February 17, 2025
What's on TV? Wednesday, February 23, 1955
February 15, 2025
What's on TV? February 19, 1955
The exciting prospect of television being beamed across the Atlantic via a series of microwave relay stations is thought to be four to ten years away. It won't be easy, nor will it be cheap; construction costs are estimated at a minimum of $75 to $100 million. AT&T's Ultra High Frequency microwave, which could cast signals as far as 300 miles, could expedite things, in terms both of cost and time. (Of course, the Early Bird satellite is still ten years away, and it is this satellite technology that revolutionizes the industry and makes live worldwide broadcasts possible. Given that Sputnik itself is two years in the future, it's no surprise that satellites don't enter the discussion.) Assuming that the technology works, Lowe wonders just what pieces need to be filled in to make global television a reality.
Western Europe has made great strides with its eight-nation Eurovision network, which has transmitted several simultaneous transmissions to Britain, France, West Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, and Switzerland. There are hopes that Sweden and Spain will be able to join before the end of the year, and as soon as Luxembourg and the Saar get up and running, they should be easy to add as well. The Soviet Union has, it is believed, seven stations, and they've enquired about joining Eurovision; Poland, with one station, and Czechoslovakia, which hopes to be on the air before next year, could join them. French Morocco has started a television operation at Casablanca, and it would be easy enough to connect North Africa to the continent via coax cable or microwave; Egypt and South Africa are expected to have operational stations sometime this year. See how easy it is?
Nowadays we'd call this the Global Community, and what I find interesting about all this is how far along it already is, and how fast it seems to be progressing. I'm old enough to remember the awe inspired by Early Bird, and the sporting events that came to us Live via Early Bird Satellite. Believe me, it made any event special, and in the 1960s, there were a lot of them—not just sports but news, town hall meetings, cultural events, and more. I suppose it must seem terribly ho-hum to those who have grown up with the internet and cell phones, but in reading this article, one can sense that the anticipation is palpable, that the possibilities from such technology are unlimited. It may well be that technology will yet turn out to be the instrument of our destruction, either literally or figuratively, but back in 1955 the sky was the limit.
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Also on the cover this week is the reigning king of comedy, Sid Caesar. After catapulting to fame with Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris on Your Show of Shows, he's now moved on to a show of his own, Caesar's Hour, along with Reiner and Morris; Coca's place has been filled by comedienne Nanette Fabray. But what's it like now that Sid is his own boss?
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| The cast of Caesar's Hour |
Friends say he's more relaxed since splitting with Coca and producer Max Liebman to go on his own; although the ratings were beginning to slide, he says that what made the split inevitable was "the indicision that tied me in knots." That relaxation doesn't seem to extend to his home life, though; he works from 10 a.m. to midnight, and when he gets home, he's so tired that "I won’t walk from here to there. Not unless I can calculate what it’s worth and am sure it’s worth it."
Throughtout his life, Caesar has been an astute observer of fhuman behavior, which he has translated to his skits. He generally relies on physical humor—gestures and grunts—to convey comedic situations, but he's also a master of doublespeak, able to mimic the sounds of a foreign language after hearing it for as little as 15 minutes and make it sound convincingly like actual words. But for all his success (Pedell describes it as "enough statuettes, ribbons, scrolls and citations to stock a dozen mantelpieces."), he still seems driven, immune to the pleasures which that success should have brought him. Says a former associate, "You know, he’s the kind of a guy who sits in the back of his chauffeur-driven limousine and says, 'Gee, I wish I had a hot dog.' The funny thing is—he really means it."
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NBC says Groucho Marx will be appearing in one of the spectaculars produced by the aforementioned Max Liebman in April, but if that ever happened, there's no record of it in the files of the series Max Liebman Presents. What's that they say about the best-laid plans?
In Washington, House Speaker Sam Rayburn remains adamant that there will be no television coverage of House sessions or committee hearings. He believes that cameras would be a distraction to members of the House, and perhaps for good reason: during last month's telecast of President Eisenhower's State of the Union address, cameras picked up "a foreign Ambassador obviously sleeping during the message, another of the dignified Speaker scratching his nose, and still others of Senators talking together during the speech." (Your tax dollars at work.) Ironically, when C-SPAN comes along with gavel-to-gave coverage of Congress, it's the Senate, not the House, that initially balks. Eventually, the Senate goes along, on C-SPAN2.
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You may recall that Lincoln's Birthday was celebrated in last week's issue; this week, it's George Washington's turn. The Father of Our Country is feted on The Christophers (Saturday 9:30 a.m., WFIL), as John Daly, Fred Allen, Ella Raines, and Thelma Ritter provide dramatic readings using Washington's own words. If that's too early in the morning for you, stick around for Texaco Star Theater (9:30 p.m., NBC), as host Donald O'Connor welcomes Boris Karloff—song-and-dance man.
The WFIL studio is taken over by cars on Sunday for the third annual Auto Show (2:00 p.m.), showcasing "America's smartest cars, along with sleek European cars" such as Jaguar, Volkswagen, Hillman Minx, Triumph, Sunbean, and Porsche, are on display during the two-and-a-half broadcast. Wouldn't you like to see some of those old beauties? Later in the afternoon, the George Washington tributes continue with Hallmark Hall of Fame's presentation, "Martha Custis Washington" (5:00 p.m., NBC), which tells the story of the young widow and mother of two who becomes America's first First Lady.
Colgate Comedy Hour comes to us from New Orleans this week (8:00 p.m., NBC), with host Gordon MacRae celebrating Marti Gras with Louis Armstrong, Peggy Lee, and comedian Gene Sheldon. Meanwhile, on Toast of the Town (8:00 p.m., CBS), Ed Sullivan is in London to host a tribute to the great English actress and musical comedy performer, the late Gertrude Lawrence, with an all-star lineup including Helen Hayes, Metropolitan Opera star Lily Pons, actress Judith Anderson, actress Sarah Churchill, and others.
We're back on the early morning beat Tuesday, as Today honors Washington's Birthday with its annual trip to Mount Vernon, Virginia. (I've been there myself; terrific place to visit.) In primetime, Boris Karloff makes his second appearance of the week in the comedy-mystery "A Sting of Death" on the anthology series The Elgin Hour (9:30 p.m., ABC). In his review of the season's drama anthologies, Robert Stahl calls Elgin "one of the brighter series" of the season, with an "adventuresome spirit." (By the by, Stahl rates Philco Television Playhouse as television's top anthology series; Philco, in its final season after a seven-year run, can boast Paddy Chayefsky's original version of "Marty" and the Broadway productions of Horton Foote's "Trip to Bountiful" and N. Richard Nash's "The Rainmaker" as successes.
Wednesday's highlight comes courtesy of Disneyland (7:30 p.m., ABC). It's "Davy Crockett at the Alamo," the third of five Crockett adventures made by Disney between 1954 and 1955. Fess Parker stars as the great frontiersman, with Buddy Ebsen as his sidekick George Russel, and Kenneth Tobey as James Bowie. "Davy Crockett at the Alamo" is, appropriately, the final segment of Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, the theatrical movie made from the first three Crockett stories. And opera star Robert Merrill, who appeared on The Milton Berle Show on NBC Tuesday night, spans nights and networks to play the celebrity with the secret on I've Got a Secret (9:30 p.m., CBS).
David Niven, one of the four stars of Four Star Playhouse, plays author Robert Louis Stevenson in "Tusitala," the story of the author's life on Samoa. (Thursday, 9:30 p.m., CBS) "Tusitala" is Samoan for "teller of tales," which certainly describes Stevenson. And on WCAU's Late Show (11:30 p.m.), it's the 1937 movie You Only Live Once, directed by Fritz Lang, with Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney. Only don't tell James Bond.
In the sports netherworld, between the end of football and the start of baseball, boxing dominates the scene, and on Friday the main event pits world featherweight champion Sandy Saddler*, making his first title defense in three years, against the number one contender, Teddy Davis, live from Madison Square Garden. (10:00 p.m., NBC) It's not that Saddler was inactive; he fought a a total of 163 times, winning 145 times. Most of his fights during his time as featherweight champion were 10-round non-title bouts, sometimes against fighters from other weight classes.
*Fun fact: Sandy Saddler's nephew is Grandmaster Flash.
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Emerson started out in show business when she was still in her teens, making her first movie appearance in 1941. Her transition "from actress to interviewer" came in 1948, while she was married to Elliott Roosevelt, son of FDR. (The two were brought together by Howard Hughes.) She was interviewed at the Democratic National Convention and found the questioning so banal that "As far as I could see, all you had to do was talk. So I figured this was for me." (She didn’t think of Eleanor Roosevelt as a mother-in-law, she said, but more as "a woman of the world who belonged to the world." She never gave up on acting, thought, with appearances on various dramatic anthologies and Broadway productions, as well as hosting her own interview shows. (She also found time to divorce Roosevelt and marry bandleader Skitch Henderson.) Last year, she added the title of columnist to her duties, writing a nationally syndicated column. She reads all the daily newspapers, a habit she got into when she was a panelist on the quiz show Who Said That? "But I’m no intellectual; just curious."
These days, she's a regular panelist on I've Got a Secret. She has also, unexpectedly, turned up as something of an arbiter of women's fashion on TV. In those early days, she was known as "the girl with the plunging neckline," a label she vehemently rejects. "I wore my own clothes when I started on late evening shows, and they were clothes appropriate to that time of day. Evening clothes, of course, are cut low; but I also wore a lot of high necklines. And I never wore anything in bad taste." Unlike some of today's stars, she might have added; in one of her recent columns, she said that "TV isn't necessarily like a Turkish bath," and that "The less said, the better, about some things that go on after 10 P.M." It's an issue she'd rather stay out of, though, "because it is keeping alive what is distasteful to me. I can well remember the days when people said all a girl had to do was to 'cut her dresses low like Fayzie' and she was an actress." But would they have wound up as the Grand Old Lady of Television? TV
February 14, 2025
Around the dial
Onward to Cult TV Blog, where John continues "Private Detective Season" with the mid-80s British series Bulman, and the episode "Pandora's Many Boxes." Bulman's one of those maverick P.I.s who don't follow the rules, which is just fine with me, and it provides an excellent snapshot of its time, which the best shows always do.
Garry Berman returns with the third in a series of stars who've gone "from hits to flops," and there are more than you might think. Of course, you don't get to be a star unless you take chances, and some of them don't work out. How many of these failed series do you remember?
Roger continues his recap of The New Avengers at A View from the Junkyard with "To Catch a Rat," another quality episode in the series revival. In addition to being a thriller revolving around amnesia, it's a philosophical reminder of just how important one's memory is to their own identity.
There was a time when Susan Oliver seemed to be on just about every television show you tuned in to, and Travalanche looks back at her road to success, including some of her more memorable roles (including, of course, the "Green Chick" in Star Trek).
One of the great things about the Criterion Channel is the access it gives you to movies and genres you might never have known about, let alone watched. For me, the great revelation was Japanese Noir, and Maddy writes at Classic Film and TV Corner about one of the best, Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog, with the great Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura.
On the subject of movies, at Classic Film & TV Cafe, Rick looks at Buchanan Rides Alone, one of the six "Ranown Cycle" Westerns made by Randolph Scott, directed by Budd Boetticher, and written by Burt Kennedy. Merits of the movie aside, I'm reminded of the night of the 1992 New Hampshire Presidental Primary, when Pat Buchanan was running against Bush Sr. and the GOP establishment. TNT was airing this movie, and I wondered then if they appreciated the irony of the title. TV
February 12, 2025
If I ran the network, part 6
Thus was born "Jack the Ripper: The Series."
That wouldn't have been the final title, of course. For one thing, I wasn't interested in doing a period piece, at least not that period. I also wasn't interested in a series set in England. And anyway, what more is there to say about the real Jack the Ripper that hasn' t already been said? I mean, if the idea that the Ripper might have been a member of the royal family doesn't shock you, then what's the use? It made for a good working title, though, and as far as explaining the concept goes, it'd be a great elevator pitch. So it stays as a place-holder.
In rejecting a period piece, I also rejected setting it in a contemporary timeframe, when so much of modern investigative and forensic work is conducted in the lab, online, or through psychological profiling. No, what I wanted to see was good, old-fashioned police work, where pavements are pounded and shoe leather is worn out, where informants are consulted and every lead has to be followed up. As for the location, probably a nameless American city with a population of several million people, as opposed to a small town where the character pool would be relatively limited and the focus of the investigation would narrow rapidly. Both of these were details to be determined later.
The series would work something like this: in the pilot (a two-hour special), we'd meet three or four characters, people from various walks of life. We'd learn about them: what they did, what their lives were like, what they did at home and on the job, and how those factors might possibly bring them within the circle of a serial killer. At first, as each one is murdered, the crimes are investigated as unrelated killings, but by the end of the pilot, the police realize they're dealing with a serial killer. For however many epsodes the series runs, we'd see the investigation progress, through the eyes of the task force formed to coordinate the strategy, the detectives looking for clues, the reporters covering the story, or some other aspect of the case.
In the meantime, the killings continue, usually at the rate of one per episode, but never more than two. Each week we'd be introduced to two or three potential Ripper victims. As in the pilot, they'd be the focus of the episode, similar to character-driven dramas like The Untouchables, Naked City and The FBI. Sometimes their activities would be shown simultaneously on split-screens (a la 24), other times we'd switch between their stories and the progress of the investigation. Throughout the episode, viewers would be left wondering what threat might be waiting around the corner, at a dark bus stop, or in the shadows next to the garage.
As for the identity of the Ripper, it could be male or female, one person or two—we wouldn't know until the final episode, although sharp-eyed viewers would pick up clues after every murder that would allow them to play along with the detectives in creating a profile that would suggest various suspects. Along the way there will be false leads, red herrings, and brick walls encountered. It could be that one of the guest stars, one we feared might be a victim, becomes a suspect instead. It could be the delivery person who brings coffee or donuts to the detectives, one of the reporters, or even one of the detectives. We might receive glimpses of the killer in various episodes without realizing it, and we might have some parts of the story seen through the eyes of the killer, without revealing their identity.
As the murders continue, the detectives would begin to establish a pattern, that would produce a list of suspects; that list would be added to or narrowed down over the course of the series. Some suspects might reappear in multiple episodes, while others come and go in the course of an hour. There could be cliffhanger endings in which the detectives pursue a suspect who eludes them; that suspect might be cleared later, or remain on the list. In one of those episodes where we see things through the eyes of the killer, we might see him come close to being captured, have the intended victim escape, or have the plan inadvertently thwarted, with the intended never knowing how close he or she came to becoming a statistic.
There'd also be room for some episodes that break the mold. For instance, there might be an episode in which, with the killer not having struck for several months, the case appears to be on the verge of going cold. There could be a story in which a psychic is brought in to try and identify who might be behind the crimes. We could see a reporter working on a trap that would catch the killer; and there'd probably be one illustrating the pressure mounting on the department to capture the Ripper, with that pressure being passed down to the detectives. Speaking of which, since in real life these crimes often take place over extended periods of time, we'll probably see three or four years pass over the course of the series, during which time new detectives come on the case while others are transferred, get killed on the job, retire, or otherwise move on.
Admittedly, there are some ideas that have to be worked out before we can go into production. For one thing, we'd have to give the viewers characters they can care about, to keep them tuning in each week; therefore, the potential victims have to be compelling, fully-formed charcters, with viewers becoming invested in their stories (some of them might be real SOBs, people you'd want to be victims). And there'd have to be characters among the detectives that would be the main protagonists, people the viewers would be rooting for. Unlike The Killer, under no circumstances would the Ripper ever be considered the protagonist, even if he did wind up killing someone who deserved it.
To be sure, "Jack the Ripper: The Series" is a long way from being a polished idea, although that never stopped a network from greelighting a series. There are some things about it that I really liked, though: the way it combined serial storytelling, with the arc continuing through the whole series, and episodic television, with a new victim being killed each week. And while we've seen serial killers come and go on TV in the years since, I don't know how many Rippers have carried that series without being the lead character—or, for that matter, without even being identified. And how many series have carried such a serial killer investigation through an entire season, with the killings continuing each week?
It might not be an idea a network would pick up today, but there would always be a place for it on HBC. No matter what it was called. TV
February 10, 2025
What's on TV? Monday, February 7, 1972
February 8, 2025
This week in TV Guide: February 5, 1972
However, this year's Winter Olympics, from Sapporo, Japan, are on NBC, and with the network planning extensive live coverage, the fourteen-hour time difference between Japan and New York has necessitated a most unusual broadcasting schedule. The network has divided its weekday lineup into three segments, starting with a 30-minute broadcast at 8:30 a.m. ET, preempting the last half-hour of Today. Primetime shows (which include live coverage of skiing and speed skating) are on Monday and Tuesday nights for an hour each, and a two-hour broadcast on Thursday.* Daily coverage concludes with 90-minute broadcasts at 11:30 p.m., preempting The Tonight Show. Things are somewhat more expansive on the weekend, with four-and-a-half hours on Saturday and three hours on Sunday.
*In case you're wondering what programs were so important that they couldn't be preempted on Wednesday or Friday, they were Columbo and Night Gallery (Wednesday) and Friday Night at the Movies on Friday. (Two Mules for Sister Sara, FYI.) Even in the middle of the Olympics, a network has to have its priorities in order.
In total, the network presents 36 hours of coverage across the 12 days of competition; by contrast, the NBC family of networks provided close to 3,000 hours of coverage of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, across 19 days. For absolutists, I'm sure today's broadcasts provide a bonanza. I'm a meat-and-potatoes, just-the-facts kind of guy, though, and back when I watched the Olympics, I was only interested in seeing medal-winning performances, not all the preliminaries or various features; I think that the advent of saturation coverage was when I started to lose interest in the Olympics; I haven't watched them since, I'd guess, the 1990s, and I don't have any plans to take them up again any time soon. Maybe NBC could offer a "skinny package" of coverage on one of their streaming platforms, but even then I don't think I could be convinced to tune in to some of the newer "sports."
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.
Elizabeth Baur is, as Dick Adler relates in this week's cover story, the new face on Ironside, and I can remember, during one of my occasional forays into viewership, wondering what had happened to the blonde I'd seen before. Was it the same actress, with a new hair color? (Well, you can't always expect sophisticated analysis at that age.)
Be that as it may, I'm opting for Akira Kurasawa's masterpiece The Seven Samurai (Friday, 8:30 p.m., PBS), one of the greatest movies of all time (featuring a star-making turn from Toshiro Mifune), and the basis for the American Western The Magnificent Seven, a pretty good movie in its own right. When it was released for American theaters, it was edited from 200 minutes to 160, but PBS promises that it will be showing the original; though it has inspired many a Western in both America and Italy, it is, as Crist says, "a meaningful film, concerned with individuals rather than stock characters, and [Kurasawa's] artistry raises his work to classic stature."
In honor of Lincoln's Birthday on February 12, CBS presents a repeat of the David L. Wolper documentary They've Killed President Lincoln! (Thursday, 8:00 p.m.), an excellent "You Are There"-type look at the events leading up to the assassination. Civil War historian Bruce Catton supervised the production; Richard Basehart narrates. Meanwhile, over on PBS, NET Playhouse airs "Abraham Lincoln" (8:30 p.m.), D.W. Griffith's first talkie, with Walter Huston as Honest Abe and Una Merkel as his first love, Ann Rutledge. And that's not all; next week, PBS's NET Opera Theater carries the world premiere of Thomas Pasatieri's one-act opera "The Trial of Mary Lincoln," covering the firmer First Lady's insanity trial. There was no particular Lincoln commemoration in 1972, at least as far as I know; it's interesting that he's getting so much attention this year.
In total, the network presents 36 hours of coverage across the 12 days of competition; by contrast, the NBC family of networks provided close to 3,000 hours of coverage of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, across 19 days. For absolutists, I'm sure today's broadcasts provide a bonanza. I'm a meat-and-potatoes, just-the-facts kind of guy, though, and back when I watched the Olympics, I was only interested in seeing medal-winning performances, not all the preliminaries or various features; I think that the advent of saturation coverage was when I started to lose interest in the Olympics; I haven't watched them since, I'd guess, the 1990s, and I don't have any plans to take them up again any time soon. Maybe NBC could offer a "skinny package" of coverage on one of their streaming platforms, but even then I don't think I could be convinced to tune in to some of the newer "sports."
There's a closing irony about this though, as there is about almost everything. The theme to NBC's Olympic coverage, written by John Denver, Bill Danoff, and Taffy Nivert, was called "Victory Is Peace." It only took eight months, until the Summer Olympics in Munich, for that to come crashing down.
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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. Of the many tough lessons learned in the process of being Cleveland Amory, TV critic, one stands out this week: "[B]eware of any show which is titled Somebody's Something. It's inclined not to be anybody's anything." Case in point is Rod Serling's Night Gallery. And if you don't see where he's going with this review, he continues: "Most episodes contain three separate stories, so if you don't like the first, you can always look forward to the next two. On the other hand, if you don't like either the first or the second, you can always look forward to the third. By the same token, if you don't like the first or the second or the third—well, look at it this way, it's over."
The problems with Night Gallery are legion: the stories are often either overwritten, or overacted, or overproduced—and, on occasion, all three. Most of the episodes are based on overworked gimmicks, and on the rare occasions when the show threatens to succeed, something gets in the way. Two episodes come to mind, both written by Serling: one in which a man from the future sents his deformed son to anothet planet in accordance with "The Federal Conformity Act of 1993." (The story Cleve's referring to "The Different Ones," according to IMDb.) "It could have been touching," Amory says, "but, being in this show, it wasn't." The other story he references is undoubtedly "Green Fingers," with Elsa Lanchester as a woman who refuses to sell her cottage to a developer. "Again, it had its points—aside from the fact that, like so many stories here, it didn't really have an end." It's important, Cleve says, that stories like this have an end; it's not good enough that they are ending.
What this show really strives for, Amory believes, is the sort of sensation one got from Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "And it really is infurating, 50 years after Hitchcock, to have something not anywhere near as good." It's particularly puzzling that "such drivel" manages to attract name stars. We know from Serling's own comments that he had major problems with Night Gallery, and became frustrated with elements such as the comic blackout sketches, which he felt distorted the entire program. Several of his scripts were rejected, and when NBC ruled out any Twilight Zone-type philosophical stories, Serling commented that "These people are taking what could have been a good series and they're so commercializing it it's not going to be commercial." For better or worse, Serling knew what he wanted Night Gallery to be, and I'm not at all sure he wouldn't have agreed with Cleveland Amory on the results."
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It's true that there had previously been a blonde, Emmy-winning Barbara Anderson, for the previous four seasons. But she'd left the show, rather surprisingly, to get married and try her luck with movies, and so Baur, who had previously been on the Western series Lancer, was selected from a large group of contenders. You'd be forgiven for thinking she hadn't made much of an impression at first, though; the first three episodes of the season had already been written for Anderson when Baur came on-board, so neither she nor the writers had much of an opportunity to establish her character. That has since changed, and she's flourishing as part of the ensemble cast.
At the same time she'd tried out for Ironside, producer Cy Chermak told her that she wasn't really what they had in mind for the role, but that he wanted her to come back and read for him. After that second meeting, he again told her that she wasn't the type they were thinking of, but would she come back and do a screen test? She did, along with seven other actresses, and she was the unanimous choice. Not taking any chances, however, she also auditioned for a role in the daytime soap Bright Promise, which she got. The next day she was offered the role for Ironside, and sent Bright Promise her regrets.
It's all interesting, and her impression of Raymond Burr ("he was very sweet and charming") pretty much lines up with everything else we read about him from people who've worked with him. What I find most interesting, though, is not the Ironside story, but her experience on Lancer. That series ran for two seasons, from 1968 to 1970, placing it in the midst of television's latest anti-violence period, and her comments on how the "silly business" of "violence points" on the show were handled are quite illuminating. "We had a limit of a certain number of points per show—like 10. You got maybe three points for a slap, four points for hitting somebody with a fist. It got to be pretty foolish. I mean, Westerns are supposed to have action in them, and when you take that away the shows getvery talky." And, she might have added, bland. So when you're watching television from this era and wonder why the bad guys never seem to get shot, just ask yourself how many points that might have been worth.
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Would you care to take a guess at how many times, over the years, I've written disparagingly about the contemporary version of Hallmark Hall of Fame, comparing it unfavorably to its classic presentations? Anyone? Buehler? I'm not sure myself, but I'd have to guess it happens at least a half-dozen tims a year. And I don't believe any of you fine connoisseurs of television out there would disagree with me in those criticisms. Well, this week I get to take aim at a presentation from this more distinguished era. It's called "Love! Love! Love!" (Tuesday, 7:30 p.m., NBC), and it's part of Hallmark's advertising blitz for Valentine's Day. By the way, if you have any doubts about that point, take a look at the Hallmark ads appearing in this issue alone:
Three ads, three mentions of "Love," and a story called "Love! Love! Love!" Get it?
Anyway, this musical "tribute to young love" features Robert Wagner playing the emcee at The Troubadour in Los Angeles, where he introduces performances by Mac Davis, Helen Reddy, and Bread. As they sing, "a series of montages shows six young couples enjoying the pleasure of each other's company." It's not quite a musical, not quite a variety show, not quite a drama, and—as far as I'm concerned—not quite interesting enough for me. The idea itself is a creative departure for Hall of Fame, and I think it could have worked with a different selection of artists; as it is, the only one I can halfway listen to is Mac Davis. I know they were all big stars, but—and this is the kind of comment I might have reserved for Sullivan v. Palace—I don't know why. According to the Hall of Fame website, the next presentation will be Harvey, with Jimmy Stewart reprising his famous role, and that's more like it.
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Once again, one of the highlights of the viewing week comes to us courtesy of the big screen, so let's start with the television premiere of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (Thursday, 9:00 p.m., CBS), with Oscar-winning performances by Vivian Leigh, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden; Marlon Brando's iconic, much-parodied role as Stanley Kowalski lost out to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, but, as Judith Crist says, his performance here is "nothing short of brilliant," as he "furthered the style that innumerable young actors were to ape and established his reputation for greatness."
Down a notch or two perhaps, but still eminently watchable, is the two-part showing of Ice Station Zebra (Sunday and Monday, 9:00 p.m. both nights, ABC), an action-adventure adaptation of Alistair MacLean's Cold War thriller, with an all-star cast including Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine, Patrick McGoohan, Jim Brown, and Lloyd Nolan. It received mixed reviews in its release, but as Crist says, "With Cdr. Rock Hudson in charge—who's to worry?"
What else? Victor Borge presens a lesson in his famous phonetic punctuation on The Electric Company (Saturday, noon, WGBH in Boston). I must have been younger than this the first time I saw Borge do this, and it was as funny then as it is today. On American Bandstand (1:00 p.m., ABC), it's a "Salute to the Fifties" with Little Richard and Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids. We still do these tributes today, but in 1972 the 1950s weren't that long ago.
What else? Victor Borge presens a lesson in his famous phonetic punctuation on The Electric Company (Saturday, noon, WGBH in Boston). I must have been younger than this the first time I saw Borge do this, and it was as funny then as it is today. On American Bandstand (1:00 p.m., ABC), it's a "Salute to the Fifties" with Little Richard and Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids. We still do these tributes today, but in 1972 the 1950s weren't that long ago.
Sunday is Glenn Ford night on CBS. First, it's a repeat of The Brotherhood of the Bell (7:30 p.m.), a darkly sinister story of a secret society with its members in all the right places of power; you may recall me writing about it here, in my "Descent into Hell" series. That's followed at 9:30 p.m. by Ford's underrated modern Western, Cade's County, in which Ford plays a tough Southwestern sheriff, the kind of role he plays best. Tonight's episode is part two of a drama in which Cade seeks to clear a man charged with murder.
On Monday, Bill Bixby and Brandon Cruz, stars of The Courtship of Eddie's Father, star in ABC's Monday Night Special, "Bill Bixby and Brandon Cruz at the Budapest Circus" (8:00 p.m.). Bill and Brandon not only introduce the acts, they perform with some of them! Hollywood Television Theatre presents a repeat of an adaptation of John Dos Passos's monumental trilogy "U.S.A." (8:00 p.m., PBS), telling the story of American life from pre-World War I to the Depression; Peter Bonerz, John Davidson, James Farentino, Joan Hackett, Shirley Knight, and Michele Lee play all the roles, while Edward G. Robinson reads the prologue.
It's easy to forget that the Sunday Mystery Movie used to be on Wednesday (when it was called, for no other reason, the Wednesday Mystery Movie), and that's why Columbo is bumping out the Winter Olympics tonight; the episode is Blueprint for Murder" (8:30 p.m., NBC), with Patrick O'Neal as the killer, and Peter Falk himself as the director. If you're not a Columbo fan, and I can't imagine why that would be the case, you're perhaps watching the week's second dose of Bill Bixby and Brandon Cruz, this time on their own show (8:00 p.m., ABC), with tonight's special guest, Sammy Davis Jr.
Friday's highlights come from late-night, unless you're in the mood for some heavyweight boxing, with Floyd Patterson taking on Oscar Bonavena from Madison Square Garden in New York. (10:00 p.m., WSMW in Worcester). At 11:25 p.m., part one of the WTIC (Hartford) double feature is Alfred Hitchcock's shocker The Birds, with Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren, and at 11:30, Dick Cavett's guests include Liza Minnelli, promoting her new movie, Cabaret (opening next week), Pete Seeger, Robert Klein, and Gale Sayers.
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No MST3K movie this week, so we'll look at a recipe. "Cooking with wine adds something very special to a dish, making chicken superb, veal delicate and transforming beef stew into beef bourguignon." I'll take their word for it, but here's a nifty recipe for Chicken Marengo. Bon appetit!
TV
February 7, 2025
Around the dial
My friend Alan Hayes has some exciting news on the horizon: Escapades: An Exploration of Avengers Curiosities, a new book co-authored with J.Z. Ferguson, which takes a deep dive into aspects of the classic series that haven't been previously covered, such as the London stage play, the South African radio series, a couple of unmade TV scripts, and a Mexican wrestling film—and that's just for starters! The book is available for pre-order here, and I'd encourage all you Avengers fans to look into it. And stay tuned to this space over the next few weeks, for an interview with Alan and a review of the book.
Let's work it a little more, as Roger's review of The New Avengers continues at A View from the Junkyard, with the latest episode being "Target!" He sees it as "another superb episode in a season that hasn’t put a foot wrong yet," and even ventures that it's better than the original series. What do you think?
The Broadcast Archives has several classic TV stories this week, covering everything from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me to the first made-for-TV movie. They're all fun, but why not start out with the single-season series Mr. Lucky, a Blake Edwards creation starring John Vivyan.
At bare-bones e-zine, Jack's Hitchcock Project continues with "Total Loss," a fourth-season episode by J.E. Selby that is most assuredly a product of its times. Nancy Olson and Ralph Meeker star; find out if the bad guy gets away with it.
The Rose Medallion is the next series in line in John's continuing "private detective season" at Cult TV Blog. John says that we have to watch this 1981 series about an uncovered skeleton and the quest to find out the rest of the story, and he's a pretty good judge of shows.uuu
The Globe and Mail has this essay on ditching streaming in favor of DVDs. I've been in this camp for quite awhile; aside from the fact that it's difficult to find some of the more obscure programs on streaming, it's too often a case of "here today, gone tomorrow." I'll always be a believer in physical media.
David's journey through 1970s TV at Comfort TV has now come to Wednesday, 1975, and if we can't remember When Things Were Rotten, Kate McShane, and Doctors' Hospital, we can certainly recall Little House on the Prairie, Starsky & Hutch, Cannon, and more.
At RealWeegieMidget, Gill (and Darlin' Husband) take a look at movie recommendations from January, including a miniseries with Barry Bostwick and Stefanie Powers, a movie with brothers Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez, and Gary Coleman as a pint-size arsonist!
Do we ever get tired of the latest schemes cooked up by Sgt. O'Rourke and Corporal Agarn at F Troop? Not if we're Hal at The Horn Section, and the latest sure-to-fail scam, "The West Goes Ghost," involves ghosts, the railroad, and the two passing themselves off as medical men, for starters.
At Drunk TV, Paul reviews the second season of Simon & Simon, one of the quintessentially '80s series of, well, the '80s, with Gerald McRaney and Jameson Parker as the brothers running the Simon & Simon detective agency. Thrilling cases and beautiful women galore!
Martin Grams, who wrote one of the definitive books on The Twilight Zone, looks at books containing adaptations of Rod Serling's TZ scripts (done by Serling himself), as well as adaptations and original stories written by Walter Gibson, all of which were quite successful.
I've written before about Turn On, the legendary one-episode ABC series that was virtually cancelled before that one episode was done. But was it really as bad as history says? Not so fast, says Travalanche, who believes it was far from the worst show of all time. TV
February 5, 2025
What I've been watching: Winter edition
Shows
I’ve Watched:
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Shows
I’ve Added:
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The Loner Poirot Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
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F Troop Nichols World War I
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One series that wrapped up recently is Rod Serling's The Loner, the 1965-66 Western starring Lloyd Bridges as William Colton, a Civil War veteran traveling through the West in search of a meaningful life. The series ran for 26 episodes (most of which were written by Serling), and bear all the trademarks of typical Serling stories: provocative ideas based on a strong moral sense, with messages that frequently hammer us over the head with their lack of subtlety.
That's not necessarily meant to be a criticism, by the way; there's only so much character development that can be accomplished within the structure of a half-hour drama (minus commercials), and by definition we should expect things to unfold at a more rapid pace than if the running time is longer. The stories are, without exception, presented in a literate and thoughtful way, and Bridges delivers his lines with a firmness and conviction. As a result, The Loner is rarely less than good and occasionally better than that, and the storylines are almost always worthy of thought afterwards, even when they fall short of their potential.
Aiding Suchet in making the show so watchable is a brilliant supporting cast, including Hugh Fraser as Captain Hastings, Poirot's loyal, if occasionally dim, associate. As is the case with Doctor Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories, Hastings frequently serves as a surrogate for the viewer, giving Poirot someone to whom he can explain how he got from point A to point B; also like Watson, Hastings makes up for a lack of imagination with an intelligence that, more often than not, provides an asset to Poirot. Philip Jackson, as Inspector Japp, provides a perfect foil for Poirot's brilliance; his confidence in his ability to solve the case is frequently undermined by Poirot's discovery of the pivotal clue (with Poirot often graciously allowing Japp to think he did it without Poirot's help), but make no mistake: he values both Poirot's intelligence and his friendship, and he'll be the first one to defend the detective against skeptics. And as Poirot's secretary Miss Lemon, Pauline Moran not only keeps the office running efficiently, she occasionally provides a needle to Poirot's non-insignificant ego. Just as in Perry Mason, Poirot functions as an ensemble, but with Suchet always the first among equals.
Several factors combine to prevent Voyage from completely descending (so to speak) into kitschy sci-fi, the first and unquestionably most important being Richard Basehart as Admiral Harriman Nelson, the visionary scientist and designer of Seaview. Basehart brings a gravitas and depth to the role that instantly provides the character—and the series—with a credibility it might otherwise lack. He's authoritative, incisive, suspicious, and dedicated to both science and the nation's security.
We know that Serling was disappointed in the final result, believing that network interference compromised his vision of a "realistic, adult Western" in favor of more "traditional" Western action. And in truth, there are episodes that present an undeniable tension between Serling's desire to lean on the philosophical and the constructs of the Western genre, resulting in endings that can be somewhat less than satisfying. Merely preventing the man in the black hat from acting on his homicidal impulses does not necessarily mean that said black hat won't resume being a threat once Colton has departed the scene; in other words, you can't always shame a bully into reforming himself in the Old West. Sometimes you have to eliminate that threat permanently, if you catch my drift. Don't take that caution as a deterrant, though; your investment in The Loner will likely be a satisfying one.
One show that's been a delight to revisit is Poirot, with David Suchet providing the definitive interpretation of Agatha Christie's iconic Belgian detective and his "little grey cells." Our last viewing of Poirot came when the series was in its original run, which makes it almost as good as new. In addition, since some of the later episodes were exclusive to Acorn (including the series finale, "Curtain"), those episodes will be new.
I referred to Suchet as the "definitive" version of Poirot, not only in his brilliance, but his mannerisms, fussy eccentricities (Suchet fought to portray Poirot down to the last "obsessive-compulsive" gesture), and relentless determination to discover the truth. His dedication to justice, occasionally tempered by mercy, makes him a very dangerous adversary, and for all the good humor that is built into the character (frequently causing his opponents to take him lightly), Suchet does an excellent job of projecting that danger. I would not want to cross swords with him, regardless of the circumstances.
The music and period detail—especially the breath-taking art deco accents—are a fundamental part of Poirot's appeal. Later stories, considerably darker in tone and frequently taking place on location, are still quite entertaining, but I have to admit that they lose some of their fun of the early seasons. Is that a quibble? I don't intend it to be, merely an observation; if those early seasons had never existed, the series would still stand on its own as one of the best British imports. Poirot very nearly made it on my Top Ten list, and when the next update comes around, I wouldn't be surprised to find it there.
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea has neither the existential depth of The Loner nor the art deco elegance of Poirot. What it does have is a very cool atomic-powered submarine, a raft of special effects, some cheesy-looking monsters, and a surfeit of fun. It's based on Irwin Allen's 1961 movie of the same name about a fantastic submarine of the future called Seaview, starring Walter Pidgeon*, and Robert Sterling; and in adapting the movie for the small screen, Allen was able to utilize a ready-made treasure trove of quality, big-budget sets and ship miniatures that gave the series a big-screen look from the get-go.
*But we won't tell Gypsy.
The first season, shot in black-and-white, is arguably the best of the four. It leans heavily into Cold War and espionage themes; given that the Seaview is frequently utilized for secret missions by the U.S. government, and that it's the most advanced ship of its kind in the world, it's entirely plausible that it would be the target of both foreign governments (i.e. the Commies) and meglamaniacs bent on world domination. As the series progresses, that realism becomes less and less common (and plausible), replaced (at the network's request) by stories that are more overtly science fiction and often populated by sea monsters, ghosts, aliens, and other kinds of flotsam and jetsam that one doesn't usually encounter in the ocean's depths—but then, since the Seaview is able to submerge to deeper depths than any other ship, who knows what they might find down there?
Nelson's number two is Lee Crane, played by David Hedison. Crane is actually the captain of the Seaview, the COO to Nelson's CEO, and proves himself more than up to the task. Regardless of the ship's mission, whether scientific or military, Crane's first priority is always the safety of the Seaview and her crew. Hedison portrays Crane as cool and confident, not afraid to butt heads with Nelson when he feels his men are in jeopardy, but never suggesting that he chafes under the weight of having the boss always around to look over his shoulder (and it's a mark of Nelson's confidence in Crane that he pretty much leaves the operation of Seaview up to him). He's ably assisted by the ship's Executive Officer, Chip Morton, played with competence and trustworthiness by Bob Dowdell, an actor who seldom gives a bad performance. And while the show's move to color in the second season coincided with a shift to more fantastical stories, it also bathed the episodes in a wonderful color palette that looks terrific.
What I like about Voyage—and I enjoy it tremendously; as I mentioned with Combat!, I set aside whatever else I'm doing when it's on—is that there's just enough to it that it's possible to tolerate the more ridiculous storylines. Basehart is, as I said, never less than terrific in the role, and while the scripts often require a mighty suspension of disbelief, for the most part they don't insult my intelligence. It's dumb fun without being dumb, television viewing just for the pleasure of it. If you want your adventure straight-up, with a minium of pontificating and existential angst, a voyage on the Seaview is well worth taking. TV
February 3, 2025
What's on TV? Wednesday, February 1, 1984
February 1, 2025
This week in TV Guide: January 28, 1984
Cybill Shepherd, current star of NBC’s The Yellow Rose, future star of ABC’s Moonlighting, is this week’s cover story. We’ll be back later to find out if there’s anything else worth discussing, but in the meantime here’s the rest of the issue.
One of the constant features of dyspeptic, apocalyptic police state stories has been the ability of governments to spy on their citizens through the television, looking out at you as you look at it. Stories of early television viewers worried that the characters on the tube could actually see them are legion, although you’d like to think most of them are urban legends. Still, the thought of moving pictures actually appearing in your living room, some of them being broadcast live as they happened, had to have been a pretty radical concept. Seen from today’s perspective, when we watch television on the same phones with which we have video chats with friends, maybe it wasn’t so far out after all.
This week, in another of the cautionary stories that marked this era of TV Guide, James Morrow commemorates the first month of 1984 by looking at just how close we are to the world of George Orwell’s book, and it turns out we’re pretty close—just not the way you might think.
For example, Morrow points out that to Orwell, "language is the blood of the mind. To abuse language is to abuse the human spirit." What better example of the power to abuse language, he says, than the television commercial? Consider the use of the word "natural." "It seems pretty straightforward, until you hear someone say, " 'Change your hair color. It’s the 'natural' thing to do.' " Orwell called this trait "doublethink," as in "War is Peace" and "Freedom is Slavery." Television does this kind of thing all the time.
American television, writes Morrow, may have developed a "dominion over human consciousness" similar to that existing in Winston Smith’s world. Viewers turn to fictional TV doctors for medical advice, they accept without question documentaries that portray American society as far riskier and dangerous than it really is. Some people might substitute Dr. Phil for Dr. Marcus Welby, while others would see either global warming (on the right) or Donald Trump (on the left) as evidence of American television viewers' willingness to be taken in by The Big Hoax.
For all of American television’s faults, Morrow thinks that Orwell might well have liked it, or at least parts of it. Orwell, says Morrow, "believed in the common sense of common humanity" and might well have seen TV’s "populist nature" as protection against the all-encompassing state. Orwell believed that "it was among the intellectuals, not among the working classes, that you found society’s villains": he probably would have loved Cheers.
So how close are we to the nightmare telescreen world of 1984. We’re not there, at least not yet. But, as Morrow concludes, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t listen to those who seem to be crying wolf about TV's power and influence. "The boy who cried wolf was wrong—and the townspeople who ultimately ignored him were also wrong. Theirs was the sin of complacency."
It’s a preposterous premise, on many levels. Neither of them work, for example, yet they pay their bills every month. There are a lot of car chases and crashes, and McCormick drives so fast and so well that in real life he’d probably be a professional racing driver, thus solving the problem of where the two find the money to pay bills. Keith is fine as Hardcastle; MacKenzie believes he "can do better work, and has, but he likes steady employment." Hugh-Kelly is "cute" and has great hair, which puts him in competition with NBC's Knight Rider, which features David Hasselhoff, "who also drives fast and has even more hair."
Sometimes, after a long day of work, you just want to turn on the television and relax instead of thinking about the world’s troubles or having some talking head shout at you all evening long. The problem, as Orwell might have put it, is that this can lead to complacency, or at least laziness. Like so much of television in 1984, Hardcastle and McCormick "seems designed for workingmen who dream about hot cars but can’t afford them, who can flake out in from of a TV world in which the good guys have the fastest cars and the hardest fists." It’s a nice world to visit from time to time, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
We’re now on to sports, and this is the early stages of the cable era, that unregulated free-for-all before sports governing boards figured out the power of collective negotiating, when leagues and conferences signed contracts with just about any cable network that would have them. This week there are no less than 26 college basketball games on, for example, and that’s only counting NBC, CBS, ESPN, WGN, and USA. There's still the impression of scarcity, though—we're just emerging from that time when we were lucky to get more than two or three games over the weekend—which makes them all feel a little more important, a little more exciting, than they otherwise would be. The atmosphere also hasn't been polluted by what I'd call the ESPNification of sports, meaning that the players were still more interested in playing the game than in winding up on a highlight reel posterizing their opponents.
And speaking of ESPN as we were, it looks much different in 1984 than it does today. For instance, I had completely forgotten that it used to carry business programming in the early morning hours, but before it became a lifestyle network, it had to have something to show during the week at 5:00 a.m., and that was Business Times, which ran until 7:00 a.m. Frankly, I think it was an improvement over what it carries now. (No Stephen A. Smith, for one thing.) And the network had a children's program on Wednesday afternoons, if you can believe it: Vic's Vacant Lot, in which famed tennis instructor Vic Braden (whose students included two-time U.S. Open champion Tracy Austin*) worked with groups of children showing them how to organize competitive sports on a vacant lot. It ran for two seasons; who knew? In 1984, ESPN covered sports such as Australian Rules Football and the Canadian Football League, while still having time for serious interview shows and weekly fishing programs. I miss those times as well.
*Fun fact: Tracy Austin's sister-in-law is fitness author Denise Austin, who also had a show on ESPN.
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Coming to your TV screens Saturday night on NBC—it’s World War III! Or, to be more accurate, World War III! (8:00 p.m.) It’s actually a rerun from 1982, when this kind of speculation, in the Ronald Reagan-Evil Empire era, was all-too-real for some. It boasts an all-star cast including Rock Hudson as the American President, Brian Keith as the Soviet Leader, David Soul as "an American colonel trying to hold off a war,” and Cathy Lee Crosby as “an intelligence officer craving one last moment of love," among others. It runs both tonight and Sunday night, and since Judith Crist calls it a "dandy," I’m inclined to give it a pass instead of saying something even snarkier. You might prefer heading over to CBS, where two new series debut tonight: Airwolf (8:00 p.m.), with Jan-Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine; and Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer (9:00 p.m.), starring Stacy Keach as the legendary private detective whose gun is quick and whose fists are even quicker.
On Monday (8:00 p.m.), NBC airs a live special from Hawaii as the aforementioned David Hasselhoff and Jayne Kennedy invite viewers to vote for The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, chosen from "21 international beauties." Entertainment comes from Air Supply and Engelbert Humperdinck. Opposite that, it’s the ABC Monday Night Movie “When She Says No,” examining the case of a woman who claims she was raped, and the men who insist she led them on. Crist calls it a “cogent and sensitive” movie, free from the leering exploitation that one often sees in such fare.
The Hallmark Hall of Fame has made its complete transition to movie format, but it hasn’t yet descended to saccharine Oprah-style greeting cards expanded to feature length. On Tuesday it presents a rip-roaring adventure, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Master of Ballantrae (8:00 p.m., CBS), starring Michael York and Richard Thomas, and Crist views it as “first-class romantic adventure despite the final sugarcoat” which gives it a happy ending
Live From the Met headlines the PBS schedule on Wednesday, with the remarkable Plácido Domingo headlining an all-star cast in Verdi’s masterpiece Don Carlo. I’m not shy in using the word "remarkable" to describe Domingo, still wowing audiences 40 years later; and it’s not a case of him having been a young unknown back then, either; he was already a star, and has remained one since. It's a four-hour investment of time that opera fans won't regret.
Friday night has a cast of familiar programs, unless you’re last-place NBC—The Dukes of Hazzard, Dallas, and Falcon Crest on CBS, Benson, Webster, and Matt Houston on ABC, even Washington Week in Review and Wall $treet Week on PBS. Stick with KTCA, the PBS affiliate, for the best of the night: Monty Python's Flying Circus, including "The Attila the Hun Show" (10:00 p.m.) and Doctor Who, with Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor and Lalla Ward as Romana II in "The Creature from the Pit." (10:30 p.m.)
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| With co-star Sam Elliott |
Along the way we learn about her start in The Last Picture Show, her romance with the movie’s director Peter Bogdanovich, who viewed her in the same category as Ava Gardner and Lana Turner. Although her acting ability is often overshadowed by her looks, she’s learned the craft over the last few years, taking acting classes from Stella Adler; says John Wilder "We’ve put some real demands on her dramatically in the first couple of weeks, and she’s really come through."
She’s also learned more about herself, that marriage is "a male invention to control women," but that she still loves it; that childbirth is the most incredible experience, one that men envy because "women create life"; that even through adversity "we can’t be afraid of making mistakes." The Yellow Rose only lasts for 22 episodes, but it leads next to Moonlighting, which can hardly be said to be a mistake.
Longtime readers of the blog will recognize that in another era of TV Guide, her declaration of being sexy would probably have been seen by Richard Gehman as expressing a basic insecurity in both her physical appearance and her limited acting ability, resulting in an aggressive assertion of self as an attempt to legitimize her value as an actress and convince herself that she is, in fact, sexy. Am I not right?
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