What's on TV? Tuesday, June 17, 1958

All this week, WGBH is broacasting specials from the Boston Arts Festival, which has been held, off and on, since 1952. In 1958, the festival would have been held at Boston's Public Garden, and the event was considered a major step in bringing the arts to the people, where it belongs. Tonight's feature: the Folk Dance Festival. As you might have guessed, the listing comes from the New England edition.

This week in TV Guide: June 14, 1958

According to the television calendar, we're now into "Rerun Season," Between cable, streamers, and on-demand, I'm not sure most people today would actually understand what "Rerun Season" is, but back in 1958, June was officially proclaimed as the end of television's "regular" season, a time to take inventory of the past season and proclaim winners and losers. Therefore, much of our attention this week will be spent not on what is, but what was, and what will be, beginning with Frank DeBlois' year-end review of the 1957-58 season.

Among the winners are CBS' Gunsmoke, one of the biggest of winners in the Western genre; the "charming" Leave It to Beaver, hailed as television's best new comedy series; ABC's American Bandstand, "a national favorite among teen-agers", and a flock of drama series, including Hallmark Hall of Fame, Omnibus, Kraft Theatre and Playhouse 90. There's also praise also for news documentaries from Edward R. Murrow and Lowell Thomas, and docu-series like The Twentieth Century and Bell System Science Series. There's praise aplenty too for variety shows from Victor Borge ("Comedy and Music"), Mary Martin ("Annie Get Your Gun"), Stars of Jazz, Crosby and Sinatra on The Edsel Show, the Young Peoples Concerts of Leonard Bernstein, The General Motors 50th Anniversary Show and NBC Opera Theatre.

And then—well, there are those shows that didn't do so well, such as Sid Caesar Invites You on ABC, which "was often embarrassingly bad," series by Frank Sinatra and Eddie Fisher that were "respectively bad and fair," and "flops" by Gisele MacKenzie, Guy Mitchell and Polly Bergen. As far as the quiz show circuit is concerned, there's The $64,000 Question, which "supposedly enables a viewer to win thousands," and that's before they found out it was rigged. On the other hand, Frank found NBC's You Bet Your Life to be "a refreshing contrast," in which "Groucho [Marx] continues to prove that money isn't always everything on television."   

While there is much to like about the season just ended, DeBlois notes that there are still too many Westerns—17 on the networks, and another 15 in syndication—and dramas seem to be declining. But then, who determines the difference between a good show and a bad one? It is the critic, which one TV executive described as "any former obituary writer who happens to own a television set."

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We're not just looking backwards in this issue, though; there's also a preview of coming attractions for this summer. Although the networks aren't looking for prestige dramas or breakout hits as they do today, they are looking to add some new blood, and perhaps find a series or two that has some staying power. They promise "at least 18 spanking new shows," including eight—count 'em, eight—quiz shows.

There is, for example, E.S.P., ABC's panel show, hosted by Vincent Price, which may well be "the most interesting of the new shows" but runs only from July 11 to August 26. On the other hand, Buckskin, replacing Tennessee Ernie Ford's Thursday night show on NBC, is a "promising newcomer" that debuts July 3 and actually makes the fall schedule, with original episodes lasting until May 1959, and appearing in summer reruns in both 1959 and 1965. The closest any network comes to "experimental programming" is probably NBC's plan to run 13 pilots (or "test films," as they're described) in hopes that "some will attract enough interest to win network time slots next fall."

Some familiar faces make appearances in unfamiliar settings: Andy Williams, for example, who's pinch-hitting for Pat Boone this summer (Thursdays at 9:00 p.m. on ABC); it's still awhile before he becomes a staple of NBC's regular schedule. George Fenneman, the longtime sidekick to Groucho Marx, gets to host his own show, ABC's Anybody Can Play, on Sunday nights at 9:30 p.m. Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, mainstays for years on television, get a chance at their own show, filling in for Steve Allen Sundays at 8:00 p.m. (going up against Ed Sullivan); and a rotating list of stars including Edie Adams, Stan Freberg, and Rowan and Martin take over for Dinah Shore.

There's the switcharoo: Destiny takes the place of Zane Grey Theater, while reruns of Zane Grey fill in for December Bride. I Love Lucy moves back to its original Monday night timeslot with a series of reruns, taking the place of Danny Thomas' show; Lucy, in turn, is replaced in its current timeslot by reruns of Gerald McBoing-Boing. There's the recycled show. On Trial, last seen in 1957, returns in reruns Saturdays at 10:30 p.m. as The Joseph Cotten Show (taking over for Your Hit Parade), while No Warning!, which has actually been on for a few months, is nothing more than warmed-over Panic! episodes from last season. And an as-yet unnamed anthology show, made up of reruns from Schlitz Playhouse and G.E. Theater, spells Red Skelton. Got all that?

The only interesting note I see is for Perry Mason; the series is "featuring new material in order to get a head start in next fall's race against Perry Como."  (Como is being replaced for the summer by bandleader Bob Crosby, brother of Bing, in a show that's live "purely in its technical sense.") That's a creative, nay innovative, approach to summer programming - nearly as creative as you might see today.

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This isn't to say  there aren't new shows on this week, and one of the most noteworthy is Playhouse 90's presentation of "A Town Has Turned to Dust" (Thursday, 9:30 p.m., CBS), written by Rod Serling, directed by John Frankenheimer, and featuring a cast including Rod Steiger, Fay Spain, James Gregory, and the great William Shatner. (If the town does turn to dust, it's probably the only thing that keeps Shatner from chewing the scenery. Besides, he'll have to fight of Steiger in that department.) Seriously, though, the play deals with some heavy issues, and the story behind the story is, if anything, even more interesting. It also helped propel Serling straight into The Twilight Zone.

For some time Serling had wanted to do a script based on the real-life story of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old black teenager who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 for flirting with a white woman. His first stab at dramatizing the story was "Noon on Doomsday," written in 1956 for the U.S. Steel Hour, in which the murder victim was intended to be a Jewish storekeeper. As this article shows, though, the program soon became bogged down in politics, especially after word leaked out that the story might be based on the Till case. The location, which was never specified, was now to be New England, to avoid any possible suggestion that it could be in the South. The Jewish victim was now an "unnamed foreigner," and the killer was not a psychopath but merely "a good, decent, American boy momentarily gone wrong." (Happens all the time, doesn't it?) At no point in the script could the word "lynch" be used. It was a total beatdown for Serling, and although the show was pretty good, he complained that "its thesis had been diluted, and my characters had mounted a soap box to shout something that had become too vague to warrant any shouting."

"A Town Has Turned to Dust" is Serling's second crack at the Till story, but if he thinks it will be any easier this time (and, considering his past experiences with networks, he likely doesn't), he'll be sadly mistaken. When CBS gets done with his script, the story has been shifted to the American Southwest, the time period changed from the present day to the 1870s, and he victim is now a poor Mexican boy guilty of admiring a white girl from afar. Once again, the episode gets pretty good reviews; New York Times critic Jack Gould calls it "a raw, tough and at the same time deeply moving outcry against prejudice," and is particularly effusive in his praise for "superlative" performances by Rod Steiger and William Shatner, and the "superb" direction of John Frankenheimer, which he says "truly strengthened Mr. Serling's intent." Interestingly, the final paragraph of Gould's review references how both Serling and the show "had to fight executive interference, reportedly requiring some changes in the story line, before getting their play on the air last night. The theatre people of Hollywood have reason to be proud of their stand in the viewer's behalf."

While Gould's conclusion makes it sound as if Serling had the last word, the author himself felt quite differently. “By the time the censors had gotten to it, my script had turned to dust,” he later said. “They chopped it up like a room full of butchers at work on a steer.”  Was Serling justified in his outrage, or was he just a sensitive author who didn't want anyone to touch his work?  

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Among the week's other highlights, Ed Sullivan takes us on a tour of the Brussels World's Fair (Sunday, 8:00 p.m., CBS), with the celebrities appearing at the Fair, such as Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot, Mitzi Gaynor, William Holden, the Platters, French comedian Jacques Tati, and others.  and Maurice Chevalier. Remember when World's Fairs were a thing? They're still held on an occasional basis, but one of the drawbacks to the "global community" is that we've gotten used to seeing other cultures, whether on television or in our own communities, and the world, in a way, has become too small for these big expos.

Some of those new shows we were talking about earlier make their debuts this week, including The Joseph Cotten Show (Saturday, 10:30 p.m., NBC)  and ABC's Traffic Court on Wednesday. On Thursday, NBC premieres Confessions, which is not about Roman Catholic priests but does focus on convicted criminals, with a panel of sociologists, penologists, clergymen, psychiatrists and lawyers providing commentary. Frigidare Summer Theater, one of those clearinghouses for reruns of dramas from old anthology series, makes its debut on Friday on ABC.

TV Teletype tells us about two new series being prepared for a fall debut: Gunn for Hire, starring Craig Stevens, is set for Mondays on NBC. You know it by the name they finally settled on: Peter Gunn. Also on tap for NBC is a new Western series, Virginia City, going into production next month. When it debuts, it too will be under a different name: Bonanza.

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This week's cover features Robert Young, the beloved star of Father Knows Best, and Dan Jenkins' feature looks at the relationship between the show's adult actors and the children who play such a prominent role, as well as the impact the show has had on the American landscape, "impressing itself upon the collective conscience of the American Organization," in the words of writer Dan Jenkins.

In the 1957-58 season alone, Jenkins notes, the show has received requests from 22 organizations for personal appearances: a New York life insurance company (Jim Anderson, Young's character, is an insurance salesman), the U.S. Army Recruiting Services (Young and co-star Jane Wyatt appeared on the Army float in the 1958 Rose Parade), the National Safety Council (Young views his work for them as a year-around job), and the Mount Sinai Hospital and Clinic (recognizing Young as Father of the Year, "a title twice bestowed upon him by the National Father's Day Committee), among others.  The show, winner of three past Emmys, is seen in 21 countries and is a smash in Australia.

Yes, Father Knows Best is one of the most popular shows on television, a gentle, literate family comedy about "a pleasantly intelligent and happy American family with all the built-in values," and Robert Young is one of the most popular stars on television. For a generation he becomes the very model of a husband and father, and while Father Knows Best lives on in syndication, another generation will come to consider him the very model of what a doctor's bedside manner should be like, in Marcus Welby, M.D. None of this earns him credit with his real family, though: one of his daughters recently chastised him for saying he didn't know the answer to a question she asked. "Jim Anderson always knows," she said, to which Young replied, "Jim Anderson has two writers. Bob Young doesn't have any."

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This week's starlet is Whitney Blake who in a little over two years has gone from selling ice cream at an Oregon stand to becoming "one of TV's most active free-lance actresses". "I always wanted to be an actress," she says, but it wasn't until her family finally settled in Oregon that she was able to pursue her passion. "My mother wanted me to do something sensible, like get married. But I knew what I really wanted."

After studying at Pasadena City College, Blake heads for Hollywood, where she's seen by a talent agent, after which the roles just kept coming. She honed her skills playing in summer stock, and now she's ready for the future. "I'm an actress now," she says. "Even Mother now accepts that."

Indeed she is. In addition to her many guest-starring roles, Whitney Blake the actress will be best known for her four seasons as Dorothy Baxter in the sitcom Hazel. But there's also Whitney Blake the television mogul; she and her husband Allan Manings will create the sitcom One Day at a Time. And then there's Whitney Blake the businesswoman; in the '90s, she and her son will own the Minneapolis bookstore Baxter's Books, which over the years helped me fill a shelf or so in my library. (Had I known, I might have demanded to see the owner.) Most famous, perhaps, is Whitney Blake the mother; her daughter, Meredith Baxter, will inherit her mom's looks and have a pretty good career of her own.

So as TV Guide starlets go, Whitney Blake is definitely one of the winners.

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Finally, just to show that you can find magic out of even the most innocuous items, there's Wednesday's presentation on Kraft Theatre, a mystery entitled "Now Will You Try for Murder?" (9:00 p.m., NBC). The plot: "One of the biggest money winners in TV-quiz history is murdered on the day that he is scheduled to try for a record sum. An investigation reveals that a number of people connected with the show had motives for killing the contestant, including the top executive, the director, the producer and the producer's pretty assistant."

For every good reason, that reminds me of Dotto. The show airs weekdays at 11:30 a.m. on CBS, and since its January premiere, it's become so popular that a nighttime version is planned to debut next month on NBC. In this week's review, Dan Jenkins says that frankly, he doesn't see much to write about; it's "still another in the apparently never-ending succession of new quiz shows, [which] comes out of the same old mold." "The game's the thing," he says, "the money prizes rarely going higher than about $3000." 

And yet, only two months after this issue, Dotto disappears from the airwaves. It's not that it suffered a sudden drop in popularity; on the contrary, one could say that its cancellation came about because it got too much of the wrong kind of attention. It began the previous month, when one of the contestants, Ed Hilgemeier, discovered a notebook belonging to another contestant, Marie Winn. Turns out that notebook contained the answers to questions she would be asked on the show. Hilgemeier took his suspicions to the contestant defeated by Winn, Yaffe Kimball, and then to the show's producers. The producers paid all three of them off to keep quiet, but as often happens with these cover-ups, Hilgemeier wound up going to the authorities anyway. And—well, as Paul Harvey would say, I'm sure you all know the rest of the story.

I wonder: if this play had been scheduled to run later in the year, would the network still have aired it? Or would it have been cutting a little too close to the bone, so to speak?

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MST3K alert: Cat-Women of the Moon (1954) A rocket ship from the Earth lands on the moon. Sonny Tufts, Marie Windsor, Victor Jory. (Saturday, 1:00 p.m., WCSH in Portland) That description doesn't tell us much about this Rifftrax feature, so let's look at the Amazon description: "An expedition to the moon discovers a subterranean cavern of ferocious, love-starved cat-women who have not seen men in centuries." Yes, that's much better. TV  

Around the dial

Let's kick things off this week with one of my favorite British detectives, Frank Marker, as played by Alfred Burke in Public Eye. But this isn't about either Frank or Alfred; it's the finale of the "Sylvia Coleridge Season" at Cult TV Blog, and I'll forgive John for ending the season since he's chosen well: the episode "No Orchids for Marker."

At Comfort TV, David looks at some of our classic shows to see what they have to say about the ubiquitous computer, which was a thing to behold back then—and something to be feared. The question that these shows posed: can the computer be trusted? 

The Broadcast Archives celebrated Game Show Wednesday this week with a look at the "Golden Age" of game shows, at least in number: the 1970s. They were everywhere, and I'm willing to bet you're going to recognize at least one or two of the hosts pictured.

Jack's Hitchcock Project returns at bare•bones e-zine with "Act of Faith," a seventh season episode written by Nicholas Monsarrat, starring George Grizzard and Dennis King. It is, as Jack says, a curious choice for a Hitchcock episode; you'll have to see whether or not it works.

At The View from the Junkyard, Roger continues to survey The A-Team, and points out that this week's episode, "The Out-of-Towners," keeps a trend going: that of the team taking on missions to right wrongs, rather than purely as mercenaries. It's part of what makes the show fun.

Television's New Frontier: The 1960s is back with the 1962 episodes of The Danny Thomas Show, and I'm always amazed that a show as successful as this was, with a star as big as Thomas was, can become so obscure today. Or maybe it's just me, I don't know.

At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence bids farewell to Pippa Scott, a frequent presence on classic TV over the years, who died last month at the age of 90. If you had a favorite show back in those days, the chances are excellent that she was on it.

Better twice than never: at Drunk TV, Paul reprises a piece from Mavis Movie Madness on NBC's 60th anniversary show in 1986. I think it's safe to say that both Paul and I have our doubts about how well it worked, and what it may augur for the 100th anniversary show coming up. TV  

How classic television foresaw the future

Xx  Unless you're a complete stranger to this website—and if so, what took you so long?—you know that for years, I've been beating the drum for the value of classic-era television as a primary document of sorts, a glimpse into not just the history of television itself, but of our culture: the trends, the influences, how it reflects our national and cultural history, and how, in turn, how it has been influenced by it. 

However, if you require any further proof of this, my new book Darkness in Primetime: How Classic-Era TV Foresaw Modern Society's Descent into Hell gives you a precise look at our current world—as it was envisioned by the writers of television shows in the 1950s and 1960s. With remarkable foresight, these writers applied the lessons they'd learned from history—the French Revolution, the rise of Communism, the McCarthy era of the Blacklist—to a view on what the world might be like twenty, thirty, fifty years from now. It was, in many ways, a depressing look, filled with totalitarian images, widespread consumerism, constant surveillance, oppressive governments, and a purposeless society that had descended into an endless quest for pleasure. By then, many people had abandoned God altogether, content with their reinvention as their own gods, masters of the environment, controllers of the mind, arbiters of the soul. In place of the individual, there was only the monolith: the State, the collective, the society in which all must look alike, think alike, be alike, in order to avoid confronting our worst fears.

If we'd paid more attention to these programs at the time, and what they were saying—ah, but that ship has long since sailed. As cultural historians, we can only look back at the themes of these shows and what they reveal about the world that helped spawn them. These programs served as more than simple entertainment, though entertaining they often were; the problem was that even the television industry didn't take them seriously enough. My efforts to track down some of these programs were ample proof that when it came to preserving its own history, television took itself no more seriously than many of its critics did. It was, as I write, as if "painters were to throw out their canvases following an exhibition, or playwrights burned their manuscripts after a performance." Hopefully, in addition to informing readers about the fascinating history of these programs, it will serve as a reminder that television can do more than produce cheap laughs, real-world exploitation, and dramas that carry no moral weight.

Many of you have probably seen this already, but for those of you who haven't, this is the trailer for Darkness in Primetime. Please take a couple of minutes to watch it, and feel free to share with others who have an interest in classic-era television.

Darkness in Primetime will be available in August; you can sign up for updates on when you can preorder, as well as information not only about this book but the others that I've written. I feel confident that after you've read Darkness in Primetime, you'll have a new appreciation for the value of classic-era programs, and the light they can shed on our history: who we were and who we are. TV  

What's on TV? Sunday, June 11, 1972

A little something for everyone today, especially in the sports arena: baseball (two different games), tennis, track and field, judo, even roller derby. It's hard to complain about that. You'll notice what's missing, though: basketball and hockey, both of which have their finals series going on at the time that I'm typing this. In 1972, the NBA Finals ended on May 7 (!), while the Stanley Cup playoffs skated to an end on May 11. Those really were the days weren't they? Today's listings are from the Eastern New England edition.

This week in TV Guide: June 10, 1972

In the midst of television's infatuation with Upstairs, Downstairs, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Elizabeth R, and other prestigious British costume dramas, it seems appropriate to remind viewers that "British television is not all kings, queens and high-flown drama." There is, for example, science fiction, an example of which is the long-running (now in its ninth season) series Doctor Who, about to make its debut in American syndication this fall. 

The episode in question in this week's article is "The Sea Devils," and with its over-the-top story of sea monsters trying to reconquer the Earth. It's a prototypical Who story for those of us in the know, but for readers whose idea of British television was Masterpiece Theatre, I can only imagine what they must have thought of the article's attempt to explain the storyline, not to mention the various eccentricities of the Doctor. At this point in the show's history, the Doctor's ability to travel in time and space had been disabled by the Time Lords; I'm sure that time travel would have pushed some of these readers over the edge.

Doctor Who made its premiere the day after John F. Kennedy's assassination; by 1972 it's on its third actor to portray the Doctor, Jon Pertwee. Pertwee will play the role for five seasons, to be followed by the man who brought the series its greatest fame in the United States, Tom Baker. And it won't be until Doctor Who becomes a staple of local public television stations throughout the nation that the show develops its cult following, one that continues to this day.

From left: the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee), the Master (Roger Delgado), a Sea Devil, the Doctor and companion
Jo Grant (Katy Manning)

For old-time Whovians like yours truly, it's been difficult to watch the show's decline since its revival many years (and many Doctors) ago. I stopped watching it several years ago, and I've got no particular desire to return to it—if, indeed, the show returns from the hiatus the BBC is reportedly preparing for it. We've been watching the classic episodes from the very beginning over the last year or so, and it's been a pleasant reminder of how much fun it used to be, and how much moral power it carried. I haven't made any secret of my disappointment with the turn it's taken in its reincarnation, so I won't tread the same ground here. Suffice it to say that, back in 1972, there was little indication that the program would still be airing in 2025, through 40 seasons and 15 incarnations of the Doctor. If only we had known!

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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. 

Cleveland Amory's last column of the season is a look at the mailbag, and in typical Amory fashion, the pithy answers to the questions from readers are just as entertaining as the letters themselves. 

Typically, we hear from those who felt Our Critic was a little too hard on their favorite shows and/or stars. For instance, Alan Thomas, of Macon, Georgia, asks Cleve why he was so down on the Tony Curtis-Roger Moore adventure series The Persuaders!, a show which I found quite entertaining, by the way. "I do not like you one bit," Mr. Thomas says. "They are good actors. They have their faults. So does everybody." In defense of the Curtis-Moore duo, Amory replies, "In this show the fault, dear Brutus, was not in the stars." Meanwhile, Donald Parker, of Madison, South Dakota, suggests that Amory's review of McMillian & Wife proves that "Cleveland Amory has a severe case of the cynics." "Yes," Amory responds, "but that's the show that gave it to us." And E. H. Scheckler Jr., of Elizabeth, New Jersey, is more blunt about it all. "I wish that someone would review one of Cleveland Amory's reviews and have him canceled, as so many of these programs have been." Not so fast, responds Cleve: "But wouldn't you get tired of the reruns?" Erika Ela (no address) suggests that Amory have a panel of reviewers to review shows. Ah, but as Amory retorts, "Who do you think we is?"

Not everyone has a bone to pick. Alexander McCormick, of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, wasn't impressed with NBC's coverage of the Winter Olympics in Japan, and wonders what Amory thought. "[T]he announcers and experts were dull and the '[Jack] Perkins Pieces' overrated. I still remember the time they cut away from a terrific fight at a hockey game to a downhill ski race which you couldn't see anyway on account of a snowstorm. And I also remember spending hours on the distance skating, with the same guy [probably the great Dutch triple-gold medal winner Ard Schenk] going around and around. For all we know, he's still going around." Jeannie Adlon of New York City wondered about Cleve's opinion of the recent Emmys telecast. There were too many awards given for single performances, Amory thought; as for the Emmy show itself, "it was awful. It would be easy to produce it right, too—just give us more and longer scenes from the nominations and less junk, bad jokes, long, dull thank yous and bad taste."

Not everything is so negative, though. Mrs. D.E. Woods of Richmond, Indiana says, "I'm 50 years old and I'm in love with three men—my husband, Peter Falk and Cleveland Amory." "Dear Sis," Amory responds, "we thought your letter would never come."

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Movies form a big part of this week's highlights, beginning on Saturday with a repeat of the political thriller Seven Days in May (8:30 p.m. ET, ABC), starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Fredric March, Ava Gardner, and Edmond O'Brien, directed by John Frankenheimer, and with a Rod Serling script that uses large sections of the Fletcher Knebel-Charles Bailey II novel verbatim. If it shakes your faith in government, it reinforces your faith in Hollywood's ability to tell a terrific story that's far more than just a political potboiler. On the more lighthearted side, Once upon a Dead Man (9:00 p.m., NBC) is the pilot for the aforementioned McMillan and Wife; I wonder what Cleveland Amory thought of this? And at 11:30, it's Compulsion, a fictionalized version of the Leopold-Loeb case, with Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman as the youthful killers, and Orson Welles brilliant as their Darrowesque attorney.

The features continue Sunday with the "angry young man" drama The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (noon, WBZ), directed by Tony Richardson, with Tom Courtney as the reform school student who finds fulfillment, of a sort, through distance running. At 1:00 p.m., it's Jacques Demy's jazz opera The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (WKBG), with the music of Michel Legrand (the movie's biggest hit: "I Will Wait For You"), and starring Nino Castelnuovo and the luminous Catherine Deneuve. In primetime, the great actor of our lifetime, William Shatner, stars as the heavy in Cade's County (9:30 p.m., CBS), as Glenn Ford tries to prevent him from setting off a nuclear warhead. Forget the county; no scenery is safe in this scenario. 

If you thought that we were done with opera after The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, guess again. On Monday, it's the movie For the First Time (7:00 p.m., WTIC), with opera star Mario Lanza, in a nice bit of casting against type, playing—surprise!—an opera star who falls in love with a deaf Viennese girl. If you want something a little more serious, turn to NET Opera Theatre's presentation of Benjamin Britten's magnificent "Peter Grimes" (8:00 p.m., PBS), one of the greatest operas of the 20th century, starring Peter Pears, Heather Harper, and Bryan Drake. But if you want to get back to the movies, I can't think of anything better than the documentary Hollywood: The Dream Factory (8:00 p.m., ABC), an hour-long retrospective of Hollywood's Golden Age, narrated by Dick Cavett.

Tuesday begins with a perceptive episode of The Mod Squad (7:30 p.m., ABC) that looks at the difficulty Vietnam veterans have adjusting to civilian life, as Robert Pine plays a vet who looks at domestic dissidents as "the enemy." There's no telling how he would have treated Cannon's adversary (9:30 p.m., CBS): a cult leader with "an almost satanic influence" over his followers, who include Arthur Rubenstein's son John, June Lockhart's daughter Anne, and Dennis Weaver's son Rick. And Dick Cavett's sole guest tonight (11:30 p.m., ABC) is none other than Jack Paar. 

I always enjoyed the British import The Persuaders! (Wednesday, 9:30 p.m., ABC), starring Roger Moore and Tony Curtis; a pity it only lasted one season. In this week's explosive episode, Tony's walking around with an attache case attached to his wrist, little knowing that while he tries to prevent the "Other Side" from getting it, he's putting his own life in danger: the case is loaded with explosives that could go off "at the shake of a wrist." If you'd prefer something a little more macabre, try out tonight's Night Gallery (10:00 p.m., NBC), which includes "Green Fingers," with Elsa Lanchester as the little old gardener who isn't all she seems.

On Thursday night, NBC kicks off Adventure Theater (8:00 p.m.), one of those summer quasi-anthology series that were so common back then, either failed pilots or, in this case, "a series of dramas from the Sixties," specificially reruns from Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, swhich works out well since that show was filmed entirely in color. In this case, it's "The Lady is My Wife," first shown in 1967, and it's notable not only for a fine cast that includes Bradford Dillman and Jean Simmons, but because it's directed by Sam Peckinpah. Expect something that's a little toned down from what we're used to seeing from him in the theaters. Over on PBS, it's NET Playhouse on the '30s (8:30 p.m.), with Dustin Hoffman and Orson Bean in Maxwell Anderson's time-travel comedy "The Star Wagon," which also features Eileen Brennan.

Since we started with movies, we'll finish the same way, with Antonioni's L'Avventura (Friday, 8:30 p.m., PBS), the story of a missing woman that becomes a series of "metaphors for spiritual listlessness." Judith Crist isn't particularly a fan—she describes it as "a difficult, slow-paced film, marked by uneven acting and stolid characters"—but acknowledges the movie's reputation as a "masterpiece." Monica Vitti and Gabriele Ferzetti star in what has subsequently been listed as one of the top ten greatest films ever made.

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I sense something of an underlying theme in this week's features. First, we have Cleveland Amory's second appearance in this week's issue, authoring the cover story on Doris Day. The focus, not surprisingly, is on Dodo's involvement in the animal rights movement, her love of dogs, and her efforts to rescue them from cruel treatment. There's some mention of her personal life, virtually none of her CBS sitcom, although it's hard to imagine that anyone would be turned off from the show based on this very flattering portrayal.

That's followed by a brief story on Eric Knight, the author of a Saturday Evening Post story that's spanned even more years than Doctor Who: "Lassie Come Home," which originally appeared in the Post in 1939 before being expanded into a novel the following year. The book inspired a movie that catapulted its two child actors, Elizabeth Taylor and Roddy McDowall, to a stardom that endures to this day. It also inspired a series, Lassie, that has been a presence on television for 17 years. Lassie Comes Home has recently been reissued by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, at the request of Knight's widow, Jere. It is a timeless story, that of a boy and his dog, isn't it? 

Finally, an animal story that's probably less of a favorite with Cleve: Melvin Durslag's look at the upcoming Belmont Stakes. (Saturday, CBS) It's the longest and most grueling of the three Triple Crown races, and six potential Triple Crown winners (including last year's Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Canonero II) have failed the test. The challenges are many: the distance, the timing (the three races are run over the course of six weeks), and the excitement of the Triple Crown. It's one of the rare times when horse racing takes center stage on the American sports scene; considering the ratings the races generate, it's often asked why one of the networks doesn't splurge on a weekly Saturday racing show. The answer, says Durslag, is that trainers and owners of the best horses spend too much time avoiding each other to guarantee audience-generating matchups. By the way, this year's Belmont does not carry the potential of a Triple Crown winner, but Riva Ridge, the year's best three-year-old, dominates the race, adding to his Kentucky Derby victory. No need to worry, though; Riva Ridge's stablemate will take the Triple Crown next year. His name: Secretariat. 

(In-between these stories is a form-fitting fashion layout featuring two-time Emmy Winner Susan Hampshire, but that's a different kind of animal altogether.) 

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MST3K alert: The Crawling Eye (English; 1958) In a radioactive cloud lies a tentacled monster, awaiting its victims. Forrest Tucker, Laurence Payne, Jennifer Jayne. (Saturday, 9:15 p.m., WKBG) One of Forrest Tucker's finest roles (and I'm not being sarcastic) sees him as a UN consultant investigating mysterious goings-on at a village in the Alps. Two of the most notable members of the supporting casts aren't listed here: Janet Munro, who enjoyed a very successful film and television career, including three Disney movies; and Andrew Faulds, who goes on to star in the UK series The Protectors before serving more than 20 years as a Labour member of Parliament. TV  

Around the dial

Let's see; this week, I think we'll start with The Twilight Zone Vortex and season five's "You Drive," written by Earl Hamner Jr., and starring the great character actor Edward Andrews. As Brian says, it's "not terrible," but not the best, either. 

You can also read a nice remembrance of Swit by Terence at A Shroud of Thoughts. And while you're at it, check out his 21st anniversary post. I thought I'd been at this awhile, but he's got seven years on me!

It wouldn't be Friday without the "Sylvia Coleridge Season" at Cult TV Blog, and this time John is looking at the sci-fi series Out of the Unknown and the episode "The Dead Past," featuring a research tool that looks suspiciously like AI, especially in its trustworthiness and reliability.

In honor of the late Loretta Swit, RealWeegieMidget takes a gander at "Hail to the Chief," an episode of Supertrain, which manages to work in some improbable presidential political intrigue with Roy Thinnes playing a dual role. It's either very bad or very fun; find out which it is!

We haven't heard from Garroway at Large for awhile, but Jodie pops in this week to give us a portrait of "Garroway at peace": in this case, the peace of Laurel Hill Cemetery, where the great man was laid to rest. A short but moving piece.

At The Horn Section, Hal's back for another round of F Troop and the second season episode "Reach for the Sky, Pardner," with O'Rourke scheming to increase the amount of convention business coming into Fort Courage. As delightful as it is goofy.

A couple of classic pictures make the Broadcast Archives well worth checking out: first, a terrific picture of William Boyd in character as Hopalong Cassidy; second, an equally great picture of Bob Keeshan as Mister Mayor, a single-season Saturday morning show that took the place of Captain Kangaroo.  

At Drunk TV, Paul looks at the terrific third season of The Odd Couple, which captures the series at his creative best, including one of the great episodes of any sitcom: Felix and Oscar appearing on the game show Password, with Allen Ludden and Betty White as themselves.

Paul is back at Mavis Movie Madness with a plug for one of my favorite TV blogs, David Hofstede's Comfort TV, which you'll recognize from my many links to his site. If you don't make this part of your regular reading, you should. (He also gives yours truly a nice shout-out; the check is in the mail.)

Cult TV Lounge reviews the Mike Hammer telemovie Murder Me, Murder You, starring Stacy Keach as the world's most violent private detective. I recently wrote about how TV never really gets Hammer's essence, but Keach is almost always worth a watch.

The View from the Junkyard takes us to The A-Team and the episode "The Rabbit Who Ate Las Vegas," and you'll want to find out from Roger whether or not this episode can possibly live up to its title.  TV  

The Magical Memory of Bewitched Star Elizabeth Montgomery Lives On With Herbie J Pilato’s Twin Biographies and the Show’s New Blu-ray Release

Today I'm proud to welcome Herbie J Pilato to It's About TV. May was the anniversary of Elizabeth Montgomery's death, and Herbie graciously agreed to provide this week's guest essay on Elizabeth, her iconic portrayal of Samantha Stephens, and the role she played in Herbie's life and career, including his books and DVD release. His resume is so extensive, I've included it at the end so it won't delay your getting to his fine essay.  

by Herbie J Pilato

It’s been thirty years since the tragic demise of beloved Bewitched actress Elizabeth Montgomery. She died on May 18, 1995, from colorectal cancer, a short time after my father died of lung cancer on April 5, 1995.

Needless to say, 1995 was a tough year. Both Elizabeth and my father influenced my life and career.

With my mother Frances and the blessings of Heaven, my father gave me life, and did all he could for me with our humble life of raising me in the inner-city of Rochester, New York.

But he always believed in me. “That kid’s got talent!” he’d say time and again.

As to any one non-family member or individual that more directly influenced or inspired my career, that would involve the meeting of Elizabeth Montgomery.

I owe her my career, because every good thing that has happened in my career, happened because she granted me my first major celebrity interview. That led to my initial Bewitched Book, followed by the revised Bewitched Forever edition of that book, and my two biographies about Elizabeth, Twitch Upon a Star, and The Essential Elizabeth Montgomery. Every other good thing that happened because of those books.

Additionally, Elizabeth inspired me as a human being. Her father was famed film and TV actor Robert Montgomery and her mother was Broadway actress Elizabeth Bryan Allen.

They were a wealthy and prestigious family; so much so, that Elizabeth could have easily been raised in arrogance or to have some kind of superior attitude. But that was not the way it went in the least.

Elizabeth was a lovely, down-to-earth person who utilized her celebrity for several charitable causes, none the least of which was helping the disabled community, and various minority groups. She was also one of the first celebrities to advocate for those suffering from AIDS.

All of that fits with the core message of Bewitched, which is prejudice. As Elizabeth once told me, “Yeah. That’s what I want Bewitched to be all about. Prejudice.”

The show originally aired from 1964 to 1972, during a turbulent time of political assassinations, the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution, the rampancy of drugs, the early onset of Women’s Liberation, the Civil Rights movement, and more.

When speaking of prejudice and Bewitched, Elizabeth was referring to the “mixed marriage” of her famed character on the show: “twitch-witch” Samantha Stephens, who married the mortal advertising man Darrin Stephens (first played by Dick York, then Dick Sargent).

The love they shared was a sincere love, based not on their differences but rather on what made them the same: their mutual respect for one another.

What’s more, Samantha had no need for money and material things. She didn’t love Darrin for his money or any “power(s)” he may have had due to his social status. She loved him for who he was, and not for what he could do for her. Because whatever he could do for her, or buy her, she could twitch up something better.

Additionally, Elizabeth’s Samantha was one of the first real liberated women portrayed in television history. Her supernatural powers notwithstanding, Samantha was empowered in other, more significant ways. It was her choice to live the mortal life; to be a housewife; a home engineer. Darrin never forced her to love him, or again, “bought” her love with financial security. She didn’t care about any of that. She cared about him. And she could have left him any time she wanted to. But she never wanted to because she loved him and respected his strong work ethic as an individual.

In the big picture scheme of things, Elizabeth Montgomery and Bewitched were really the reasons I went on to form the Classic TV Preservation Society, my formal 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, which celebrates the positive social influence of classic TV shows, because Elizabeth dedicated her life to charitable work and loving-kindness. Her inspiration to me is unending, as is her legacy.

Herbie J Pilato is an award-winning writer, TV producer, actor, singer, and dancer. He is the author of several acclaimed books on pop culture, including twin biographies about Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery: Twitch Upon a Star: The Bewitched Life and Career of Elizabeth Montgomery, and The Essential Elizabeth Montgomery: A Guide To Her Magical Performances. Both books, along with all of his others, are available on Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com, and wherever books are sold. Personally signed copies of Pilato’s books are also available on his website: HerbieJPilato.com. Pilato also served as a co-producer and co-writer with director Justin Beahm and Reverend Entertainment for the new Bewitched Blu-ray that will be released by Mill Creek Entertainment in July.  TV  

What's on TV? Wednesday, June 6, 1973

I'm pretty sure I've already mentioned this in the past, but one of the great charms of early public television was the auction, which is running all this week on WGBH and WGBX in Boston. Back in the day, this was one of the main ways in which local public stations paid the bills; for an entire week, the station will auction off donated items from businesses and individuals, including "an antique fire engine, a week's stay in a villa in Portugal, two acupuncture kits, 500 pounds of chicken, a stuffed gorilla and a cruise on a Chinese junk." Among the guest auctioneers at WGBH are Arthur Fiedler, Gene Rayburn, John Updike, and Curt Gowdy. We had one of these in the Twin Cities when I was growing up, with similar prizes and local celebrities; although I never bid on anything, I never missed watching it, either. This week's listings are, as you might have figured, from Eastern New England.

This week in TV Guide: June 2, 1973

Among the many pleasures of classic-era television, few bring about as many warm memories as those of the local children's shows that so many of us grew up watching. In my neck of the woods, those shows included Lunch with Casey, Clancy the Cop, Dave Lee and Pete, and Carmen the Nurse; slightly earlier, it would have been Axel and His Dog and T.N. Tatters. Just about everyone has similar memories of those shows, and the local personalities hosting them. Those days are long gone, of course, and as is the case with so many things, we're left wondering How things got this way. 

Recently, 40 of these hosts gathered in Key Biscayne, Florida, guests of the Muscular Dystrophy Association as part of their "backyard carnival" planning sessions, heavily promoted and supported on local programs. The stories they tell Neil Hickey are not pleasant ones, and together they paint a picture of an America that has long since vanished. 

It all began with the new addition to the Television Code by the National Association of Broadcasters, prohibiting children's shows from airing commercials during or adjacent to their programming "that might imply any endorsement whatsoever of the advertised products." The assumption behind the rule was that the hosts of said kiddie shows exert an "oversided influence" on their viewers, thus inducing them to pressure mom and dad for that special toy, candy, breakfast cereal, or other product. (I'm shocked, shocked, to find that commercials could influence shopping habits.) This, sensibly, led many of the sponsors to pull out of their local TV advertising, which in turn led many of those hosts to quit. "When the rule became effective last January 1," said Rex Trailer of WBZ, host of the syndicated Earth Lab, "they were like waiters who were told they couldn't take tips any more. So they just quit." 

Compounding the problem is lobbying by the villain of the piece, Action for Children's Television, which is pressuring the FCC to ban all commercial advertising on children's programs. The result, says Hickey, could "bring down the curtain on local, live children's programming, and undermine network kidvid as well." Says Chuck Zink of WTVJ in Miami, who has been playing "Skipper Chuck" in the market for 17 years, "I think they're out of their minds. They rave about Sesame Street, but nobody ever mentions that Sesame Street is fantastically well-funded. I'd love to have its budget. Give me nine million dollars and I'd show you what kind of shows I could do." 

"It's a dangerous Big Brother kind of thing," adds Bill McClain, "Brakeman Bill" on KTNT in Seattle-Tacoma, who thinks this kind of pressuring could extend to news programming as well. "Many pressure groups are unhappy with TV news, and this is one way of getting at it." He also points to the elephant in the room: "If you look at who the organizers are behind the pressure groups, you see that they're very heavily infused with public-TV people. They'd love to get a lot more Government money into children's programming. But then you have a dangerous concentration of Government power. First, they're teaching kids how to read and write, and then they're telling them how to vote."

As an example of the chilling effect the rule has already had, look no further than WSYR in Syracuse. "For years, WSYR had no fewer than 11 local, live children's programs a week: morning and afternoon shows each weekday, and a two-hour extravaganza on Saturdays. Now there is only one; Salty Sam is tucked away in a 7-8 A.M. Saturday slot, with minimal ratings and practically no budget." 

No matter how good national shows, whether from PBS or the commercial networks, may be, there's one thing they can't replicate from local hosts: personal appearances. Bill McLain makes a telling point about the loss of local kid shows: "One day the public will wake up and discover all the TV kid entertainers gone. Who's going to visit the hospitals, the schools, the shut-in children—Daffy Duck?"

Now, you can't lay the blame for this entirely on ACT, no matter how sanctimonious they were with their pseudo-altruistic rhetoric about the dangers of children's television. Over the decades the family home has changed completely; children don't come home for lunch, they're more active after school, they watch less TV and more video games, and the like. As I said, it's a lost world we're talking about, a way of life that no longer exists. But the demise of local children's programming certainly didn't help matters, and McLain's warnings about government involvement in children's programming are well-founded. And we haven't even begun to discuss the role that hyperactive programs such as Sesame Street may have played in shortening the attention span of children, which has shrunk to microscopic levels over the years. (True, nobody ever accused Howdy Doody of being sedate, but still.) Through the years, Fred Rogers was a welcome respite from such busyness, but now we don't have him. And we don't have those local hosts, either; more's the pity.

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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. 

As yet another television season comes to a close (most of this week's programs are reruns), Cleveland Amory takes his annual look at the second thoughts he might have had during the season. The four reviews that provoked the most comments from you, the readers, were his takes on M*A*S*H, The Little People (later to become The Brian Keith Show), UFO, and Banacek. To those who wrote in, he replies that he "found M*A*S*H a little better, The Little People a little worse, UFO a lot worse and Banacek better." As he adds, "see, we can admit we were wrong."

Going deeper into the season, he concedes that he's "grown to like" both McMillan & Wife and The Streets of San Francisco, both of which suffered from weak starts. And he thought he'd given a positive review to Kung Fu, but apparently it wasn't positive enough. He also wants to reassure the person who suggested that he was jealous of Kaine that he, Amory, has "lots more hair than he has." To those who felt he disliked Bridget Loves Bernie, he didn't dislike either of them; just the show. One writer clucked that Amory seemed to have a predisposition against the old jokes that appear in both The Little People and Banyon, to which Cleve replies that "We don't mind old jokes. As our readers know, we even love making up old jokes. We just mind when a whole show is an old joke."

He saves some praise for PBS's landmark documentary series An American Family, which I wrote about here. While he thought it "technically mediocre, pointlessly overlong and poorly edited," the fact was that "here was a dramatization of the decline and fall of the American dream. It was the most talked-about show of the year, and just exactly what public television should be doing and should not be cut off from doing." Comparing and contrasting it with his favorite show of the year, The Waltons, Amory concludes, "Look at both these series. A Depression family with nothing. An affluent family with everything. And then ask yourself: which one had nothing and which one had everything? Ask yourself, in other words, not what the country has gained in the past 40 years, but what we have lost."

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Two of television's definitive rock music shows, NBC's The Midnight Special and ABC's In Concert, faced off on Friday nights in the early '70s. Whenever the two slug it out, we'll be on hand to see who's better, who's best.

Midnight: Soul artist Curtis Mayfield hosts. Guests include Ravi Shankar, Jose Feliciano, Canned Heat, the soul singing Spinners, and pop duo Tufano and Giammarese. 

Concert: A lot of rock from groups T. Rex; Grass Roots; Beck, Bogert and Appice, and singer John Kay. Plus a little pop from Johnny Nash and the Sons of the Jungle.

I probably saw this week's Midnight Special; it would have been the only thing on television in the World's Worst Town™ on a Friday night, and when you're in high school, Friday and Saturday nights are a major occasion to be able to stay up late. (Oh, for the days when I could make it to midnight on any night of the week.) Anyway, I don't have a lot to go on as far as opinions, so for old times' sake, we'll give the edge to the Midnight Special.

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One of the treats of the week is Peter Ustinov's portrayal of King George III on the CBS News special "The Last King of America" (Wednesday, 8:00 p.m.), part of their American Revolution series leading up to the Bicentennial. If you're too young to remember, the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence was a big deal in this country, even though it was somewhat stained by the aftertaste of Watergate; still, the leadup to 1976 was tremendous, and this series on the Revolution was just one of the ways CBS, and all the other networks, sought to join in. The premise gives us newsman Eric Sevareid interviewing Ustinov's George, who improvises his answers based on history and his knowledge of George's politics.

Accompanying the program is a TV Guide Background article written by James Thomas Flexner, who authored perhaps the definitive George Washington biography, which was itself turned into not one, but two TV miniseries (1984's George Washington and 1986's George Washington II: The Forging of a Nation), both of which starred Barry Bostwick as Washington. In his article, Flexner provides a genuine insight into George III, explaining his family background and how, at first, George was well-liked both in England and the colonies. There are, in fact, several parallels between the Revolution and the American war in Vietnam, including how support for the war was initially quite strong in England, and how George was laid low by increasing public damands for peace, which would haunt George for the rest of his life (he reigned for 37 years after the Revolution). Flexner doesn't make a point of emphasizing these similarities; he doesn't have a political axe to grind, he doesn't want to score points with any particular ideological group: he just leaves readers to see these similarities for themselves. 

It's a popular belief that George was insane; Flexner points out that he likely suffered from porphyria, "an error of metabolism," which he inherited from his ancestors, including Mary, Queen of Scots. It is true, however, that he often behaved in an erratic, if not insane, manner. It's a tragic story, in many ways. As Flexner says, "No king ever had better intentions than George III. It was his misfortune to have been misaimed by his peculiar childhood and then to have stumbled into the American Revolution, a world-shaking event far beyond his competence to control."

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How many of you remember watching an ABC miniseries called The Strauss Family? It goes without saying that I don't, given that I was stuck in the World's Worst Town™, but if you didn't suffer that handicap, it might ring a bell. It was a British Associated Television production, aired in 1972 over there, and in 1973 ABC carried it for eight weeks on Saturday nights at 9:00 p.m. PT. (I'm a bit surprised it didn't find its way to Masterpiece Theatre.) The Strausses wrote some lovely music, but I can't see the appeal that this series would have had in America, unless the thought was that we'd eat up anything British, and they might well have been correct. The biggest names in the series (not necessarily the stars) are probably Derek Jacobi and Jane Seymour, although many of the actors are probably well-known to Anglophile viewers. 

Sunday's highlight comes on The Wonderful World of Disney (7:30 p.m., NBC), a 50th-anniversary celebration. Included is the evolution of Mickey Mouse, highlights of past Disney TV shows and movies, and something I can guarantee you wouldn't see today: a clip from Uncle Remus singing "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" from Song of the South, which the company has shamefully tried to purge from its history. If they ever reran this show today, they'd probably make sure to clip that scene out. And does anyone out there recall Reverend Ike? If you'd seen him, you'd remember; anyway, tonight his show premieres on WMUR in Manchester at 11:30 p.m.

The must-see TV on Monday comes later on; you'll read about it at the very end. But in the meantime, you might check out a pair of local movies, which are about as different as you could ask for: The Band Wagon (9:00 p.m., WCBV), starring Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, and a scene-stelling performance by Oscar Levant; or The Fountainhead (9:00 p.m., WKBG in Boston), a faithful adaptation of Ayn Rand's controversial novel (adapted by Rand herself), with Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, and Raymond Massey.

One of the lesser Peanuts cartoons leads off Tuesday: He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown (8:00 p.m., CBS), with Snoopy being sent off to obedience school. The series of strips on which this cartoon was based was funny enough, but let's face it: after A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's the Great Pumpkin, a lot of those cartoons really don't make much of an impression. Making a much greater impression is ABC's movie of the week, a repeat of That Certain Summer (8:30 p.m.), which discussed homosexuality in a far more frank way than television was accustomed to doing. Hal Holbrook, Martin Sheen, Hope Lange, and Scott Jacoby head an outstanding cast.

In addition to Peter Ustinov's bravura performance in "The Last King of America," Wednesday offers an ABC Theatre repeat of ◀ "If You Give a Dance You Gotta Pay the Band" (9:00 p.m.), a look at life in the black ghetto, produced by David Susskind, directed by Fred Coe, and written by ex-convict and former drug addict Stanley L. Gray, and stars Donna Bryan and a very, very young (11 years old) Laurence Fishburne. That's followed by an ABC News Special that stays on the mean streets: "The Methadone Connection" (10:30 p.m.), which investigates the growing use of the opiate to treat heroin addiction. 

On Thursday, we've got another one of those crossover episodes that tries to convince us that different series on the same network share the same universe: It's a special two-hour Ironside featuring the doctors from The Bold Ones, E.G. Marshall and David Hartman, treating a critically-injured Ed for a bullet wound that closely resembles the kind that paralyzed Ironside (8:00 p.m., NBC). I suspect this was originally one of those storylines that began on Ironside and ended on The Bold Ones.

The CBS Friday Night Movie is a three-hour epic, The Shoes of the Fisherman (8:00 p.m.), an overblown adaptation of Morris L. West's novel about the election of a new pope from the Soviet Union. Judith Crist calls it "mostly Hollywood with little true reverence," and, having both read the book and seen the movie, I'd agree with that, although the movie did take on added significance after the Church elected an actual pope from the Soviet bloc: John Paul II. Anthony Quinn does the honors; his Soviet adversary is Laurence Olivier.

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One of the provisos in this week's programming is that live, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings could result in schedule changes or preemptions. In the early days of the hearings, all three networks carried the hearings live, with PBS showing taped replays in primetime for those unable to watch during the day So far, according to Richard K. Doan, the reviews have been mixed; in Chicago, ABC's affiliate WLS received just over 300 calls during the first two days of coverage supporting the coverage, while 450 were angered that their favorite soaps and game shows were gone. CBS says their feedback has been about 50/50, while NBC reports calls were running "more heavily to beefs." 

Networks are said to be losing about $1 million a day in revenue due to the coverage, and they're not sure how long they'll continue to provide it on a start-to-finish basis. As I recall, the nets wound up rotating coverage, which is what people have been calling for on major news coverage for years. Today, this would dominate the news channels, but I wonder how much of it would bleed over to over-the-air? In turn, would coverage that was exclusively cable-based have put as much pressure on President Nixon to resign? All speculative, of course, but one can't help but wonder, even as one marvels at how much things have changed over the years.

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MST3K alert: Girls Town (1959) Unconvincing story of a wayward girl (Mamie Van Doren) sent to a reform school run by nuns. Fred: Mel Torme. Dick: Ray Anthony. Jimmy: Paul Anka. Vida: Gloria Talbott. Mother Veronica: Maggie Hayes. Serafina: Gigi Perreau. Sister Grace: Sheilah Graham. Stan: Dick Contino. Mary: Elinor Donahue. (Monday, 11:00 p.m., WSBK in Boston) There's really not much more to add to this one; despite Mel Torme, Ray Anthony, and Paul Anka (who plays a thinly-disguised version of himself), this is about what you'd expect. Which is to say: a perfect movie for MST3K. TV