Well, that's the way it used to be, back in the days when the only significant movie awards show besides the Oscars was the Golden Globes, and those were confined to an hour-long broadcast on The Andy Williams Show. Back then, the Oscarcast was held in early April, usually on a Monday night, and it was the only awards show for most people. Now, it's just one of many, and soon it won't even be on commercial TV, just YouTube.
Dwight Whitney's take on the Oscars concerns the revamping of the show, under the direction of famed Broadway choreographer Gower Champion. It's been an uphill climb for Champion, who's had to deal with the conservative Board of Governors of the Motion Picture Academy, a group that has "always considered jazzing up Oscar tantamount to jazzing up the Lord’s Prayer." For them, the the one and only important thing about the show is "The Walk," that "interminable walk to the podium" taken by the winners. As producer and former Academy president Arthur Freed says, "It's the World Series. I don't care what you say, it's who's going to win the ball game. The drama is The Walk." William Dozier dryly notes that "The big question is, does the winner kiss his wife or his girl friend when he hears the thrilling news?"Joe Pasternak, producer of three of the most recent Oscarcasts, predicts that "Gower will regret the day he took it on. They will stop him from having a great show. They control the costs."
*Ingrid Bergman, Diahann Carroll, Tony Curtis (replacing Warren Beatty), Jane Fonda, Burt Lancaster, Walter Matthau, Sidney Poitier, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, and Natalie Wood.
And that's not all. The dress code has been relaxed, with black tie replacing white tie and tails. Champion even proposes getting rid of the bleachers outside the auditorium, where the fans gather to watch the stars walk down the red carpet, but that was going too far in the eyes of many, and Champion eventually relented.
Whitney expresses an appropriate level of skepticism regarding Champion's plans. After all, the Academy Awards are now "an electronic monster which no one seems able to control on any level." (Boy, some things really don't change.) But, in the end, the broadcast comes off pretty well. It's one of the longer broadcasts in recent years, checking in at what now would be considered a svelte two hours and 33 minutes, but it brings in good ratings, along with some surprise winners, and Champion is accorded a standing ovation when he arrives at the after-broadcast party. As stagnant and dull as recent broadcasts have been, it's a pity we don't have another Gower Champion waiting somewhere in the wings. And let's be honest: none of the recent hosts have been any "friends of Oscar."
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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.Many of us may have been tempted, over the past few years, to ask the question, "What's It All About, World?" (The answer is not "Alfie.") This week, Cleveland Amory asks the same question, but without the existential angst that the question merits today. It is, instead, ABC's "Second Season" variety show, hosted by Dean Jones, which Cleve describes as "a kind of Thinking Man's Laugh-In." (A low hurdle to clear, perhaps, but still...)
Most of us are familiar with Jones from his many appearances in Walt Disney movies over the years, and he gives us a different host than we've become used to, "both charmingly different and genuinely diffident—and that, these days, is difficult." He's also backed by a cast of regulars including comedian Scoey Mitchell, singer Gerri Granger, news commentator Alex Dreier, and the comedy team of Jenna McMahon and Dick Clair. The show has boasted an impressive guest lineup as well, with the Smothers Brothers, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, Carl Reiner, Barbara Feldon, Alice Ghostley, and Art Carney. Skits tend to be geared toward current events, and they don't shy away from controversial issues in their comedy bits. (Amory notes that previous topics have included overpopulation, obscene children’s books, the "obsolescence" of husbands, and exclusive country clubs taking on minority members. This suggests that Laugh-In isn't the only apt comparison; one might also suggest that the network learned its lessons after the fiasco of Turn On.)
Unfortunately for those who like What's It All About, World?, it's on ABC. And ABC, as Cleve says, has employed a unique strategy toward their second season, which appears to have been, "put out a whole barrage of new midseason shows, then decided to take them—literally before anyone even knew they were on—off." The network, he says, used ratings as an excuse, but "It would have taken a pretty nimble Nielsener just to keep these shows straight, let alone rate them." Before too long, What's It All About, World? becomes The Dean Jones Variety Hour, and after a total of thirteen weeks, it takes on a title that's all too common to ABC series of the day: cancelled.
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And that's not the only special on Sunday evening. NBC, wisely, scheduled a Dinah Shore special to follow Dick Van Dyke, rather than go head-to-head (9:00 p.m.). Will wonders never cease? It's called "Like Hep," and features an all-star lineup of guests: Lucille Ball, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, and Diana Ross; and cameos from Tom and Dick Smothers, Lorne Greene, Greg Morris, Victor Buono, and Elisha Cook Jr. You can also see this special and decide, as I often say, who's better, who's best.
But in case you were curious, Saturday night's Palace (9:30 p.m., ABC) is hosted by Diahann Carroll, with her guests, Richard Harris; Mort Sahl, the Checkmates, Ltd., and her young co-stars from Julia, Marc Copage and Michael Link. And yes, this episode exists as well. Can't beat YouTube, can you?
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It's a new era for Major League Baseball, with the two leagues expanding to twelve teams each, the creation of two divisions in each league, and the advent of playoffs between the division winners prior to the World Series. Some would argue that the game hasn't been the same since. (I'd say that it still had a few decades to go before "baseball" evolved into a completely different sport, but the point is well-taken.) The changes are immediately apparent in the season premiere of NBC's Game of the Week, with the San Francisco Giants taking on the expansion San Diego Padres (Saturday, noon PT)—or, depending on where you're located, the game between the Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians.
In addition to the Academy Awards, the Monkees return to the airwaves Monday night in "a superpsychedelic hour" with the Brian Auger Trinity, featuring Julie Driscoll; Fats Domino; Jerry Lee Lewis; Little Richard; the Clara Ward Singers; the Buddy Miles Express; We Three; and Paul Arnold and the Moo. The special isn't named, but it's the infamous 33⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee (8:00 p.m., NBC), which, according to the always-reliable Wikipedia, was "chaotic, both on-screen and off-screen," and which Mike Nesmith described as the television version of their equally infamous movie Head. The network was said to have been so disappointed by the result that it scheduled the West Coast telecast opposite ABC's live broadcast of the Oscars. (It was seen two hours before the Oscars in most areas.) It would be the final time the Monkees performed as a quartet until 1986. There's also a Carol Channing special (9:00 p.m., ABC, time approximate), which follows the Oscars on the West Coast but was seen prior to the show everywhere else; Danny Thomas and Carol Burnett are Miss Channing's guests.
Wednesday sees the Beverly Hillbillies, accompanied by Drysdale and Miss Hathaway, heading to London for four episodes, starting this week (9:00 p.m., CBS). This was a popular trope back in the day; stars from Lucille Ball to Danny Thomas to Jack Benny would do episodes from London; Jack Paar did a week's worth of shows from there, as did Today. I wonder, though, given what London has become over the last few years, if it would be quite as popular a location shoot today? Meanwhile, Oliver and Lisa chaperone Arnold the Pig to Hollywood, a much safer (in some ways) location, in the second of a two-part story that sees the pig in the running to appear in a movie. I didn't realize Babe was a remake... (9:30 p.m., CBS)
Thursday, Bob Hope make his final appearance of the season (8:30 p.m., NBC), with an eclectic cast that includes Patti Page, Jack Nicklaus, Sergio Mendes and Brasil ‘66, and Bob‘s newest leading ladies: Jane Wyman, Maureen Arthur, and Tina Louise. The telemovie feature is entitled U.M.C., which stands for University Medical Center and is the pilot for a new fall series. (9:00 p.m., CBS) The movie stars Richard Bradford as Dr. Joe Gannon, with James Daly as his colleague and mentor, Dr. Paul Lochner. Daly, father of future TV-star Tyne Daly, stays with the project when it becomes a series, but Bradford, whom we recognize from the British import Man With a Suitcase, is replaced by Chad Everett when the series, now called Medical Center, makes its debut in September of 1969. The movie wasn't available for preview, but Judith Crist praises the cast, which features Edward G. Robinson, Kevin McCarthy, Maurice Evans, J.D. Cannon, William Windom, and Kim Stanley.
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By the way, do you find yourselves wondering if any of those shows would have been worth watching? Well, if it were up to Dr. Frank Stanton, you'd have a little more information to go by when making your viewing decisions. In The Doan Report, Richard K. Doan reports that Stanton, the president of CBS, is advocating giving TV critics a chance to review shows before they're broadcast, ostensibly to warn of content that might seem "too risque or violent for younger audiences." The other networks, NBC and ABC, are aghast at the idea; "Stanton is way out on a limb," one rival says "What are sponsors and their agencies going to say the first time the critics blast a CBS show before anybody else has seen it?"
In this case, I think we can say "never" didn't last quite as long as those networks might have thought. With a few exceptions, most shows have been made available for preview for quite some time now; even in the case of streaming series, critics (and other influencers) are often given the first three or four episodes in order to prime the pumps, so to speak. And it really is difficult to remember a time when this wasn't the case; after all, without previews from the critics, how else would we know what to watch?
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I've written about Garry Moore many times in the past, as well as devoted a full episode of the "American TV History" episode to talking about him. And there's a good reason why. At one time, Garry Moore had logged more hours in front of a television camera than anyone in history. In 1963 he was the highest paid entertainer on television, making $43,000 a week, and at the time of Paul Wilkes's article this week, he's still pulling in about $200,000 a year, for doing nothing.
It's really a rather sad article. Although he's only 54, he's aged dramatically in the two-plus years since his last CBS show went off the air; one executive says he looks closer to 70. Moore wants to work, but nobody's interested in him; they tell him he appeals to the wrong demographic. He'd like to do something substantial, "like CBS Reports," but the network doesn't mingle its news and entertainment divisions, and while he's under contract to CBS he's prohibited from appearing on other networks without their permission. He's about to start a stint as host of the syndicated To Tell the Truth, which he'll stay with until 1977, and he's making guest appearances on shows like The Carol Burnett Show, but it's just not the same thing. He says he's not bitter, just that "I'd like to be used somehow."
Garry Moore was a unique figure in television. He wasn't a singer, although he could sing, and wasn't an actor, although he could act). Mostly, he played himself, on his variety show as well as his long run hosting I've Got a Secret, and he did it better than anyone else. He was friendly and avuncular, and he put viewers at ease as they watched him, making them feel like his friends. But as we know, the times are changing; CBS isn't far away from the "Rural Purge," and the people who have grown old with television are now seen as being too old for television. As the song at the end of Wilkes's article puts it, "oh, how the years have flown."
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Humorous, as I say, but making a point. "We are brought to a state of nausea whenever we hear or read one of these banal or crude or cloddish substitutes for thinking that are so horribly ubiquitous these days in broadcasting and in print." I wonder if you couldn't make the same sort of statement today? We don't write or even think in words so much anymore—it's more likely the strange pig-Latin language of texting, with its abbreviations, concepts, half-thoughts, and emojis. Such is the life of a post-literate society, though. And it has consequences, which we see play out today with ever-increasing frequency: "people talking about commitment and value judgments" which they use as weapons against those who have the temerity to disagree with them.
Although we're all about television here, we're also about language, especially the written word. I find there's a great deal of eloquence in writing about TV, even though I may only capture a fraction of its potential. Television, and its history, has painted a vast panoply of imagery over the years, which words are uniquely suited to describe. It's ironic, in that television is mostly a visual medium, one that's been blamed by many for leading to the death of the written word. And yet millions of words have been, and continue to be, written about it, words oftentimes more powerful than those images they describe. And as long as I'm writing about it, I intend to keep looking for the beauty in those words, as well as the pictures which accompany them.
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