Unfortunately, we don't get nearly enough of Jeannie in this feature, which is about the show's transition from last season's black and white episodes to this year, in which she appears in living color. (On the other hand, Jeannie in color has to be good news no matter how one looks at it.) But it's an interesting story, because it presents a situation that we don't think about all that often: the series that started out in B&W and then made the switch to color. For some longer-running shows, this was kind of a downgrade; I don't think anyone would argue that The Fugitive and Combat! were better in color; monochrome was particularly effective in transmitting the grittiness and darkness in these shows, not to mention that "exterior" scenes shot in a studio are usually a little easier to disguise in black and white. There are some who would even make the case that a show like The Wild Wild West benefitted from black and white; it toned down the surreality of the steampunk devices utilized throughout the show's history, and made the show a little more grounded.
On the other hand, I don't know that there's any particular disadvantage to a show such as I Dream of Jeannie being shot in color, particularly since the show's designers really knew how to take advantage of it. This week's story details how the show's special effects man, Dick Albain, along with his five assistants, "spent weeks inventing a process to create a cloudy effect which would seemingly waft the beautiful Barbara across TV screens." The effect was eventually achieved through a combination of dry ice, steam, mirrors, and a system of colored lights. "We manufactured different colors of smoke, all traveling as in a Frankenstein marsh scene," Albain explains. "The idea was to show the viewers that Jeannie is going from one scene to another."
On the other hand, I don't know that there's any particular disadvantage to a show such as I Dream of Jeannie being shot in color, particularly since the show's designers really knew how to take advantage of it. This week's story details how the show's special effects man, Dick Albain, along with his five assistants, "spent weeks inventing a process to create a cloudy effect which would seemingly waft the beautiful Barbara across TV screens." The effect was eventually achieved through a combination of dry ice, steam, mirrors, and a system of colored lights. "We manufactured different colors of smoke, all traveling as in a Frankenstein marsh scene," Albain explains. "The idea was to show the viewers that Jeannie is going from one scene to another."
These kinds of detail are, I suppose, things that one doesn't ordinarily consider when looking at the effort required to transition a show to color. Of course, even in those monochrome days, the colors used in sets and costumes was an important consideration, given that certain colors transmit off a different look or in black and white. (Case in point: the pink interior of the Addams Family living room.) And when you consider the vividness of the potential color in a Jeannie episode, it's easy to understand how both the "All Color Network" and the show's producers would want to exploit it to its utmost.
Eden says that shooting with the new effects is "like being in a beautiful fairyland, among the mirrors, smoke and lights. The smoke is my traveling music." That's not to say that it's all good news on the set, though. She also concedes that it gets pretty hot after a couple of hours with those colored lights. "Not only that, but my expensive silk-chiffon pants shrank." Oh dear.
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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..Sullivan: Scheduled guests: Ethel Merman; the rock ‘n’ rolling Supremes; Frank Fontaine; Allen Funt, who shows films of Ed’s appearance in “Candid Camera’; pianist Peter Nero; comics Nipsey Russell and Steve Rossi; dancer Peter Gennaro; the comic Uncalled for Three; and baseball greats Rube Marquard, Lefty O’Doul and Fred Snodgrass. (The Sullivan online listings omit Funt, Gennaro, and the baseball greats.)
Palace: Phil Silvers, making his debut as a Palace host, introduces singers Polly Bergen, Sergio Franchi and the folk-rocking Lovin’ Spoonful; and the comedy team of Carl Reiner and "2000-year-old man" Mel Brooks. Also on the bill: sword-swallower Tagora, and Mr. and Mrs. Bob Top, who roller-skate on a 60-foot-high platform.
This week's choice really depends on what you're looking for. If comedy's your thing, then Silvers, Reiner and Brooks are very, very hard to beat. On the other hand, if it's music, then you might lean toward the Supremes, Peter Nero, and the Merm as your pick. As befits an early-season matchup, they're both strong lineups, and consequently, you shouldn't be surprised that I'm begging off on taking a stand. This week is a Push.
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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era. Every once in a while, Our Man Cleve punts on reviewing a specific program in favor of taking on an entire genre. This is one of those weeks, as Cleve shares with us a few thoughts on sports before taking up the new season's shows.
As Amory perceptively observes, "Many people originally started their TViewing with sports." Think about it: what are your early television memories? Mine are almost exclusively sports, and it's not just because it's easier to identfy such events by titles, such as an all-star game, World Series, or Super Bowl. And, in fact, there has never been a time in the medium's history when sports hasn't been a main part of the draw: wrestling, boxing, even, as Amory points out, roller derby. They were easy to cover, operating in essentially a self-contained studio, and they had a ready-made audience. However, nowadays sports has become such a big part of TV that "the chief danger now is that TV’s going to take over sports altogether—and even change our sports seasons." Have truer words ever been spoken?
By and large, television has done right by its expanded coverage, particularly when it comes to golf, "a sport you would hardly consider a spectator one to begin with." The recent introduction of instant replay and stop-action tapes has been "outstanding"; "Miserable as they may be for umpires, they are terrific for viewers, particularly on such a fine show as the weekly Major League Baseball." However, there's one trend that Cleve is apprehensive about, and that's that announcers for local games are hired "with the approval of the major-league teams and paid by the teams or the TV sponsors." Regardless of how these announcers go about their jobs (and, Amory notes, the vast majority "lean over backwards to be fair to their team's opponents"), it is the appearance that matters, and here the look is not a good one; announcers should be free from the suspicion such controls create; better yet, they "should be free of such control."
I wonder what Amory would think about today's televised sports, where entire networks (looking at you, ESPN) are owned or about to be owned in part by one of the leagues whose games it covers. It raises concerns about the objectivity of those in the business, whether they're announcing the games or, in the case of a network like ESPN, the network itself presumes to style itself as a news-reporting outlet. In so doing, it creates a situation which even a forward-looking critic such as Cleveland Amory might have had trouble anticipating. And, as is so often the case, it creates a situation where nobody knows how it ends. That's not the kind of drama we look for from sports on television.
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*What's perhaps most surprising about this to modern eyes is that the NFL was trounced in the ratings by NBC's coverage of the Miss America Pageant. Today, that pageant barely exists as an entity, let alone a TV behemoth, while the NFL just purchased 10 percent of ESPN, and even owns a share of CBS.
For contrast—and admit it, you knew this was coming—let's take a look at sports on television for the weekend of September 6 and 7 of this year. As was the case back in 1966, the offerings included the men's and women's finals of U.S. Open tennis, and there's baseball and football. Specifically, there's a lot of football; setting aside for the moment the myriad options offered by streaming services and league-operated networks, the average viewer could choose from a single college football game on CBS and NBC each, two on Fox, three each on ABC and the CW, and literally dozens more on cable. There was also time for Saturday night baseball on Fox, plus soccer (both professional and college, volleyball, and other marginal sports. Sunday was, not surprisingly, dominated by pro football, with at least three NFL games to choose from on Sunday afternoon between Fox and CBS, plus one on NBC Sunday night (and an additional game on Monday night on ABC, for those counting). There was also NASCAR and Formula 1 auto racing, men's and women's soccer, along with regional baseball for those with local teams.
In other words, if one were to include streaming sports from around the world, a viewer could literally go from the NFL game on Friday on YouTube clear through to late Sunday night watching nothing but sports. Even with those having nothing other than an antenna (the most like-for-like comparison with 1966), one could easily go from noon to midnight both Saturday and Sunday with sports as a constant presence. With the amount of money networks spend for the rights to telecast sports—an amount in the billions of dollars—one has to ask if sports have taken over television, or if television has taken over sports. It is, to be sure, a mutually agreeable situation for both, and not a bad deal for the fans, either.
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The first month or so of a new season is often rife with big names, specials, and blockbusters of one kind or another, and this week is no exception. The highlights begin, appropriately enough, on Saturday, with the first of ten original musicals on The Jackie Gleason Show (7:30 p.m., CBS). Tonight's presentation, "The Politician," stars Gleason as Big Jim Finley, a machine politician running for re-election as mayor against an opponent, Frank Meriweather who is everything Finney isn't: astronaut, veteran, and movie star. Elliot Reid is Meriweather, and Art Carney, the indispensable man, plays Finley's advisor. I think many of us are familiar with Gleason's later Honeymooners musicals, but this is something I wasn't familiar with. Later, on David Susskind's Play of the Week (9:00 p.m., KQED), it's "A Cool Wind Over the Living," with Diana Hyland and James Patterson as two young people pondering their lives while attempting to gas themselves to death—even though they haven't paid their bill and the gas company has shut off the service. Not quite the network fare you'd see today.
On Monday, the great Stan Freberg makes a rare television appearance on The Monkees (7:30 p.m., NBC), in an episode where the boys try to get regular jobs in order to pay the rent, but Peter has to deal with a computer aptitude test. In local movies, the sinking of the Titanic, which had faded in memory after two World Wars, first returned to the public consciousness in the movie of the same name (9:30 p.m., KSBW in Salinas), with Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck, and Robert Wagner. Don't mistake this for the more recent Titanic movie, which might be more spectacular, but this fictional story of the great ship's foundering, which was my introduction to a lifelong interest in the Titanic, tells a pretty good story on its own. And Johnny Carson welcomes a couple of heavyweight guests to The Tonight Show (11:15 p.m., NBC) in Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Bob Hope.
Boris Karloff makes a delightful appearance on The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (Tuesday, 7:30 p.m., NBC), dressed for the role of "Mother Muffin" a kindly old woman who also runs an assassination academy. Bruce Gordon, whom we all know and love as Frank Nitti on The Untouchables, guest stars as gangster Vito Pomade, and don't even begin to ask how he fits into the story. The night's rounded off by a couple of serious-minded programs: a CBS Reports look at "Black Power—White Backlash" (10:00 p.m.), documenting the mounting white concern about the rise of the civil rights movement in the North. On NET, Open Mind (10:00 p.m.) features an interview with the provocative media critic Marshall McLuhan, who discusses some of his theories on the effect of media on man’s consciousness.
On Thursday, it's the fourth and final episode of The Tammy Grimes Show (8:30 p.m., ABC), so if you've been thinking about checking out this much-maligned show (and I don't know why you would), here's your last chance. At the time, it was almost unheard-of for a series to be cancelled this quickly; obviously, things have changed a bit since then. An eponymous show of a slightly more successful bent is The Dean Martin Show (10:00 p.m., NBC), and Deano's got a star-studded lineup tonight, with Duke Ellington and his rhythm section, the Andrews Sisters, Frank Gorshin, Tim Conway, and Lainie Kazan.
Friday night, it's a rare NFL weeknight matchup, with the San Francisco 49ers taking on the Los Angeles Rams from the Los Angeles Coliseum (8:00 p.m., KTVU); due to the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, the game is limited to coverage by local stations. As I recall, the scheduling was due to a stadium conflict with USC, but I could be mistaken on that. And on the short-lived—although not as short-lived as Tammy Grimes—Milton Berle Show (9:00 p.m., ABC), Uncle Miltie welcomes Forrest Tucker, Larry Storch, and Ken Berry from the network's F Troop, plus singer Donna Loren and Johnny Puleo and the Harmonica Rascals. Oh, and I almost forgot: Bob Hope, too. Remember how a week or two ago I said something about Bob Hope never meeting a show he wasn't willing to appear on? I swear, he must have had a standing agreement that any program needing a guest star had to give him first dibs. There was a reason why Hope was a big star, though.
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