This week in TV Guide: March 6, 1965

As my enforced series of encore presentations continues, we're up to an interesting issue: so interesting, in fact, that I've already encored it once. I promise you, however, that there's even more new in this week's look, along with some features you might recognize from the past.

The brooding visage of David Janssen graces this week's cover.  Janssen is in the second of four seasons playing Dr. Richard Kimble the hero of the hit ABC series The Fugitive. As Arnold Hano notes, Janssen the actor shares many similarities with Kimble the fugitive, among which is a lack of comfort with his surroundings. His friend, novelist Bernard Wolfe, comments that "David is not a fanatically dedicated person. If he were, all this grueling work would have more meaning for him. But he is not dedicated. He has great doubts as to the ultimate aim of it all, as to where it is leading him."

Janssen in fact houses a number of torments: his heavy drinking, which Janssen claims has diminished while doing The Fugitive, but would always remain a part of his life; his ulcer (caused, Janssen wryly notes, by "thinking"); his heavy smoking (two to three packs a day); and the fatigue of his grueling schedule of 14-hour days filming a show in which he is in virtually every scene. When told that executive producer Quinn Martin "speaks grandly of five more years" of The Fugutive, Janssen dully replies, "Five more years? Contractually, I suppose I would have to put in five more years, but—" The Fugitive ran just about the right length of time; David Janssen, who died of a heart attack at age 48, died way too young.

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Personally, I don't think you need a reason to show a picture of Sophia Loren, but this week we have one. On Saturday, WTCN presents the TV premiere of Two Women, the movie for which Loren won her Oscar for Best Actress. Channel 11 advertised the movie accordingly.

Now, take a good look at that ad.  Notice anything strange about it?  The placement of that "TONIGHT 10 P.M." strip looks just a little suspicious, don't you think?  Especially when compared to the same picture, unedited:

While this picture might be considered somewhat modest today, I'm sure that 1965 Midwest sensibilities might have been offended by the amount of Sophia's cleavage on display. Two Women is an art-house movie (and Loren was the first Best Actress winner in a foreign-language film), so it's likely that many people in the Twin Cities hadn't seen it; Loren's sexpot image was well-known, however, so the station might have thought a little judicious editing was in order.

Alternately, because it probably wasn't seen widely and viewers didn't know what it was about, perhaps the station just wanted to create the impression that there was more to see than meets the eye. Or is that too cynical a thought? I'm just sayin'.

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During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premiere variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup..

Ed Sullivan: Scheduled guests include singer Ella Fitzgerald; Duke Ellington and his band; singer Rita Pavone; singer-dancer Roy Castle; comics Stiller and Meara; the two Carmenas, balancers; and comedian John Byner.

Hollywood Palace: Host Eddie Fisher welcomes actress-vocalist Connie Stevens, comedian Jack Carter, the Marquis Chimps, the Arirang Korean ballet troupe, comedy pantomimist Ben Wrigley and the Kuban Cossacks, dance team.

This contest was pretty much over at the start. With Ella and Duke headlining the Sullivan show, Palace was already going to have to come up with something big to top it. Eddie Fisher, Connie Stevens and Jack Carter are OK, but the royalty that the Palace needed was already spoken for. Crown Sullivan as winner for the week.

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Let's see—we've covered Saturday, so what does the rest of the week have? The big movie of the week is a really big one: ABC's Sunday night presentation of Judgment at Nuremberg, starring Spencer Tracy, Oscar winner Maximilian Schell, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland and a cast of thousands. It's a long movie, starting at 8:00 p.m. CT and running for three and one-half hours. And it's a heavy movie—preachy at times, as one might expect from writer Abby Mann and director Stanley Kramer. But less than 20 years after the end of World War II, it's also a portrait of a world still trying to come to grips with the horror of the Holocaust, and a country (Germany) trying to sort out its moral responsibility.

On Monday, Bing Crosby reunites with his old friend Phil Harris on Bing's sitcom (8:30 p.m., ABC); Harris is Bing's former vaudeville partner, who shows up with his new act: a trained crow, who may be responsible for a rash of neighborhood jewelry thefts. Following that, Jerry Lewis doubles as director and star in a rare dramatic role on Ben Casey (9:00 p.m., ABC) He's Dr. Dennis Green, a new resident at County General and an "irrepressible clown" (no surprise there), but Casey takes a dim view of it all, endangering Dr. Green's hopes to go into neurosurgery.

Tuesday kicks off with a special Red Skelton (7:30, CBS) entitled "The Red Skelton Scrapbook," hosted by Ed Wynn and featuring Red performing some of his most famous sketches and pantomimes. At 9:00 p.m., NBC presents a news special, "The Pope and the Vatican," covering the concluding days of the Second Vatican Council and the radical changes (termed aggiornamento, or "bringing up to date") coming to the Catholic Church. Vatican II had its critics even then, but could they have imagined the havoc this would create in the decades to come.

Wednesday night it's the "first annual" Grand Award of Sports (8:30 p.m., ABC), presented live from the New York World's Fair, and hosted by Bing and Kathryn Crosby. The format: "Panels of outstanding sportsmen have selected 20 winners" from a list of 83 nominees representing "the world's top athletes". The nominees included football stars Jim Brown and Johnny Unitas, boxer Cassius Clay, baseball's Sandy Koufax, basketball greats Wilt Chamberlain and Oscar Robertson, and hockey stars Bobby Hull and Gordie Howe. At the show's end, one of these winners will be chosen to receive the "Grand Award," presented by former astronaut John Glenn. That picture on the right is from the John H. Glenn archives; it's one of the Grand Awards, presented to Glenn "for his work as chairman of the Grand Award of Sports inaugural telecast." I can't find another listing for the "Grand Award of Sport"; it's my guess that it was either replaced or folded into the Victor Awards, which began (coincidentally?) the very next year, 1966.

Gloria Swanson makes her TV comedy debut Thursday on My Three Sons (7:30 p.m., ABC), playing an old vaudeville friend of Uncle Charley, while another Gloria—Gloria Stewart—guests with her husband Jimmy and their twin daughters on Password (7:30 p.m., CBS). And tonight's Tonight Show (10:30 p.m., NBC) bears some looking into, as Johnny has a scheduled guest lineup that includes Bob Hope, Hedda Hopper, Richard Chamberlain, Carol Lawrence, Barbara Parkins, and Harve Presnell.

A rerun of Have Gun—Will Travel attracts some interest on Friday (7:30 p.m., WTCN), with Paladin's assignment being to act as Oscar Wilde's bodyguard. John O'Malley plays Wilde. And not to be outdone by Johnny, Jack Paar has a pretty good show himself (9:00 p.m., NBC), with Peggy Lee, plus Mike Nichols and Elaine May.

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Looking at the TV Teletype, there's a note that on April 11 the ABC program Directions '65 will be telecasting David Amram's Holocaust opera The Final Ingredient, commissioned by the network,*  based on the teleplay by the famed Golden Age writer Reginald Rose. "Set in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, The Final Ingredient relates the story of a group of inmates who attempt to hold a secret Passover Seder inside the camp, and their quest for the final ingredient, which lies just outside the camp walls."  It sounds intriguing; I know Amram's music primarily from his soundtrack for the movie The Manchurian Candidate. As this article points out, ABC conceived of this as a "Passover Opera" that might be presented annually—almost a Jewish counterpart to Menotti's Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors. But it didn't become an annual broadcast, at least as far as I know. It's available for viewing at the Paley Center.

*I'm not positive, but I'm fairly certain this was the final opera commissioned by one of the big three American commercial television networks. After this, it would be up to PBS.

We'll also learn that the Smothers Brothers are guests on Jack Benny's season finale April 16 on NBC; Jack will probably be limiting his appearances next season to hour-long specials, which indeed he does. And if your appetite for awards shows hasn't been sated by the Grand Award of Sports, you'll be glad to know that the Grammys are coming up in a one-hour telecast on NBC May 18, in which most of the winners are expected to perform their Grammy-winning songs.

Neil Hickey reports on CBS's series The Nurses, which has just been retooled with the addition of a couple of doctors; it's now called The Doctors and the Nurses. The nurses (Zina Bethune and Shirl Conway, left) are now supporting players to the doctors (Joe Campanella and Michael Tolan). According to producer Herb Brodkin, the move was made to improve ratings and dramatic potential; since nurses can't diagnose patients, there just weren't enough stories to carry the show. Says Brodkin, "Part of the problem was that, in making things happen in a story, nurses are handholders."

The Doan Report tells us that Johnny Carson's doing a 15-minute sit-in, in protest of the fact that many NBC affiliates around the country (including those in New York and San Francisco) don't carry the first 15 minutes of Tonight (which at the time ran for an hour and 45 minutes), choosing instead to run a half-hour of local news. For Carson, this meant about half of the nation would miss his monologue, a situation which justifiably caused him some distress—so much so, Carson claims, that it's preventing him from appearing on-air for the first 15 minutes of the program. His "sick-in" lasts for two nights, after which he agrees to discuss things with the network. The short-term solution is that Ed McMahon and bandleader Skitch Henderson vamp for the opening segment, with Johnny coming on at the bottom of the hour to do his monologue. Within a couple of years, that first 15 will be dropped altogether, giving the show a tidy 90 minute running time. That becomes the industry standard for talk shows, until Johnny cuts it back further to one hour in the 1980s. I don't think talk shows have been the same since, and I don't mean that in a positive way. Oh, and in case you're wondering, the NBC affiliate in Minneapolis-St. Paul, KSTP, currently shows the entire 1:45 show, on a 15-minute delay to follow the 10:00 news.

British satirist and social critic Malcolm Muggerage has a witty, but also very provocative, article on "The British Passion for American Television," and what he has to say might surprise you. I wrote about it at length here.

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Finally, we'd be real knuckleheads if we didn't pause to note a story on The Three Stooges, who are going strong as ever since their fueled-by-TV comeback. The emotional peak is a moving story about a 12-year-old girl being treated for emotional troubles. The girl spoke and wrote only in numbers, and when she became angry she "cried out numbers ending in 4." The stunned doctors eventually discovered that the numbers she used corresponded to the numbers on Three Stooges trading cards. The cards depicted "moods of violence" that the troubled girl herself was unable to articulate without the emotional release offered by the Stooges; in recounting the story, Moe Howard tears up.

It's interesting to note that although the Stooges (which at this point consist of Moe, Larry Fine, and "Curley Joe" DeRita) don't receive any financial compensation for their old movies, but the features and personal appearances sparked by the renewed interest in the movies more than make up the difference. Ah, the Stooges - loved 'em as a kid, love' em just as much now. TV  

This week in TV Guide: February 18, 1961

Every year it seems there's yet another meaningless awards show on TV. And yet, very view of them seem to go away. (Personally, I don't think they'll stop until everyone's won at least one. I'm still waiting for mine.)

A variety of sources suggest that the "TV Guide Awards" began in 1999, but if the magazine says that then they're ignoring their own history - as this week's issue proves. The TV Guide Awards started in 1960, and by the next year AP's Cynthia Lowry refers to the "three important awards-presenting shows—Oscar, Emmy and TV Guide." The young medium hadn't been around that long, and there are already two awards shows devoted to it.

What makes this different from other awards shows of the time is that, in kind of an early People's Choice Awards, the winners of the TV Guide Awards are chosen entirely by viewer votes. The ballot we see here  for the 1961 Awards (which was scheduled to be on NBC April 11, but in fact didn't air until June 13) allows readers to cast their vote for Favorite Series, Favorite New Series, Best Single Musical or Variety Show, Best Single Dramatic Program, Best Single News or Information Program, Favorite Male Performer, and Favorite Female Performer.  Not many categories compared to today, hmm?

The awards show had a moderately successful run, lasting from 1960 until 1964. It didn't always have a dedicated program built around it; for example, the 1963 awards were presented during the last segment of the Bob Hope Show. According to the contemporary reports, the 1961 show had its pluses-and-minuses—the pluses included the entertainment portions, which were done on videotape; the minuses, which occurred during the live awards presentation, included technical glitches, speeches ending before they were done, and confused winners not knowing which way to exit the stage. Despite all that, it sounds as if a good time was had by all.

Interested in knowing who won the '61 trophies? You're going to have to wait until you get to the end of the column to find out.

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I don't think it won any awards, but on Saturday (8:30 p.m., CBS), one of the prestige shows of the time, David Susskind's Dupont Show of the Month, features a live 90-minute presentation of "The Lincoln Murder Case," starring Luther Adler, House Jameson and Roger Evan Boxill as John Wilkes Booth.* I don't have a clip of that show, but for what it's worth, here's an episode of I've Got a Secret from 1956 featuring a gentleman whose secret was that he was an eyewitness to Lincoln's assassination. Think of that for a minute—he lived during the Civil War, while Lincoln was President, and appeared on television. That is something to marvel at.

*Meaning no disrespect to Roger Evan Boxill, I'd like to think he was cast as John Wilkes Booth because of the three names.

We don't have any "Sullivan vs." matchups this week, but I will mention that Ed's guests on Sunday (7:00 p.m., CBS) are Lucille Ball; comedian Jack Carter; instrumental group the Bill Black Combo; the comedy team of Rowan and Martin; folk singer Leon Bibb; and tap dancer Timmie Rogers. Lucy's on the show to sing "Hey, Look Me Over" with Paula Stewart; it's from the musical Wildcat, Lucy's only appearance on Broadway.

One of those shows that winds up being nominated for a TV Guide Award is Astaire Time, Fred Astaire's third television special, rerun "by popular demand" Monday night at 7:30 p.m. on NBC. (And in these pre-VCR days, I have no doubt that it was in fact by popular demand.) Fred's guests include his current dancing partner Barrie Chase, the Count Basie band with singer Joe Williams, the Hermes Pan Dancers (Pan being Astaire's long-time choreographer) featuring Ruth and Jane Earl, and the David Rose Orchestra. I've seen all the Astaire specials on DVD and this one, like the others, is terrific.

I have, in the past, mentioned my alma mater, Hamline University in St. Paul, and on Tuesday night The Hamline College Hour (8:30 p.m., KTCA, and it's actually only a half-hour) presents a discussion of Milowan Djilas's book The New Class, hosted by Dr. Wesley St. John, who happened to be my adviser in the Political Science department twenty years later. One of my rare brushes with fame, I guess; Dr. St. John was indeed a scholar and a gentleman.

A show that didn't win any awards but led to a movie that did is Wednesday night's U.S. Steel Hour presentation of "The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon" (9:00 p.m., CBS), based on Daniel Keyes' Hugo Award-winning short story "Flowers for Algernon" and starring Cliff Robertson, which will be made into the big-screen movie Charley, for which Robertson wins the Best Actor Oscar in 1968.

It was a couple of years ago that the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus shut down for good (it's mentioned at the end of this piece) but Ringling Bros. seldom came to the Twin Cities when I was growing up. Instead, it was the Zuhrah Shrine Circus, which played the Minneapolis Auditorium (and for which we got an afternoon off from school, which tells you just how long ago that was). On Thursday night, WCCO personality Randy Merriman, who used to be a ringmaster before turning to radio and television, hosts a live half-hour broadcast of opening night (8:00 p.m., WCCO), including the opening prade and some animal acts. Yes, good luck with that nowadays.

On Friday it's another of the shows that competes in the TV Guide Awards, Sing Along with Mitch (8:00 p.m., NBC), with Guy Mitchell as the guest star. Mitchell had a very successful career as a singer, but I remember him better as George Romack, Audie Murphy's sidekick on the Western police drama Whispering Smith.

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Care for some sports?

Let's start with Saturday, and you'll see that things are a little different than they are now. For example, Wide World of Sports hasn't premiered yet, and college basketball hasn't become a national obsession, with only two games on tap: SMU vs. Texas (1:00 p.m., WTCN), and the Big Ten Game of the Week between Purdue and Michigan (3:30 p.m., WCCO). The NHL isn't on network TV and there isn't a team in Minnesota yet, so the hockey coverage is a taped replay of last night's game between the St. Paul Saints and Omaha Knights (2:00 p.m., WCCO). The NBA isn't the cool game yet, so there's only one game—NBC has the Lakers and "Knickerbockers" in New York (1:00 p.m., NBC). The PGA isn't a weekly happening, so the duffer out there has to settle for All-Star Golf, with Sam Snead taking on Bob Rosberg (5:00 p.m., WTCN). Even the Pro Bowlers Tour hasn't hit the big time yet (it'll be on ABC next year), so we've got a potpourri of bowling shows: Bowling Stars at 3:30 p,m, and Championship Bowling at 5:00 p.m., both on KSTP. There is football, though, at least sort of: WCCO has a one-hour replay of the Packers-Lions Thanksgiving Day football game* from three months ago.

But there's still boxing, and it's still a prime-time sport in 1961. Saturday's Fight of the Week (9:00 p.m., ABC) features future middleweight champion Dick Tiger taking on Gene Armstrong from Madison Square Garden, which has apparently been turned around from the Lakers-Knicks game earlier in the day. (Tiger wins in a 9th round TKO.) Fight of the Week was the last regularly scheduled prime-time boxing show, running on Saturday nights through September 1963 before spending another year on Friday nights. When it ended its run on September 11, 1964, it was the end of an era that at one time had seen as many as six televised boxing shows a week.

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Jackie Gleason's profiled in an article sans byline. He's described as "the star of a new CBS panel show called You're in the Picture, which went on the air Jan. 20 and which was pre-empted on Jan. 27 by Jackie himself, who spent a half hour apologizing to viewers for perpetuating 'that bomb' on them."

You're in the Picture was, in fact, one of the most infamous bombs in TV history. Although the article professes confidence that the show would return, in fact it did not. Of that initial episode, UPI's Vernon Scott wrote "Jackie Gleason is a big guy who does everything in a big way. Friday night he laid a big egg." Gleason's apology on January 27, delivered with real panache, won raves from critics, including Scott, who this time called it "the most delightful show on television in the last few weeks"


As detailed by Television Obscurities, there was great confusion as to what was going to happen after the January 27 apology show—as late as the day before the next broadcast (February 3), the network didn't know what they were going to get. Kellogg's, the sponsor, apparently wanted (for some unfathomable reason) to continue with You're in the Picture, but Gleason did not. What went out that night was Gleason again, continuing his apology, combined with some sketch comedy. Kellogg's dropped its sponsorship, and the remainder of the show's run (seven weeks) was in talk-show format, entitled The Jackie Gleason Show, with The Great One interviewing various celebrities.

Such a debacle might have brought down a lesser star, but not Gleason. He would be back on CBS in 1962 with his big-budget variety show, which he would move to Miami Beach and would run for four successful years.

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Maharis (left) with Milner and the famed 'vette

There's also a profile of George Maharis (again without byline), co-star of the CBS series Route 66. Maharis, much like Buz Murdock, the character he portrayed, comes across as loud, brash, a fighter, a man who "not only looks like a hood but might well have become one." The article opens with the story of Maharis, while on location, walking into a bank and shouting, "All right, folks—this is a stick-up" before breaking into a big grin. Everyone agrees that he was lucky he wasn't killed. No question, he's a stark contrast to his Route 66 co-star, Martin Milner, a veteran actor who brings his family along during the location shoots whenever possible (virtually all of the show was shot on location).

Maharis is being prepped for stardom—"the hottest thing to come along in TV since the invention of the hot plate," according to one executive. But Maharis will miss several episodes in 1962, near the end of the second season, reportedly due to infectious hepatitis. He returns for the start of the third season but there are rumors that he is difficult to work with, that he wants a movie career, that his illness persists. Eventually he breaks his contract in the middle of the third season and leaves the series, and although he has steady work, he never does quite become the star that everyone thought he would be, back in 1961.

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A few notes from the yellow Teletype section, where "It looks definite now for The Rifleman to switch from ABC to CBS in the fall." For some reason the switch never happened though, and The Rifleman would end its days on ABC after two more seasons.

Producer Hubbell Robinson has four shows on tap for the 1961-62 season. ABC is interested in Stage 61, although what they eventually got was Stage 67, and The Lawyer, which apparently nobody got. NBC was luckier, though—it got not only the police series 87th Precinct, but the Boris Karloff-hosted Thriller.

There's also excitement about a TV version of the hit movie Some Like It Hot, with Vic Damone and Tina Louise. Despite getting Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis to cameo at the start of the pilot, there were no takers.

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Finally, we shouldn't ignore another program from Wednesday night, Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall (8:00 p.m., NBC). Perry's guests are Anne Bancroft and Jimmy Durante. As our faithful reader Mike Doran notes, "The main guest was Anne Bancroft, who at the time was one of Broadway's most notable bachelorettes; the premise of the show was to show her the joys of married life. The historical significance is that this show was where Anne Bancroft first met Mel Brooks, who was on Como's writing staff at the time. The two married a few years later, and the rest is history.

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Wait a minute, I did promise you the winners of the TV Guide Awards, didn't I? Very well, here they are: see how your favorites did:

Favorite Show: Perry Mason
Favorite New Show: Andy Griffith
Favorite Variety Show: Sing Along With Mitch
Male Performer: Raymond Burr
Female Performer: Carol Burnett
Best News Program: The Huntley-Brinkley Report
Dramatic Program: Macbeth, Hallmark Hall of Fame  TV  

This week in TV Guide: March 19, 1960

This week's cover story is on Perry Mason, and since you all should know by now this is one of my favorite shows, you can't be surprised I'm going to spend a little time on it.

One of the secrets to the success of Mason, according to this unbylined article, is its strong supporting cast, each of whom brings something special to his or her role. Take Bill Talman, for example, who plays Perry's nemesis Hamilton Burger. According to Talman, Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner didn't think much of the D.A. "Erle detested Berger," Talman says, "and drew him as the prototype of the loud, blustering sorehaead, like the one who used to plague him as a young lawyer." Talman has worked to flesh out the character, to reduce the temptation by viewers to see him as a heavy. "Otherwise, it would be no credit to Perry to set him down every week."

Ray Collins, the honest (if quick to judge) detective lieutenant Arthur Tragg, is an old pro, one who "can sense other actors' needs and throw the scene their way." For instance, if a young actor, perhaps one playing his first big role, is struggling with his lines, Collins will start fumbling his to take the pressure off - if, that is, Talman or Raymond Burr don't beat him to it.* But, as Collins adds, "we are professionals. Therefore, no matter how fond we are of one another, we all try to protect ourselves. If Willie Talman can get better lighting than I can, well, I assure you I'l try to change that." Barbara Hale, Perry's loyal secretary Della Street, says "It's like the competition in a family."

*I wonder about this. Collins was, by all accounts, a generous colleague, but it's been said that as his health began to fail (he died in 1965), he began to have more trouble memorizing and delivering his lines. It could be that Talman and Burr, almost certainly the sources of this anecdote, were in fact using it to cover for Collins. It's the kind of thing mensches would do.

Bill Hopper, son of the famed columnist Hedda, has learned his share of tricks of the trade, thanks both to his mother and veteran actors. He, too, has become a pro over the years; "If all you know is tricks, you're dead."

It's a tight cast, even if they do compete for better lighting and close-ups. Says Talman, who has shared a dressing room with Hopper for three years, "Can you think of rooming with a guy for three years and never having a quarrel or argument? I can't. But that has happened with Bill and me." Collins adds that "There's something else - call it a great affection, like a legit show on the road. When it closes you may never see each other again. Sometimes we think of that. And so we still speak to each other." "And laugh at each other's jokes," Talman adds.

At the center of it all is Raymond Burr, and Collins accurately sums up the man and his impact on the cast.  "Take Raymond, a man doing 39 hour-long shows a year, appearing in almost every scene, knowing his lines letter-perfect, and who still devotes himself to making it better for other people." He and Talman are inveterate practical jokers, both on each other and on other members of the cast; Hale, who's a favorite target for Burr, once found everything in her dressing room - sink, flower pots, everything - filled with green gelatin.

Judging by the lack of jealousy among the cast, that must be the only thing that's green.

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Starting in 1954, Steve Allen helmed his own NBC variety show which, at the beginning, aired opposite that of Ed Sullivan. 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 four seasons. Let's see who gets the best of the contest this week.

Sullivan: Ed presents circus stars from all over the world. In London: Popov, famed Soviet clown; the Boxing Russian Bears. In New York: Emmett Kelly, celebrated American clown; the De Donge Chimps; Linon, high-wire clown; and the Three Murkies.

Allen: Steve's guests are actress Ann Blyth, Nick "The Rebel" Adams, comedian Jan Murray and the Nikolais dancers.

No contest here; unless you're a big fan of circuses, the only name you may recognize from Ed's lineup is Emmett Kelly, although I'll admit to having a soft spot for boxing bears. On the other hand, Steve has an actual lineup of stars, and while it may not be the strongest hand, it's the best one this week. The verdict: Allen takes the week.

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Speaking of Ed, to coin a phrase, we've got some really big stars in specials and regular fare alike, and that dominates our look at the week.

On Saturday Jack Benny gets a full hour special (9:00 p.m. CT) in addition to his regular weekly series, and he fills it up with Phil Silvers and Polly Bergen. Among the highlights, Jack interviews a "typical" TV Western viewer, gives his opinion on television commercials, and wonders about the runner taking the Olympic torch from Squaw Valley to Rome for the Summer Games.

Sunday brings us the return of Dr. Frank Baxter, whom we've enjoyed here before, in another Bell Telephone Science Special, "The Alphabet Conspiracy." (5:00 p.m., NBC) Dr. Baxter plays Dr. Linguistics, who's out to "prevent three plotters who are determined to do away with the alphabet and thus destroy all languages." Who knew they'd go on to invent emojis instead? Hans Conried plays The Mad Hatter, who for all I know may or may not be one of the plotters. If you caught this when it was first on 14 months ago, you may opt for this week's roundtable discussion on Small World (5:00, CBS), featuring Pablo Casals, Isaac Stern and Ernest Ansermet discussing the musician's political and social responsibilities. CBS follows that up at 5:30 with The Twentieth Century, as Walter Cronkite profiles "Patton and the Third Army."

Sunday evening brings a pair of specials; first, Our American Heritage (7:00 p.m., NBC) tells the story of "Autocrat and Son," also known as Oliver Wendell Holms Sr. and Jr. Sr. is played by Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Jr. by Christopher Plummer, and the whole thing was written by Ernest Kinoy, who wrote great teleplays into the 1990s, everything from The Defenders to the TV-movies Victory at Entebbe and Skokie. Then, at 8:30 p.m. on CBS, the General Mills Special Tonight series presents "The Valley of Decision" with Lloyd Bridges and Nancy Wickwire.

Compared to Sunday's lineup, Monday is pretty tame, but it does have its benefits, with Arlene Francis as Jack Paar's guest-host for the week (NBC, 10:30 p.m.), while Jack's in England taping next week's shows. Was Arlene the first woman to host Tonight? I think so, but don't hold me to it; I'm not sure at this point in history who else in might have been.

Tuesday starts off with Playhouse 90's chilling adaptation of Robert Shaw's novel "The Hiding Place" (7:00 p.m., CBS) starring James Mason as a Nazi holding two British flyers (Richard Basehart, Trevor Howard) prisoner in his cellar. They've spent years chained up in there, with Mason as their only contact to the outside world. What he doesn't tell them is that the war has been over for seven years. If that's too dark for you, you can check out a rare television appearance by Rex Harrison in Startime's "Dear Arthur" (7:30 p.m., NBC), co-starring Sarah Marshall and Hermoine Badderly, with Gore Vidal adapting the play by P.G. Wodehouse.

I like the sound of Perry Como's show on Wednesday (8:00 p.m., NBC), with Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé, and Don Adams. (Might be the best variety show of the week, for that matter.) You can also check out Richard Boone, taking time out from Have Gun - Will Travel to star in "The Charlie and the Kid" on The U.S. Steel Hour (9:00 p.m., CBS), with Geraldine Brooks.

The big event on Thursday is a local one, the start of the Minnesota State High School Basketball Tournament. (For boys, of course; it is 1960, after all.) I think most people think of hockey when they think sports in Minnesota, but in the years before professional sports came to town, the basketball tournament was very, very big stuff. The tournament ran for three days, with eight teams battling for the title, ending on Saturday night when nearly 20,000 would pack Williams Arena, home of the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers, to watch the final. If they're lucky, it would be a David-vs-Goliath story, with an unsung small school out of nowhere taking on the big city schools.

In 1960 that's exactly what happened, as Minnesota staged its very own version of Hoosiers, starring the team from tiny Edgerton, Minnesota (population 961). Edgerton, led by coach Rich Olson (so young that security guards demanded to see his identification before letting him into Williams Arena), had finished the regular season undefeated, then knocked off several large schools before making it into the tournament, where the standing-room only crowds adopted the tiny school as its own, cheering them on as they upset top-ranked Richfield in the semifinals before defeating Austin in the final. Edgerton was the smallest school ever to win the state championship, and to this day the tournament remains one of the most storied moments in Minnesota sports history.

On Friday, Robert Ryan and Ann Todd star in a live adaptation of Hemingway's story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (7:30 p.m., CBS), which must have been quite an accomplishment considering our hero leads a life of adventure all over the world. At least they have the right man at the helm, with John Frankenheimer directing. Pretty good supporting cast as well, with Janice Rule, Jean Hagen, Mary Astor and James Gregory,

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And the winner is: Last week, you'll recall that we looked at the official ballot for the inaugural TV Guide Awards, and at that time I promised I'd reveal the winners this week. The show airs in color Friday night at 7:30 on NBC, with Robert Young, Nanette Fabray, and Fred MacMurray hosting and performing in some pre-recorded skits, while while the awards themselves are presented live in both New York and Hollywood, depending on where the winner is. Perhaps the most interesting piece of information about this show is that the producer and director are Bud Yorkin and Norman Lear - small world, huh?

Anyway, may I have the envelope please?

Favorite Series of One Hour or Longer: Perry Mason
Favorite Half-Hour Series: Father Knows Best
Best Single Musical or Variety Program: Another Evening with Fred Astaire
Most Popular Male Personality: Raymond Burr (Perry Mason)
Most Popular Female Personality: Loretta Young (The Loretta Young Show)
Best News or Information Program: The Huntley-Brinkley Report
Best Single Dramatic Program: "The Turn of the Screw" (Startime)

So how did you do? Do you think you could have picked them better than the readers of TV Guide? By next year, 1961, the TV Guide Awards are ranked as one of the three important entertainment awards, together with the Academy Awards and the Emmy Awards. They'd run through 1964, and then came back for a brief encore in the early 2000s, before disappearing completely into the television ether, although if it's true that television and radio waves disappear into space, perhaps someone's still enjoying it today.  TV  

This week in TV Guide: March 12, 1960

Although the TV Guides in this series are chosen more or less at random, depending on what I happen to have available at the time, I think we're seeing a consistent trend running through the first four decades of the magazine: a constant examination of the role television plays in society, and a challenge to those in charge of programming to do a better job of it.

This week's article is from Erwin D. Canham, editor of The Christian Science Monitor and current President of the United States Chamber of Commerce, and his message is simple and straightforward: "TV should toughen the mind of America, not put it to sleep."

One of the main threats Canham sees - a threat that we also see, over and over, in these essays - is that of depending too much on the ratings to determine which programs survive and which disappear without a trace. He compares the process to that of the print media: if newspapers and magazines used the same criteria to determine their contents, the dominant features would be comic strips, sports, and pictures - what he calls "a completely unbalanced and unacceptable newspaper." Television, writes Canham, must never become overwhelmingly entertainment-based, or else it will lose the tremendous potential it has of "lifting the minds and hearts of mankind into the age which modern technology makes possible." As he puts it, "A dinner composed nine-tenths of chocolate eclairs would be absurd. Popularity is not all."

Canham also warns of "grave challenges" that America faces, and the responsibility to which television must answer. He appeals to the medium to help build "new standards of life and citizenship," that "our minds must not be merely softened up under a salve of bland relaxation". The American people will have to think hard and work hard, and "the pervasive power of television must help them to do so. They need awakening, not tranquilizing. Television must not become the opium of the people. Like all great voices, it must cry out - not by mere editorializing, but by informing and challenging with the factual image it so vividly conveys."

When Canham writes of "the grave challenges we face," I think he's referring specifically to the threat posed by Communism, and the many ways in which Americans have to respond to that challenge. There's an educational one, of course; with talk of the missile gap and the need to match Soviet minds in the space race, it will be vital for America to put a priority on training brighter and better minds, and television must play a role in doing so.

Then there's the value of citizenship itself, and the importance of a free society. "Can we stand up against the earnest, fanatical focused challenge of totalitarian aggression? Will we weaken our society from within? Are our goals and standards the true values of a good society? Have we gone soft?" Here is where television can make the difference; "Nothing can help America to awaken and gird itself for internal and external battles for survival more effectively than television." No other medium can reach so many people or get into their minds. The print media can follow up with the in-depth story, but television must get their attention.

Like others, he sees the quiz show scandal of the past decade not only in terms of what it says about the industry, but about the public as well. To him, the scandal "reveals a national crisis of confidence. People are wondering not so much about television morals as national morals. They are asking whether our national standards and values are as sound and true as they should be, or whether too many of them have become shoddy and specious." And here I think we again turn to the Cold War, for the "national values" Canham refers to are those which we put on display for the rest of the world to see. What are those, in the winter of 1960? The civil rights movement, voting rights, growing racial unrest, poverty, lack of education. Even though more was to come throughout the '60s, these images are already being broadcast, and while they are assuredly bad enough in and of themselves, they also provide fuel for Communist propaganda.

The way in which television faces all these challenges will be just as important as the fact that they are facing them at all. They must be made "as humanly interesting, entertaining and penetrating as much of the trivia and passion of this world is without half trying." To have any effectiveness at all, to involve television in the coming world in the way it must, the programs must engage the viewer, else they won't be seen at all. Those responsible for this programming must, writes Canham, "work as hard to get truly important facts and ideas into the minds of viewers as they do to put over their commercial messages." It is only then that television will be able to play its role in helping to create "a nation of mature decision makers."

I wonder how Canham would view the evolution of television over the past 58 years? With pessimism, I would think. The warnings he penned about television becoming an entertainment medium have for the most part gone unheeded; while there has been much over these past years that has been very good, it has not, for the most part, strengthened the American character; in fact, were it not for the social media contrivances of today, I'd think that TV would bear the burden of being the single instrument most responsible for dumbing down the nation. Or perhaps social media merely took advantage of viewers already softened up by television? The argument was already raging when this article was written, and by the mid-'60s there were a lot of people who looked at programs such as The Beverly Hillbillies (the one it seems is most cited) and threw up their hands in resignation. As far as the education of the public into a "knowledgeable citizenry," collectively we're probably bigger fools than we've ever been. It's everybody's fault, but ofttimes the greatest responsibility goes hand-in-hand with the greatest potential, and the potential of television - well, how high is the sky?

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Starting in 1954, Steve Allen helmed his own NBC variety show which, at the beginning, aired opposite that of Ed Sullivan. 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 four seasons. Let's see who gets the best of the contest this week.

Sullivan: To celebrate St. Patrick's Day, Ed hosts a collection of Irish talent, including song-and-dance man Pat Rooney; singers Eileen Brennan and Lee Sullivan; and from Dublin, playwright Seán O'Casey and veteran actor Barry Fitzgerald.

Allen: Steve's guests are comedian Mort Sahl, singer Tony Martin and dancer Juliet Prowse, along with Steve's regular cast of by Don Knotts, Louis Nye, and Bill Dana.

Back in the days when playwrights were actual celebrities, Seán O'Casey was one of the most prominent, having risen to fame primarily as the result of his 1907 play The Playboy of the Western World. I don't know just how entertaining he'd be though, even with Barry Fitzgerald (Going My Way). On the other hand, Tony Martin was always kind of a B-list singer, and I've never been the biggest fan of Juliet Prowse. Eileen Brennan and Mort Sahl offset each other; the verdict: Push.

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Believe it or not, there was once a time when tennis was primarily an amateur sport, and professionals not only were not allowed into the Grand Slam tournaments (Wimbledon, Forest Hills, etc.), they were segregated into their own little touring company.

It's Sunday's CBS Sports Spectacular (2:00 p.m.), and the event comes to us live from the Everglades Club in Palm Beach, Florida. It's all brought to you by former Wimbledon and U.S. champion Jack Kramer, a pioneer in the "open" movement to integrate professionals and amateurs under one banner. Since the 1950's, Kramer has toured the country with his "traveling tennis troupe," featuring Pancho Gonzales, Ken Rosewall, Tony Trabert, Pancho Secura and others. Typically, these would involve head-to-head matches (As seen at right, Kramer himself played former great Bobby Riggs in an 89-match tour, with Kramer winning 69 of them), with a secondary match and a doubles competition on the undercard. On occasion, as is the case in this event, a semi-final match is played the night before, with the winner getting the opportunity to play the leading man, I suppose you'd say, in the final the next day.

Nowadays we'd consider these exhibitions, since the players were generally under contract and guaranteed a set amount of money for the season. There was more than pride at stake, though; as the preeminent player in the world, Gonzales was playing for commercial endorsement money as well, and the more he won, the more his endorsement was worth. There were also tournaments from time to time, and while none of them were as prestigious as, say, Wimbledon, they helped pay the bills.

The idea that the amateur game was as pure as the driven snow was a farce - there were under-the-table payments galore, including appearance fees - and I'm not sure even people in 1960 were naive enough to believe it. Kramer finally won the battle for Open tennis in 1968, which is why the U.S. Championship is now called the U.S. Open. Seeing a listing like this is a real slice of life, though.

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Kathryn and Arthur Murray are hosting a party for Bob Hope on their Tuesday night program. (8:30 p.m., NBC) No offense to Bob, but one of the things I've noticed in looking through these back issues is that whenever a series needs a ratings boost or seemingly has nothing better to offer, they bring in Bob Hope. Honestly, there's no particular reason for this program; Hope hasn't won any awards lately, he isn't celebrating some type of anniversary, and there's no connection I can see to anything else that he might be promoting - his 1960 movie, The Facts of Life (co-starring Lucille Ball) won't be released until November. Well, I'm sure someone had a good reason.

Hope's old sparring partner, Bing Crosby, is on twice this week, both times with Perry Como. At least he's on twice in this issue; his special on ABC, featuring Como and Bing's sons Philip, Dennis and Lindsay, was actually broadcast February 29, but it's being shown this Saturday night at 8:00 p.m. on NBC affiliate WDSM in Duluth. WDSM, along with the rest of the NBC network, will be airing the return broadcast Wednesday night at 8:00 p.m. on Como's Kraft Music Hall*, where they're joined by singer Genevieve and dancer Peter Gennaro.

*Fun fact: from 1936-46, the host of The Kraft Music Hall on radio was none other than Bing Crosby himself. 

New York Philharmonic conductor Leonard Bernstein is also on twice this week; on Sunday afternoon (3:30 p.m.) his CBS special (last in an irregular series sponsored by the Ford Motor Company) illustrates the use of rhythm in the world of music, using the works of Shakespeare and Aaron Copland to illustrate his points. There's an interesting footnote to this; at the conclusion of the program, Joseph N. Welch, the nemesis of Joseph McCarthy, appears in a five-minute "Message for Americans," a feature which appeared in each of the programs in the series. Bernstein, sans Welch, is back on Wednesday night at 6:30 for his Young People's Concert, featuring young performers. Alas, as was the case with the Crosby special above, CBS affiliate WCCO is only now getting around to this broadcast, which was originally carried on March 6. Oh well, better late than never.


We also ought to look at what probably was the funniest program of the week, NBC's Star Parade (Friday, 7:30 p.m.), which this week features "The Victor Borge Show." His guests include Jane Powell, dancers Allegra Kent and Jacques d'Ambroise, and two of his children. I'm betting that if we're not careful, we might also see some of Borge's classic routines, such as Phonetic Punctuation.

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We can't possibly pass up this appraisal by Chuck Connors of his hit series The Rifleman. For a Western whose titular hero does, indeed, carry around a rifle, Connors knows that the real backbone of the show, the element that brings the viewers back each week, is the relationship between his character, Lucas McCain, and McCain's son Mark, played by Johnny Crawford. "Everybody says, 'We like your show because it's a family show.' It's because of the emphasis we try to put on moral values." Killings occur in, Connors estimates, about half of the episodes. "But if you'll notice, the story always turns on the reasons for the violence, usually in the big scene toward the end between Lucas and his son."

And, Connors concedes, that sentimentality "does make the whole thing a little corny. In one script the boy says to me 'You don't like me,' or something like that. Well, instead of beating around the bush or using psychology or anything like that, I just look right at him and say: 'Look, son, I love you!' I love you! Brother, that's corn. That's as pure as they grow it, but that's what people want."

They do indeed, at least the fans of The Rifleman, and they like the corn they're being fed enough to keep the show going for five successful seasons.

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Finally, it's time again for the TV Guide Awards! We've seen this in past years, sometimes with the nominees, sometimes with the winners. In this issue, we have the official final ballot, which you can clip and mail to TV Guide, Box 515, Philadelphia 5, Pa. And although we'll have to wait for another time to find out who came out on top, we do have a bonus: someone in the household of the subscriber to this issue, L.O. Olson of Chisholm, Minnesota, checked their choices for the awards. I don't know why they didn't mail in their ballot but I'm glad they didn't, because it gives us a "you were there" glimpse of what one American family was watching.

Herewith the nominees (the Olson family's choice is listed in CAPS);

Favorite half-hour series:
Father Knows Best
Gunsmoke
Hennesey
The Real McCoys
THE TWILIGHT ZONE

Favorite one-hour-or-longer series:
Bonanza
PERRY MASON
77 Sunset Strip
The Untouchables 
Wagon Train

Best single dramatic program:
CALL ME BACK (Art Carney)
Jebal Deeks (Alec Guinness)
Moon and Sixpence (Laurence Olivier)
Our Town (Art Carney)
Turn of the Screw (Ingrid Bergman)

Best single musical or variety program:
Another Evening with Fred Astaire
FABULOUS FIFTIES
Gene Kelly Show
Meet Cyd Charisse
Tonight with Belafonte

Best news or information program:
CBS Reports
Douglas Edwards with the News
Huntley-Brinkley Report
TODAY
The Twentieth Century

Most popular male personality:
Raymond Burr
Perry Como
Ernie Ford
GARRY MOORE
Jack Paar

Most popular female personality:
Lucille Ball
Donna Reed
Dinah Shore
Ann Sothern
LORETTA YOUNG

The show can be seen on March 25 on NBC, hosted by Robert Young, Fred MacMurray and Nanette Fabray. How will your picks do? How did the Olson family's picks do? You'll just have to wait until next week, when as a bonus I'll present you with the answers. Until then...  TV  

This week in TV Guide: April 13, 1963

He's one of the most influential men of the 20th Century, although most of his damage was done behind the scenes. His fingerprints are all over the concepts of urban development. His battles with mayors, governors and even presidents were legendary, and it was the rare man who didn't succumb to at least a little trembling at the mention of his name. His accomplishments, for good as well as ill, were legion. He's the subject of this week's CBS Reports on Wednesday night: "The Man Who Built New York," Robert Moses, where host Bill Leonard quizzes him on his ideas, his critics and his accomplishments, as well as his reputation as "someone hard to argue with."

If you watched Ric Burns' magnificent documentary New York about 15 years ago, you know the name well, for no discussion of New York City can be had without talking about Robert Moses. He's been called the most polarizing figure in the history of urban planning, and his concepts were a blend of genius and utter contempt. It is Robert Moses who developed the modern superhighway, the spaghetti pattern of on- and off-ramps that often approached art in their intricacy; it is Moses who, with his contempt for mass transit, helped create the modern suburb. Moses designed Jones Beach State Park as a haven for those trying to escape the city, accessible by freeway, and then designed the overpasses low enough that buses couldn't use them, in order to keep the riffraff away. He created landmarks such as the Triborough Bridge, and ordered the destruction of landmarks such as the original Penn Station. He did more than any man since Henry Ford to not only popularize but make essential the automobile, yet he himself did not drive. He tore through neighborhoods to build roads and housing projects, he refused to help Walter O'Malley build a new stadium in Brooklyn to keep the Dodgers but gladly pushed for the construction of Shea Stadium at the site of his 1964 World's Fair. He started out as a reformer and ended by treating "the people" with scorn, while never holding elective office.

Moses was hugely influential in urban planning, and if you look at just about any large urban city in America you'll see his influence. I could see it when I lived in Minneapolis, every time I drove through the slums and run-down areas that lined the freeways - freeways that had been built by tearing down thriving ethnic neighborhoods, replacing them with miles and miles of concrete and fences. The irony is that Moses' creations, designed to alleviate congestion on the roadways, actually wound up causing more congestion; as the roads and bridges went up, they encouraged more and more traffic, often making the projects outdated before they'd even finished.

At the time of this profile, Moses is controversial, but still feared by politicians, and his accomplishments (including that upcoming World's Fair) are generally praised, if sometimes grudgingly. But the tide is turning - the following year, his plan to demolish Greenwich Village in favor of the Mid-Manhattan Expressway is vetoed by city government, and Jane Jacobs takes direct aim at him in her classic book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. But it is probably Robert Caro's massive Pulitzer-winning biography of Moses, The Power Broker, that seals the public's perception of him. Its subtitle is "Robert Moses and the Fall of New York," and it comes at a time when the city is in crisis, when its finances are collapsing, crime is spiraling, subway cars are enveloped by graffiti, and decay is everywhere. This, says Caro, is his legacy; this is the promised land that Moses hath wrought.

By then Moses has fallen from power; Nelson Rockefeller is the first politician - federal, state or local - to outwit the master, and Caro captures perfectly the puzzlement of the man who, oblivious to his own ruthless, bullying legacy, simply can't understand why people don't understand that he did what he had to do - what he knew was best for New York, and for America.

***

April 14 is Easter Sunday and, unlike what we see (or don't see) on television today, the morning is filled with special programming.

Channel 7, WNAC in Boston, presents a program at 9:30am ET on the Shroud of Turin - if that sounds familiar, it's because I also noted it in a TV Guide from 1959. Yep, same program. At 10, WBZ has Our Believing World, a half-hour of sacred music performed by the Boston University Seminary Singers. Also at 10, CBS has Missa Domini, an hour of Easter music by the University Chorale and chamber orchestra of Boston College conducted by C. Alexander Peloquin, including three of Peloquin's own compositions. And as if that weren't enough, the ABC stations in the area have live coverage of the Easter Solemn Pontifical Mass from Holy Cross Cathedral in Boston, celebrated by the renowned Richard Cardinal Cushing, Archbishop of Boston.

But there's more - at 11, NBC has an Easter service from Pleasant Ridge Presbyterian in Cincinnati, and CBS follows with a service from Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. And later in the day Channel 12, WPRO in Providence, has a half-hour of Easter music from the Canticum Glee Club at Brown University and the Lincoln School Glee Club, conducted by Erich Kunzel - who will go on to great fame as conductor of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. There are also musical presentations on ABC's Directions '63 and WBZ's Odyssey program, and at 4:30 Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians are on hand to provide a little popular Easter and spring music.

Finally, at 6:30, it's another of John Secondari's Close-Up! documentaries on ABC, this one on the Vatican. We see the inner workings of Vatican bureaucracy, a session of the Second Vatican Council, and Pope John XXIII at work in his office. In an article that appears elsewhere in the issue, Secondari talks of the profound impression the Pontiff left on everyone involved in producing the program - he asked questions of the sound and cameramen, wondering how their equipment worked, asked about the families of the correspondents, obligingly reread a statement when asked if he could do another take, and engaged in his everyday routine - all along seemingly oblivious to the chaos caused by the crew. "It was not only his appearance of universal grandfather," Secondari writes, "it was the warmth and friendliness which came out to envelop all of us who had invaded what little peace and quite is his." As they wrapped up their work the Pope blessed cameras and crew, remarking, "It is early yet and I have many things to do before I have earned my midday meal."

John XXIII was already dying of stomach cancer when this program was filmed; less than two months after it is aired, on June 3 "Good Pope John" died at the age of 81.

***

In 1963, when someone talks about sports at this time of the year, there can be only one sport: baseball. And on the first weekend of the season, the game is in full swing. You remember last week how I mentioned that the blackout rules of the time prohibited televising major league games into a major league market? Well, it still holds true in '63: NBC's Game of the Week, featuring Cleveland and Detroit, and CBS' Game of the Week between Baltimore and New York, are seen in Portland, Maine, but if you want baseball in Boston you're going to be watching the Red Sox and Washington Senators battle it out at the then-newish District of Columbia Stadium, with the legendary Sox announcing crew of Curt Gowdy and Ned Martin.

On Saturday night ABC's Fight of the Week, in its final season, has a heavyweight bout between #4 condender Cleveland Williams and unranked Ernest Terrell. In an upset, Terrell wins a split decision, and in 1965 he'll win a portion of the heavyweight championship after Muhammad Ali is stripped of the title (for fighting a rematch with former champ Sonny Liston rather than taking on a mandatory #1 contender), holding the title until 1967 when he loses a vicious decision to Ali in a unification bout. Williams, for his part, would also fight Ali for the title, losing via third-round TKO in 1966.

***

The TV Guide Awards are on this week! Before you get too excited, though, the presentation of the awards is only part of Sunday night's Bob Hope special on NBC, much as the Golden Globes used to be nothing more than a segment of the Andy Williams show.

The bowl given to TV Guide Award nominees - this one
to Peter Pan, nominated for Best Dramatic, Musical or
Variety Program.

This is the fourth of the five years that the TV Guide Awards were presented, and I took a closer look at them here. The nominees are an interesting blend of long-running hits, acclaimed but short-lived series, and specials that few people likely saw. For example, there's the "Favorite New Series" category, comprised of McHale's Navy, The Beverly Hillbillies and The Virginian, all of which went on to successful runs, and Stoney Burke and The Eleventh Hour, which found more favor from critics than they did viewers.

In case you're wondering, the winners: Carol Burnett and Richard Chamberlain for Favorite Female and Male Performers; The Beverly Hillbillies for Favorite New Series, Bonanza for Favorite Series, Bob Hope's Christmas Show for the Best Entertainment Program, NBC's special The Tunnel for Best News or Information Program, The Huntley-Brinkley Report for Best News or Information Series, and Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color for Best Children's Series. So what do you think?

***

In preparing the "What's on TV?" feature for this coming Monday, I took a good look at ABC's Thursday night lineup. With one exception, this is a stunning night of television, a veritable who's who* of iconic sitcoms, all of which are deeply ingrained in classic television history.

*I don't know where, but I recall reading once that the only kind of "who's who" is a "veritable" one.

It starts at 7:30pm with The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, which is in its 11th of 14 seasons, and made Ricky Nelson into a teen idol. That's followed at 8:00 by The Donna Reed Show, in its fifth of eight seasons, which helped define the housewife of the late '50s and early '60s. At 8:30 it's Leave It to Beaver, the much-loved show in its sixth and final season, and then at 9:00 My Three Sons, which is probably better-known as a CBS show but spent its first five of 12 seasons on ABC. The sitcom stars conclude at 9:30 with the youngster of the group, McHale's Navy, in its first of (only) four seasons. ABC's schedule concludes at 10:00 with the hour-long drama anthology Alcoa Presents, the most outstanding feature of which is that it was hosted by Fred Astaire, who also occasionally starred in an episode.

I've written before about the Saturday night "Murderer's Row" of CBS shows in the '70s, and the Thursday night "Must See TV" on NBC more recently, but this has to rank as one of the most underrated television lineups of all time.  Every one of those sitcoms is well-remembered and loved, with big-name stars and familiar storylines, and each one of them tells us something important about the America of the '50s and '60s.  If you wanted to learn about those times and were limited to watching just these five sitcoms, you could do a whole lot worse.

***

Here's something we haven't done for awhile - a quick look at the celebrities appearing in this week's game shows. As is generally the case, the celebs are on for the entire week.

Appropriately enough, first up is Your First Impression on NBC, with Steve Dunne, Betty White and Dennis James joining host Bill Leyden. On CBS' Password, Orson Bean and Susan Strasberg are the duelers, with Allen Ludden moderating the fray. That's followed by To Tell the Truth, which this week has Carol Channing, Joan Fontaine, Skitch Henderson and Henry Morgan on the panel, and Bud Collyer behind the host's desk. (From past experience watching game shows, I can assume that Carol Channing was a real pain in the you-know-what.) Finally, the unlikeliest pairing, on NBC's You Don't Say! - Lee Marvin and Beverly Garland, with host Tom Kennedy. The oddity isn't Garland, but Marvin - I don't know about you, but I just can't imagine him on a game show.

In the prime-time shows, the nighttime version of To Tell the Truth has Tom Poston, Peggy Cass, Kitty Carlisle and Sam Levenson, while the nighttime Password has Eydie Gorme and Alan King (who was an excellent player).  The cast of I've Got a Secret isn't listed, but I'd assume it's the regular one - Bill Cullen, Betsy Palmer, Henry Morgan and Bess Myerson, presided over by Garry Moore.  And on the granddaddy of them all, What's My Line? (now in its 14th season!), Phyllis Newman and Richard Boone join regulars Arlene Francis, Bennett Cerf, and host John Daly, and though it wouldn't have been listed in the TV Guide, the Mystery Guest is Jimmy Durante.

***

Finally this week, the essayist Marya Mannes, serving as guest reviewer for the next couple of weeks, has a very funny and yet insightful look at soap operas which, she says, she became addicted to during a recent brief illness. Says Miss Mannes,"They relax the brain, suspend belief and elicit continuous admiration for the expenditure of so much production and acting talent on such unending woe."

Her two favored soaps right now are The Guiding Light and The Edge of Night, with occasional look-ins at As the World Turns and The Secret Storm. In particular, she finds The Edge of Night to be far and away the best, primarily because of its emphasis on law and crime and its use of reason and ingenuity in telling its stories. She finds it, for the most part, free of the "grotesquely lurid" storylines that populate many soaps, and is "refreshing to find the sentiment occasionally leavened with humor, and some indication that the American female exists outside the kitchen."

On the other hand, there's The Guiding Light and the "bovine dumbness" of the Bauer females, which is only partially made-up for by outstanding performances of Barbara Becker as ex-alcoholic Doris Crandall and Phil Sterling as lawyer George Hayes. (I think she's got something for lawyers.) She finds As the World Turns to be "dull but peculiar," describes the two heroines, Penny and Ellen, as "tedious girls," and sees the show as the epitome of what plagues most soap operas: "rampant emotionalism for small reason." I'm going to have to remember that phrase the next time someone asks me to describe the biggest problem with the Internet. In fact, one might consider the following to be a kind of "Everything I Know About Life I Learned From Soap Operas":

• Americans Spend Half Their Time on the Operating Table and the Other Half on the Witness Stand.
• Nothing Exists Outside the Family Unit.
• Women with Aprons Are Good Women; They Drink Coffee Every Two Minutes.
• Bad Women Drink Cocktails and Have Careers.
• Mothers Who Want Their Grown Children to Stay Home Are Good Mothers.
• Good Men Must Be Lawyers, Doctors or Business Executives.
• Nobody Reads Books.
• Divorce Is Unthinkable.
• There Is No Happiness Outside the Home.

That would make a great poster, don't you think? TV  

This week in TV Guide: May 14, 1966

I've made this joke before, but it bears telling again: with Frank Sinatra on the cover, I didn't dare not pick it for this week's review.

Leslie Radditz' article, which accompanies Sinatra's acclaimed NBC special "A Man and His Music" on Sunday, looks at Sinatra at 50.  In many ways, Radditz notes, Sinatra "seems to be reaching new peaks."  He complains about not getting enough sleep, about his current Vegas gig being about two weeks too long, about lousy service in the hotel dining room.  But then, when he gets onstage - well, as Radditz says, "the old excitement is there."  Comments from women in the audience bear this out: "It's the eyeball-to-eyeball contact that gets me," one says.  "I"ll bet there isn't a place in that room where you wouldn't feel he was looking at you."  Adds another, "His animal attraction is amazing."

Sunday's Sinatra special, which originally aired the previous November, bears it out.  It's just an hour of Frank singing - no skits, no forced banter, just Sinatra, with two of his best collaborators, Gordon Jenkins and Nelson Riddle, providing the orchestral backing.  The show's available on DVD, and if you're a Sinatra fan you need to have it.  Looking through some of the songs is like reading the notes on a Greatest Hits album: "I've Got You Under My Skin," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "It Was a Very Good Year," "Young at Heart," "Come Fly with Me," "Lady is a Tramp," "You Make Me Feel So Young," "One For My Baby."  He closes the show with his longtime theme, "Put Your Dreams Away."  "My Way" and "New York, New York"?  He hasn't even recorded those yet.  Yes, Frank Sinatra still has some very good years ahead of him.

Here's a sample of Frank at work:

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No Hollywood Palace this week, preempted by a "Holiday on Ice" show hosted by Milton Berle.  However, that doesn't mean we don't have some variety for you.  Sullivan himself has a reasonably good lineup, headlined by Alan King, Kate Smith, and dancer Peter Gennero.  Frank's Rat Pack pal Dean Martin, on NBC Thursday night, has singers Gisele MacKenzie, Tommy Sands and the McGuire Sisters, comedian Jack Carter, and Sherri Lewis and Lamb Chop.  Red Skelton's Tuesday CBS show features Petula Clark, who was so big back in the early 60s that she's on twice this week - she's also a co-headliner on NBC's Best on Record program, airing Monday night and featuring performances by winners from March's Grammy Awards.

That show in and of itself is interesting.  The listing for it reads "The annual Grammy awards are presented," and mentions that Dinah Shore will be giving the Golden Achievement award to Duke Ellington.  But we know it isn't the awards show itself - that was on March 15, in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Nashville.  So what gives?  Well, believe it or not, the Grammy award ceremony wasn't broadcast live on TV until 1971 - prior to that, a series of annual specials - Best on Record - showcased the winners in the major categories, performing their winning tunes.  It wasn't about the competition; who knows whether or not they named the losing nominees on the show?  It was all about the music.  And in that sense, it's no different than the Grammys today.  Nobody really turns on the show to see the lame jokes from the presenters, the envelope opened, the four losers on screen while the winner tearfully accepts the award.  No - people want the performances, and that's what this show gives them.  Maybe they should consider this format every year?

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If you're a sports fan, there's not much to look forward to this week.  The Dodgers and Pirates meet in NBC's Saturday Game of the Week, and the Twins take on the Yankees in a local broadcast Friday night on Channel 11.  Otherwise you've got swimming, wrestling, bowling, ice-dancing and hydroplane races to look forward to.  Oh, and Sam Snead offers tips on how to avoid sand traps.  Many of the weekly series have started the rerun season, so there's not a lot new there either.  Even the week's biggest show (except for Frank, that is) comes up a cropper.

That's the scheduled launch of Gemini IX, which was slated to take off on Tuesday morning as the second-half of a space doubleheader.  The day was to begin with the launch of an Atlas-Agena target vehicle, followed a little over 90 minutes later by the Gemini launch.  The Gemini, manned by Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan, would then catch up with, rendezvous and dock with the Agena, a crucial component that had to be understood and mastered prior to the forthcoming Apollo flights.

However, as you can see here, the launch of the Agena didn't exactly come off as planned; Mission Control lost contact with the vehicle after the Atlas booster failed, and the Agena plunged into the Atlantic.  The Gemini flight was postponed until the following month, when a replacement vehicle was launched.  Gemini IX finally took off on June 3, and while it didn't quite come off without a hitch, it was still a success.

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A show I might have watched if I'd been older is on NBC Thursday night: A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to the White House, featuring Jack Paar and Tom Lehrer, along with clips of political humor from JFK, FDR, Adlai Stevenson (the author of the quote used as the program's title) and others.  Gifted as some of the show's humorists are, I doubt the program rose to the level of political humor of Mark Russell's political satires.  It's also a bit like showing a history of great home run hitters that was made just before Hank Aaron comes on the scene (or Barry Bonds, if you prefer).  A documentary about political humor that doesn't include Ronald Reagan can't help but be incomplete.

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And now for some British television.

First is Cleveland Amory's review of ABC's The Avengers.  As I recounted last week, it apparently took the British public a while to figure out that The Avengers was a satire, but with the passage of a couple of years, Amory has no such problem - "Each of the episodes we've seen has involved not only individual satires of the old days, but also general satires of modern life."  He likes the show, although he adds that it's "so British you don't have to be British to understand it - but it helps."  I don't really buy that; after all, we appear to have figured out the satire before the Brits.  But he's absolutely on with his take of Diana Rigg, whom he describes as "both pretty and good."

And then there's Robert Musel's (yes, this one's for you, Mike Doran!) profile of "the incorruptible" Patrick McGoohan, star of the decidedly more serious Danger Man or, as it's known in these parts, Secret Agent.  McGoohan hasn't yet ventured into what will become his most famous role, that of Number Six in The Prisoner, but it's not hard to see the genesis of that show as he riffs on his television philosophy.  "Every real hero since Jesus Christ has been moral," he says, a statement that will come as absolutely no surprise to those who've noticed the occasional Messianic parallel in Number Six's actions.  He adds that he will not let John Drake, his character in Danger Man*, do anything he would not do himself.

*And, perhaps, alter ego of Number Six?

SOURCE: HADLEY TV GUIDE COLLECTION

McGoohan's a man who knows what he believes in and isn't afraid to say so.  "When I first started the series," he tells Musel, "they wanted me to carry a gun and have an affair with a different girl in each episode.  I wasn't going to do that. I simply will not appear in anything offensive.  I won't accept bad language or eroticism."  That doesn't mean he's against romance on screen; "Romance is the finest for of entertainment...It's something you create in the mind of the viewer."  Rather, it's his philosophy toward television itself, and its responsibility to the viewer.  "What I object to is promiscuous sex which is anti-romance.  Television is watched by so many people, children and grandmothers among them, that it has a moral obligation to its audience."

McGoohan's a demanding man to work with, but "generally liked by his crew because they recognize him as a professional who could, if he had to, light a set or edit a film or even design a production."  I suspect it also doesn't hurt that he has a clear idea of what he wants in a series.  All in all, we get a picture of a man with an ego, a man with vision and the determination to bring it to fruition, a man with a pure artistic integrity.  It's hard not to respect a man like that.

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Another of the fashion spreads that TV Guide features from time to time, and this week our model is Joan Hackett.  Hackett, a woman of unconventional beauty, has had a pretty good career, winning awards for her work on stage and showing up regularly on a variety of movies and television shows and series.  This article has nothing to do with that, of course; for TV Guide, Hackett makes a perfect model for the English-styled fashions popularized by the ultra-chic New York shop Paraphernalia.

SOURCE: HADLEY TV GUIDE COLLECTION

The store, which opened multiple locations and remained around in one form or another until the late 70s, is quite a story itself.  As for Hackett, her career continues on the upswing, with critical plaudits for the TV adaptation of Mourning Becomes Electra followed by Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for her work in her last movie, Only When I Laugh; in 1983 she will die of ovarian cancer.

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That seems like kind of a down note to end on, so let's take a look at a movie that sounds so awful, you have to smile at it.  It's 1958's Attack of the Puppet People, starring John Hoyt and John Agar (Shirley Temple's first husband; how far we've fallen since then, hmm?), and I swear to you that this is the real description of the movie, which airs on Channel 5 at 12:45am on Saturday night/Sunday morning:  "A toymaker carries his occupation to an extreme.  He shrinks people and locks them in a dollhouse."

Shockingly, the always-reliable Wikipedia says that the movie, which was shot under the working title The Fantastic Puppet People,  "has had a generally poor reception amongst critics."  It was rushed into production to capitalize on the recent popularity of The Incredible Shrinking Man, but something tells me that no amount of time would have helped this flick out. Perhaps it makes more sense with three silhouettes on the bottom of the screen. TV