What's on TV? Wednesday, January 28, 1959

Now here's something you don't see every day: a network news program on an educational television station. But until May 1960, The Huntley-Brinkley Report was not carried on WBZ, the NBC affiliate. Instead, it was seen first, as in this listing, on WGBH (without commercials) and then WHDH, before debuting on WBZ. According to Tim Lones, it had to do with Group W's ownership of WBZ, and the "bad blood between Westinghouse and NBC over the WNBK/WPTZ [Philadelphia] swap in 1956. Though Westinghouse agreed to it, they felt they were pressured into the move by NBC. To get back at the network they didn't clear Jack Paar in most markets where Westinghouse had NBC affiliates. [As you can see in this issue, Tonight is on WHDH.] In Cleveland, WEWS, the ABC affiliate, carried Paar, then Carson, from 1957-66 and Huntley-Brinkley from 1959-60. Another factor is that Westinghouse Radio stations that were NBC went independent." Ah, the rabbit holes you can go down, in this Eastern New England issue.

This week in TV Guide: January 24, 1959

Based on the composition of this week's cover, which features a picture of Red Skelton with one of his clown paintings, accompanied by the caption "What Good Are Television Critics?" one might assume that it's Red himself asking the question. Well, he's not—we'll get to that story later. In fact, Dwight Whitney's cover story asks a much different question: "What Makes a Clown?" And the answer can be a disconcerting one. 

The story plays off the death last year of Skelton's nine-year-old son Richard from leukemia, and posits that tragedy helps define a clown, in the same sense that Janus has both a laughing and crying face. Whitney looks to past stars who've blended comedy and tragedy in their work, stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Ramu, Emmett Kelly, and others. In looking at Skelton's recurring characters, such as Freddie the Freeloader, Whitney often finds that same mix; as Freddie is about to sink his teeth into a shiny red apple given him by a sympathetic restaurant owner, a policeman raps him across the knuckles with his nightstick. Defeat plucked from the jaws of victory, leaving Freddie, in Whitney's words, "bereft of everything except the look of inexorable sadness that seemed to embody all the frustrations of humankind." 

It's not a theory to which Skelton subscribes. "Malarky!" Red replies (or something like that; I'm betting that he didn't use quite that tame a word). "My comedy has nothing to do with tragedy. I couldn't tell you why people laugh at me." Whitney wonders, though, for Skelton is more than familiar with the school of hard knocks, and that has helped to make him "one of television's most enduring comics." Skelton's father died before Red's birth left the family penniless and forcing the youngster to sell newspapers and work as a street singer at the age of eight. When he was ten, Skelton left home to join a traveling medicine show, and from there moved to burlesque and vaudeville, eventually arriving on Broadway. He started on radio in 1937, graduating to host his own show the next year; by 1940, he'd become a movie star, and moved to television in 1951, where he would remain until 1971. 

So people do, indeed, laugh at him. His work has never been favored by highbrows or critics, but even when his bits were corny or even bombed, there was always a "brilliant flash of humor when it was least expected," an ability to reach out and stir the emotion in others. "I guess I've just been lucky," Skelton says. "I like people. I know they come to see me for fun. So I give them as much of it as I possibly can." He has, by any definition, been a success. In addition to his television show, he does countless personal appearances; he lives on an estate in Bel Air with his wife and daughter and a staggering number of pets; and in his spare time, he paints clown pictures (such as that one on the cover), and estimates he's done at least 500 over the years. 

But Whitney's story keeps coming back to tragedy, albeit sensitively. And despite Skelton's denials, there is a moment when he lets the mask slip. "I don't mind talking about it," he says of his son's death. "Everybody's had tragedy. Tragedy is embarrassment—because your house burned down and you were powerless to do anything about it." He continued working even in the wake of Richard's death. "People ask, 'How could you keep on telling jokes?' Sure, I told jokes. And if the little guy were here I'd tell the same jokes." And he's not the only one to have suffered. "How about the parents during the war who sweated out that telegram from the War Department?"  And then, after a pause, he adds, "Except my kid had no gun to defend himself with." There was only one time it got to him, when a little boy in a red sweater came to visit. "Gauguin [his pet macaw] set up an awful fuss. We couldn't figure it. Then it hit me. Richard used to wear a red sweater. I cried."

Red Skelton had a reputation for being difficult to work with, a suggestion that all is not rosy behind the crowd-pleasing clown's face, but for this article, at least, Skelton is all-too human.

l  l  l

One of Ed Sullivan's first great on-air challenges came from Steve Allen, who left Tonight to take over an NBC variety show which, at the beginning, aired opposite Ed. It didn't run as long as Ed's, of course, but then Allen said his goal was never to conquer Ed, but to coexist with him, which he did for three seasons. Let's see who gets the best of the contest this week.

Sullivan: Ed's guests are actress-singer Eartha Kitt, star of the movie Anna Lucasta, actor Charlton Heston, comedians Wayne and Shuster, songstress Georgia Gibbs, English ventriloquist Arthur Worsley and French dancer Noelle Adam. (It looks as if this was, indeed, the lineup for the week.)

Allen: Steve's guests are actor Lee Marvin, star of TV's M-Squad, musical-comedy star Dolores Gray, comedian Johnny Carson and actor-singer James Darren. 

I like both shows: Ed loved Wayne and Shuster; they appeared on his show more times (67) than any other act. Throw in Charlton Heston and Eartha Kitt, and most weeks this would be a winning lineup. On the other hand, Steverino has Lee Marvin, Johnny Carson, and James Darren. That's a tough call, but on the basis of getting a chance to see Carson before he truly became Carson, I'm giving a slight nod to Allen this week.

l  l  l

And now that article on critics. "What good are television critics?" The answer, it seems all depends on who you ask. Oliver Treyz, president of ABC, says that critics "certainly affect our over-all thinking," while C. Terence Clyne, vice president of the McCann-Erickson ad agency, counters that critics' importance are "limited to the board of directors of the sponsor and his ad agency."*

*Remember that, in the 1950s, sponsors were still prime movers and shakers when it came to setting the schedule, and even a relatively successful series could be doomed if a sponsor were to withdraw.

Critics themselves are divided on the subject. According to Jack Gould, the well-known—and, dare I say it, influential—critic for The New York Times, "our influence is vastly overrated. We generate interest more than influence." His counterpart at The New York Herald Tribune, the equally well-known (and influential) John Crosby, says that he and other critics receive plenty of mail from their readers, telling them that "we persuade or dissuade them from watching a certain show." A recent poll shows that 54 percent of viewers have, at one time or another, made their viewing choices based on a review.

One thing that everyone agrees on, though, is that critics perform a vital function. David Susskind feels it is the critic who holds producers' feet to the fire, forcing them to offer better quality programming. "Without the critic, I believe we would have more mediocrity than we now have."

l  l  l

Well, it's a Leonard Bernstein double bill this weekend! Lenny leads off with one of his Young People's Concerts on Saturday (noon ET, CBS), in the episode "What Is Classical Music?" The ad promises "an exciting opportunity" to learn the answer to that question. He follows this up on Sunday, leading his New York Philharmonic in a program called "Jazz in Classical Music," which shows " how composers have consciously or unconsciously employed jazz elements" in their classical pieces.

And the ad was right: these shows are exciting. Bernstein, whatever his faults and flaws—and he had many, both professionally and personally—was a wonderful teacher, able to infuse his programs with an enthusiasm that couldn't help but be infectious, allowing him to communicate his knowledge to both children and adults in a way that was both entertaining and accessible. I wasn't yet alive when his Young People's broadcasts started, but he did them throughout the 1960s, and when I was old enough, I watched them; even though I might not always have understood everything, I know he had a lot to do with creating my love of classical music. 

Could anyone today do what Bernstein did back then? If there's anyone out there who could, I suspect it would be Gustavo Dudamel, the dynamic conductor who assumes the leadership of the New York Philharmonic this September. He's not the musicologist that Bernstein was, nor is he as sophisticated a speaker as Lenny, but he might be the only one who could talk PBS into broadcasting that kind of show. Since most schools, for many reasons, no longer have music appreciation, it may be the last best hope for transmitting to future generations a love of classical music.

l  l  l

What else is on this week? There's a nice play on words on Saturday evening, as Steve McQueen stars in Wanted—Dead or Alive (8:30 p.m., CBS), followed by the Western Black Saddle (9:00 p.m., NBC), starring Peter Breck, and this week featuring a character named "McQueen."  Nice, hmm? And all day, WHDH in Boston presents the second annual March of Dimes Auction, starting at 2:00 p.m. and running until 4:30, then returning intermittently throughout the night until the station signs off.  All the goods are donated by local merchants, and the phones are being handled by "models and Channel 5 staffers." The show is described as a fundraiser "for the benefit of polio victims," of which there are still many. It's true, however, that with the advent of the Salk and Sabin vaccines, polio is not the horrifying plague that it has been for so many generations. And this ad perhaps indicates that knowledge, as the organization begins to transition from polio research to that of other illnesses, finally settling on birth defects. It's a reminder, as if we didn't need one this week, that science indeed plays a major role in the culture of the late 1950s.

Sunday is filled with star turns from beginning to end. In addition to Bernstein, Sullivan, and Allen, Ernie Kovacs is Jack Benny's guest on The Jack Benny Program (7:30 p.m., CBS), including an absurd skit about the prison of 1970.  is Bette Davis makes a rare television series appearance on Alfred Hitchcock Presents (9:30 p.m., CBS), in the story "Out There—Darkness," a nasty little piece about a haughty woman getting on the wrong side of an elevator operator. 

Following the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957, there were growing fears that the Soviet success was based on a "science gap" between the United States and the Soviets, and that the gap was getting wider. The nation responded with a renewed emphasis on teaching science, and evidence of that can be seen on TV screens everywhere. Continental Classroom (Monday through Friday, 6:30 a.m., NBC), has an entire week of science classes, including Monday's "Electromagnetic Waves," and on Monday night  our favorite scientist, Dr. Linguistics (aka Dr. Frank Baxter) is back with another installment in the Bell Laboratories Science Series, "The Alphabet Conspiracy." (7:30 p.m., NBC),

Trust me: don't take that trip!

Tuesday, it's the second episode of Alcoa Presents, which most of us know better as One Step Beyond, and "The Night of April 14" (10:00 p.m., ABC), an episode centering on various premonitions of the Titanic disaster, including the main story of a woman who dreams that she drowns in the ocean. Her nightmare seems fanciful, as she lives many miles from the ocean, but then she finds that for her honeymoon, her fiancé has booked them passage on the liner's maiden voyage.

On Wednesday, the DuPont Show of the Month (9:30 p.m., CBS) presents "a play no man should miss!" so I'd better spend a moment on it. It's Sir James Barrie's drama "What Every Woman Knows," starring Siobhan McKenna, James Donald, and Cyril Cusick, in the story of a poor but ambitious young man who's offered a proposition by three wealthy brothers: they will finance his education if, at the end of five years, he marries their sister Maggie. Oh, and just what is it that every woman knows? It is that she is "the invisible power responsible for the successes of the men in her life."

It's not My Three Sons on Thursday, but "his four sons," the man in question being Bing Crosby, and his four sons Gary, Lindsay, Dennis, and Philip, and all four of them appear tonight on The Pat Boone Chevy Show (9:00 p.m., ABC). Later, Playhouse 90 (9:30 p.m., CBS) presents Reginald Rose's play "A Quiet Game of Cards," telling the story of five wealthy and powerful men who decide that their weekly poker game has become too dull, and the only way to liven it up is to play for "the highest stakes possible." 

Friday, Disneyland presents what one would have to think is a highly fictionalized biography of composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky (8:00 p.m., ABC), starring The Incredible Shrinking Man's Grant Williams as the tortured composer, and Hogan's Heroes's Leon Askin as Tchaikovsky's mentor, composer Anton Rubinstein. On Person to Person (10:30 p.m., CBS), Ed Murrow's guests are sports columnist Red Smith and actress Dagmar, appearing with her husband, comedian Danny Dayton.

l  l  l

MST3K alert: Project Moonbase (1953) An American Space Force rocket makes a flight to the moon. Dona Martell, Hayden Rorke. (Wednesday, 11:05 p.m., WMUR in Manchester) All you need to know about this week's movie is that it features a female astronaut named Col. Briteis, pronounced bright-eyes, and that she had been selected to make the first orbital flight around Earth because she would weigh less than a man. Kevin Murphy sums it up for everyone at MST3K when he says, "The best thing I can say about it is that it was very very short." TV

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

Around the dial

If you're in a part of the country that's going to get hammered this weekend, I can't think of a better way to spend your time than with some classic television. Well, actually, I suppose there are several ways that would be better, but seeing as how this is a family website, let's stick to television.

And let's start with my latest podcast appearance with Dan Schneider, as we talk about one of television's forgotten stars of the past: Garry Moore. He hosted daytime and primetime variety shows and game shows, was one of the most genial and well-liked personalities of the time, and at one time was not only the highest-paid entertainer on television, but had spent more time in front of the camera than anyone in human history. Did I say "forgotten"? Instead, as Dan says, let's think of him as "misfiled," because someone like him can never be truly forgotten. Anyway, give it a watch and let us know what you think; it was a fun show to do!

At Woman's World, of all places (never let it be said that I don't scour the planet looking for items of interest for my readers), you can enjoy this article on Mr. Ed, Alan Young, and some facts that you may or may not be aware of. 

Speaking of shows that didn't get enough attention, or facts you might not know about, at Comfort TV, David looks back at the very good 1973 series Tenafly, part of NBC's Wednesday Mystery Movie wheel series, starring James McEachin as one of the first black leads on a dramatic television series.

At Cult TV Blog, John resumes his series that focuses on the works of one actor, rather than the episodes of a series. In this case, the subject is Tony Wright, and the show in question is 1960's The House in Marsh Road. 

Frankly, any show that promises both bullets and bikinis in the same episode is probably already a step or two ahead of the rest. At The View from the Junkyard, Roger looks at the A-Team episode of the same name to see if it fulfills its promise.

Two testimonials from Terence at A Shroud of Thoughts, remembering T.K. Carter, a familiar figure on television from the 1980s on; and Roger Ewing, best known as Thad Greenwood on Gunsmoke, both of whom passed away earlier this month. TV

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

The wonder of it all

I've said this before, but it bears repeating: I am a child of television. There's never been a time when television was not a reality in my life, never a moment when I wasn't able to turn it on and look in at the rest of the world. Television was always a marvel because of what it could do, but its existence was something I could take for granted because I didn't know any other way of life.

Because of that, I can't really imagine what the advent of television must have been like for people who'd lived maybe 20 or 30 years of their life without it. Was it something that never stopped being amazing to them, a phenomenon that, in some way, they appreciated more than those of us who grew up with it? That's how I feel sometimes when I look up at the moon, remembering the first nine years of my life, when nobody had ever set foot on its surface.

Or is it possible that they merely took it in stride, one more step in what must have seemed to be the inexorable march of progress: radio begat television, just as the movies preceded radio, gas led to electricity, balloons became the Wright Flyer, and so on. Sure, they were impressed, but they'd seen this kind of evolution before, and they were sure they'd see it again. I doubt that the millennials are much amazed by every next iteration of the iPhone or Android, and while the technology is a marvel, it couldn't be that surprising to someone who'd grown up watching Dick Tracy and his two-way wrist radio. On television, of course.

The late Paul Auster, in Report from the Interior, a memoir of his years growing up, wrote of an early childhood memory, conveying the sense of wonder that television could create in a five-year-old's mind, even from something as simple as watching a Felix the Cat cartoon:

They appear every afternoon on a television program called Junior Frolics, hosted by a man named Fred Sayles, who is known to you simply as Uncle Fred, the silver-haired gatekeeper to this land of marvels, and because you understand nothing about the production of animated films, cannot even begin to fathom the process by which drawings are made to move, you figure there must be some sort of alternate universe in which characters like Farmer Gray and Felix the Cat can exist—not as pen scratches dancing across a television screen, but as fully embodied, three-dimensional creatures as large as adults. Logic demands that they be large, since the people who appear on television are always larger than their images on-screen, and logic also demands that they belong to an alternate universe, since the universe you live in is not populated by cartoon characters, much as you might wish it was.

One day Auster's mother told him that she would be taking him and his friend Billy to see Uncle Fred's show in person.

All this is exciting to you, inordinately exciting, but even more exciting is the thought that finally, after months of speculation, you will be able to set eyes on Farmer Gray and Felix the Cat. At long last you will discover what they really look like. In your mind, you see the action unfolding on an enormous stage, a stage the size of a football field, as the crotchety old farmer and the wily black cat chase each other back and forth in one of their epic skirmishes. On the appointed day, however, none of it happens as you thought it would. The studio is small, Uncle Fred has makeup on his face, and after you are given a bag of mints to keep you company during the show, you take your seat in the grandstand with Billy and the other children. You look down at what should be a stage, but which in fact is nothing more than the concrete floor of the studio, and what you see there is a television set. Not even a special television set, but one no bigger or smaller than the set you have at home. The farmer and the cat are nowhere in the vicinity. After Uncle Fred welcomes the audience to the show, he introduces the first cartoon. The television comes on, and there are Farmer Gray and Felix the Cat, bouncing around in the same way they always have, still trapped inside the box, still as small as they ever were. You are thoroughly confused. What error have you made? you ask yourself. Where has your thinking gone wrong? The real is so defiantly at odds with the imagined, you can't help feeling that a nasty trick has been played on you. Stunned with disappointment, you can barely bring yourself to look at the show. Afterward, walking back to the car with Billy and your mother, you toss away the mints in disgust.

Sure, the ending is something of a downer, but even so, Auster's tale speaks to the miracle of television, even to someone who has basically grown up with it. I was in the peanut gallery of one of those shows myself, once upon a time, although I don't recall having any expectations of seeing Felix the Cat in real life. (Maybe I was just a little older, or my imagination wasn't as fantastic.) I do remember how great it was to see backstage at a television studio. It's no big deal now, but it was back then.

How easy it's been for me to accept television, from rabbit ears to rooftop antennas to cable to satellite to streaming, from black-and-white to color to HD. How amazing it's been, and how easy it is to take it all in stride, as I do, as so many people do. I wonder; are we capable of wonder anymore? Kids start in on technology at such an early age, I don't know if it's even possible for them to be amazed by anything. Maybe we're past that, and if so, it's too bad. There's something exciting about the wonder of it all, the wonder and excitement that Paul Auster felt in that studio all those years ago. At least until he threw away the mints. TV

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

What's on TV? Sunday, January 16, 1966

Tonight, KHSL airs the final episode of Amos Burke, Secret Agent. It's being shown in an off-network hour, which means it was probably shown on ABC last week. Regardless, it's one of many examples through the years of network interference ruining a perfectly good show. As Burke's Law, the program combined mystery with light comedy, with Gene Barry being aided by an excellent supporting cast. But ABC, inspired by the success of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and the James Bond movies, wanted to capitalize on the spy craze, despite opposition by Barry and series creator Aaron Spelling. They were right; the network was wrong. Amos Burke, Secret Agent didn't even last the season. But you can see the listing here in this Northern California edition.