Around the dial

I don't generally begin things with a non-television thought, but Bob Sassone had a very interesting piece last week that's stuck with me the more I've read it. It's called URL vs. IRL, and it's all about how we ought to be spending more time in real life (IRL) rather than on social media (URL). I won't attempt to summarize it here; I'd prefer that you go to the link and read it for yourself, because then you won't be deprived of either his fine writing or his excellent reasoning. 

Suffice it to say that, as someone who spends a pretty fair amount of time online, I not only feel his pain (to coin a phrase), I feel it myself. This may sound strange coming from me, given how I not only write four pieces a week for this site, but also spend time on X, Facebook, and other platforms in support of my writing projects. Quite frankly, though, I'm sick and tired of it all. I've met some wonderful friends through these platforms, and I've been the beneficial recipient of some brilliant insight from others (I'm not shy about admitting it), but it all gets quite tiresome and demoralizing to witness all the internecine fights among (and between) various cliques, the clickbait masquerading as news, the dull-witted stupidity of some people, the elitist condescenation of others, the cheapening and coarsening of debate and conversation, and the effort required to make one's way through it all. It's harder to get through X or Facebook while avoiding all this crap than, one supposes, it is to make your way through quicksand. (Which isn't usually all that deep, as it happens.)  

Again, this has nothing to do with television, except that I think it's good for all of us to reflect on it periodically and do something about it, So instead of hate-surfing the web, watch a decent television show from the past. Better yet, instead of streaming some mindless stupidity on YouTube, go out for a walk. Don't worry about the resolution of your screen; think more about the amazing experience of real-life HD that can be found simply by looking all around you at the miracle and wonder of God's creation. You might even find yourself making a habit of it, as I hope will be the case with me. 

At Comfort TV, David's journey through the 1970s continues with Saturday night, 1976: CBS's heavyweight lineup starts to show signs of fatigue, but can anyone else catch up? Holmes and Yoyo, Mr. T and Tina, and Doc suggest that the answer is "no." 

The 50th anniversary Space: 1999 celebration concludes at Captain Video with a comic book and record set of the pilot. "It's fun to read as you hear!" I don't know if we have tie-ins like that anymore; I suppose in the era of streaming and DVD, why would you bother?

At Cult TV Blog, John's investigation as to whether The Prisoner references Soviet Russia brings us to the episode "A, B and C," in which the analogy actually matches up pretty well. Food for thought, for us Prisoner aficionados, the next time we watch the series.

Our friend Gill is celebrating the tenth anniversary of Realweegiemidget with a look back at some of her biggest posts from the past ten years, as well as a preview of coming attractions. I hope you're making her a part of your regular blog reading.

At Mavis Movie Madness, Paul looks at the seriously intense (not to mention kinky) 1975 telemovie thriller The Legend of Lizzie Borden, with Elizabeth Montgomery's spellbinding star turn as the title character. It's a fascinating part of Americana; you can actually read the trial transcripts online!

One of the last greats from the Golden Age of movies and television (Lassie, Lost in Space, and Petticoat Junction to name a few) was the great June Lockhart, who made it all the way to age 100 before dying last week, and Terence has a very nice tribute to her at A Shroud of Thoughts.

If you're out trick-or-treating tonight, be careful, and watch out for the goblins—not just those in costume, but the ones in real life. TV

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What I've been watching: Summer, 2025

Shows I’ve Watched:	Shows I’ve Added:
Waiting for Godot The Power and the Glory	None

If it seems as if we haven't done one of these in awhile, you're right; the last time was in June, if my memory is correct. And there's a good reason for this: there hasn't been much of a change in my viewing habits over the summer and fall. It's been the same shows, week after week, month after month, and while they wouldn't be part of the regular rotation if they weren't fun to begin with, all good things have to end sometime. (And for some, not a moment too soon; I'm looking at you, Joe Mannix!) Following the break for sustained Christmas programming, you can expect to see a shakeup in the lineup, but in the meantime, let's take a look at a couple of notable episodes from the dramatic anthologies of the past, and see what they tell us.

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I must admit that it's taken me far too long to watch Samuel Beckett's controversial absurdist play "Waiting for Godot," and while I'm not going to pretend for one minute that I understand it, I will say, with confidence, that my cultural experience has been enhanced by watching the edition that appeared on the 1961 NET Play of the Week production, starring Burgess Meredith and Zero Mostel as  Vladimir and Estragon, the play's protagonists, who spend a couple of hours doing—well, doing nothing. Add in Kurt Kasznar as Pozzo, and Alvin Epstein as Lucky, the slave, and you have it. What it is is, of course, up to interpretation.

I'm not going to presume to try and explain the premise of "Godot," other than to say that the titular character, Godot, never shows up. Will he? Did he ever intend to? Is there, in fact, any such person as Godot? We'll never know, and Beckett doesn't intend to help us figure out the answers to any of these questions, or anything else, for that matter. 

So what does one do when confronted with a story that one can't really describe? Describe it, naturally! Not the story per se but the production, which I enjoyed a great deal—more than many of the contemporary critics, if the reviews I've read are any indication. For one thing, it was clearly and undeniably a television adaptation; the limits of the set were apparent, the staging was minimal, and the direction clearly a product of the live TV era. I am, of course, a sucker for all of these things. Given the choice between the Metropolitan Opera's "Live in HD" series of broadcasts and the old, studio-bound operas of NBC Opera Theatre, I'll opt for the latter any time. I suppose it's a product of being a television historian, or maybe it's just misplaced nostalgia for a time that preceded my own viewing, but I do enjoy the limitations inherent in even the best of these old made-for-TV productions. And even though this wasn't a live broadcast, it well could have been, based on what we saw.

Burgess Meredith is, without question, one of those actors who elevate everything in which he appears. He's one of the most natural of actors, and here he tosses off Beckett's challenging absurdities as if they were the most natural thing in the world. Zero Mostel, on the other hand, can be a bit broad, and we see that here. Now, I didn't bring any preconceived notions or prejudices to my viewing of this, which means that I don't have a definite idea of how Estragon, Mostel's character, is usually played, or should be played. What I do know is that he and Meredith made, I thought, an effective team; more so than some of the gimmick casting that Broadway has been known to indulge in over the years. 

But here's the thing—and, as I often point out, there's always a thing:I did actually find that "Godot" made more sense than I thought it would. Now, this might be my own personal interpretation, or perhaps I'm seeing it through a more contemporary influence than others, but when you look at this Godot character, who's talked about constantly but never seen, what does he remind you of? For me, it was the endless series of promises that comprise so much of what we're fed nowadays. Politicians promise us they'll take care of what ails us, but do they? Doctors promise the latest vaccine will keep us healthy, but does it? We're always being told that we have to be more patient, more understanding, willing to come back day after day after mind-numbing day, with the promise that things might have improved by then.

You notice all the similarities here? We're always being promised something that never comes to pass, just like Godot's promises that he'll be here tomorrow, or perhaps the day after tomorrow, or possibly the day after that. Godot is, if you want to look at it, the Big Brother of absurdist theatre, unseen but influencing everything. Or, like The Prisoner, Godot could be us, only we don't see ourselves as we truly are, which only underlines our own weakness. Perhaps he's dead. Perhaps he doesn't even exist. Maybe he never did; maybe we're all just being fed a line. And yet: he continues to control our lives, and nothing ever changes.

To me, it makes perfect sense, which is to say that it makes no sense at all.

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And now for something completely different, namely Graham Greene's magnificent novel The Power and the Glory, which was translated into a somewhat less magnificent 1961 television broadcast produced by David Susskind, starring Sir Laurence Olivier, and co-starring George C. Scott, Julie Harris, Martin Gabel, Roddy McDowall, Keenan Wynn, Patty Duke, and Cyril Cusack, among others. Like "Godot," The Power and the Glory has the feel of a television play, rather than a movie. Perhaps something from the Hallmark Hall of Fame, back in the day what one could count on quality from that series.

Unlike "Godot," which actually benefits from the claustrophic atmosphere created by the studio-bound production, The Power and the Glory is a sprawling, epic saga taking in a priest's twin journey: one that takes him through various parts of Mexico during the persecution of Catholics, in search of safety and rest; the other, a journey of self, as he discovers how, despite his many flaws and failings, the priesthood is something that fundamentally, and permanently, changes a man. He can leave the active priesthood, he can be defrocked or laicized, but the mark remains on him: he can never escape the fact that he will always be a priest.

Our whiskey priest, played by Olivier, is only too well-aware of his limitations: not only is he an alcoholic, more concerned about getting his next drink than anything else, he also fathered an illegitimate child while in the clerical state. His failings have imposed a crushing burden on him, a sense of unworthiness that is painful and heartbreaking to witness. Although Olivier has a tendency to chew the scenery, especially in the early going, the pain he exhibits is undeniable, and impossible to ignore; it is present in every syllable he utters, every motion he makes, every thought he espouses. His quest for wine to be used as a sacramental for the Mass, which ends with him drunk and held in a squalid jail cell, is typical: his inability to procure the wine is both cause and effect of his desire for drink. His drinks to forget his failures as a man, a father, a priest. His depression over his condition merely reinforces his weaknesses, his dependency on alcohol. It is a most vicious circle.

I wrote about The Power and the Glory in a TV Guide feature from a couple of weeks ago, when the production was looked upon with great anticipation. For Olivier, it was a return to the medium which had given him an Emmy for his performance in The Moon and Sixpence, and it was expected that The Power and the Glory would be equally heralded. In the event, it was not. It was good, and at times better than that; the performances, especially those by Scott as the relentless office obsessed with the priest's capture (think The Fugitive's Lieutenant Gerard, only with a Spanish accent and a persecution complex) and Martin Gabel as Scott's cynical superior, are intense. And as I say, even though the great Sir Laurence's essay on the role—broad at times, mannered at others—still conveys the sense of nobility that remains embedded in this man who finally realizes that his death may afford a dignity to his life that life itself often failed to deliver.

What these two productions do have in common, above all, is that they both exist today, a somewhat unlikely result given all of the television history that has been lost in the mists of time (or the dumpsters of various networks). That dramas such as these might show up on television today is a pretty unlikely thought. Maybe "Godot," because for all its inscrutability, it does, as I said earlier, lend itself to gimmick casting, the type that PBS is so fond of (think Steve Martin and Martin Short, for example). The Power and the Glory, however, is far less likely to show up any time soon, especially given its subject matter of religion, the third rail of American culture. And the idea that human dignity can rise above even the greatest of a man's failings and give his life (or any life, for that matter) meaning? Well, talk about absurd. TV

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What's on TV? Tuesday, October 31, 1961

I never watched the early-morning educational on a regular basis; I was too busy getting educated myself, at dear old Longfellow Public School in Minneapolis. (Of course, I was also two years old when this issue came out.) I remember Sunrise Semester, but I know the rest of them only through the pages of TV Guide. And these programs, shown on commercial television, offered not just variety, but some pretty heavy topics: "Some Organic Chemistry," "Political Parties and the Founding Fathers," and "Reproduction of Cells," and that's just today's lineup. There's even a program called English for Americans because there was a time when newcomers to America wanted to sound, you know, like Americans. All these treats for Halloween '62 come from the Eastern New England edition.

This week in TV Guide: October 28, 1961

Every so often, we encounter one of these "Week to Watch!" issues, when television is filled with big-name, marquee-value specials. Back in the 1960s, they frequently happened around Thanksgiving, but nobody's waiting around this year! Most of this week's issue is devoted to backstage looks at the feature presentations, so let's get right to it and see just how special this week really is!

The week starts with Saturday's Ernie Kovacs Special (8:30 p.m. ET, ABC), one of the comedian's monthly appearances, sponsored by Dutch Masters Cigars. Kovacs, in an article accompanying the special, describes it as "a half hour composed of Beethoven's Fifth, a girl in a bathtub, an interview with Horace Gridley, the noted molester, and Stravinsky's 'Firebird Suite.'" Scattered throughout, he continues, are blackouts done to the tune of "Mack the Knife" (in the original German," plus "Mona Lisa" sung in Polish, and a section of the program devoted to "Sex and Violence." There are also "some complimentary phrases dedicated to Dutch Masters Cigars." And lest anyone think Kovacs isn't responsible for the content, "I direct the show. I also write and produce the show. Do you realize how much money I would be making if this show had any kind of decent budget?!" It's an absolutely delightful half hour, available on DVD in the Ernie Kovacs collection put out a few years ago by Shout! 

Sunday bring a triple-header of specials, beginning with The World of Bob Hope (7:30 p.m., NBC), which is not the typical Bob Hope special we've all come to know and love; instead, it's a documentary look at Hope, narrated by Alexander Scourby, that not only reviews his show-biz career, but gives us a glimpse at what life is like for Hope on the road, interacting with friends, and talking about her personal and private life. That's a good lead-in to The DuPont Show of the Week (10:00 p.m., NBC), which features none other than Joan Crawford, narrating "The Ziegfeld Touch," a look at the legendary producer and impresario. The documentary combines vintage film clips featuring stars of various Ziegfield Follies shows, including Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor, Will Rogers, and W.C. Fields, and contemporary performances by musical-comedy performers, recreating performances from the era. 

Now, if you're not in the mood for this, I recommend the David Susskind-produced adaptation of Graham Greene's novel The Power and the Glory (9:00 p.m., CBS), with a sterling cast topped by Sir Laurence Olivier, and co-starring George C. Scott, Julie Harris, Martin Gabel, Roddy McDowall, Keenan Wynn, Patty Duke, Cyril Cusack, and others. (It's really too bad they couldn't have gotten some bigger names, isn't it?) The star, of course, is Olivier, who won an Emmy the previous year for "The Moon and Sixpence." Booton Herndon's profile of Sir Laurence is an admiring one, though he doesn't shy away from the actor's faults, including two spectacular and very public divorces. 

But the man often referred to as the world's greatest actor comes off as sincere and unpretentious, admired by his colleagues and those who work with him (Keenan Wynn made two cross-country trips just to shoot one scene with Olivier "Because this guy is the greatest", and a valet remembers Olivier waiting around for an hour after a shoot in order to give the man a ride back to Manhattan), and his dedication to his craft is without question (he spent days just working on the Latin accent he used in the production). History records that The Power and the Glory, which tells the story of a "whisky priest" in Mexico during the Catholic persecution, will fall short of its lofty ambition; Greene himself hated the adaptation, and critics gently chided Olivier for a tendency to ham it up at times. Nevertheless, its themes of faith, human frailty, and redemption are timeless, and the thought of a special like this appearing on commercial television today is just a dream. And you can see it all here, including the original commercials.

On Friday, James Arness is the unlikely host for The Chevrolet Golden Anniversary Show (8:30 p.m., CBS), a variety special celebrating the 50th anniversary of the American auto manufacturer. These anniversary shows used to be quite common; the Ford 50th Annivesary Show, nearly a decade earlier, not only ran two hours, it was broadcast on both CBS and NBC simultaneously.* Many of us have seen clips from this show, as well as The Edsel Show, which didn't commemorate an anniversary but did celebrate the launch of Ford's new automobile. (Only retrospectively does it look like a special covering the christening of the Titanic.) Anyway, back to Chevy; this "fun-filled" hour looks back at comedy and songs from the last 50 years, and features a lineup including Art Carney, Nanette Fabray, Tony Randall, Allen Case, and Eileen Rodgers. Now, if Matt Dillon ends the show by gunning down Henry Ford at high noon, I'm tuning in.

*It should be pointed out that at the time (1953), neither network covered 100 percent of the country, necessitating a multi-network purchase to cover the whole nation.  

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Granted, after all this, anything else is likely to pale, but there is certainly more worth watching: for instance, who could pass up John Carradine as "a half-crazed old man" (is there any other kind? I say this, of course, as a half-crazed old man myself) scaring Tom Poston and Elizabeth Montgomery with talk of vampires and such on Monday's Thriller episode "Masquerade" (10:00 p.m., NBC), which you can watch here. And on PM East . . . PM West (11:15 p.m., WBZ), Mike Wallace and Joyce Davidson's guests are monster and horror figures from the movies, including Theodore, movie host John Zacherle, "Famous Monsters" editor Jim Warren, and producer Mike Ripps. By the way, did I happen to mention that the next day is Halloween?

Perhaps it's interesting only to me, but Tuesday's ABC News Closeup! (10:00 p.m.) on "The Awesome Servant" seems to strike a chord with today's world. It deals with the growing trend toward automation in industry, the unemployment it has caused, and the fear engendered in those losing their jobs. The special includes looks at a meat processing plant and a data processing center, and how jobs have been both lost and created in the process. Most of us are, I trust, familiar with the effects AI is having on various industries, from acting to writing; I've known several of my writing colleagues who've lost jobs because they've been replaced by AI. Like so many things, there's no easy solution to this problem; it's also clearly a situation that continues to replicate itself over and over again, in every era and generation.

Wednesday's daytime rerun of I Love Lucy (10:30 a.m., CBS) is highlighted by a rare television appearance from William Holden, playing himself in a classic episode in which he meets Lucy, who's wearing a fake nose. We all remember that one, don't we? There's also a very funny takeoff on The Untouchables, entitled "The Unscratchables," on Top Cat (8:30 p.m., CBS), involving a gang of jewel thieves (fresh from the Louvre, perhaps?) who hide their stolen loot in T.C.'s garbage can. 

Speaking of can, the question is whether or not William Shatner can bail himself out of trouble in an episode of Dr. Kildare that finds him being sued for malpractice after a patient he treated and released dies afterward. (Thursday, 8:30 p.m., NBC) Will Shat discover that the Kobayashi Maru doesn't work in Blair General and that he's going to have to act his way out of this one? Tune in tonight and find out.

And on Friday, Dinah Shore welcomes Dean Martin and Donald O'Connor to the spot she shares on an every-other-week basis with The Bell Telephone Hour. (9:30 p.m., NBC) Ironic, isn't it, that' just an hour before we were celebrating the anniversary of the company she used to shill for, Chevrolet? You can still see the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet, apparently, just not with Dinah. And what fun would that be?

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This week Gil Seldes gives us his opinion on two of television's legendary series, The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. One of the reasons I enjoy reading contemporary reviews of classic series is that, over time, such programs can become so wound up in reputation that it becomes difficult to, as John Ford might say, separate the fact from the legend. The good news, for fans of both shows, is that for the most part they live up to their reputation.

Serling has described episodes of TZ as being mostly "far out," which is just fine with Seldes: "I, who am not even a mild addict of science fiction, find I like the far-outs better. In those, The Twilight Zone not only kids me, it kids itself. In the others, it gets all solemn and allegorical." As an example of the former, he cites a pair of well-known episodes: ◀ "A World of His Own," in which Keenan Wynn plays a novelist who brings his characters to life through a tape recorder; and "The Arrival," with Harold J. Stone as an investigator who can't crack the case of an airliner that lands without any passengers or crew. Seldes praises the ending, with Stone's desperate cry of despair, as "magnificent." Less successful is one of the "important" episodes, "Two," with Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery as the last two survivors of a world war. It was, says Seldes, little more than "boy meets girl." Turning to Hitchcock, there is "The Changing Heart," with a clock-maker (Abraham Sofaer) who can't bear the thought of his daughter (Anne Helm) leaving him, and "Specialty of the House," a darkly humorous story of cannibalism, with Robert Morley and Kenneth Haigh.

 "At their best," Seldes writes," both of these programs are first-class entertainment and they are always well-made and thank heaven no one has inflated them beyond their proper length, which is half an hour." Of course, The Twilight Zone would go to an hour for its fourth season (a story in inself), but the half-hour format is perfect for these tales; "I have in recent weeks seen three hour-long dramatic shows which among them hardly contained more entertainment than a single show of either of these."

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I'm well aware that not everyone will find a certain item as interesting as I do, and I do sometimes write about particular issues multiple times. Yet, that's the way of it as a historian; you trace certain significant trends as they evolve through the years, as a means of measuring their impact on whatever it is that you write about. This week, that issue is television sponsorship, as seen by the editors.

A recent FCC hearing "confirmed what everyone knew all along: Many sponsors censor their shows." It's not necessarily as nefarious as it might sound; sponsors, risk-averse as always, seek to avoid "anything that might offend potential customers or place their products or companies in a bad light." And that's an understandable position, one for which you can hardly fault them, given that they're spending millions in support of their product. The threat comes when things get out of hand, and when writers and producers start to self-censor in an effort to proactively appease the sponsor, in which case "the result is bound to be bland, unimaginative programming." (Ask Rod Serling about the effects of sponsor pressure.)

So who's to blame, if not the sponsors, nor the content creators? It is, according to the editors, "a television system which permits an advertiser to decide upon, and to buy, the editorial material that surrounds his advertising." An advertiser can't do that in newspapers or magazines, and "television can't possibly be an independent, mature communications medium until he can't do it there either." The answer, ironically, could lie in the rising costs of television production, which is increasingly requiring multiple sponsors for a broadcast. The more sponsors a show has, the less influence any one sponsor can have on that show's content. Still, recent episodes of The Defenders and Bus Stop encountered significant opposition from a sponsor who threatened to withdraw sponsorship from both episodes. Will the producers of these shows seek "safer material" as a result? 

What is the relevance for today's television? Well, oftentimes, ad time is sold through brokers, meaning that the sponsor might not even have an active role in determining what programs they sponsor. For this reason, sponsorship boycotts, while they may be good for headlines, often have no impact on overall content unless a program becomes too toxic for anyone to touch. On the other hand, in an era of corporate activism, one can't rule out coordinated efforts by various sponsors to influence programming. The real test comes when a network makes decisions that appear to be at odds with the network's own priority, which is presumably achieving successful ratings in a given demographic. When that metric begins to take a back seat, then we'll know there's something to worry about.

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I mentioned at the outset that this issue is dominated by the week's special programming, but there's still room for mention of a serious topic: whether or not television is being used as a "scapegoat" for social ills. Edward Walsh, the Patterson Professor of Journalism at Fordham University, thinks it is, and says that those who put down television need to take a good look in the mirror first. If, as Walsh suggests, television bears some responsibility for the sharp rise in juvenile delinquency in the nation, is it solely TV's fault? Or, as Walsh suggests, should the parents who "lash out at television as the great debaser of modern society" take a closer examination at the programming they watch? For "it's their viewing habits that set the pattern for those of their children, at least up to the age of 10."

Walsh refers to what he calls "a triangle of responsibility" regarding mass media, involving the government, the media themselves, and the public. Each bears a particular obligation to see to it that mass media remains a responsible part of society. And yet there's another triangle, one that has been around much longer and goes to "the very core of our society": the church, the school, and the home. Each of these has greater responsibility than that of the government or the media, but so far they've escaped the bulk of the blame. And that's not right, says Walsh; according to Fr. J. Franklin Ewing, an anthropologist at Fordham, "Culture is not an inhuman juggernaut. The participants in a culture are individuals. If errors, inadequacies or dangers appear to you to exist in TV, you are the one to do something about this." 

Indeed, writes Walsh, "Television content is a symptom of our social problems more than it is a cause of them. We may decry the great incidence of violence in the medium, but we must also remember that the age of mass communication has been an age characterized by violence." To the extent that television reflects the world in which it exists, "Can our society condemn television without condemning itself?"

Furthermore, there's the question of those who use television as a babysitter or pacifier. According to Dr. Wilbur Schramm, Director of the Institute for Communication Research at Stanford University, "If we do not introduce our children to books, simply because television is so easily available, then we are being foolish. If we do not help our children to build up healthy contacts with other humans their own age, simply because television 'keeps them at home,' then we are truly doing them an unkindness." One could, I suppose, say the same thing about social media.

Parents must take responsibility for their duties as parents: keep informed of what's on TV, and carefully supervise what their children watch. If this results in them developing good taste in programming, their influence will help elevate the quality of the content. "That is a long-range job," he concludes, "but most jobs worth doing are long range."

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MST3K alert: Plan Nine from Outer Space (1956) Reports of flying saucers terrify San Fernando Valley. Bela Lugosi, Vampira. (Saturday, 11:15 p.m., WPRO in Providence) Now, you didn't think we'd pass up the opportunity to spotlight one of the worst, if not the worst, movies ever made? It's never better than in the Rifftrax edition—featuring a colorized version of Plan 9—in which our heroes play off the energy from a live audience to deliver a memorable interpretation of this epic failure. Who could ask for anything more? TV

If you enjoy the content here and want to support my broader creative work, please consider making a donation at my Ko-fi page. Any amount you contribute helps me continue writing, researching, and sharing these articles and projects. Thank you!

Around the dial

Are you ready for more Space: 1999? You'd better be, because that's where we begin this week, as the 50th anniversary celebration continues at Captain Video. Instead of graphic adaptations, though, this time, it's a short story version of the pilot episode.

Back in the days when Hallmark made more than Christmasy romcom telemovies, Teri Garr appeared in the 1987 Hall of Fame adaptation of Pack of Lies, a British Cold War drama that makes for compelling viewing, according to Gill at RealWeegieMidget. Those were the days.

There's not much to add to this 1960 ad for RCA televisions at the Broadcast Archives, except this: I wish I looked this good while I was watching TV.

Hard for me to believe that Halloween is just a week away, but for those of you celebrating, at Classic Film & TV Cafe, Rick has an excellent list of the 25 greatest classic horror films. But why wait; if you feel like it, watch one of them tonight!

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More spooky favorites? Let's go over to Mavis Movie Madness, where Paul looks at the 1973 ABC Movie of the Week Dying Room Only, written by Richard Matheson, and starring Cloris Leachman, Ned B eatty, Ross Martin, and Dabney Coleman. Fine story, terrific cast.

John continues with his series on The Prisoner and Soviet-era Russia at Cult TV Blog. This week, it's "The Chimes of Big Ben," and how the episode suggests such Soviet concepts as social parsitism, the refusal to work, and how Number 2 mirrors Joseph Stalin. Fascinating stuff.

Completing our terrifying trio is Martin Grams's review of The Creeping Unknown, the 1956 movie better known, perhaps, as The Quatermass Experiment, based on the much-loved BBC TV series of the early 1950s (and its sequels), and written by the great Nigel Kneale.

Eventually, Roger will come to the end of A-Team episodes, and then we'll be searching for something else to link to; in the meantime, the show continues, and now we're up to the episode "In Plane Sight," a nice turn of phrase for a story of a pilot falsely accused of drug smuggling.

I'll admit I didn't remember the 1973 sitcom Thicker Than Water, starring Julie Harris and Richard Long; the last show I recalled Long from was Nanny and the Professor, and quite frankly, my attention back then was directed elsewhere. Remember it now with this commercial, at Television Obscurities. 

Samantha Eggar was one of those actresses I would describe as "handsome," a type of beauty that is in no way denigrated by the masculine suggestion. She was very lovely, if you prefer. She died last week, aged 86, and Terence has a tribute to her career at A Shroud of Thoughts. 

What's this? No Hadley self-promotion this week? Sorry, but you knew it had to be coming: my latest appearance with Dan Schneider is another two-fer, regarding two of the most prominent religious figures in television history, Billy Graham and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. God Bless! TV

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Naked City and the existence of a man

I will always insist that one of the very best police dramas ever shown on television—one of the best dramas of any kind, for that matter—was Naked City. Today's police procedurals pale in comparison; not only are many of them simply inferior products, even the best of them mostly fall short of the intellectual, emotional, and even spiritual depth contained in the eight million stories of the naked city. Of all its many fine episodes, perhaps the one that most epitomizes this is the extraordinary episode "Which Is Joseph Creeley?" That title is not a typo or a misstaatement, for the question of Joseph Creeley's identiy is not one of who, but which. It is an extraordinary episode, and while I can be accused of overusing that word from time to time, in this case I thought it really was extraordinary, even as the episode was unfolding. 

It's an unusual episode in many respects, not the least of which being that of the Naked City regulars, only Detective Adam Flint (Paul Burke) and his girlfriend Libby Kingston (Nancy Malone) appear in the episode; none of the other detectives are shown, or even mentioned in the opening credits—but then, this is not their story. The cold open gives us Adam and Libby heading up the steps to where some type of legal proceeding is being held. Adam is clearly tense, with Libby providing moral support. She heads into the courtroom, while Adam first detours to another room, where he meets with Joseph Creeley and Creeley's defense attorney. At this point, we still have no real idea what the episode is about, except for this intriguing tidbit: Creeley tells Adam that if he, Creeley, is guilty, then he wants to be punished for it.

The story is dominated by Martin Balsam's performance as Creeley, a man who finds himself at a crossroads few of us should ever hope to face. He's on death row, awaiting execution for a murder committed during a botched robbery, when he collapses from what turns out to be a brain tumor. The doctor gives him two choices: undergo an operation to remove the tumor, which may or may not succeed, or do nothing and see whether it kills him before the electric chair does. Adam, who was the original arresting officer and has been guarding Creeley in the hospital, is thrown into the maelstrom when Creeley asks him what he should do. For Adam, life is precious because it allows for hope, and he urges Creeley to undergo the surgery even if it changes nothing in the long run. Creeley signs over a Power of Attorney, and Adam authorizes the surgery.

And here's where it gets interesting.

As it turns out, the surgery is a success, with one caveat: in removing the tumor, the operation also wipes clean about ten years of Joseph Creeley's memory. He has no recollection of the crime, of his wife having divorced him, (or even having been married), of the circumstances that led him in desperation to the robbery that killed a man and left him on death row. It's as if his entire life ended ten years ago and has now started up again, with a giant hole in the middle. Furthermore, his doctor believes the tumor was probably responsible for his behavior up to and including the time of the robbery, which means he may not have been legally responsible for his actions.

All of this we learn from flashbacks generated by Adam's testimony on the stand, and now we understand just how we've gotten to this courtroom, on this date. Creeley's attorney has successfully won a new trial based on the doctor's opinion, and he's now going about demonstrating that there were two Joseph Creeley's: the one before the tumor, and the one after. He uses the testimony of people who have known Creeley throughout his life to demonstrate how his behavior had changed; a priest remembers him as a studious, polite boy; his ex-wife says that she divorced him because he was no longer the man he had been when she married him (a phrase which we often hear but in this case is meant to be taken literally), even Adam says that Creeley had the look of a wild man (i.e. crazy) when Adam arrested him.*

*Key point in understanding Adam: despite this wild look, Adam did not shoot (and risk killing) Creeley; he wouldn't take such action if he didn't have to, and in this case he didn't think he had to. 

The defense's insanity plea is an unusual one, in that the attorney suggests not only that Creeley was not legally responsible for his actions at the time due to the tumor, but that his memory loss (likely permanent) means he can never be that man, and that punishing him would be an injustice. The prosecution does not contest the notion that Creeley is a different man today, but their contention is that this is all immaterial: the Creeley who committed the crime did understand, for the purposes of the legal definition, the difference between right and wrong, and whether or not he remembers it today is beside the point as far as the administration of justice is concerned.* He calls as a witness the widow of the man Creeley killed, who herself was seriously injured in the attack, to share how her life has forever changed as a result of Creeley's actions.

*It's a line of thinking that invokes Dismas, the Good Thief who confessed the divinity of Christ on the Cross. Christ promises salvation for Dismas, but does not pardon him from earthly punishment for the crimes he had committed.

Quite a conundrum, isn't it? As the defense attorney says in his closing summation, the jury has now heard two versions of who Joseph Creeley is. According to one, he's a man who poses absolutely no threat to society, who has no memories of the man he was, and who should be allowed to live to be the man he is today. According to the other, he's a man who robbed and murdered, who knew that it was wrong regardless of why he did it, and who now must pay the penalty. The question for the jury to decide: which of these is Joseph Creeley.

We never find the answer to that question; the episode ends with the verdict yet to be given. It's an appropriate way to end the story, I think, because the answer to this question really lies within ourselves, in how we see and define the humanity of an individual.

Is it true that a man is the sum total of his memories? The philosopher John Locke used, as the criterion for personal identity (the self), not the substance of either the soul or the body, but the psychological continuity of consciousness: the memory. In other words, you are what your memory shows you to be.* Locke contends that you "are in truth only responsible for the acts for which you are conscious," which lies at the heart of the insanity defense, that if you are not aware (or conscious) of an act, you cannot be held accountable for it. Without that memory of who he was, he is not the same man. The court would, in effect, be punishing the wrong man for having committed the crime.

*Displayed in his analogy of "The Prince and the Cobbler," where a prince, whose soul (and memories) were transferred to the body of a cobbler (whose soul had departed), would continue to think of himself as a prince, even though he finds himself in appearance to be a cobbler. Think Here Comes Mr. Jordan, or its remake, Heaven Can Wait, as examples. This is, of course, the same premise upon which Doctor Who is based.

Against this, the argument can be made that Locke has no lock on the truth. In discussing the concept of "identity over time," the Catholic philosopher Peter Geach denies the idea "that there is a single absolute relation of identity rather than a host of relative identity relations." In other words, it is impossible to say that the prince is identical to the cobbler. "Instead there must be a concept of a kind of thing, a so-called sortal concept, that serves to answer the question." We would have to ask: is the prince the same what as the cobbler? The same man? The same thinker? The same craftsman? The same husband? The same leader? Likewise with Creeley: Is he the same man? The same murderer? The prosecution might well contend that while he is not the same man, he is the same murderer, and must be punished accordingly.

It's no surprise that Naked City could generate this type of discussion. In the book The Philosophy of TV Noir, Robert E. Fitzgibbons labels Naked City as an example of a "relativist" television series, one that insists that there is no clear definition of the truth at any given time. Dr. Wirtz, Creeley's doctor in the episode, says as much: "Sanity is a relative term." Even when someone in the program does something we might define as "wrong," Fitzgibbons insists, the viewer "was left—indeed almost forced—by the end of many episodes to wonder whether perhaps these choices might not have been right in some way." The concept of moral relativism, expressed in this manner, dovetails with Locke's would-be insistence that Creeley today cannot be judged as if he were Creeley yesterday, because that man literally no longer exists at this moment in time.

So what does this all mean? There is no closure to this question, since we never see the verdict come in. Gilbert Ralston, the writer of this episode, almost certainly intended for the viewer to be the jury and to let each one of us make the decision for ourselves. Although I am not a moral relativist, I find myself, for the most part, agreeing with Creeley's attorney that it would not be in the interests of justice to hold Creeley accountable for a crime which he has no memory of, which in fact, he may not have been legally responsible for having committed in the first place. And yet justice does demand an answer; it's similar to a terrorist who commits suicide after having perpetrated his mass murder. We're left with an empty feeling, a sense that the circle has not been squared.

Ultimately, what I love about this episode is not just the lack of a neat conclusion, but that it dares to raise this kind of question in the first place. Had the story ended with a jury verdict, we need not have agreed with that verdict to have been stimulated by the questions presented in the episode. Perhaps only The Defenders would have dared to go into this type of territory at the time; most of the discussions offered in contemporary television usually consist of straw man arguments that are eventually knocked down by the cast member acting as a surrogate for the writer. I never got that feeling from "Which is Joseph Creeley?" Regardless of how Ralston wanted us to think about Creeley, and whether or not he should be punished, he gave us more than enough to chew on, more than enough for us to come to our own conclusion about just how it is that we define the existence of a man. TV

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What's on TV? Saturday, October 16, 1965

I've mourned the loss of movies on local stations often enough that you're probably sick of hearing about it, but today's a good example of the kind of thing we're missing today. Just look at the late movies: KCRA has the World War II classice Twelve O'clock High, with an Oscar-winning performance from Dean Jagger; KPIX has The Best Years of Our Lives, which won six Oscars, including Best Picture, Director (William Wyler), Actor (Fredric March) and Supporting Actor (Harold Russell); and KRCR is showing A Face in the Crowd, with Andy Griffith in his finest role, Patricia Neal, and Walter Matthau. And those are just the headliners! I suspect this is the equal of any lineup you're apt to see nowadays. We're looking this week at the Northern California edition.

This week in TV Guide: October 16, 1965

As anyone who watches television knows, sponsorship is the lifeblood of the medium. Commercials on TV are, by and large, annoying, infuriating, stupid, loud, and wind up telling you very little about the products they're supposedly advertising. There are too many of them, they last too long, and they're so intrusive that they can leave a viewer running for cover just to escape. Even public television has them, although they're not called such. There was a time when a television series couldn't even make it to the airwaves without already having sponsors lined up.  

Which leads us to this week's question: just how do programs go about getting sponsorship? Here to provide the answers, in a very funny article that contains more truth than I suspect we might think, is Robert Leonard. Leonard is a man who should know, having spent ten years as Vice President in Charge of Television at one of Madison Avenue’s biggest ad agencies. It was his job to sell prospective programs to sponsors looking to finance the season's next big thing, which would just so happen to provide the sponsor's product with the best possible platform for exposure to the millions of viewers who, until this very moment, had no idea that said product was so essential to their quality of life. There are, Leonard says, four basic types of pitches known to the industry, one to cover each type of program the agency might encounter; in the right hands, each of these pitches guarantees sure-fire results every time.

The safest kind of program to pitch, according to Leonard, is the "Likewise, I'm sure" kind of show. You know the kind: a show that"carbon-copies some other well-rated program as closely as the laws of infringement permit." Imagine, if you will, a show starring "an outspoken housemaid." You can't call it Hazel, of course, but what about Ethel? It's the perfect response for the sponsor who demands something on the order of, say, Bonanza. "You might come right back at him with a drama called Briganza that takes place on a big Oregon ranch called The Sequoia, which is owned by Bill Wheelwright who has four sons. ('A real switcheroo, eh, Harry?')" I'm sure we've all seen an example or two of this kind of program over the years, haven't we, Dick Wolf? 

Speaking of whom, the second kind of show, Leonard says, is the one with the sterling "credit rating." This is something everyone who watches television today ought to be familiar with; Dick Wolf has made a career out of selling concepts based on the simple fact that they were created by one Dick Wolf. You can, in fact, make this kind of pitch all the way down the line, "through scriptwriters, film editor and wardrobe mistress." With this kind of credit in the bank, you can push for extra star power in the casting, in something called a "fresh format." Think of "something like combining Willie Mays and Chet. Huntley in a psychological Western, or Lawrence Spivak playing the role of a kindly football coach." Why, the pitch practically writes itself: "Believe me, Louie, the rating services will Top-10 this baby! It’s got everything going for it!"

Then, there's something called "integrated programming." In this kind of program, the commercial is practically a part of the show; imagine, Leonard proposes, a series called D.S.C., featuring the brave men of the "Department of Street Cleaning." Sounds exciting, right? Well, maybe not to you or me, but what if you were in charge of ad buying for a company famous for its detergent products. See where we're going here? Each week, "exciting episode after episode takes us into the everyday lives of the men who preserve our sanitation; their hopes and fears, their home life; the things they have inside their homes that they’ve collected in line of duty." All brought to you by the company that makes their uniforms sparkle! 

What if, however, your program lacks that certain je ne sais quoi? The kind of show that "Doesn’t aim very high, so it can’t fall very far." It's still on the market, even though it's been on the air for a few weeks. "The network is desperate. The packager is frantic. The price is slashed! And the concessions you get! Quick-escape clauses! Extra commercial positions!" Sounds good—but, you might be wondering, why hasn't someone bought it up yet? "Maybe it's a real stinker. Maybe everyone who saw the pilot threw up." In that case, it's not that the's show's bad; it's just offbeat, not for everyone, victim of a bad timeslot. Don't look at it as a bad show; think of it as a good bargain.

 
And so there you have it, the concise explanation for how your favorite (or least-favorite) show got its sponsor. There's only one last detail remaining: the Return on Investment, here expressed as the CPM: cost per thousand homes per minute of commercial. You arrive at this by taking the weekly average audience from last season, and add 25 percent "to prove you have confidence in the new vehicle you picked." Divide that by the sponsor's cost per episode, and then again by the number of commercial minutes per episode. And that is your magic number, the one that enables you to close the deal. However, Leonard offers this warning in conclusion: "Don’t dare put the CPM in writing. Because when your television turkey is staggering around next spring just asking to be slaughtered, the CPM can get your neck, too."

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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: In Hollywood, Ed's scheduled guests are Sid Caesar; actor Sean Connery; the singing McGuire Sisters; singer Pat Boone; the rock 'n' rolling Animals; comics Guy Marks and Totie Fields; and the Fiji Military Band. (Note that according to the episode guide, Connery was a no-show, while Caesar was joined by Joyce Jameson (who also sings) in a sketch, and musical group Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs and tumbling group The Gimma Brothers also appeared.)

Palace: Host Frank Sinatra welcomes Count Basie; comic Jack E. Leonard; dancer Peter Gennaro, choreographer for Perry Como and the recent Andy Griffith special; West German singer-dancers Alice and Ellen Kessler; and Colombian high-wire acrobat Murillo.

What I enjoy about this week's matchup is that it shows off the extremes of my own musical tastes: The Animals (singing "The Work Song") and Pat Boone ("Night and Day" among other selections) on Sullivan, and Frank Sinatra and Count Basie on the Palace. And despite the temptation to push it, I'm going for The Palace, but in this pre-DVD era watch for Sullivan on reruns.

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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. 

This week Cleveland Amory demonstrates that there was, in fact, such a thing as life before Columbo for Peter Falk. Falk, of course, knew this well; prior to donning the lieutenant's rumpled raincoat, he'd received two Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor, won an Emmy for "The Price of Tomatoes," and had starred in the subject of this week's review, a series which he's called his favorite, Trials of O'Brien. And Cleve has some news for you: "If you think that Peter Falk is an overrated young man who looks like the late John Garfield and acts like a road-company James Cagney—and that, furthermore, he is inclined to make a federal case out of saying 'hello' and yet plays a big scene as if it should have been handled in small-claims court—then you are not going to like this show." On the other hand, if you think he is the coolest, hippest, In-est actor to come along since The Birth of a Nation, then you are going to love it. For, make no mistake about it, this is Falk’s show."

And what this is is a legal drama laced with a liberal dose of comedy; in fact, it might not be a stretch to view Danny O'Brien, Falk's character, as a distant relative of Columbo, one of those familial characters that keep popping up in the stories the lieutenant tells suspects as he's luring them into his trap. He is, as the American Bar Association disparingly described him in a complaint to CBS, a man who "(1) plays the horses, (2) parks his car in a no-parking zone, (3) throws his brief case, crammed with important papers, into the back of his open convertible and (4) is divorced and, apparently worst of all, is behind on his alimony payments." In addition, they don't like his habits, manners, and dress. All of this, the ABA claims, combines to bring the legal profession into disrepute and suspicion. (As if they weren't capable of that on their own.)

To all this, Amory replies, the network should "throw the American Bar Association out of court." Yes, make him pay his parking fines, but the back alimony points to one of the strongest parts of the series, O'Brien's relationship with his ex-wife Katie, played by Joanna Barnes, whom Amory calls "the brightest new spot of the new season." "[E]ven if the writers make her act mean, she doesn’t really mean to be mean—she’s not all on the side of the Bar Association." Falk, in fact, is surrounded by a strong supporting cast; in addition to Barnes, there's Elaine Stritch, Ilka Chase, and David Burns, and guest-starring appearances by Herschel Bernardi, Robert Blake, Buddy Hackett and Cloris Leachman. But, as will be the case with Columbo, the center of gravity at all times is Falk, who is on screen 90 percent of the time and can "tough-guy it and hard-heart it with anybody but the Supreme Court." And the network itself; despite a positive reception (even from critics not named Cleveland Amory), the series ends after a run of 22 episodes.

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For political junkies, the Sunday interview shows are a feast. With the death of President Kennedy last year, former President Dwight Eisenhower is seen even more as the elder statesman of the presidency (along with Harry Truman, to a lesser extent), and on Issues and Answers (1:30 p.m., ABC), he sits down for a one-on-one interview with White House correspondent Bill Lawrence from the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg. General Eisenhower* analyzes military tactics in the Vietnam War, discusses the final volume in his memoirs, and talks politics, including "a plan for limiting Senate and Congressional terms of office." Ah, Ike always was a man ahead of his time.

*As a five-star general, Eisenhower was given the choice as to what title he wished to use following his presidency. He always chose to be referred to as "General" rather than "President."

From left: Beame, Lindsay, Buckley

Meanwhile, Meet the Press (4:30 p.m., NBC) interviews the three major candidates for mayor of New York City: Republican John Lindsay, Democrat Abe Beame, and Conservative William F. Buckley, Jr. Buckley's stated reason for entering the race is an attempt to deny victory to the liberal Lindsay (indeed, Beame may well be less liberal than Lindsay), and although he fails (Lindsay wins with 43% to Beame's 39% and Buckley's 13%), WFB does get off the best line of the campaign: declining his rebuttal time during a debate, he remarks that "I am satisfied to sit back and contemplate my own former eloquence."* Would that there was even one candidate of this caliber running today.

*I've used this line many times over the years myself. Although there are those who would have preferred I stop with "I am satisfied to sit back."

There's no guest listed for Face the Nation (9:30 a.m., CBS), but a quick Google search reveals that it was Alabama Attorney General Richmond Flowers, who's there to discuss the trial of KKK member Collie Leroy Wilkins for the murder of civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo following the march from Montgomery to Selma. Wilkins' first trial ended in a hung jury, and the moderate Flowers, a proponent of civil rights legislation, has announced that he will personally take over the prosecution of the retrial because, as state AG, he won't be subject to the pressures that local prosecutors might face. The sensational case has drawn worldwide attention, as well as a move to have the KKK investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Wilkins is never convicted by an Alabama court (thus escaping the electric chair), but is found guilty of civil rights violations in a subsequent Federal trial.

*Fun fact: Flowers' son, Richmond Jr., was a football player at Tennessee and went on to play in the NFL for the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants. (He chose Tennessee over Alabama because of his father's controversial politics.) He was also a star hurdler, a contender to make the 1968 Olympic team (a torn hamstring prevented him from qualifying), and was known at the time as "the fastest white boy alive."

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Let's continue with the sports theme for a moment. The World Series has ended, and now the spotlight turns fully to football. (Another sign of how the times have changed; today, it's the World Series that fights for a place in the spotlight.) The college game of the week on Saturday features a Southwestern Conference showdown between two of the nation's top teams, #1 Texas and #3 Arkansas (1:00 p.m., NBC). Arkansas, after blowing a 20-0 lead, rallies to defeat Texas 27-24. Four years later, the two teams will play "The Game of the Century" for the national championship; once again, Arkansas jumps out to a lead, but Texas rallies in the fourth quarter to win the game and the national title, 15-14. Today, the SWC is but a distant memory, while the two teams compete in the Southeastern Conference.

I discussed musical tastes earlier in the "Sullivan vs. The Palace" feature; Monday night offers us plenty of the same, beginning with Hullabaloo (7:30 p.m., NBC), where host Paul Anka welcomes the Supremes, Leslie Uggams, the Back Porch Majority, and jazz dancer David Winters. Later, it's the 18th  season premiere of Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall (9:00 p.m., NBC), with Perry joining singer Nancy Ames in a look back at the radio days of Kraft Music Hall, beginning with the Bing Crosby and Al Jolson days of the Thirties and Forties, and through the Fifties, when Perry himself took over. And I'll bet you get plenty of fall recipes during the commercial breaks.

On Tuesday, CBS presents master documentarian David L. Wolper's adaptation of Theodore White's best-seller The Making of the President 1964 (9:30 p.m.). Neither the book nor the documentary have quite the cachet of White's original 1960 book (and subsequent documentary), but it's still a valuable portrait of the tumultuous 1964 campaign, as LBJ tries to step out of the shadow of JFK. As with the previous documentary, stage actor (and frequent What's My Line? guest panelist) Martin Gabel provides the dignified narration.*

*Elsewhere in this week's issue is this ad for the John F. Kennedy half-dollar coin set, a valuable collectors item as silver is being phased out of coin-making. Is the placement a coincidence?  And what about that Dallas mailing address?

Barbra Streisand burst onto the television scene in April 1965 with her special "My Name Is Barbra," and CBS repeats the Emmy-winning show on Wednesday night (10:00 p.m.) It tops off a night of great variety that started with the 15th season opener of Hallmark Hall of Fame (7:30 p.m., NBC) and its original drama "Eagle in a Cage," the story of Napoleon's exile to the island of St. Helena and his plot to return to France, starring Trevor Howard and James Daly. (Admit it: can you see Hall of Fame showing something like that today? Not enough of a chick flick, I'd say.) That's followed by a Bob Hope Special (9:00 p.m., NBC), with Bob and his guests James Garner, We Five, Carol Lawrence, and Phyllis Diller. 

I couldn't possibly get through this week's music programs without stopping on Thursday to see the unexpecdted spectacle of Hedy Lamarr hosting Shindig (7:30 p.m., ABC), with the Dave Clark Five, the Kingsmen, Joe Tex, Brenda Holloway, and Lulu and the Luvvers. Over on NBC, Dean Martin (10:00 p.m.) has a stellar lineup with Louis Armstrong and his combo, Robert Goulet, Lainie Kazan, the Kirby Stone Four, the dance team of Brascia and Tybee, and the comic contortionists Trio Leema. And if you didn't get enough Frank Sinatra on The Hollywood Palace, there's more, with the network TV premiere of the original Ocean's 11 (9:00 p.m.), the Rat Pack romp co-starring the aforementioned Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, Angie Dickinson, and a movie-stealing Cesar Romero.

Awards shows haven't quite progressed to the point where they're stand-alone programs. The Golden Globes, for example, were a feature for several years on The Andy Williams Show, and on Friday night the Country Western Music Awards are handed out on The Jimmy Dean Show (10:00 p.m., ABC). Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Norma Jean Beasler, Del Reeves, and the team of Roy Drusky and Priscilla Mitchell are among the performers, and Tex Ritter and Roy Acuff are on hand as presenters. The show runs the typical one hour; nowadays, it seems as if there's a Country music awards show every other week. What's that? You say there is?

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Some interesting feedback in the Letters to the Editor section regarding a writer's roundtable featured in an issue that I wrote about many years ago. There's an interesting response from Howard Bell, the NAB Code Authority Director, who takes issue with the idea that the Code is responsible for the decline in TV drama. "[T]he TV code is not designed to stifle creativity in writers, nor does it do so in actual practice," Bell writes, quoting extensively from Section 1 of the Code: "It is in the interest of television as a vital medium to encourage and promote the broadcast of programs presenting genuine artistic or literary material, valid moral and social issues, significant controversial and challenging adult themes." While the Code isn't responsible for television's premier dramas, Bell writes, neither has it been a deterrent. If there has been a decline in the quality of television drama, there are undoubtedly reasons for it, but "from the Code Authority point of view, the excuse of censorship through the TV Code is misleading."

Leo Monaghan of Springfield, Massachusetts, also sees the issue of censorship as a straw man, pointing out that "Movies, paperbacks and magazines have amply shown that elimination of censorship is not the answer to mediocrity, but merely an invitation to degradation." According to Monaghan, the answer is not license, but talent. And while Maureen Bendich of Saratoga, Colorado, says that the article was "appalling and stimulating," suggesting that she sympathizes with the writers, she says it also "confirms my impressions that there is no room left for creativity." Finally, Robert Shaw, a "visiting Briton" writing from Jamaica, New York (the Robert Shaw, perhaps?), finds the whole thing ironic, having "been lectured on the 'evils' of government-controlled TV [i.e. the BBC] compared to the free enterprise system, as practiced here where 'no censorship exists.'" It's not clear whether Shaw finds the complaining or the assertion of no censorship to be the most humorous.

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The networks lost a combined $10,000,000 in revenue during their coverage of Pope Paul VI's historic visit to New York City earlier in October, but it was worth it, as Henry Harding reports they "rose magnificently to the occasion." The networks devoted virtually all of October 4 to coverage of the papal visit, with 90 pool cameras broadcasting images to over 140 million viewers during the 14 hours of coverage, including a high point of 70,000,000 at one point. Compared to "the esteem and gratitude of millions of viewers," the loss of revenue may be well worth it.

And they could use it, according to Samuel Grafton, in the first of a three-part series on how television covers the news. His question: does TV news really give the viewer the whole story? His answer: no. It's quite interesting, and another indication of how times have changed, that the article is full of comparisons between television and newspapers. NBC's Reuven Frank, for example, says that "A television news show is a front page. It is not a full news service, like a complete newspaper." Washington correspondent Clark Mollenhoff, who covers the capital for the Des Moines Register and Tribune and the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, says, "They touch the surface," but to do anything further would take "depth knowledge of a subject, which they don't have, or don't have time to acquire." Even Walter Cronkite, in a recent interview on the educational station WNDT, admits that "I do not think we cover the news"

Grafton compares the newspaper reporter, who "works through contacts he develops over the years, with many people, great and small," with the television reporter, who "comes through like a parade, with his truck and his cameras." Complicating things is television's fear of boring viewers, requiring them to reduce stories "to a small enough compass so that the viewer can take all of it," unlike the newspaper reader who commits himself to a thorough review of the daily paper. For the same reason, television news avoids stories that lack mass attention—"news of music, of the theater, paintings and new books." As Frank says, although "[t]here's no subject that can't be covered on television," it should only be covered if it's of interest to the layman—"not if it is interested only in a specialist's way."

By comparison, local television news is seen as a strength of the medium. Now, most sane people today consider local news to be pretty much, not to put it too delicately, crap. The "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality, combined with the boy-girl happy news anchor teams, most of which look as if they're auditioning for a fashion runway rather than the newsdesk, has heavily influenced network television. However, the advantage that local news had in the mid-1960s was that its audience was interested—these were stories that had a direct impact on viewers, ranging from commentaries to reviews of new plays.

The lack of commentary on television news is particularly striking, since the three major anchors—Cronkite, Huntley, and Brinkley—all have five-minute daily radio spots in which they often make pointed comments. Why radio and not TV? Huntley acknowledges that "We're still feeling our way on television. We'd feel naked on TV doing a one-and-a-half-minute think piece." Lacking commentary, there's always hard-hitting reporting, but even here, television falls short. According to Raymond Brand, an editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, it's because TV newsmen are too worried about their own images, too "dignified" and respectful, to lower themselves into the muck. CBS's Fred Friendly hopes this changes; "We want yeast. We want savvy. We want what comes out of a reporter's deep experience. Our reporters are going to dig, not just read."

Much as was the case with that drama writers' roundtable, the main obstacle to television news seems to be a sort of censorship, a reluctance to go beyond self-set limitations. But with expenditures of over $100 million annually, it's clear that television news won't remain static.

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MST3K alert: The Amazing Transparent Man (1959) A scientist enlists a convicted safecracker to help him steal radioactive material using the scientist's newly-developed method for turning a person invisible. Marguerite Chapman, Douglas Kennedy. Typical of the time, this sci-fi non-epic concludes with military personnel contemplating the prospects of an all-invisible army. Would that they had made the short, the Union Pacific safety film The Days of the Years, invisible; it's fortunate for the nation's economy that Union Pacific is better with the railways than with filmmaking.  TV

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