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.

l  l  l

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.

l  l  l

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.

l  l  l

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.

l  l  l

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.

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!