What's on TV? Sunday, January 31, 1960

I mentioned last week ago how WGBH, the educational channel in Boston, acted almost as a secondary NBC affiliate, broadcasting The Huntley-Brinkley Report because WBZ had a grudge against the network. Well, this week, we see that WGBH is taking on some programming from CBS as well, including Camera Three and CBS Television Workshop, the last five minutes of which include Harry Reasoner's news update. Then, they turn back to NBC at the end of the afternoon for Meet the Press and Chet Huntley Reporting. I suppose WBZ figured nobody would recognize Huntley on their channel! As you can tell, this is the Eastern New England edition.

This week in TV Guide: January 30, 1960

Ahat are we to make of this week's cover story, "Can Ratings Be Fixed?" Does it imply that the ratings system is broken, that networks and advertisers pay far too much attention to them, sacrificing admirable but low-rated programs at the altar of profitability and popularity? Or do we understand "fixed" to have the same meaning as "rigged," that the integrity of the ratings system has intentionally been breached so the  figures reflect something other than the truth, all to profit an unknown someone in position to tamper with the numbers? Oh, the uncertainty of it all.

As it turns out, according to Bob Stahl, it's a little bit of everything. In addition to those choices above, the overriding question, one on everyone's mind, is: "How can electronic gadgets in only 1050 homes measure accurately what 112,000 viewers are watching?" A Senate investigating committee is looking into it (yes, they don't have anything better to do than that), for as Oklahoma Senator Mike Monroney says, "[t]he struggle for rating supremacy led to rigging of TV quiz programs." Put that way, compared to the constant threat of nuclear war, I guess it is an important question.

The fact is, as is the case with alcohol, guns, technology, and, well, television, the ratings are neither good nor bad, but neutral. "They serve a useful and necessary purpose in the business," Stahl points out. "The fault lies in the way ratings are constantly misused." Max Banzhaf, advertising director of the Armstrong Cork Co. (sponsors of Armstrong Circle Theater), says that ratings are "designed to serve only as a guide in making program judgments," but that "too often [they're] used as a substitute for judgment. ABC President Oliver Treyz says ratings are "only one factor in any program decision." Answering critics who claim networks are too eager to jump on the bandwagon and copycat successful shows, NBC Vice President Hugh M. Beville Jr. replies, "Is it wrong to give the people what they say they want?"

Counters historian Arthur Schlessinger, "The television industry must see its job, not as that of catering to the worst or even the average taste of its audiences, but in part as that of elevating taste." And Marion B. Harper Jr., president of the imposing McCann-Erickson ad agency, says that networks "must telecast more shows of quality than the ratings indicate the public wants to see." (We touched on this question of who decides what quality is in an earlier edition.)

Garry Moore, who's been on TV long enough to know a thing or two about ratings, raises this question: "Is a comedian any funnier when he gets a 30 [rating] than when he gets a 20?" As an example, "[s]uppose the comedian gets a 20 when he has a really good show. His audience will talk up the show to friends; more people will tune in the following week. So he may get a 30 rating that second week and not have as good a show. Wouldn't that mean he was funnier with a 20 rating than with a 30?" Yes, the ratings are necessary, but they "don't show whether viewers buy the sponsor's product." As to the question of whether or not the ratings are rigged, Sen. Monroney says they aren't. "[W]e concluded that rating samples are inadequate, that ratings receive far too much emphasis in the industry, [but] we never charged that ratings were rigged." It's possible that television could see something akin to the payola scandals that rocked the radio world, but unlikely.

Unsurprisingly, reports Stahl, "There is no clear-cut answer to all of this." Broadcasters and advertisers need to be taught how to use the ratings correctly, and, says Beville, since the press aren't experts enough to write about them, "ratings should have no place in the press." Dr. Frank Stanton, president of CBS, offers the final word: beyond ratings, the networks need to know something more: what people want to look at. "We need constantly to know what the audience things we ought to be doing." To that end, they're conducting their own public-opinion polls, but I'm not sure that's necessary, because we all know what the audience thinks the networks should be doing: putting on better shows.

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If you think we're done with Garry Moore because of that little quote above, you've got another think coming. He's looking pretty satisfied on the cover, and for good reason: his Tuesday night variety show has more than held its own against NBC's heavily promoted Startime specials despite the latter's massive budget advantage ($250,000 per show, as opposed to Moore's $100,000), and I've Got a Secret, the panel show he's emceed all these years, is doing "quite all right" against NBC's Perry Como Show. (You'll notice ABC's not even in the discussion, which is par for the course in these days.)

"You can't run scared," Moore says of the doomsayers predicting disaster for both of his prime-time shows at the hands of well-funded competitors. Of his Tuesday night show, he says that "we expected very rough competition and we were prepared for it." It's true that Startime got off to a good start, but Moore credited the loyalty of his viewers for his show's success. "People were familiar with our show from last year and I guess a lot of them liked it." It doesn't hurt either that the supporting cast includes Durward Kirby, Allen Funt and his Candid Camera, and Carol Burnett. "I guess the most important thing is to have faith in what you've all learned over the years and not start running around scared when the ratings slip a point or two."

Regarding that $100,000 per show budget, Moore provides an example of how that money doesn't really go very far. "Nine years ago if we wanted a smoke effect for some kind of a skit, somebody would borrow a bucket from the janitor and get 40 cents' worth of dry ice from the drugstore. Today you've got to have three special-effects men and a hand-forged bucket and the tab is $40. That's the way it goes." Multiply that by thousands, and now we know why simple things cost so much nowadays.

Moore closes with a great take on the quiz show scandals. Asked if they were embarrassed, he says, "Of course we were embarrassed. Embarrassed because no one bothered to investigate us." Apparently giving away $80 per show doesn't attract much attention. But Moore wouldn't have it any other way. "I turned down a job as host on a big-money quiz show because I figured that, on it, I wouldn't be a host at all. I'd be a croupier."

Of course, if you'd like to hear more about the great Garry Moore, I'd point you in the direction of the video I did with Dan Schneider last week.

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Invariably, one of the programming victims of the ratings game is the cultural/educational genre. These shows haven't disappeared from TV completely, but with few exceptions they've been relegated to the Sunday cultural ghetto. This week is a good example, beginning with CBS's famed trio of Sunday morning religious and cultural shows. At 10:00 a.m. ET, Lamp Unto My Feet presents "For God and Country," a documentary on the role of religion and the Scriptures in American politics during the Revolutionary War. At 10:30 a.m., it's Look Up and Live, with "The Betrayal," the final episode in the five-part series "Images of the Bible." Finally, at 11:00 a.m., Camera Three has scenes from Colette's novelette The Vagabond, interpreted in dramatic and dance sequences. 

Speaking of, the culture continues at 3:15 p.m. on NBC (following the NBA game of the week between Detroit and Boston), with NBC Opera Theatre's live, color special of Mascagni's one-act opera Cavalleria Rusticana. The title might not be familiar to you, but this might be: the Intermezzo, one of the lovliest and most famous orchestral pieces in opera, used in all kinds of movies, including Raging Bull.

Following the opera, it's back to CBS at 4:30 p.m., with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, on Ford's Sunday Musical Showcase (you can see the entire program here). In this program, "The Creative Performer," guest Igor Stravinsky conducts the Philharmonic, with pianist Glenn Gould (making his United States television debut) and Met soprano Eileen Farrell. And after that, it's NBC, with G-E College Bowl at 5:30 p.m. (Case Western Reserve University of Cleveland vs. Purdue; the Boilermakers win, 260-15).

Bernstein is just fortunate that in Ford, he has a big sponsor supporting his show. Hallmark is another big sponsor, which is why Hallmark Hall of Fame airs in color on NBC Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. It's not one of those saccharine pieces of drivel you see on the Hallmark Channel, either; it's Shakespeare's The Tempest, starring Maurice Evans, Richard Burton, Lee Remick, Roddy McDowall, and Tom Poston. (Watch it here.) Don't worry; I promise I'm not going to go off on one of my celebrated rants about the quality of Hallmark programming. It's just too easy nowadays, like catching fish in a barrel.

The point is none of these shows—none—would be on television today, save some niche streaming service that I'm not aware of. In fact, the best you can do is to seek them out on YouTube, which is not a bad alternative. After all, did you notice how many of these shows are there?

  

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What else? Well, there is sports on Saturday, though not at the volume we have today. Hockey takes center stage with the NHL game of the week, featuring the Detroit Red Wings vs. the Bruins at Boston Garden (2:00 p.m., CBS), while the NBA counters with a matchup between the Philadelphia Warriors (before they moved to San Francisco) and New York Knicks from Madison Square Garden. (2:15 p.m., NBC)

Sunday night, CBS presents a two-hour retrospective on "The Fabulous Fifties," hosted by Henry Fonda, with an all-star cast including Jackie Gleason, Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Betty Comdon and Adolph Green, and news highlights with Arthur Godfrey, Roger Bannister (the first sub-four-minute mile), Navy Captain William Anderson (who sailed his submarine, the Nautilus, under the polar ice cap), and Edmund Hillary (conqueror of Mount Everest). Eric Sevareid provides commentary. (YouTube has it here.)

We didn't have a "Sullivan vs. Allen" face-off this week, as Ed was preempted by that "Fabulous Fifties" special; anyway, Steverion has moved to Monday nights, and this week his guest is singer Steve Lawrence (10:00 p.m., NBC). Later on, The Du Pont Show with June Allyson (got to get the full name in, right?) features June starring in "So Dim the Light," playing a movie star who discovers she will be totally blind due to injuries from an auto accident. Robert Taylor plays himself in a brief cameo appearance. (10:30 p.m., CBS)

On Tuesday, the aforementioned Startime presents Ed Wynn, Bert Lahr, and Nancy Olson in "The Greatest Man Alive" (8:30 p.m., NBC), a comedy about a man who, deeming his life to have been a failure, prepares to hang himself, when fate intervenes. Garry Moore, who more than holds his own against Startime, welcomes Andy Griffith and Carol Lawrence as his guests (10:00 p.m., CBS). And in the late night movie slot, a feature destined to become a thriller classic: The Night of the Hunter (11:15 p.m., Channel 4), the only movie directed by Charles Laughton, starring Robert Mitchum as a serial killer looking to murder a widow (Shelley Winters) for her money. The movie was deemed a failure in its time; Laughton never directed another film. Today, it's considered one of the greatest movies ever made. I'm always curious as to what leads to these kinds of reassessments. What was it the critics of the time didn't see?

Wednesday, Armstrong Circle Theatre presents "Ghost Bomber: The Lady Be Good" (10:00 p.m., CBS), a docudrama on one of the most enduring mysteries of World War II: the disappearance, without a trace, of an American bomber on a mission to Italy. Last May, the wreckage of the plane was discovered in the Libyan Desert, with no trace of the crew. You may remember a Twilight Zone episode from around this same time, "King Nine Will Not Return," starring Bob Cummings as the pilot of the mystery plane. Among the stars is a very young George Segal. The program is hosted by CBS newman Douglas Edwards

On Thursday night, the great French star Maurice Chevalier stars in a one-man show on CBS (10:00 p.m.), performing all his favorites, including "Thank Heaven for Little Girls," which he sings to some special members of the audience, including the daughters of Joan Crawford and Jack Paar. And in the late movie slot, Fredric March and Betty Field are in for a shock when they find out the German boy they adopted was raised as a Nazi in the 1944 movie Tomorrow the World! (11:15 p.m., Channel 13).

Friday, it's a one-man performance of another kind, as Art Carney stars in three one-act plays: Sean O'Casey's "A Pound on Demand," "Where the Cross is Made" by Eugene O'Neill, and "Red Peppers" by Noel Coward. (8:00 p.m., NBC, and in color, of course.) Elaine Stritch guest stars in "Red Peppers," doing a couple of song-and-dance numbers with Carney. Carney's singled out for praise in one of our Letters to the Editor as well, for his recent performance in "Cal Me Back." Anyone who thinks he's just Ed Norton has another think coming. Also on Friday, Robert Conrad makes a brief cross-over appearance as Hawaiian Eye's Tom Lopaka in "Who Killed Cock Robin?" on 77 Sunset Strip (9:00 p.m., ABC). Warner Bros. is always good that way.

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Interesting note in Burt Boyer's column about how Robert Young wants this to be the last year for Father Knows Best. When you figure that Young started out on the show in 1949 when it was on radio (he was the only member of the cast to make the transition to television), he's already been Jim Anderson for 11 years. Not only does Young want to do something different, his TV daughter, Elinor Donahue, is getting other offers herself. It's said that Young is looking for $11 million to sell a network the show's inventory of close to 250 episodes. As it turns out, this is Young's final season, and while I don't know how much he wound up getting, Father Knows Best ran for another three years in prime time; two seasons on NBC, and a final season on ABC. Think about that: three years of reruns in prime time, and additional years as part of ABC's daytime schedule.* The only similar example I can think of is Marshal Dillon, the name for the half-hour episodes that CBS ran on Tuesdays from 1961 to 1964 (while Gunsmoke was still in first-run), and then in syndication.

*It was an episode of Father Knows Best that was running on ABC affiliates in the Mountain and Pacific time zones at 1:30 p.m. ET on November 22, 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated. The ABC footage on YouTube shows a follow-up voiceover bulletin interrupting the next to last scene of the episode, "Man About Town," before returning for some commercials and the wrap-up. Knowing what we do now about what the post-JFK years are like, it's actually kind of poignant. I do wonder what happened with Bud and the illusionist, though. 

Then, there's Dwight Whitney's note on Edd Byrnes, one of the stars of 77 Sunset Strip. Byrnes has joined the impressive ranks of Warner Bros. talent, past and present, who've been engaged in contract disputes with the studio, and consequently he's on suspension. In the meantime, he's taken a job as a greeter at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. He's making $400 a week, which equals what he made playing Kookie. (No wonder he's upset with his contract!) Says Byrnes of his temporary career change, "The bills were piling up. I need the money."

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"Introducing Pat Crowley" in
the role of the Kookie.

Finally, this week's starlet is Pat Crowley, who, aside from her good looks, is known as someone who doesn't pine for her own TV series. She likes being a free-lancer, she explains; comparing it to a gym, she says it allows her to "work out on a different kind of bar bell every week." She's already been a success on the Great White Way, selected as "one of Broadway's most promising new personalities," and after a brief stint with movies ("The timing wasn't good," she explains. "Kookies weren't fashionable.*), she tried her hand at the small screen, and with appearances on Wanted—Dead or Alive, 77 Sunset Strip, and Maverick, she hasn't looked back.

*Except, as we've seen, on Sunset Strip.

She can afford to be choosy, since she's married to a Los Angeles attorney named Gregory Hookstratten. He's better known as Ed "The Hook" Hookstratten, and as one of the biggest legal names in Hollywood, he boasted of clients including Johnny Carson, Elvis Presley, Vin Scully, Joey Bishop, Bryant Gumbel, Tom Snyder, and Dick Enberg. He was general counsel for the Los Angeles Rams, fixed a DUI for Fred Silverman without it getting in the papers, and negotiated contracts for many a celebrity. All that, and Pat Crowley too (even though they wound up getting divorced). Quite an adventure, wouldn't you say? TV

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Around the dial

We're off on another week's journey through the classic TV blogosphere (or at least the part of it to which I'm privvy) we'll start with David's journey through 1970s TV at Comfort TV. Today it's Tuesday, 1977, a truly blockbuster night, with ABC's powerhouse lineup of Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and Three's Company, the three highest-rated shows of the season. What's it up against? Check and find out.

At Cult TV Blog, John's appraisal of roles by character actor Tony Wright continues with a series I've actually seen (and enjoyed): Colonel March of Scotland Yard, starring Boris Karloff in the title role. Write appears in the episode "The Case of the Lively Ghost," and it's lively, indeed.

A two-part episode of The A-Team is the fodder for Roger's review at The View from the Junkyard. The episode in question is "The Bend in the River," and if you can make it through the slower first part, you're in for jungle fighting, outlaws, neo-Nazis, nuclear power plants, and more.

At the start, I mentioned Laverne & Shirley, and at A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence celebrates the 50th anniversary of the program, one of the most successful-spin-offs in television history, as well as one of the most influential.

Cult TV Lounge looks at the inaugural season of a show I very much like, Peter Gunn. The sophisticated detective series stars Craig Stevens, Lola Albright, and Hershel Bernardi, and if you search through the blog, you'll find I've written about it a few times.

We'll end on a video note, as our favorite YouTube channel, FredFlix, starts a new series this week: a look at the 1950 Fall lineup, complete with opening credits and bumpers for many of them. This was almost 80 years ago, and the fact that so many of them actually exist is pretty impressive stuff. TV

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What I've been watching: January, 2026

Shows I’ve Watched:
Leonard Bernstein Doctor Atomic The Bell Telephone Hour The Iceman Cometh

Most of the time, my choices in this space focus on television series, and for good reason: this is called "It's About TV," after all, not "It's About Everything Else." (If you want to read that, go to my new author Substance, "In Other Words," which just started yesterday.) It occurs to me, however, that this is a somewhat self-limiting proposition, in that you can watch many different things on television—assuming you don't use your laptop or phone, just about everything you stream comes through your television set. And if you expand the definition of "TV" to include that, it opens up a whole new horizon of things to write about. This comes in especially handy when you've been watching the same series of shows for the past few months.

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Having spent an entire paragraph explaining this, it therefore makes perfect sense to start my review of the last month's viewing with an actual television series—two of them, in fact. The first might more properly be considered an occasional series of specials: Leonard Bernstein's series of music lectures that were first presented on (or in place of) Omnibus, the public affairs variety show that aired on all three networks, at one time or another, during the 1950s and 1960s. These aren't the Young People's Concerts that many of you might be familiar with; these are programs done for a general audience, not limited to children. And it shows; while Bernstein, to his eternal credit, never dumbed down his programming for young people, the shows he presented on Omnibus attain a much higher level. So high, in fact, that I have trouble keeping up with some of his concepts.

I have no trouble watching, though, because even if you don't understand everything Bernstein is talking about, you get the gist of it, and when it starts to make sense—when the pieces begin falling into place—it actually gives you a bit of a rush, sort of like answering a question correctly on the old College Bowl series. On one recent program we watched, Leonard Bernstein on Rhythm, which was originally broadcast on March 13, 1960, Bernstein opens the program with films of a beating heart. He then goes to show how rhythms are built upon this natural part of the body: not just the simple beat-beat-beat rhythm, but the in-and-out of breathing, for example—in and out, one and two. He then elaborates on how classical music has been built on these rhythms: four beats, one-two, one-two; followed by a matching set that maintains the same rhythm even though the notes may be varied. These couplets of four-note sections now make up eight beats. This is then multiplied to create various passages that may repeat themselves in various ways throughout the piece. In fact, almost all music written prior to the 20th Century was composed in this manner, either in sets of two or sets of three, but always based on the number two. It is, he says, just like a mathematical equation. I hasten to add that I may not have all this right; I was struggling a bit to keep up. But you get the idea. 

Bernstein then goes on to demonstrate, both at the keyboard and while conducting the New York Philharmonic, how this changed in the 20th Century, using examples that range from Stravinsky to Copeland to Gershwin. The patterns become more unpredictable, less symmetric, which helps give them the excitement and movement that can make Stravinsky, for instance, so enthralling to hear. By the end, even though I didn't understand everything, I understood enough. What made it most enthralling, though, was Bernstein's obvious love for his subject and the passion and excitement he was able to transmit to the viewing audience. Anyone with even a vague interest in music will find it impossible to resist. Richard Nixon once wrote that what separates leaders from thinkers is that leaders express their ideas in such a way to inspire, if not compel, others to follow them. If you can't articulate your ideas in such a way, then you're not a leader; you're a thinker. Bernstein comes across the same way; no matter how music was presented to you in school by your music appreciation teacher, it probably didn't captivate you the way Bernstein does. The man's enthusiasm is infectious. I've remarked before that Bernstein left a mixed legacy: his private life was often suspect, and his political ideology was idiotic at best. But when it comes to teaching, to injecting a love of music in those listening to him, to even just talking about music, he has no equal. Of all that he contributed during his lifetime, nothing can even come close to this, and we should all be grateful. It's one of the reasons why, despite all his flaws, I can't help but love Bernstein when I see him in these shows.

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Another kind of music appreciation comes to us from The Bell Telephone Hour, the long-running series that was broadcast on NBC from 1959 to 1968. If you remember this, it might well be from the live Christmas specials presented each year, often on or near Christmas Day itself. But there's so much more to it than that, and thankfully, there are some episodes out there, thanks to YouTube, that you can watch and enjoy.

Earlier this week, we saw Robert Young host an hour on the American musical, and while Young might seem at first an odd choice for this—I've never thought of him as having a particular relationship to music—he does a very good job. As I mentioned, for most of its run, Telephone Hour was shown live, which means that in an episode like this, done before a live studio audience, with many separate segments, you need someone who can project the right amount of gravitas, combined with a personable personality and the knack of getting things right. Young certainly fills the bill there, whether he's introducing ballet stars Patricia McBride and Edward Vilella doing the Slaughter on Tenth Avenue dance sequence, the Brothers Four performing a song from Porgy and Bess, or Andre Previn and his trio doing the overture from West Side Story, the show is in good hands. Throw in songs from stars of the time such as Lainie Kazan, Earl Wrightson and Lois Hunt, and a monologue by Young to commemorate Thanksgiving Day (which was less than a week away), and you've got the kind of entertainment that makes people of our age ask why there isn't anything like that anymore.

So Telephone Hour was closely identified with both classical and popular music. In its last season or two, however, its emphasis shifted to filmed documentaries exploring various music topies, whether the history of jazz (Jazz, the Intimate Art, which includes profiles of and performances by Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck and Charles Lloyd and is ten times better than anything Ken Burns could put on, at one-tenth the length, or South Carolina's Spoletto Festival. One of the many lingering gripes I have with my childhood is that The Bell Telephone Hour was frequently preempted in the Twin Cities by other programming; I suppose it was thought too highbrow for some of us yocals. Thankfully, with the internet, I'm at last having my revenge.

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What's this, you say? More music? In a word, yes. Most of the Metropolitan Opera presentations done in HD for movie theaters were later repeated on PBS's Great Performances at the Met, so this counts as television. And recently we went back to look at one performance that we did see in the theater, many years ago: Doctor Atomic, the stunning opera by John Adams that tells the story of the testing of the atomic bomb. Now, you might not think that the bomb is a natural subject for an opera, and you'd be right; how many productions can you remember where a mock-up of "the gadget" (as the bomb was frequently referred to during its development) is the centerpiece of the set, always present even when you can't see it? 

As is typical of most modern opera, Doctor Atomic is mostly sung-through, meaning that instead of traditional arias, duets, choral pieces and the like, the dialogue (taken from the notes, memos, diaries, and letters of those people who actually worked on the Manhattan Project) is set to music and sung without repetitions. In the wrong hands, this can make for an extremely boring few hours. Adams pulls it off though, in the same way that he did with another unlikely subject for an opera, Nixon in China. This is due in no small part to the performance of Gerald Finley as J. Robert Oppenheimer, Sasha Cooke as Kitty Oppenheimer, Richard Paul Fink as Edward Teller, and Eric Owens as General Leslie Groves, the head of the project. The first act features a scene with Oppenheimer and his wife Kitty, which is unspeakably intimate without either of them taking off their clothes or even kissing; it's all carried by the choreography and the words, and it is breathtaking. Having seen the movie Oppenheimer a couple of years ago, it gives us a slightly different view of their relationship, but it is fascinating nonetheless.

The moment is exceeded by the concluding aria of Act One—the opera's only aria—"Batter My Heart," set to the text of John Donne's "Holy Sonnet XIV." Finley is spellbinding, and the music, especially at the act's conclusion, is dynamic, driving, propulsive—and laced with dark overtones that hint at what the scientists are well aware of: after the development of the Bomb, the world will never be the same again. The YouTube description calls it "thrilling," and that sums it up pretty well. Opera in general, and this opera in particular, might not be your cup of tea; it doesn't have to be. But it packs a wallop nonetheless.

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I've been saving the longest for last. When The Iceman Cometh has been presented on television, it's usually been over two parts: sensible, given that Eugene O'Neill's play runs for nearly four hours, without commercial interruption. However, having watched it a couple of weeks ago, I can vouch that this is the only way to watch it. (Thankfully, it comes with an intermission for bathroom breaks.)

The television version, which aired on Play of the Week in 1960 and starred Jason Robards in the lead as Hickey (and Robert Redford as Parritt), is very good. That, however, is not the version we watched; instead, we opted for the 1973 film adaptation, which was directed by John Frankenheimer, and features a dynamite cast that includes Lee Marvin as Hickey, Fredric March as Harry Hope, Robert Ryan as Larry Slade, Tom Pedi as Rocky Pioggi, Bradford Dillman as Willie Oban, Sorrell Booke as Hugo Kalmar, and Jeff Bridges as Don Parritt. It's a faithful adaptation of the play, trimmed for time but otherwise intact, and it is a brutal experience; the flophouse at which the action takes place resembles nothing so much as hell on earth; Hickey, the travelling salesman whose regular appearances everyone anticipates, arrives this time not as the life of the party, but as a harbinger of doom, an avenging angel, a man preaching a unique type of repentance that involves giving one's self up to the freedom of nihilism.  Make sure you've got some antidepressants available while you're watching it.

Frankenheimer, of course, cut his teeth on live television, and his direction here is steady. And while the performances are uniformly good, a couple of them really stand out, those of Marvin and Robert Ryan. This was Ryan's final screen performance, and he conjures up every bit of world-weariness as a former political anarchist who no longer believes in the cause, and is now simply waiting for death to overtake him. In any other play, his role as a kind of Greek chorus would be what everyone talks about afterward, because he's twice as good as anyone else (including March, as good an actor as has ever graced the stage). However (and you knew there had to be one of those in here somewhere, didn't you?), when Marvin takes the stage, it's as if nobody else exists. Truly. He underplays the role with his patented menace; the quieter he is, the calmer and more collected, the more dangerous he becomes. When he's on camera, he's twice as good as Ryan, and in this play, that's really saying something. It's a performance that legitimizes Marvin's Oscar win (for the comedy Cat Ballou), and certainly could have scored another nomination here. I have a few qualms about O'Neill's play; I would have preferred a slightly different twist at the end, which I won't bore you with here, but who am I to compare myself to O'Neill? Anyway, like Doctor Atomic, this is not for everyone. But if it is for you, you'll thank me for introducing it to you. 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? 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.