Hal March has that important quality that often makes the difference between a successful quiz show and one that comes and goes in a matter of weeks: likability. Contestants feel comfortable around him, and audiences like him because he's, well, human. One night he forgets to ask a contestant the $32,000 question, another time he accidentally gives the answer as well as the question, and then there was the time he almost forget the sponsor plug before signing off. . .
But, like Donald Trump in a completely different context, March doesn't seem to be hurt by these flubs. In fact, he's increasingly moving beyond quiz shows to other areas of entertainment. He's already appeared as himself on Perry Como's show, played a forger on Omnibus, acted opposite Maurice Evans and Vivian Blair on stage, and even made the big screen in the Warner Brothers movie It's Always Fair Weather. (We just saw him in an old Burke's Law episode last month, in which he played the killer.) The talk now is that March might be headed for Broadway, and more movies may be in store as well.
The scandals put all of that to an end, of course; although there's no evidence that March was involved in fixing games (if anything, the pressure to rig the show came not from the producers, as was the case with other quiz shows, but from Revlon, the sponsor), there's that taint of guilt by association, and with it March's opportunities begin to try up. There are the odd guest star bits here and there; he's good, not great, but very natural in his technique. By 1969, though, things seem to have turned a corner, and March signs up to host a game show called It's Your Bet. But only a few weeks into taping, tests show that March has lung cancer, and he dies in 1970, only 49 years old.
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It begins this week with the network's telecast of George Bernard Shaw's witty "Caesar and Cleopatra," starring Claire Bloom and Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Tuesday night on Producers' Showcase (7:00 p.m.), and continues next week with Laurence Olivier's big-screen version of Richard III* and Hallmark Hall of Fame's "The Taming of the Shrew." The programs face steep competition, especially "Caesar and Cleopatra," which has to deal with Burns & Allen, Arthur Godfrey and I Love Lucy on CBS. And while the editor, probably Merrill Panitt, points out that TV Guide "is far from a highbrow publication," he adds that they are "grateful for any sort of programming that tends to enlarge television's scope." How, for example, could one say that they don't like Shakespeare or The $64,000 Question unless they've seen them?
*For what it's worth, Richard III was the first three-hour telecast of a film ever in the United States; it was also the first time that a movie had ever aired on television (on a Sunday afternoon, so as not to affect the ratings) and opened in American theaters on the same day.
NBC should be thanked, Panitt concludes, "for gambling money and prestige on the theory that viewers want such fine fare." I suppose at some point they did, although even in the Golden Age documentaries suffered, and Voice of Firestone dragged down the ratings of every show on the network that night. Quality television has been said to have made a comeback on cable in the last few years, and indeed there is no doubt a high quality of drama available for viewing. But as for the classics, I don't think we'll be seeing them anytime soon. Not even on PBS.
NBC should be thanked, Panitt concludes, "for gambling money and prestige on the theory that viewers want such fine fare." I suppose at some point they did, although even in the Golden Age documentaries suffered, and Voice of Firestone dragged down the ratings of every show on the network that night. Quality television has been said to have made a comeback on cable in the last few years, and indeed there is no doubt a high quality of drama available for viewing. But as for the classics, I don't think we'll be seeing them anytime soon. Not even on PBS.
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Now this is an interesting bit of counterprogramming. On Sunday's Famous Film Festival (6:30 p.m., ABC), it's the first of a two-part showing of the aforementioned G.B. Shaw's aforementioned Caesar and Cleopatra, made in 1945 and starring Vivien Leigh and Claude Raines. Now, let's think about this for a minute: if you've got a color TV, you can see NBC's Monday night production in color (the big-screen edition, although filmed in Technicolor, will be shown in black-and-white), and you won't have to wait until next week to find out how it ends. Even though the movie version airs one night earlier than its TV counterpart , I know which one I'd be watching.
Monday is a fine day for music lovers, beginning with the premiere of The Gordon MacRae Show" (6:30 p.m., NBC). The star of Carousel and Oklahoma will host the 15-minute program (in color!) each Monday, as part of the half-hour block that includes John Cameron Swayze's Camel News Caravan. Meantime, young Roberta Peters is the guest soloist on Voice of Firestone (7:30 p.m., ABC). Peters, one of the greatest sopranos ever (as well as one of the most popular), is a frequent presence on television over the years, appearing on Ed Sullivan's show a record 65 times.
Once Walt Disney made the decision to produce programming for television, it was just a matter of time before other studios followed suit, and we can see one early example of this on Wednesday with M-G-M Parade (7:30 p.m., ABC). The half-hour show, hosted for the final time this week by actor and future U.S. Senator George Murphy (next week, Walter Pidgeon takes over as host), is one of MGM's first ventures into television. They don't really get it, though, at least not with this series, which combines clips from vintage MGM movies of the past, and plugs for upcoming MGM releases. (This week, for example, Judy Garland sings in an excerpt from The Harvey Girls, and we see previews from the new movie Meet Me in Las Vegas, with Cyd Charisse and Dan Dailey.) Eventually, the studio succumbs to the show's bad reviews and adds more extensive, condensed versions of its classic movies. The series runs for another two months before fading from our screens.
For four seasons, the CBS anthology series Climax! presented various tales, mostly of the mystery type; it was later known as Climax Mystery Theater. However, this Thursday the show presents a real change of pace with "The Louella Parsons Story," based on her autobiography The Gay Illiterate. (7:30 p.m., CBS) Parsons, America's most influential (i.e. loved and/or feared) gossip columnist from the early '30s into the '60s, achieved a level of stardom as great as that of some of her subjects, and she maintained a feud with her hated rival Hedda Hopper for decades. What makes this show so unusual is not just the subject matter, but that following the story, there's a tribute from stars of the industry, emceed by Jack Benny and featuring Gene Autry, Charles Boyer, Rock Hudson, Susan Hayward and John Wayne, among others. An odd hybrid of genres, no?
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| It just didn't work out for Barry on Brooks. |
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According to the Teletype, Mister Peepers, which ends its three-season run in June, will be reborn as a weekday show, airing Monday through Friday afternoons. Wally Cox, of course, will return in the title role, but it's not certain how many other original cast members will join him. This never happens, for whatever reason, but I'm not surprised; the show had dropped in the ratings after Peepers had married his sweetheart (as shows often do), and it's difficult to imagine that it could have continued for long at a five-a-week pace. In reruns, maybe, but original episodes? On the other hand, it could have become television's first comedy soap. Think of the possibilities!
There's also an item about how sometimes the squeaky wheel does get the grease; ABC has fielded viewer complaints about the number of commercials in its Afternoon Film Festival, which interrupted the movie every five or six minutes. The new plan: limit the breaks to every ten or eleven minutes. There are also plans to have host Allyn Edwards give news headlines during some of the breaks. According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, Afternoon Film Festival also suffered from a lack of variety; ABC's deal with the J. Arthur Rank Company for 35 films meant that some titles were repeated every two or three weeks.
And The Johnny Carson Show, which airs Thursday nights on CBS, will be wrapping things up at the end of the month. The sponsors have cancelled, and the show went through seven directors ("through no fault of Carson's") during its 39-week run. It returns as a daytime show through the summer, and later Carson will begin a five-year run as host of Who Do You Trust? before going on to even bigger and better things.
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Finally, we're always up for a good discussion on censorship, and this week we look at what gives a network censor headaches. A similar article appeared in a 1980 issue, and though there's a vast difference between the shows of the mid '50s and early '80s, the censor's job is pretty much the same. The censor in question is Stockton Helffrich, Director of Continuity Acceptance for NBC, and he strongly believes that one of the jobs of a censor is not to censor. "We are not kill-joys, spoilsports, crape-hangers or wet blankets," and part of the philosophy is that "children should be able to reach adulthood as really mature people without prejudices." What that means is that much of their work deals with censoring "racial stereotypes, religious oversimplifications, unkindness toward the physically handicapped, ignorance regarding the emotionally disturbed."
However, censors also represent the interests of sponsors, which means if your favorite show is brought to you by Your Gas Company, you probably aren't going to see someone commit suicide by sticking their head in an oven. If the show is sponsored by a billiard company, the script can't suggest that pool halls are the exclusive domain of underworld characters and shady punks. While the sponsors' interests clearly need to be taken into account, Helffrich warns against "authors and producers [indulging] in fearful knuckling under." In other words, don't self-censor yourself - let the professionals decide what ought to be included.
Oh, there's the occasional "low neckline," but Helffrich says those are "an exception on current TV," and there's no discussion of profanity; I suppose that isn't even an issue in 1956. For Helffrich and his three dozen colleagues (and assistants working with them), it's a never-ending job, encouraged by the occasional constructive letter from a viewer that "has made us take pause and try to do better." TV
Oh, there's the occasional "low neckline," but Helffrich says those are "an exception on current TV," and there's no discussion of profanity; I suppose that isn't even an issue in 1956. For Helffrich and his three dozen colleagues (and assistants working with them), it's a never-ending job, encouraged by the occasional constructive letter from a viewer that "has made us take pause and try to do better." TV
Hal March tried his hand at directing, and ended up directing what ended up being F TROOP's series finale, "Is This Fort Really Necessary?", in 1967. His only other TV directing assignment was a couple of episodes of little-seen CAMP RUNAMUCK, but his F TROOP episode was well directed. Had the series returned, I think he would have had more assignments for the following season there.
ReplyDelete"The Court-Martial" is fantastic, and deservedly praised: that entire 1955-56 season for BILKO is one of the very best seasons for any TV show, ever. All the more astounding that Nat Hiken and Co. were able to maintain that level of excellence producing 34 episodes that year.
That scene is intact on the DVD release of The Phil Silvers Show. Clearly the show at their best. The scene with the officers demoting each other while trying to shift blame is still a laugh out loud moment.
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