Since Haynes plays a history teacher on television, it's natural that he has some ideas of his own about history, and some of it doesn't sound all that different from what one might read today. For example, he calls George Washington a bigot (where have I heard that before?), and is frustrated by the lack of visibility when it comes to the role of blacks in American history. South Bend, Indiana, his hometown, was run by the Ku Klux Klan and the Mafia when he was growing up.
He hit his stride during a stint in the Marines, which funded his education at City College and San Jose State, and then it was on to Heater-Quigley, where he worked his way up from office boy to production assistant, with the goal of eventually breaking into acting. After a series of successful guest spots in various series, he now has one of his own, and he's making the most of it.
Haynes goes on to recount the time he was the only black in an encounter group. "A lady looked over at me and said, 'I hate you.' I asked why and she said, 'Because you're black.' She lived at Newport Beach or somewhere like that, you know, lily white. She figured if she could attack me, it would keep the others from finding out what was really wrong with her."
I mean, I don't want to insult any of you out there who may have taken part in groups like this (they're still out there, you know), but I don't see how anyone can read what I've just written without breaking out into hysterical laughter. It's just so, so. (If you ever want to see a great parody of these new age group therapy sessions, check out Semi-Tough, the movie based on Dan Jenkins' wonderful novel. I'd like to think we've come a long way from that white woman from Newport Beach, though I know we haven't come far enough. I'd also like to think we've come a long way from those ridiculous encounter sessions; I know that isn't true, either.
During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premier variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup..
Sullivan: Ed's guests: Pearl Bailey, Petula Clark, comic impressionist David Frye, country singer Buck Owens, the country-rock sound of The Band, comic Rodney Dangerfield and the Feux Follets, French-Canadian folk dancers. (The quasi-official guest list also includes Lucho Navarro, voice impressionist doing sound effects, and Trio Rennos, humorous acrobats.)
Palace: Host Sammy Davis Jr. headlines a lively hour with Mama Cass Elliot, jazz great Lionel Hampton, pal Peter Lawford, singer Dana Valery, actor-singer Rosey Grier, and the Dells, classical-soul quintet.
It's a big week on TV for Sammy Davis Jr., as we'll see later on, and while Ed may have more stars—Pearl Bailey, Petula Clark, David Frye, Rodney Dangerfield—the star on Palace can do virtually everything they can do individually. (All right, there's no way he looks as good as Pet Clark, I'll give you that.) And that's just Sammy by himself; Sammy and Lionel Hampton are a great combo, Sammy and Peter Lawford make up almost half of the Rat Pack, and add Cass Elliot, by far the most talented of The Mamas and the Papas, and you have a show that literally jumps off the screen. This week, Palace tap dances to the win. And as a bonus, here's Lionel Hampton and Sammy: five minutes that clinch the victory.
l l l
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. Which is a good thing, because Cleveland doesn't really have anything bad to say about this show. Both Robert Young, as the good Dr. Welby, and James Brolin, as his young assistant Dr. Kiley, are "very good," and the guest on the initial episode, Susan Clark, playing a young schoolteacher who's going to die, was "magnificent." It was, Amory writes, "the finest first episode of a show we have ever seen." Various scenes are played out with a delicate mixture of humor and drama, particularly in a scene where she tries to explain her impending death to her schoolchildren, and in another when Welby gives Kiley a lesson in bedside manner: "For most of us, death comes alone, in a hospital, in the middle of the night. There may be a nurse but it very much depends on whether she has compassion or whether even she is there. Miss Adams is alone—in the middle of the night."
The second episode, in which Welby is persistent in his attempts to break through to an autistic boy, was, says Amory, "almost equally good." And at the end of this review, Amory engages in what I think is a rare moment of self-reflection, a nod to the style for which he is so well-known. He refers to an exchange between Kiley and Welby, when the young doctor, in exasperation, says to Welby, "Who are you? Sigmund Freud or Annie Sullivan?" Replies Welby, "You're too old for whimsy and too young for sarcasm." And, concluding this unusually straightforward review, Amory notes, "For a show as good as this one, aren't we all?"
But in fact, you could cover almost all of the week just with the Rat Pack. The Chairman returns for his fifth television special on Wednesday (9:00 p.m., CBS), a one-man show in which Frank belts out some of his biggest hits, including "All the Way," "The Tender Trap," "My Way," "Fly Me to the Moon," "Please Be Kind," and "My Kind of Town." Responding to the changing times, he also takes a crack at more contemporary tunes such as "Little Green Apples," "A Man Alone," and "Goin' Out of My Head." With, I might add, slightly less success.
And Frank is back on Thursday night, starring with Dean Martin in the western 4 For Texas (9:00 p.m., CBS) with Anita Ekberg and Ursula Andress making up the four.* Charles Bronson is there as well, and Arthur Godfrey and the Three Stooges appear in cameos. The last half of 4 For Texas overlaps with Dean's own show (10:00 p.m., NBC), with another terrific lineup of stars: Bing Crosby, Eva Gabor, Jack Gilford and Dom DeLuise.
*Along with Frank and Dean, of course. What did you think I meant?
There's more to the week than the Rat Pack, though, believe it or not. (And don't tell Frank.) On Monday night at 8:30 p.m, President Nixon is scheduled to address the nation on Vietnam (the "Vietnamization" speech), and this presents an unusual challenge to the networks, since the speech comes smack-dab in the middle of the evening's entertainment. CBS lucks out; they have a block of half-hour sitcoms from 7:30 to 9:00, and so The Doris Day Show gets an unexpected night off. It's not so easy for NBC and ABC, however: NBC's movie Frankie and Johnny (starring frend-of-the-president Elvis) starts at 8:00 p.m. and gets a half-hour before being interrupted for the speech, before resuming at 9:00 (time approximate). ABC's solution is even more interesting: the hour-long Love, American Style, which also begins at 8:00 p.m., is interrupted not only for the president's speech, but for an ABC News analysis at 9:00, with Love, American Style returning at 9:30. Kind of ingenious, actually; it's made up of three separate stories, so they might be able to split the show in two without cutting into any of the stories.
Also on Wednesday (10:00 p.m.), NET presents "The Heartmakers," a Science Apecial that examines the development of the artificial heart, featuring interviews with two of the most renowned heart surgeons of the day, Drs. Denton Cooley and Michael DeBakey. And on Thursday, for us early risers, Today (7:00 a.m.) has an interview with the three Apollo 11 astronauts, returning from their world tour. The moon must have been the only place that Bob Hope didn't go to entertain Americans in uniform, but Thursday evening, he stars in a 90-minute change of pace special (8:30 p.m., NBC). Rather than his usual mixture of skits, musical guests, and jokes, it's a full-fledged presentation of "Roberta," the musical comedy that made him a Broadway star in 1933. John Davidson, Janis Page, and Michele Lee costar in the show, taped at the Bob Hope Theatre on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas. And not to be left out, ABC offers This is Tom Jones (9:00 p.m.) with Connie Stevens, Matt Munro, the Moody Blues, and Shecky Greene, followed at 10:00 p.m. by It Takes a Thief, with Fred Astaire guesting in his second appearance as Alistair Mundy, Al's (Robert Wagner) master thief father.
Not so fast, my friend! The Doan Report takes a look at the early ratings race, now that we've had a couple of months to digest the new shows. The most successful among the rookies are Marcus Welby, M.D., The Jim Nabors Hour, Room 222, and The Bill Cosby Show, and old favorites like Bonanza, Gunsmoke, The Jackie Glason Show, Mayberry, R.F.D., The Glen Campbell Goodtime Show, and Family Affair are, in the report's words, "looking strong."
Of course, as one series leaves the air, another is set to take its place. With an eye toward some of its weak links, ABC is said to be lining up variety shows for Johnny Cash, Engelbert Humperdinck, and Pat Paulson. (Dick Cavett is also said to be on this list, but he unexpectedly winds up in Joey Bishop's timeslot after the latter quits his show.) They're also rumored to be preparing a version of The Odd Couple, with Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. CBS's summer hit Hee Haw is being primed for a return, and NBC's working on a hour-long show for Flip Wilson. Surprisingly, all of these make it on the air (with varying degrees of success, it should be added); however, there's no record of an Arte Johnson show ever hiting the small screen, and a pop show version of Harper Valley, PTA does make it—in 1980, with the former star of Jeannie, Barbara Eden.
Edith Efron is back this week with the fourth in a series of articles on the relationship between television and children, this one asking the simple question: "What is TV doing to them?" Unfortunately, for such a simple question, there's no simple answer; instead, what Efron mostly gets is a series of contradictions.
For example, everyone agrees that parents could use some guidance in helping them determine what their children watch. The PTA has such an advisory group; so does the National Association for Better Broadcasting, a television watchdog. The two groups agree on virtually nothing; while the NABB says that Heckle and Jeckle is "a cartoon series of excellent quality," the PTA calls it "just a heap of rubbish." Likewise, NAAB says that American Bandstand "lacks grace and gaiety," while according to the PTA, it has "gentle manners, good taste and friendly gaiety."
Likewise, the American Council for Better Broadcasts has formed its own advisory group of critics to provide aid and comfort for parents; their recommendations are similarly contradictory. Their opinions on Gunsmoke run from "Too gory and violent" to "Suitable for family viewing," and when it comes to Lost in Space, it's either "Marked by violence, greed, selfishness, trickery and disregard for accepted values" or "imaginative, with good moral concepts." Thanks a whole hell of a lot, right?
At the risk of engaging in amateur psychology, I think the rise of this question, which, in one form or another, has been around since the beginning of television, can be related directly to the state of the family in the changing times of the '60s. Increasingly, television is looked upon as a babysitter, and teens are becoming more autonomous in their viewing selections. Parents are less available to directly oversee the programs that their young children watch, and the generation gap makes it less likely that teens and their parents are even in the same room, let alone watching the same programs. (Ed Sullivan discovered this to his dismay; by introducing rock acts to the show, he actually highlighted the gap and wound up undermining the homogeneity of his audience.) Experts debated the effect of shows like Howdy Doody on children, but it's likely the discussion took place in an environment much changed by 1969.
And so, in the end, it's appropriate that we end this week the way we started. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Or, if you prefer, sic semper erat, et sic semper erit: "Thus has it always been, thus it shall ever be." If we've anything at all from the last six years of TV Guide, it's been that. N'est-ce pas?
l l l
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!
