This week in TV Guide: July 30, 1960

Usually, we don't think of a tightrope as being particularly violent. Dangerous, yes, but when someone falls off one while working without a net, we call it tragic, horrible, many other words; but violent isn't generally one of them. And then there's the series Tightrope!, which appears to have fallen victim to precisely that—violence.

For those who aren't familiar with it, Tightrope! was a series that ran on CBS during the 1959-60 season, starring Mike Connors as an undercover agent who, each week, would infiltrate a criminal organization in order to get the goods on their leaders. He was assigned to a different case in a different city each week, assuming an identity appropriate to the situation, but nobody—not even the local police departments—knew his true identity, thus putting him in jeopardy from both the criminals and the cops while carrying out his assignment. So secret was his assignment, even viewers didn't know his real name; he was referred to in the credits as "Nick," but I think I heard I heard his boss refer to him by that name only once. I ran across Tightrope! while perusing the TV Guides of the era (it was syndicated for several years after its initial run), and, the last time I looked, almost every episode was available on YouTube or the Internet Archive. (I reviewed it here a few years ago.)

So far, so good. It wasn't the greatest show on television, but it was far from being the worst, either. The premise was different, the stories were decent, and Mike Connors is always a watchable personality; even the weakest Mannix episodes benefit from his presence. The sponsor, Pharmaceuticals, Inc., liked Tightrope!, complimenting the show's creators, Clarence Greene and Russell Rouse, with doing a "magnificent job." The show's ratings were good: going head-to-head with the successful Western The Rifleman, it had succeeded in knocking that show down from #3 to #9 in the national ratings. While the episodes consistently ran over budget, Greene and Rouse were more than willing to put aside any chance of the show making a profit in order to keep the show's standards high. In April, Pharmaceuticals, Inc. told them to go ahead and get started on the new season, causing Greene and Rouse to give up several other projects, including a "lucrative movie deal." 

However, as Dwight Whitney recounts in this week's cover story, and as so often happens in the slimy world of network television, things changed. On April 15, without any warning, Greene and Rouse "read in a trade paper that CBS had filled their time slot with The Tom Ewell Show, a new comedy." The duo got, in Greene's words, "nothing but double talk" when they talked to the network. The sponsor, while praising the show, told them that, regretfully, "network problems were such that they made continuation of our sponsorship impossible." Greene and Rouse finally went straight to the top, sending a three-page letter to CBS president Frank Stanton and television division president James Aubrey asking for an explanation. They were told that said explanation would come from Oscar Katz, VP in charge of network programming.

And those explanations, for there were very many of them forthcoming, were as follows: first, that the network "'owned a substantial financial interest in the Ewell show' and therefore gave it 'preferential treatment.'" This turned out to be more than a little B.S.; Four Star, the show's producer, claimed the network shared in less than ten percent of the show's profits, and those only when it went to reruns. A second explanation was that the network was looking to establish a comedy block on Tuesday nights, and Tightrope! was the odd man (or show) out.*

*Indeed, the 1960-61 Tuesday night schedule would be made up of comedy and variety shows: repeats of Father Knows best, followed by Dobie Gillis, the Ewell show, The Red Skelton Show, and The Garry Moore Show. However, the network chose to leave the 7:30 p.m. half-hour slot open to the affiliates. Hmm.

Whether or not either of these explanations passes the plausibility test, though, neither would preclude another network from picking up Tightrope! And that brings us to the third, and perhaps most important, factor. As Whitney recounts it, "Under the fire of Congressional investigations rising out of the quiz and payola scandals, 'violence' had become a word to be feared. And there was no denying that Tightrope! was dealing in violence. Its ratings were simply not robust enough to justify the risk." In other words, had Tightrope! been a top-10 performer for the network, its violence would have been perfectly acceptable. But the last time I checked, violence is pretty much the same wherever you go, and whatever you do. Just because it's more popular, or comes with a higher (or lower) pricetag, doesn't make it more or less acceptable. Does it?

So this seems to be the final answer. And the last word comes from someone formerly "high up in the business," who told Whitney this: "What makes a good show? This is the impossible thing to answer. So, because it's impossible, we compound the felony. You don't know what you want, but only what you don't want. Everybody looks at it from their own point of view—like the blind men and the elephant. In TV it all depends on which end you grab. You grab the tail and, if you're not careful, you end up imagining the whole elephant is a rope."

Come to think of it, that explains pretty much everything about the world we live in today, doesn't it? We don't know what we like, only what we don't like. Before you know it, the only choices you have left are bad ones, which really means no choice at all. In the end, you're left with nothing to do but complain about it. And we do a lot of complaining nowadays, don't we?

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I'd like to think that the other item on the cover this week, on how violence on television can be curbed, was meant to be ironic placement. If it wasn't, it should have been. It's a summary of an outline sent to television producers by Kenneth Adam, the controller of television for the BBC, on how said producers should deal with violence. A few highlights:

Children's Programming: The "main danger points" in which the reactions of adults and children may differ are situations "which upset a child's emotional security, arising out of adoption, desertion, cruelty in the house, unwanted children, friction between parents, especially in contemporary settings"; portrayals of injuries or illnesses; "villainous" actions that could be imitated, such as using traps and pitfalls; "bad" habits in "good" characters, such as smoking; the use of weapons that are "easily available," such as knives;* and eerie or fearful atmospheres, especially when accentuated by music. These concerns should be considered regarding any program airing prior to 9:00 p.m.

*The tool of choice for attackers in Great Britain nowadays.

Adult Programs: According to the code, violence "should arise naturally from the story, and be therefore dramatically necessary and defensible"; violence that is "extraneous and designed for depraved effect" should be rejected, and any such natural sequences should not be "unduly prolonged; as with children's programmong, dangerous instruments, other than guns, should be carefully considered to avoid imitation; sound effects should not "distort or magnify the impact of violence," and anyone engaged in fisticuffs should not use "tactics of a vicious or bestial nature"; finally, violence against women or animals "must require special scrutiny." 

Interestingly, the guidelines make a clear distinction between violence, brutality, and combat. "Brutality is not the same thing as violence. Violence is not the same thing as combat. Yet because combat, which is healthy, and brutality, which is not, both contain violence, they tend to become identified." Battle scenes can be mitigated by using long-range camera shots, and there should be no shots "which dwell upon the more gruesome and bloody physical aspects of a combat." Some of these recommendations are quite commonsensical, while others are, I think, a little spurious. I would question, however, the idea that combat is "healthy"—let's see what the soldiers involved in it have to say about it.

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And now, here's the kind of item that I search these TV Guides for. On Sunday's Chevy Mystery Show (9:00 p.m. ET, NBC), the summer replacement for The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, the episode is "Enough Rope," starring Richard Carlson and Bert Freed, and written by William Link and Richard Levinson. The description: "Psychiatrist Roy Flemming has one too many women in his life. He has a wife, Claire, and a girl friend, Susan. The solution is a simple one: murder the wife and live happily ever after with the girl friend." Carlson is the adulterous doctor, while Freed, who often plays the heavy, portrays the detective investigating the crime. The play not only airs in color, it's also broadcast live.

Now, I don't know if this description sounds vaguely familiar to you, but it should. It's based on a play, "Prescription: Murder," written by Link and Levinson. In 1968, it was remade as a TV-movie, again on NBC. This time, Gene Barry took on the role of the suave Dr. Flemming, while the detective, named Lieutenant Columbo, was played by Peter Falk. Well, you can probably figure out the rest. Technically, the movie Prescription: Murder was not the pilot for Columbo; it wasn't until another Columbo movie, Ransom for a Dead Man, aired in 1971 that the network decided to turn the concept into a series later that year. But while there are differences between Freed's portrayal of Columbo, Falk's first time in the role, and the way the character is played in the subsequent series, there's no doubt that the good Lieutenant is displaying the primary characteristics that we all know and love.

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What else? I'll admit, sometimes it seems like a chore trying to find interesting programs to watch each night. I look at them and think that if I'm not interested, being the biggest nerd around, will anyone else be interested? And then I think maybe it will be better in the fall, when we're flooded with new series, specials, big movies, and the like. We'll see about that. But in the meantime, we'll turn over to NBC on Saturday at 9:30 p.m., where Herb Shriner hosts World Wide 60's look at the Boy Scouts of America's 50th Anniversary Jamboree from Colorado Springs. I have some thoughts about the Boy Scouts, what they were and what they are, and I'll not share them at the moment, but with the Blue Angels, the Army's K-9 corps, and trained falcons from the nearby Air Force Academy, I'm sure it's a colorful pageant—or would be, at least, if the show was in color.

A show that is in color is Music on Ice (Sunday, 8:00 p.m., NBC), the summer replacement for Sunday Showcase, hosted by Johnny Desmond; and if you remember those Ice Capades specials that I've highlighted here from time to time, this weekly series will look somewhat familiar. This week's non-skating guest is singer June Valli, and she's joined by skaters Jo Ann McGowan, Peter Firstbrook, and Willie Kali; and Steve Gibson's Redcaps vocal group. At the same time on CBS, Ed Sullivan's headliners are Gordon and Sheila MacRae, Harry James and his orchestra, comics Wayne and Shuster, and singer Jane Morgan. Your choice. 

You remember Arthur Godfrey, surely; I just wrote about him last week. When Godfrey was at his peak, one of the multiple shows he hosted was called Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. Well, the idea, if not the host, returns on Monday, with Celebrity Talent Scouts (9:00 p.m., CBS), hosted by the genial comedian Sam Levenson. The premise is simple: each week, three celebrities present their "discoveries" for our entertainment. Tonight's celebrities are Ann Sheridan, Audrey Meadows, and Phil Silvers (who introduces something of a ringer, Mickey Freeman, who played Zimmerman on the Bilko series). Another summer entry is the return of the anarchic Spike Jones and his band (9:30 p.m., CBS). Spike swears he's off the slapstick schtick for this series, although Bill Dana is on hand as one of the regulars, playing his Jose Jiminez character.

Tuesday's Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, starring Hugh O'Brian (8:30 p.m., ABC) is often credited with being the first adult Western, and rightly so. Something that's not generally recognized, though, is that it is one of the few series of the time that came to a natural end. The series did progress chronologically—perhaps it wasn't a serial in the way we think of them today, but it followed Earp from Ellsworth to Dodge City to Tombstone; in two months, it begins its sixth and final season, building up inexorably to the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral with a multi-part story that brings the series to a conclusion. If that's not a great way to go out, I don't know what is. Later on CBS, catch Ernie Kovacs in 'I Was a Bloodhound," a great private detective spoof originally seen on G.E. Theater last year, on Comedy Spot. (9:30 p.m.)

Bette Davis makes a rare television dramatic appearance on Wednesday's Wagon Train (7:30 p.m., NBC), as Elizabeth McQueeny, taking her group of girls out West to start a finishing school. Johnny Carson, not yet the Tonight host, is the guest on I've Got a Secret (9:30 p.m,. CBS), trying to stump the panel with his "secret," which is that he's answering their questions while hooked up to a lie detector. And Armstrong Circle Theater (10:00 p.m. CBS) tells the story of police narcotics squad members who go undercover in Greenwich Village to bust a drug ring on "Raid in Beatnik Village." Douglas Edwards, anchorman of the CBS evening news, narrates.

Thursday night sees the debut of Wranger (9:30 p.m., NBC), a new half-hour Western starring Jason Evers as a wandering cowpoke named Pitcairn. Tonight, he runs into a ranch owner named McQueen; alas, the perfect crossover promotion is missed, as it's not Steve McQueen from Wanted—Dead or Alive, but a character named McQueen, a "gorgeous blonde" played by Susan Oliver, who is, indeed, both. The series is the first to be created by Gene Roddenberry, who had a long history with Westerns; it runs for only six episodes as a summer replacement for Tennessee Ernie Ford, but never made it beyond that. Perhaps the other McQueen would have helped.

On Friday, a Project 20 repeat from 1956 takes a look at "The Jazz Age," in a documentary narrated by the late Fred Allen (10:00 p.m., NBC). The special chronicles "America and Americans" from the end of World War I to the 1929 stock market crash. A lot happened during that decade-plus, from the Treaty of Versailles to Prohibition to the KKK to Lindbergh's flight. I've read that the documentary was edited down from 23 hours of film; Ken Burns probably would have used it all, and it would have taken two months to tell the same story.

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Finally, you may recall a 1962 feature on Tuesday Weld that appeared last month. There's a similar article about Tuesday this week, relevant in that she's currently appearing as one of the Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. I won't recount the details, as most of it is already covered in the 1962 article. However, I would be remiss if I didn't share this rather, uh, entertaining photo spread of Tuesday, in her words, "becoming a teen-ager!" as she dances along to an Elvis record. (Funny, I don't recall knowing any teens quite like that back in the day; I clearly went to the wrong high school.)

I don't think you even try to follow that, do you? TV