his subjects. "The laws of beauty," he says, "are as absolute for a strip of bacon as they are for a piece of sculpture." He'll ask his staff Japanese chef, Yoshiko, to fry up 60 slices at a time, so that he can pick out the perfect one. 

Gregor Ziemer, famous for his novel Education for Death: The Making of a Nazi, gets two pages to describe and experience in 1934 Nazi Germany, where he, and another newspaper colleague, were introduced to Fern - Sprech- Sehen - Elektrischer - Wellen - Apparat: “Long Distance Talking Seeing Electric Wave Apparatus.” The Nazis called this two way video phone “Fernsehen” for short. They were able to kind of see, kind of hear, and kind of understand each other wirelessly across a distance of 100 miles that August 1934. The Nazis were proud of this technological achievement that would put the face of the Fuhrer into living rooms across Germany, and soon perhaps, the world. 

British actress Hermione Baddeley, profiled by Leslie Radditz on page 10. as early as 12 years old her performances were capturing the attention of the likes of George Bernard Shaw. Later she received praise from Noel Coward, HG Wells, Tennessee Williams, and even earned the nickname “Pussycat” from Lawrence Olivier before it was chic. Her marriage at the age of 19 is discussed as she met the honorable David Tennant at a party for the Prince of Wales thrown by Somerset Maugham's wife. Her 50 years of acting, mostly on the British stage, had brought her to America in 1964 as the Banks’ maid in Mary Poppins but her long-term contract with Disney fizzled with the death of Walt himself in 1966. She met Norman Lear around 1973 before heading back to England but that encounter left an indelible mark. When Maude needed a new foil upon the departure of Florida Evans (S2:Ep20) for the spin-off series “Good Times” which debuted 3 days later, February 8, 1974, Lear knew just who to call, ahem, ring up. Mrs Naugatuck arrived September 30, 1974 (S3:Ep4). Season 3 concludes this week, March 31. 

After the crossword, Dr. Karl Meninger gets two pages to discuss recognizing mental illness and what to do about it. It coincides with the PBS five-part series on emotional problems called The Thin Edge, which begins Monday, March 31st. Producer and host David Prowitt claims depression affects some 19 million Americans young and old, twice as many women as men. Antidepressant drugs and shock therapy will be discussed. 

Feeling free begins with feeling comfortable, and James Daly of Medical Center shows off his caftan collection in a picture feature on page 24, saying, “Don't Knock It Till You've Tried It." Mr. Daly picked up this Turkish "habit" while on vacation in, of course, Mexico. 

Cleveland Amory wraps up the issue with a review of Baretta, which began airing January 17th as a mid-season replacement. He gives high praise to the pilot episode, called "He'll Never See Daylight" written by Stephen J. Cannell, where our title character's girlfriend is shot and killed soon after his marriage proposal,which sets the tone for Robert Blakes Tony Baretta versus the Toma character played by Tony Musante who walked away after one season of that series. Rather than try to recast Toma, who had great chemistry with TV wife Susan Strasburg, the bones of the show were kept to build upon with the fighting mad Tony Baretta instead of the milder-tempered David Toma. Without a wife or girlfriend, he gets to keep his eyes on the sparrow, or in this case, a white Cockatoo, Freddy. This week Baretta moves from Friday to Wednesday April 2, 1975.

Highlights in this week of TV:

 

March 30th 1975 was, of course, Easter Sunday. ABC aired a two-part encore presentation of Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments for the Saturday and Sunday Night movies. 

The two-hour Waltons Easter story was on CBS, followed by American Parade: Sojourner, on the life of Sojourner Truth, and finally “Remembrances & Rock” starring Kate Smith with Florence Henderson, The Supremes, Dom DeLuise and more in a rousing salute to the best songs of past and present. 

Carol Burnett welcomed Jean Stapleton and Phil Silvers for this week's program. 

Dinah!, the syndicated daily daytimer from Dinah Shore (which ran six seasons), was still new and had just crossed the 100th show milestone. 

◀ ABC aired the Colgate Women's Freestyle Ski Championship (claiming the $15,000 purse was the same amount of money a man could win by doing flips and graceful ballet on skis. ~You’ve Come A Long Way Baby!) 

The Midnight Special (S3:Ep27) featured International acts like The Guess Who, Golden Earring and P.F.M. hosted by Wolfman Jack 

American Bandstand (S18:Ep25) Polly Brown, Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods 

Soul Train (S4:Ep28) B.B. King 3 songs, The Younghearts back as a trio and People's Choice from Philly 

And CBS aired the one and only episode of Black Bart ►on April 4th. Based on the Andrew Bergman screenplay “Tex X” which after some tweaks by Mel Brooks, became “Blazing Saddles”. Lou Gossett is the Sheriff, Steve Landesberg plays the drunk sidekick character that obviously pales compared to Gene Wilder. How could one resist the quarter- page pitch: “The hilarious Adventures of Black Bart, who discovers Paris, Arizona doesn't want its first black sheriff hanging around - unless he's really hanging!” Mel Brooks was not involved and the production was allegedly merely contractual to secure sequel rights for Warner Brothers.

Thanks, Hugh! A great look back at the well-known and the little-known. Feel free to share what else you're finding!  TV  

What's on TV? Wednesday, March 23, 1966

Johnny Carson's in Hollywood this week; before he made his permanent relocation to the famous Burbank studio, he used to spend at least a couple of weeks out there every year. After he moved there from New York, he did come back to the Big Apple at least once that I can remember, but never after that. And now, of course, most of the shows are back in New York. I guess in these days of modern travel, it doesn't matter that much, but it does demonstrate not only how decentralized the entertainment business is, but how true it is that Hollywood isn't what it used to be. We're in the other part of the state this week, with the Northern California edition.

This week in TV Guide: March 19, 1966

WeIn some casting news, the Teletype reports that Stefanie Powers will be replacing Mary Ann Mobley in the upcoming The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.; Mobley played April Dancer in the back-door pilot that aired on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (Mobley's co-star in the pilot, Norman Fell, will also be replaced in the role of Mark Slate with Noel Harrison.) And with that, we're into this week's cover story by Leslie Raddatz, and the beginning of the closest thing we've ever had here to a theme issue. You'll see what I mean as we go through the issue; just look for the bold-face names.

 "Nothing quite like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. has ever happened to television," he says, "not only in program content, which has spawned a host of imitators, but in the fact that U.N.C.L.E. almost didn’t make it at all." The show faltered at the outset, which producer Norman Felton says is because it took viewers a while to catch on to the show's blend of conventional adventure richly invested with humor, and it almost got the axe in January. But now, in its second (and best) season, it's become a phenomenon, garnering fan letters from people around the country "who had nothing much in common except they were U.N.C.L.E. nuts," including one from a CBS producer who told Felton that his four children had become "wild Man from U.N.C.L.E. addicts" who beg me continually, constantly, to get them U.N.C.L.E. cards, THRUSH cards, photos of Robt. Vaughn, the blond kid (Illya?), ete. Do you have kits available for fellow producers who must nightly compete with your superheroes or be branded weaklings in the eyes of their offspring?"

Felton, who sends out between 50 and 60 thousand U.N.C.L.E. cards every month in response to the same number of letters from fans, had a previous reputation for serious, prestige drama, with a portfolio including Studio One, Robert Montgomery Presents, The U.S. Stell Hour, Mr. Novak, and The Eleventh Hour; he says that he's delighted with the success of U.N.C.L.E., but admits "I would rather have one Novak on the air than six U.N.C.L.E.'s." The idea for the show came three years ago, when Felton decided he wanted to do a series that was "just fun," and thus came the concept of a show featuring "a mysterious man who would become involved with ordinary people in adventures with humorous overtones." He held back on the more humorous episodes at first, given that NBC had bought U.N.C.L.E. as a straight adventure series, and there are still viewers who look at it that way, "which is all right with us." 

Of David McCallum, Felton says, "I never had any idea he would become the hit he has. His part in the pilot film was only a few lines, and he was just one of many actors we considered. We picked him because he looked different." But the blond, 32-year-old Scot has, indeed, become the breakout star of the show, a man who embraces the mystery of his character in his personal life as well. "He has little of the actor’s vanity, pretension or self-delusion," and in a recent appearance of the network's Hullabaloo, he was never once referred to by his own name, but that of his character, an idea that came from him. He's uncomfortable with the attention from fan magazines, especially when they call him "cute" ("That’s an American word I hate. A litter of mongrel puppies is cute."), and he refuses any photo layouts including his wife Jill Ireland and their three sons. 

Considering that Robert Vaughn was supposed to be the Man from U.N.C.L.E., he'd seem to have every right to resent having to share the spotlight with McCallum, but such is not the case. "When it was pointed out that many actors would be unhappy in such a situation, Vaughn said, 'Maybe a lot of actors aren’t as secure as I am.' " Unlike McCallum, he's enjoying fame and its fringe benefits; "I'm surprised at the reaction—I never anticipated anything like this," he says, but he was always confident the show would be a hit. "I thought so from the beginning and told everybody so. Of course, I began looking red in the face that first January when they were going to cancel us." During the summer hiatus, he played "Hamlet" gratis at the Pasadena Playhouse, and continues to work at USC on his Ph.D. in the philosophy of communications.

Throughout the article, Raddatz scatters examples of letters the show's fans have written. (Letters—you remember what those were, don't you?) In one of them, a West Coast college student writes, "I feel that your program offers an escape from our problems. The cast has its problems, but they’re mostly of a child’s dream world of spies and counterspies." A student at the Bronx High School of Science wonders if there's anyone working for the show that they can talk to about patenting some of their own gadgets. And a couple traveling in the same plan as Robert Vaughn took a moment to scribble a note on the back of an air sickness bag and have the stewardess hand it to him: "May I invade your privacy to say thanks for being so gracious in giving your autograph the other night. It will be the most exciting thing we are taking back to our 18-year-old daughter." Perhaps that's what television needed, in 1966. Perhaps that's what we need more of today.

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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: Scheduled guests: singers Abbe Lane and Brenda Lee; ventriloquist Senor Wences; singer Jimmy Roselli; comedienne Jean Carroll; dancer Peter Gennaro; the rock ‘n’ rolling Young Rascals; and English comics Des O'Connor and Jack Douglas. (The actual guests included Walter Cronkite, the cast from "Wait A Minim" (South African dancers); The Magid Triplets, tap dancers; and The Olympiades, body builders. Jimmy Roselli did not appear.) 

Palace: Host Robert Goulet, star of Blue Light, introduces singer-dancer Chita Rivera; singer Nancy Sinatra; comic Jan Murray; the Muppets, puppets; comedy pantomimist Cully Richards; and the Nerveless Nocks, Sway-pole acrobats.  

Robert Goulet takes a break from his dramatic, non-singing role in the World War II spy series Blue Light to return to his strong suit, music. I've always liked him, especially his penchant for self-effacing humor (remember Bob Goulet's Cajun Christmas from the movie Scrooged, or his appearances on ESPN commercials as "Mr. G"?) Throw in Jan Murray, Chita Rivera, and the Muppets, and that's good enough to overcome a strong lineup from Ed. Once again, Mr. G delivers the goods, and a win for Palace.

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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. 

By now, regular readers are pretty familiar with the debacle that was The Sammy Davis Jr. Show, which was covered here and here. Cleveland Amory is certainly aware of it; as this review went to press, NBC has already announced the show's cancellation. And while that's understandable, it's also unfortunate, because after a rough start that you'd never wish on your worst network enemy, The Sammy Davis Jr. Show has not only become good, it's started to fulfill its potential to become something approaching the BIGGEST THING EVER.

The problems with the show went beyond those we read about, especially the bizarre conflict that forced Davis to be absent from his own show for the episodes immediately following the premiere (which was, itself, a lame affair with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor). Building an hour-long show around one of the most dynamic performers in the business was, it seemed, a good idea at the time. To hear NBC talk about it, it would be, as Cleve suggested a moment ago, the BIGGEST SHOW EVER. But these kinds of things never pan out, primarly because (1) no one star can be that much bigger than everyone else (as Jerry Lewis, Frank Sinatra, and Judy Garland discovered with their own series; (2) nobody can be interesting enough to dominate a solid hour every single week (see, again, the examples in (1)); and (3) not every star can also produce a show. Add to that a subsequent lineup of guests from Milton Berle, to Frank Sinatra Jr. ("who is a poised and charming young man but no threat even to Sammy, let alone Sinatra Sr, as a singer."), and a group called "The Copasetics" ("about whom you couldn’t tell whether they were meant to be just funny or good. If the former, they weren’t funny enough—if the latter, they were too funny.") In this sense, the show was set up to fail. 

And that, Amory, is unfortunate, because "the plain fact is, though there were many things wrong with this show, there are many more things right with it—and it is getting better every week." He cites a recent dance routine that Davis did to Robert Preston's voiceover of "Trouble," or the "127th Street" number from Golden Boy that he did with Johnny Brown. In those cases, we got to see Sammy as he truly is, "as he should have been from the beginning—Mr. Wonderful." Unfortunate, indeed.

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In Henry Harding's For the Record, the A.C. Nielsen Company now admits that 55 of its sample homes were involved in a plot to increase the ratings of an unnamed show which aired on February 18. The plot involved questionnaries that had been mailed to Nielsen sample homes in "the populous 'east-central area' of the nation. The questionnaire asked for comments on certain commercials that would air on a particular show. "If the commercials were watched, the ratings of that show, of course, would go up." The company is not naming any suspects yet, but believe they're "reasonably well-directed," according to one of their lawyers. They also admit confusion as to how anyone could get ahold of the confidential list of Nielsen homes. It's all, they said, very mysterious.

Of course, you have to know that this wouldn't be good enough for me, and thanks to the internet, I can share with you the rest of the story. The suspect in question was Richard Sparger, a former reporter and former state legislature in Oklahoma, who'd once publicly claimed that he "could make a hit of a show that was a failure." The show in question was CBS's special, An Evening with Carol Channing.* Sparger had mailed the questionnaires, along with $3, to the 58 households, asking questions about the commercials that would appear on the Channing special. If viewers completed and returned the questionnaire, they'd receive another $5. Nielsen filed suit against Sparger for $1,500,000, charging "impairment of confidence in the accuracy of the measurement service and the security of the sample." He was also accused of having used privileged information gathered when he was serving as a congressional investigator of the ratings industry in 1963.

*One of the special's guests: David McCallum.

But the plot thickens. It turns out that Sparger had exchanged at least 40 phone calls with one Charles F. Lowe, who just happens to be the husband, manager, and occasional producer for—wait for it—Carol Channing. This little fact was uncovered by private detectives hired by Nielsen (why didn't we ever see a story like this on Mannix?) who also found out that a teller at Oklahoma City's Liberty National Bank had cashed a $4,000 check from Lowe to Sparger, and that, just before Nielsen filed suit against Sparger, he had called Lowe, saying "something like 'Santa Claus will take care of you' " for "clamming up" with investigators.

It didn't help that Lowe had previously denied having done business with Sparger; he also claimed that it was "ridiculous and incredible to believe that Carol Channing should need any help" in the ratings, and that even if he did have anything to do with such a plot, it was also ridiculous (although apparently not incredible) for him to have made the payoff by check. Sparger and Lowe turned down a plea deal from Nielsen that would have involved the company dropping the charges in return for Sparger admitting his guilt and Lowe paying $100 grand to offset the legal expenses; Sparger countered that Nielsen was harrassing his friends and neighbors, had forced the phone company to give them his private number, and was threatening to including his wife and a friend in the indictment 

In the end, Nielsen dropped the suit against Sparger in September after he conceded having approached Lowe with the idea, and admitted that he'd attempted the activity "for purposes of obtaining financial enrichment," that being including the results in a planned book entitled How to Rig the Ratings for Fun and Profit. (He also revealed that he had gotten the names by finding out the identities of contractors who serviced the meters placed on television sets, then following them as they called on the sample homes.) And people continued to suspect the ratings anyway.

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Here's a small item that would have been guaranteed to make readers feel just a little older: after eight seasons and 275 episodes, Donna Reed is saying goodbye to her eponymous sitcom, and even though she'd vowed she wouldn't cry when things had wrapped up, the moment got the better of her. Her husband, producer Tony Owen; Screen Gems VP Steve Blauner; and cast and crew gathered to pay tribute to Donna and wish she and Tony the best in the future. Her plans? "Oh, rest, travel—fun, fun, fun!" (Although I don't think her plans included a trip to Dallas.)

I include this because The Donna Reed Show, along with Ozzie & Harriet, are among the handful of shows to span two distinct cultural periods, starting in the black-and-white nuclear family era (that some say never really existed), and ending at the dawn of the technicolor times (although her show never made the transition to color) of assassinations, Vietnam, civil rights, sex and drugs, and just about everything else anthetical to what The Donna Reed Show epitomized. Ah, the times, they were a changin', weren't they?

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Basketball is the lead story on Saturday, with Texas Western taking on Kentucky for the 1966 NCAA Championship, live from College Park, Maryland. (7:00 p.m. PT, syndicated; the full game is available here.) It's one of the most significant games ever played in college basketball, as Texas Western becomes the first team ever to win the championship with an all-black starting lineup, defeating top-ranked (and all-white) Kentucky 72-65.* Kentucky's presence in the final makes the moment even more significant; their legendary head coach, Adolph Rupp, was also a staunch segregationist who resisted efforts by the university's president to integrate the team; Kentucky wouldn't dress a black player until 1970. Don Haskins, the coach at Texas Western (today called the University of Texas at El Paso), didn't care what color his players were as long as they could play; his assistant coach said "he'd have played five kids from Mars if they were his best five players." He was immensely proud of his players, and took personal offense at any racial attacks on them; of Rupp, he would say, "I had been listening to all this damn crap out of him, and it's a wonder I didn't say something to him about it. But I didn't." I think it's safe to say that sports has never been the same since.

*It was, in fact, the first time any major American sports championship had ever been contested between a team with an all-black starting lineup and a team that was all-white.  

Zero Mostel, whom we'll see again later in the week, stars in Sunday's Play of the Week presentation of "Waiting for Godot." (8:30 p.m., KVIE). Burgess Meredith and Kurt Kasznar co-star in this production, which originally aired in 1961, and which many consider to be the definitive version of Samuel Beckett's Theatre of the Absurd play. And you know what: you can see it here and decide for yourself. Considering television's spotty history of preserving its own history, I'm always excited to find out that a broadcast like this actually survives. In fact, though, there are several such examples in the shows that follow.

The classic medical series Ben Casey wraps up its five-season run on Monday. (10:00 p.m., ABC) A couple of notes on this episode: first, as you might know, Ben Casey was produced by Bing Crosby Productions, and—perhaps coincidentally—one of the night's guest stars is none other than Kathryn Crosby, playing a patient showing symptoms of brain damage. Second is that of the show taking over in this time slot next week: The Avengers, "a British comedy-adventure series." Also on Monday is the movie The Young Philadelphians (11:30 p.m., KXTV), a mediocre courtroom drama starring Paul Newman and Barbara Rush. I mention this because it also features our future man from U.N.C.L.E., Robert Vaughn, who steals the movie as an alcoholic murder defendant, for which he earns a well-deserved Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Tuesday night features Carol + 2 (8:30 p.m., CBS), one of Carol Burnett's periodic specials prior to her epononymous variety show (which starts in 1967); the "plus 2" are the aforementioned Zero Mostel and one of Carol's champions, Lucille Ball. (See part 1 here; links to the rest.) I don't remember that show, but I do remember the show that followed it later, a CBS News Special called "One of Our H-Bombs Is Missing" (10:00 p.m.), a report on the area in Spain where a B-52 crashed in January, and the U.S. Navy's search for the missing bomb. I wasn't yet six years old when this aired, and I have no particular idea as to why it would have interested me, other than that that I was interested in war stories, and I might have vaguely connected this somehow with the space program. It didn't scare me, I do know that. (The bomb was evenutally recovered in the Mediterranean in April.)

On Wednesday, Julie Andrews stars in a repeat of her special from last November, with special guests Gene Kelly and the New Christy Minstrels, and you can see it here. (9:00 p.m., NBC) After that, you can choose between a Something Special episode with Julie London and her husband, Bobby Troup, the Hi-Lo's, and bandleader Jerry Fielding (10:00 p.m., KXTV in Sacramento); or ABC's excellent documentary series Saga of Western Man presents "Beethoven: Ordeal and Triumph" (10:00 p.m.), written and narrated by John Secondari, with the voice of Beethoven provided by our other man from U.N.C.L.E., David McCallum. And just wait, it keeps geting better!

For Thursday, Burgess Meredith, whom we saw with Zero Mostel on "Waiting for Godot," is back in the conclusion of a Batman adventure that started last night. (7:30 p.m. both nights, ABC) This time, the Penguin insists that he's gone straight, and to prove it, he has his henchmen staging crimes so he can break them up. Will the frequently-gullible citizens of Gotham fall for this obvious scam? Sometimes, it seems as though they just don't deserve the Caped Crusaders. Later, Dean Martin hosts a stellar lineup of guests (10:00 p.m., NBC), including Imogene Coca, Jane Morgan, the Supremes, Jackie Mason, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and the tap dancing Step Brothers. (Here's a clip from Dean and the Supremes.) I think he's giving both Ed and the Palace a run for their money here.

There couldn't be any other choice for Friday than The Man from U.N.C.L.E. itself now, could there? (10:00 p.m., NBC) Tonight, it's "The Round-Table Affair," in which our heroes try to save the Duchy of Ingolstein from Prince Frederick, who's allowing the country to become a home to the Mafia. Valora Noland is the Grand Duchess, whom Solo tries to enlist; Reginald Gardiner is the Prince; and in a wonderful bit of casting, Bruce Gordon is Lucho Nostra, the head criminal.

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Agnes Scott College is a small, all-women's liberal arts college in Decatur, Georgia, and on Sunday afternoon, March 6, 1966, they scored what Slate called "The Greatest Upset in Quiz Show History" when they defeated Princeton University in, literally, the last second to win what was probably the most famous episode ever of G-E College Bowl. Television being what it is, College Bowl was running on a two-week delay on KVIE, the NBC affiliate in Sacramento, where it was shown at at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 20. Regional issues of TV Guide being what they are, you could flip ahead a couple of pages to 5:30 p.m., where the NBC affiliates in San Francisco were showing today's College Bowl match between Parsons College, Fairfield, Iowa, and "the winner of last week’s match between Marietta (Ohio) College and Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Ga."—meaning, of course, that Agnes Scott would be defeating Princeton. So much for suspense, I guess, although I'd like to think that by this time, anyone living in Sacramento who really wanted to watch College Bowl would know by now not to get too many pages ahead.

*Agnes Scott's victory was a big-enough detail that it actually made The New York Times the next day.

But even though it's old news by this time, I wanted to mention this, not only because it's one of the great stories in TV history, but because it also provides a nice little bookend to that Texas Western story above. Agnes Scott, like Texas Western, was a little-known school taking on a prestigeous opponent that considered itself a class above the rest; carrying the analogy a step further, Princeton was, in 1966, still an all-male institution, and one couldn't miss noticing the similarities between the two schools, Princeton and Kentucky, neither one appearing to have yet adapted to the changing times. There had been David vs. Goliath upsets on College Bowl in the past, but none, before or after, seemed to capture the imagination of people quite the way this one did. Reading the Slate story, you'll be charmed, I think by the accounts of the four women competing for Agnes Scott, particularly the remarkable story of Karen Gearreald, Agnes Scott's first blind student, and her recounting of how the winning answer came to her in a millisecond.

There's one other similarity between that College Bowl broadcast and the NCAA Championship: the broadcasts of both still exist, and you can see that College Bowl broadcast here and find out how many answers you can come up with? I wonder how well the current Jeopardy champions would do?

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MST3K alert: Teenage Cave Man (1958). A young cave dweller in a primitive society questions the laws that govern his people. Robert Vaughn, Leslie Bradley, Darrah Marshall. (Saturday, 1:20 a.m., as part of KGO's All-Night Movie) Well, what would you expect after a cover story on The Man from U.N.C.L.E., a Teletype item on The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., The Young Philadelphians, and Beethoven? Sure, Robert Vaughn considers it the worst movie ever made, but that didn't stop him from cashing the check, right? And anyway, it made him the man for MST3K, and who could ask for anything more? TV  

Around the dial

Let's get right to it, starting at bare-bones e-zine, where Jack's Hitchcock Project looks at Robert Gould's ninth-season episode "How to Get Rid of Your Wife," which, despite the title, is a "lighthearted look" at psychological warfare within an unhappy marriage. Bob Newhart, Jane Withers, and Joyce Jameson star.

At RealWeegieMidget, Gill recalls Gena Rowlands and her small but multifaceted role as the wife of the murderous Oskar Werner in the 1975 Columbo episode "Playback," an episode which star Peter Falk (a longtime friend and collaborator of Rowlands' husband, John Cassavetes) called the series' best.

The Sylvia Coleridge "season" continues at Cult TV Blog, and this week John takes a look at her magnificent performance in the Armchair Thriller six-parter "Quiet as a Nun," based on the novel by Lady Antonia Fraser, in which Coleridge plays—what else?—a nun. 

At Comfort TV, David reviews six episodes from The Twilight Zone's exceptional first season: three that rank as classics (including the all-time "A Stop at Willoughby"), and three that, well, don't quite measure up. For what it's worth, I concur on all six.

Roger continues his episode-by-episode review of The New Avengers at A View from the Junkyard, and this week we're up to "Sleeper," a game of tag that's played for the highest possible stakes: if you get tagged, you die.

In case you weren't aware of it, the television world has been up in arms over the last few days over the move by Warner Bros. to remove their classic theatrical cartoons—Looney Tunes—from WB's streaming service, Max. Terence has his take on it at A Shroud of Thoughts.

I've never liked the "amateur detectives" that the British are so fond of; on the other hand, I have great respect for many of their police dramas, especially the older ones. Cult TV Lounge takes us back to season one of Van Der Valk, starring Barry Foster, based on the characters created by Nicolas Freeling. TV  

Critic, explain thyself

I had originally intended to include this in the TV Guide writeup for this coming Saturday, but as I got deeper into it, I realized that it would make an already-long piece even longer; at the same time, I didn't want to cut it short, because I think it raises the types of questions many people have asked over the years. Ultimately, it was so interesting that I felt it deserved space of its own.

It begins with a letter to TV Guide from Mrs. Iveta Moore, a housewife living in Piedmont, Kansas, who has some questions about how professional critics go about reviewing television shows. She describes herself as "a perfect example of the favorite target of all TV critics’ scorn: a square, a citizen of the Corn Belt, a part of the moronic masses!" She is also a voracious reader—illustrated, I think, by the questions she asks—who, having read many reviews over the years, would like to know about the standards they use when writing their reviews. "I think I understand what they write," she says, "but if they are really saying what they believe, I don’t understand why they believe as they do." She poses the following questions in hopes that they will help her, and other viewers, to better understand where these critics are coming from:

1. What makes fantasy? What is the difference between Peter Pan, accepted by critics as a classic, and My Mother, the Car, panned as silly and ridiculous?
2. What is escapism? Why is it used so often for TV entertainment and not, for example, Shakespearean plays? "Didn't the critics of his day think his plays were for the ignorant masses?"
3. Why not escapism? It helps her keep stable and cheerful. Why does this so often have negative connotations?
4. What makes a soap opera? Many of them are as true to life as Shakespeare's Portia winning a law case without training, while posing as a man. "Yet one is considered melodramatic trash, and the other culture. Why?"
5. What is good music? If the purpose of music is to enjoy and entertain, "Why, then, isn't it good or bad according to how it affects the listener?"
6. What is artistic freedom? Writers often think citizens of the Corn Belt are "narrowminded," yet "most of us accept Peyton Place as showing things that really do happen, over and over, in any size city or town, while the critics ery 'smut.' Why?"
7. What is realism? Writers think of it as tragic and brutal, but "doesn't it take even more talent to include the light, happy things of life in good drama?"

"Her questions seemed not only valid but also quite possibly representative of the thinking of many viewers," the editors responded, "and we felt they deserved an answer." Thus, they reached out to novelist, social commentator, and frequent TV Guide contributor Marya Mannes, to reply to Mrs. Moore.

"Dear Mrs. Moore," Mannes replies. "You deserve to be answered, not only because your questions go to the heart of television’s functions but because you belong to the great majority of viewers who, by turning on their sets for hours each day, have far more power over the nature of TV than we—the tiny minority of TV critics—have ever had." So. "for better or worse," she proceeds to tackle those questions, one by one.

What makes fantasy? "Fantasy is made by imagination. We imagine things we know are not real, but which we would like to believe. And the test of successful fantasy is whether for even fleeting moments we do believe it." Peter Pan, for example, embodies two great human desires: to fly by oneself, and to never grow old. So captivating is James M. Barrie's story, it matters not whether Peter is played "by not-so-young women or by boys." On the other hand, when it comes to a program such as My Mother the Car, "The idea behind it is not so much fantasy as a gag, or gimmick—good for some laughs, maybe, but hardly likely to stir the imagination." After you introduce the idea, which may well be funny, what else have you got? "Another formula comedy to pass the time. But—fantasy?"

Mayra Mannes

What is escapism? Just that. "To get away from the real world of worries, of tensions or problems, of daily boredom or suffering. Some escape through drink or gambling or pills, some look at television entertainment." Everyone needs a break once in a while. "But is there any reason why this break has to be silly or cheap or poorly written stuff, with a phony laugh track tacked on?" Danny Kaye is a kind of escapism, but done with "taste and wit and charm along with the fun." The reason someone like Shakespeare isn't considered escapist is because his plays "are so much more than that: They are mirrors of enduring human passions," combining the most beautiful language in all literature with plots that gave "both the mass and the minority what they looked for."

What makes a soap opera? "I have seen quite a lot of them, because I admire the acting and find them truly 'escapist.'" They seem true to a certain type of life, to "stereotypes of American middle-class suburbia and therefore not true of the millions of Americans who are neither middle-class nor white, nor of the many American wives who are too busy working to worry about all the things soap-opera housewives moan about." The difference between Portia being "culture" and soaps being "trash," it amounts to quality, "the difference between the imagination of a great writer and the slick formulas of Hollywood writing teams." If there was ever a woman in soaps who talked like Portia, "I'd spend my day at the set."

What is good music? There are good musicians and bad musicians in every genre of music; the difference depends on things such as voice quality, the songs they use, and their orchestrations. "In any case, it’s no more true that something is good because it’s popular than that something is unpopular because it’s no good." Nobody's going to stop you from listening to whoever and whatever you like; "The only point here is that your enjoyment doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s good."

What is artistic freedom? Just that, the freedom of a writer "to determine without interference what he writes about and how he writes it." It's not just cultural mores that affect such freedom; it's "a television system that depends on getting the greatest possible audience to buy the products advertised." Sponsors can't afford to offend consumers, which means avoiding anything controversial or unpopular, "and many of the most important human problems are both." Peyton Place, on the other hand, is just "a nighttime soap opera full of people in trouble."

What is realism? More than just costumes and settings. "Realism is the reflection of life as it is lived— really lived." It can be tragic, violent, tender, corrupt, or funny; "A light comedy is just as valuable as a dark tragedy, provided it is the product of talent and keen observation." If today's writers seem more attracted to the "seamy side," it's because "we live in an age of change and violence which no artist can ignore, but which, unfortunately, too many mediocre writers use to exploit the public appetite for shock and sensationalism, particularly in the areas of crime and sex." 

Taken as a whole, Mannes boils Mrs. Moore's questions to the central question: "What is Good—or Bad? And who are you, the critics, to tell us which is which?" It's a very hard thing to define, she says, but one major component is experience. "I think it can be fairly said that a critic on a responsible newspaper or magazine has, in the pursuit of his profession, read more books, seen more plays, heard more music, looked at more art than the average television viewer." Critics base their judgments on these years of experience and the thought given to them. A critic may or may not be right, "but he has earned his right to judge." 

If a critic seems harsh in his assessments, "it is because he thinks the medium can do much better and the viewers deserve much better." Why must entertainament be silly and cheap? Why do you need guns for excitement? Why must all popular music be directed to the young? In conclusion, if you like what you see, feel free to ignore the critics. "However, it is a sign of your intelligence that you choose not to, and that you have asked questions which, although these answers may not satisfy you, need asking. Thank you, Mrs. Moore."

I've come to develop an appreciation for Mayra Mannes over the years; I've devoted a chapter of my upcoming book to the television adaptation of her novel They, and even when I don't agree with her, I admire her keen mind and thought. But there's not really much to disagree with here. Her ultimate defense of the role of the critic is not, as some might think, a form of elitism; instead, I think she's talking about the vest amount of experience professional critics have accumulated over the years, and the consideration they've given to that experience over time. I've seen too many examples myself of online "critics" who blithely propose to discuss television history while at the same time demonstrating that they lack any depth of knowledge of the topic whatsoever. And I think she does an admirable job of defining the often-undefinable term "quality," rather than the relativistic notion that if it sounds good, it is good.

I don't think you'd see this kind of intelligent conversation about television (or most artistic endeavors, for that matter) in the average publication today, let alone in TV Guide. All in all, I find that what Marya Mannes said in answer to Mrs. Iveta Moore, sixty years ago, still holds true today. It's just too bad that much of her criticism of television back in 1966, unfortunately, holds true today as well. TV