This week's opening salvo comes from Cult TV Blog, where John's review of the actress Patricia Hayes continues with some of her comedic work from the 1960s and 1970s, which gives us a great look at the versatility of her roles.
Earlier this week, you hopefully read my interview with David Hofstede regarding the second edition of his wonderful book, When Television Brought Us Together. At Comfort TV, David continues with his behind-the-scenes look at how, and why, this updated version came to be. Consider it a cautionary but ultimately victorious tale.
At Cult TV Lounge, dfordoom reviews David McDaniel's novel Who is Number 2, the second original novel based on the series The Prisoner. I happen to own this book myself and, in fact, was looking at it earlier this week. It's a lot of fun, and I'll leave it to you as to whether or not it should be considered part of the canon.
Time now for a quick trip to the radio side of the dial, where Martin Grams looks at the lost radio adventures of Renfrew of the Mounted, the 1939-40 radio adventure program. Sadly, fewer than a half-dozen of these episodes are known to exist, so Martin shares some of the plot summaries from those missing episodes.
The actress Anjanette Comer died in May of this year, at age 86. We're only now finding out about that, and at A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence catches up with an appreciation of the many television and movie credits of this talented and lovely actress during her long and varied career.
Here's a neat reminder of something I used to see all the time when I was growing up: a product sweepstakes tied to a television series. In this case, it's a 1966 ad for Gleem Toothpaste's Batman Sweepstakes that appeared in TV Guide. First prize: a cool $50,000, and I wonder what that would be today?
And to close things out, this week "Wheel of Fortune" refers to our latest episode of The A-Team at The View from the Junkyard, one in which one of our heroes, Murdock, appears on an episode of the game show: Wheel of Fortune. Don't you just love it when television goes meta? TV
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Wt Cult TV Blog John leads off the week with a very interesting comparison between the 1967 Avengers episode "Never, Never Say Die" and the 1967 movie Night of the Big Heat, which was later released here with the evocative title Island of the Burning Damned.) Is he right or wrong? Check it out.
At RealWeegieMidget, Gill is back with a look at three neo-noirs from the 1960s, all of which center around "a character duped by another character,' which is a specialty of the noir genre if ever there was one: Mississippi Mermaid, Seance on a Wet Afternoon, and Diabolically Yours. Highly recommended.
I don't know when we'll reach the end of The A-Team at The View from the Junkyard, but until that happens, we'll have Roger's review of the latest, which this week happens to have the unfortunate (for me, at least) title "The Road to Hope." And I have a feeling it's not Bob we're talking about.
The feature film based on the 1960s version of Batman came out 60 years ago this week, which doesn't seem possible, but it is! And at A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence has a fond look back at a very fun movie. He also has a fond remembrance of the lovely Antoinette Bower, who lit up the screen in every movie and television show she ever appeared in, who died earlier this year at the age of 93.
Finally, Martin Grams has another of those great tie-in products that were so in vogue in the 1950s, this one a children's coloring book featuring the one and only Hopalong Cassidy. Check it out while you can! TV
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This week's Teletype brings us some news on upcoming projects hoping to make it to the fall schedule. As usual, these items are hit-and-miss, usually miss. For instance. James Farentino and Fabian are part of a proposed series called Sullivan's Place, "about three brothers who search for their missing father (Sullivan) and in the meantime run his trading post on the Amazon River." We're also told that ABC has a possible winner called Silver Springs, starring Kevin Brodie as a youngster who befriends a mermaid, played by Jeri-Lynne Fraser, and there's a pilot in the works for Li'l Abner, featuring Robert Reed as Henry Cabbage Cod. The show didn't make it, but Reed would be back two years later, in The Brady Bunch.*
*Reed was said to be the second choice for the show, after Gene Hackman turned it down. Imagine it for a moment: Mike Brady hunting down the French Connection. Kinda makes you pause, doesn't it?
On the other hand, ABC also has a pilot in the works for a series called The Time Tunnel, starring James Darren and Robert Colbert. That one absolutely did make it, along with its two stars. Also successful was Truman Capote's upcoming adaptation of his short story A Christmas Memory, which wins an Emmy.
Oh, one more thing. King Features Syndicate is hoping to convert the animated Mandrake the Magician into a live-action series made in England. It never came to pass, but in 1979 a made-for-TV version of Mandrake did appear on NBC. It didn't do very well; the critic for The New York Times said that "viewers can try a magic trick of their own. By turning the dial, they can make Mandrake disappear." The plot involves Mandrake coming to the aid of an amusement park owner being terrorized by a psychopath. The owner of the park? None other than Robert Reed.
Palace: Song-and-dance man Donald O'Connor introduces actor Edward G. Robinson, who reads an excerpt from Aaron Copland’s "A Lincoln Portrait"; pianist Roger Williams; singers Jane Morgan and Paul Anka; comedian Shecky Greene; and two acrobatic acts: the Three Bragazzis and the See Hee Troupe of Formosa.
It's dueling tributes to Abraham Lincoln this week; while Eddie G recites "A Lincoln Portrait" on Palace, Sullivan has Hal Holbrook reading Lincoln's second Inaugural Address, the famous "With Malice Toward None" speech. (I wonder if youngsters today even know who Lincoln was?) And while Palace has a fine lineup overall, I'm afraid the Merm and the Stones make it very difficult to go any other way. This week, Sullivan is presidential in the win.
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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.
Nowadays, Cleveland Amory says, "we not only have good guys and bad guys, we also have bat guys." And if that isn't a tip that this week's review is of ABC's new sensation, Batman, I don't know what else I can do. And Cleve seems not quite sure what to do about Batman, either. "It is, after all, trying to be all things to all men. Still, it is the season’s most talked about offering. Children, bless their evil little hearts, are apparently supposed to take it at face value, while us old folks are supposed to like it because it’s so far “out” it’s “in,” and also—sort of the way we go to bat for old movies—for its nostalgic value."
The show's strengths are obvious: it is, says Amory, "technically superior" to any of the Bond imitators currently on television: in color, pace, and direction. The technology is ingenious, "all the way from the batmobile to the batzooka and the batarang (boomerang, of course. Are you OK in the belfry?)." The writing is also superior, guaranteed to appeal to both young and old, and the off-screen announcer ("What foul trickery are the fiendish Riddler and his evil Molehill Mob up to now?" and "Oh, the irony of it! The horror!") adds to the fun.
You'll recall, however, that I mentioned Cleve didn't know quite what to make of it all, which suggests that, after all this praise, there has to be a downside. And that would be the acting. "Adam West may be excused by the fact that it isn’t easy to be convincing as millionaire Bruce Wayne and Batman—and at the same time convince half the viewers you’re for real and the other half you’re for fun." No such excuses exist for Burt Ward as the Boy Wonder, who has a far easier role and "is far less easy to excuse." Neil Hamilton, as Commissioner Gordon, and Madge Blake, as Aunt Harriet, are old pros who help bolster the show. And then there are the guest villains, "possibly the best thing about this show." Amory thinks that Frank Gorshin plays The Riddler "as if he had done one too many impersonations," but Burgess Meredith is "superb" as The Penguin, and the other various villains are in fine form. That leaves but one concern in Amory's eyes: TV executive Hubbell Robinson said that the history of television could be written as, "What's New, Copycat?" "If this is so, can’t you just see those "creators" at CBS and NBC now that the word has gone out? Not just copycat, of course—but copybat."
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Something you don't much see anymore is the telethon. While Jerry Lewis' Labor Day extravaganza was the best-known, there were others, both nationally and locally, throughout the first few decades of television, and we get an example of the latter on Saturday, with the start of the March of Dimes Telethon, live from the California State Fair Grounds in Sacramento (11:00 p.m., KCRA). The show, which runs until 4:00 p.m. Sunday, boasts quite the lineup, including James Drury (The Virginian); Michael Landon (Bonanza); Philip Carey, Peter Brown and William Smith (Laredo); Ed Ames and Patricia Blair (Daniel Boone); Bill Burrud (Traventure Theatre); and Jackie Coogan, state chairman, and Brenda Benet, teen-age chairman, March of Dimes Foundation.
I've never been ashamed of admitting that I enjoy Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, despite the show's descent (no pun intended) into fantasy and monster horror after a first season that was mostly dedicated to Cold War drama. Sunday presents a typical episode that's sure to give you that sinking feeling, as the crew of the Seaview go back in time and find themselves victims of a pirate curse, with Albert Salmi as the chief pirate. Aargh, me buccos (7:30 p.m., ABC).
Monday gives us plenty of entertainment, beginning with The Andy Williams Show (9:00 p.m., NBC), and the guest lineup is a singular testament to how agents jockey to get billing for their clients. The show "stars" singer Nancy Wilson, with "special guests" Peter, Paul and Mary, and "added attraction" Bob Newhart. I'd like to think this is all tongue-in-cheek, but one can never know. That's followed by Gene Kelly's song-and-dance tribute to New York, New York (10:00 p.m., CBS). The city's legendary landmarks form the backdrop for performances by Woody Allen, Tommy Steele, singer Damita Jo, and dancer Gower Champion. (No word on whether they were all guest stars or if some were special featured added attractions.) Kelly himself is responsible for the choreography.
How times have changed: CBS Reports takes an in-depth look at "The Divorce Dilemma" (Tuesday, 10:00 p.m.), described as "one of the major social problems in the U.S., where one out of every four marriages will end in the courts." The current divorce rate is about 40 percent, which is actually down from the commonly-cited 50 percent rate in the 1980s. Part of the reason for that, of course, is that there are fewer marriages in the first place. The program, hosted by Walter Cronkite, also takes a look at the rising trend toward "no-fault" divorce in some states, as opposed to New York state, where adultery is the only ground.
Bob Hope is back with one of his comedy specials on Wednesday, with an all-star lineup that includes Martha Raye, just back from entertaining the troops in her own tour of Vietnam; the Righteous Brothers, Jill St. John, and "special guest" Danny Thomas. (9:00 p.m., NBC) You can get a double-dose of the lovely Miss St. John, as she's also on The Big Valley (9:00 p.m., ABC), as "Barbary Red," a waterfront saloonkeeper who plays a role in Nick (Peter Breck) being drugged and kidnapped. George Kennedy and John Hoyt are part of the conspiracy.
A fascinating time-capsule episode of David Susskind's Open End (Thursday, 9:00 p.m., KVIE), where Gore Vidal and Washington columnist Max Freedman discuss "Is There a White House in Robert Kennedy's Future?" The speculation centers on the 1972 presidential election; in February of 1966, the assumption is, of course, that President Johnson will routinely be nominated for a second full term. And that's the power that history has to crush those who become caught it its trap; scarcely two years later, Johnson will have announced that he's not running for reelection, and Robert Kennedy will be dead.
One of the main reasons that Johnson and Kennedy find themselves caught in that trap can be seen on Friday, in an NBC special report on the Vietnam crisis (7:30 p.m.), with David Brinkley, Elie Abel, and Sander Vanocur reporting on the peace conference in Geneva, Switzerland. And on a lighter note, Carol Channing hosts her first television special, appropriately called, An Evening with Carol Channing (8:30 p.m., CBS), with George Burns and David McCallum guesting, and Carol performing songs from some of her Broadway hits, including "Hello, Dolly."
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Care for a starlet? How about two? Neither are exactly unknown; each is a regular on a current show. First up is Debbie Watson, 16-years-old and the titular star of ABC's sitcom Tammy. It's a role that's been played on the big screen by Debbie Reynolds and Sandra Dee, but, says Jane Wilkie, Debbie Watson hasn't let it all go to her head.
Not that people haven't been waiting for it to happen. Debbie started out in the Long Beach Community Playhouse, appearing in Bye Bye Birdie and Brigadoon, and from there graduated to Karen, the only segment of NBC's ill-fated 90 Bristol Court to survive the entire season. There was no second season for Karen, but Debbie had another gig waiting for her. It's been bittersweet for her parents; while they're proud of her, mom Kittie has to accompany her on the one-hour drive to the studio (due to her age), where Debbie alternates between acting and attending school on the lot, while her mother literally has nothing to do. And after a long day, and a longer drive home, there's dad Eugene, home from work and waiting for his dinner, joined occasionally by Debbie's dates, "who are also waiting."
It seems to work, and Debbie takes it all in stride, but, as Wilkie writes, "there has been a change, subtle and unsettling. It is not easy for a parent to tell any 16-year-old what to do; it is an age of emerging independence, and this is compounded when the daughter is working at a full-time job in a world completely alien to her parents and earning more each week than most adults do in a month." It's not easy, and Debbie herself knows what she's missing at Buena Park High School (she continues to hang out with her friends, who look to "mature" Debbie for advice). On the other hand, a couple of months ago she became engaged to 21-year-old Richard Orshoff, a student at USC.
What lies ahead for Debbie Watson? Wilkie cynically speculates on when Debbie eventually moves into her own apartment, closer to the studio, and "the cynics say the apartment will be in posh Bel-Air, that Debbie will soon drip with sables and eventually will even hire a press agent. And Kittie and Eugene Watson, although they will not admit it, must have some second thoughts." In fact, Tammy, like Karen, runs for only one season; Watson continues her acting career until 1971, including taking on the role of Marilyn Munster in the movie Munster, Go Home! in 1966. She married young Richard Orshoff later in 1966. She's still with us, at age 77; according to Wikipedia, so is Richard. And later this year, they will have been married for 60 years.
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I mentioned another starlet this week, and that's Nina Wayne, who can be seen in NBC's sitcom Camp Runamuck, and who is the younger sister of Carol Wayne, the Tea-Time Lady on the Art Fern skits that Johnny Carson does. The Wayne sisters began their career as figure skaters with the Ice Capades. It's interesting that when you watch the footage of Carol's first appearance on The Tonight Show, Johnny mentions that her sister has been on the show several times in the past, so at this point Nina is probably the better-known of the two.
And there's good reason for her to be known here, with this display of the latest in terrycloth fashions. It's a pleasant thought on these cold winter days.
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MST3K alert: The Leech Woman(1959) Bay Area TV Debut. A woman discovers that she is to be the guinea pig for her husband’s weird experiments. Coleen Gray, Grant Williams, Gloria Talbott, Philip Terry. (Wednesday, 5:00 p.m., KGO in San Francisco). As Crow has said many, many times, this really isn't a very good movie, although Grant Williams is fine. And this isn't the only time you'll see him this week; he's also in the much-better movie, The Incredible Shrinking Man, 90 minutes earlier, on KHSL. TV
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It's been awhile, but at Cult TV Blog, John returns to the world of The Prisoner with his continuing series in which he looks at various interpretations of the series. This week, it's a very interesting look at The Prisoner as an allegory of the Soviet Union.
Captain Video continues his own series, in which we look at various comic adaptations of the pilot for Space: 1999. Compare and contrast with last week's edition, which did a much more complete job with the same episode.
Speaking of comic book adaptations, at bare•bones e-zine, Jack and Peter continue their survey of DC's 1960s Batman comics. You can certainly see the resemblance between the TV series and the comics from the late 60s, and don't worry: Batgirl is there too!
At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence pays tribute to Dame Patricia Routledge, who died last week at 96; best-known for the British classic Keeping Up Appearances, she had a long and varied career in both television and movies, including To Sir, With Love and If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium.
At Classic Film & TV Corner, Maddie revisits one of Kurosawa's great films, Stray Dogs, starring the incomparable Toshiro Minfue and Takashi Shimura; I mention this as a happy reminder of when we subscribed to the Criterion Channel, and got to discover the gems in Japanese noir.
The View from the Junkyard takes on politics in The A-Team episode "The White Ballot," and as Roger points out, the episode gives us some insight into political corruption; I particularly like the idea of returning to the days of tar and feathers, myself.
At The Lucky Strike Papers, Andrew has some thoughts on recent interviews with Rob Reiner, as it relates to early television. In particular, he talked about how his family bought their first set so they could see father Carl on Saturday night's Your Show of Shows. What a radical change TV was.
Finally at Television Obscurities, Robert has a brief clip from CBS from an undetermined date, at a time when they were promoting themselves as "America’s No. 1 Network for 17 Years In A Row." I wonder where today's top shows, whatever they are, would fit in those rankings; probably right at the top. TV
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Xt bare-bones e-zine, Jack's Hitchcock Project continues with the second te,leplay from the team of Albert E. Lewin and Burt Styler, "Craig's Will," a rare Hitchcock comedy, with a fitting cast including Dick Van Dyke and Stella Stevens.
If you've been reading along, you know that David's been going through prime-timebib television of the 1970s at Comfort TV, to see "if it's possible to watch at least one episode" from every series. Well, you can cross off another series, with the discovery of an episode from The Chicago Teddy Bears. Remember that series?
At Realweegiemidget, Gill looks at that rare breed of TV-movie that acts as an anthology, with separate segments (think Trilogy of Terrorfor example). Rex Harrison Presents Stories of Love was a pilot for an unsold TV series, with a cast including Agnes Moorehead, Bill Bixby, Leonard Nimoy, and Juliet Mills.
John returns to the British anthology series Armchair Theatre (I always enjoy typing that name), and the offbeat "A Bit of a Lift," deeply flawed but still worth watching (isn't that the way with most TV, though?), and including casual sex, rape, thoughts of suicide, and more. What else do you need?
Combine the words "retro" and "TV," and you're likely to get my attention. That's what happens at Silver Scenes, where the Metzingers report on the new FAST channel PBS Retro, featuring 1970s, 80s, and 90s shows, mostly from the network's inventory of children's programming.
I've long-ago given up on the new version of Doctor Who, but I'm still a fan of the original. (Why else would I have shelled out big bucks recently for personally autographed pictures of Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy?), So you'll want to read Mike's review at A View from the Junkyard, aof the new colorized version of "The Daleks."
As good as Alex Trebek was, Art Fleming has always been my host of Jeopardy!, and if that makes me old, bite me! On this 100th anniversary of Fleming's birth, Travanche looks back on Fleming's career, and how it lead to the Jeopardy! podium.
One of these days I'll get back to watching Maverick (I've only made it through season one so far), but at Television's New Frontier: The 1960s, we're up to 1962, the fifth and final season of the show, with Jack Kelly carrying on as the sole Maverick brother.
Martin Grams has an interesting little article on the "lost" Batman episode featuring the villain Two-Face, which was written by Harlan Ellison and would have been part of the show's third season until it was cancelled; reportedly, Two-Face would have been played by Clint Eastwood.
I've written about Lawrence Welk several times, including just a couple of years ago, and that's also Paul's subject at Drunk TV. Paul calls himself "a born-again Welk-oholic," and looks at how the show offers a glimpse into a long-gone past.
I've had some really interesting comments the last week or two, and if you've left one of them and you're hoping I'm not ignoring you, I'm not—it's just that between a busy schedule and a bout of lethargy, I've fallen behind again. Hang on, I'll get to you! TV
We've read so many articles in the pages of TV Guide about the future of pay-TV, it's hard to keep track of them. It always seems to be just over the horizon, waiting for whatever it is that is sure to unlock its potential. And now, in this week's As We See It, we learn that pay television is dead.
The editors take no pleasure in writing this, for it's clear that commercial, over-the-air television could use some competition to force it to provide a greater variety of programming, and pay-TV has always promised big movies, sporting events, and cultural fare. But it's been tried, over the years, in city after city, and in each and every case it has failed. It became evident, say the editors, that pay-TV viewers weren't interested in "but movies and the most important sporting events"
After all, educational television now answers the call for lectures, symphonies, and cultural programming. Furthermore, "[n]o one needs a pay-television system for sports any more. There may be a couple of big events a year that aren’t on free television." And as for movies, "ABC and CBS have just contracted for another $92.3 million worth of them. That just about clears the vaults of movies that haven’t been offered to free television." The conclusion: "There may have been a reason for pay television once, but not now. It’s all over."
We have to make some allowances here for the idea that pay-TV often was used to describe what would later be referred to as pay-per-view. And if you want to limit it to that, then the editors were mostly right; more on that in a minute. If, however, you take the term "pay-TV" literally—as in "TV you pay to watch"—then the editors were way off the mark. Pay-TV, not only in the form of HBO but in cable (and later streaming) packages, has come to define television—so much so that free television came to be seen as an anachronism. "Prestige television" was almost exclusively seen on services we paid to watch, cable and streaming shows dominated the Emmys, and every time we turned around, another studio was starting up its own streaming service. And as for public television answering the call for cultural and educational programming—that was a laugh.
Now, however, things have changed again, leaving television in a state of what could charitably be called "flux." Cable-TV is on the verge (so we're told) of total collapse, while streaming hasn't taken off as predicted. And while many people still watch their local stations via antennas, "FAST" (Free Ad-Supported Television) services such as Pluto, Roku, Tubi, Xumo, and the like are what many people mean when they talk about free television.
Which brings us back to that pay-per-view discussion I started a couple of paragraphs ago. Contrary to what the editors thought, PPV did survive, but it was—and continues to be—driven mostly by sports. Many media analysts say that many of those who continue to subscribe to cable TV do so in order to watch sports. Streamers, from Amazon to Apple to WB-Discovery, look to sports to add the value they need to continue. Virtually all of the top 100 programs on television the past season were sports, mostly football. Sports is the only type of programming that is consumed live anymore; virtually everything else is on-demand, a term that would have utterly thrown the editors back in 1966. I'm watching a football game right now as I write this.
"No one needs a pay-television system for sports any more," the editors wrote. And yet today the only league that continues to broadcast the majority of its games on free television is the NFL. The college football playoffs are on cable. The World Series may be on Fox, but the majority of playoff games are not; neither are those in hockey and basketball, and college basketball's Final Four is on cable every other year. It's almost easier to list the major sporting events that aren't on pay-TV. (Well, that might be an exaggeration, but only slightly.)
The whole thing is kind of hard to summarize. The editors were way off-the-mark in predicting that pay-TV was dead. They were, kind-of, correct in thinking that pay-per-view wasn't the answer. And they were absolutely right in their assessment that sports would drive pay-TV, although they were wrong in thinking that major sporting events wouldn't migrate to pay-TV. It's easy to see that, almost 60 years later. Nowadays, you'd be a fool to predict what the television landscape will look like 60 days from now.
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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: Ed's guests are George Jessel; rock 'n' rollers James Brown and Nancy Sinatra; "singing" grandmother Elva Miller; comedians Arthur Hynes and Rich Little; and the tumbling Rudas Dancers.
Palace: Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass host this week, with comedian Shelley Berman; French vocalist Gilbert Becaud; the rock ‘n’ rolling Supremes; Ullett and Hendra, comedy team; the Sorreletis, musical-comedy quartet; and the Santos, low-wire act.
I'm not positive, but this could be the only time we ever see James Brown and Nancy Sinatra mentioned in the same sentence as performers in the same genre. I just never thought of them that way; no imagination, I guess. Anyway, when you have hosts like Herb Alpert and the TJB, you can bet they're going to be the featured act of the night, and such is the case, as they perform their hits, including "The Lonely Bull," "Zorba the Greek," "Mame," "Spanish Flea," "Whipped Cream," "A Taste of Honey," and "The Mexican Shuffle Work Song." No one else on either show can match that, and when you throw in the Supremes, singing "Somewhere" and "Keep Me Hanging On," that pretty much settles things. This week, Palace hits the high notes.
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Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever we get the chance, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era.
The Time Tunnel, ABC's new sci-fi adventure series, aims to take us back to the Good Old Days, says Cleveland Amory. "You remember those carefree happy times—Dunkirk, Appomattox, Valley Forge . . ." And Cleve really liked—well, the first scene of the very first episode was terrific. We got to see a U.S. senator whisked from the desert to a huge underground lab where 12,000 people, including Whit Bissell, John Zaremba, and Lee Meriwether are spending billions to send man into time. And to prove how important this secret project is, scientist Tony Newman (James Darren) dashes into the time tunnel before it's even known how to bring him back!
In that first episode, Tony finds himself on the deck of the Titanic, trying futilely to warn Captain Smith of the ship's impending disaster. It doesn't work, of course; these things never work in time travel stories. The scientists back at the other end of the tunnel send Tony's partner Doug Phillips (Robert Colbert) back after him, but even with a copy of the newspaper showing what happened, they're powerless to prevent it. They are able to escape before going down with the ship, though, and soon they find themselves in Honolulu, at the Japanese consulate, on December 6, 1941. You can see where this is going, can't you? Of course, they aren't able to change this any more than they were the Titanic. Obviously, they haven't read the documentation that states time travelers can't change history.
It's no wonder that Cleve finds The Time Tunnel "one of the most annoying shows we've seen." The gimmickry and photography are inventive, but the acting is "stilted and unbelievable, the dialog is soap-operaish." Not to mention how ridiculous it is to have bombs coming up the tunnel, when they can't do the same for Tony and Doug. By the time they encounter Halley's Comet, one of the scientists says, "I think the time has come to rethink this whole project." Concludes Amory, "We couldn’t have agreed more."
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I've been a fan of Van Williams ever since I saw him in Bourbon Street Beat a few years ago. His character in BSB, Ken Madison, then transferred to Surfside 6, where he hung out for a couple of seasons, and while the show's quality let him down, I thought Williams himself was pretty good. From there he moved on to the show that probably brought him the most fame, as well as an appearance on this week's cover, The Green Hornet. And for Van Williams, a man who acts not because he needs the money—he's co-owner of a bank (along with his business manager and James Garner!), a ranch, a shopping center, and a downtown building in Fort Worth, Texas—but because he enjoys it, playing the Hornet suits him just fine.
Raddatz makes the point, and I think we can see it as well, that Williams—VanZandt Jarvis Williams, to be exact, from a family whose Texas roots go back to "when Fort Worth was really a fort"—is a change from the usual celebrity profile we read in these pages. He has "none of the tortured self-seeking or the need for love or escape from a deprived childhood which traditionally mark so many of his contemporaries." He has no pretentions about being a thespian; he's objected to two Hornet scripts because they had too much dialogue and not enough action. "The Green Hornet is a pretty dead-pan guy," he tells Leslie Raddatz. "Lots of action—that's what makes a show." In fact, he'd never planned to be an actor; he was intending to be a rancher in his home of Fort Worth, but fate intervened during a vacation in Hawaii, when he met the late Mike Todd, who gave him the acting bug. Warner Bros. picked him up after a role in G.E. Theater, and that's where BSB came in.
This week's Mission: Impossible (Saturday, 9:00 p.m., CBS) features a story that bothered me the first time I saw it, and has stayed with me since: "A Free World country may become a dictatorship unless IMF can insure an honest election and get the frightened populace to the polls." IMF's way of doing the former is to tamper with the voting machines themselves, to override the tampering that's already been done by the ruling junta. In other words, a quasi-official government agency is directly involving itself in the internal affairs of an independent nation in order to guarantee the election of a government that will be friendly to the United States. I know it's only a TV show (and a favorite of mine), and this episode is just as entertaining as any of them, but still—there's a message here that doesn't pass the smell test, and today I imagine it looks much worse than it did back then.
Sunday has always been a prime night for variety shows, and I'm not just talking about Ed Sullivan; the Tiffany Network will team Ed with The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour in the years to come, and this year Ed is followed by The Garry Moore Show (9:00 p.m., CBS); Garry's regulars in this second incarnation of his prime-time show are Durward Kirby, Jackie Vernon, and John Byner, and his guests tonight are Dick Van Dyke, Connie Francis, and Jim Kweskin and his jug band. After that, switch over to NBC for The Andy Williams Show (10:00 p.m.), with a cast that would probably top both Sullivan and The Palace this week: Bing Crosby, Kate Smith, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and the Young Americans. If you're looking for a different type of variety, look no further than The Play of the Week (8:00 p.m., NET) and part one of 1960's two-part "The Iceman Cometh," with Jason Robards, Myron McCormick, and Robert Redford, directed by Sidney Lumet.
Carol Burnett stars in part one of a two-part Lucy Show on Monday (8:30 p.m., CBS). Carol plays a librarian who answers Lucy's ad for a quiet roommate. I wonder what David Stewart, of Agincourt, Ontario, thinks of this? In this week's Letters, he writes of the recent special Carol & Company that it "was so unbelievably bad I was so fascinated I couldn't turn it off," and wonders, "Was this show deliberately unprofessional and humorless as a stunt to discover what the public could be made to endure?" I guess he won't be watching it, then. Instead, check out one of the early tests of Monday Night Football, as the Chicago Bears take on the St. Louis Cardinals. (9:30 p.m., CBS, taped from a live telecast earlier in the evening) The game's being played in St. Louis, of course, as Wrigley Field, the Bears' home stadium, still lacks lights.
Tuesday's syndicated episode of TheOuter Limits (9:00 p.m., KTVU) is a personal favorite of mine: "O.B.I.T.," a disturbing story about a secret government project involving a machine that "allows the observation of anyone, anywhere, at any time," and the courageous U.S. senator (Peter Breck) determined to discover the truth about the machine's existence. It's both dark and prophetic, the kind of story that Outer Limits does so well.
On Wednesday, Don Adams hosts the 30th annual Shipstads and Johnson Ice Follies, from San Francisco. (9:00 p.m., NBC) We've seen these shows in the pages of TV Guide many times over the years, and they're always crowd pleasers. Adams was obviously chosen in order to promote Get Smart; he's kind of an unusual choice, I think, since past hosts, such as Ed Ames, Arthur Godfrey, and Jimmy Dean were also singers who could provide a tune or two. I'd expect jokes from Adams, who'll probably be comic relief for the skaters, such as Follies favorite Richard Dwyer (who was still skating last year at age 87!), former world champion Don Jackson (the first man to perform a triple Lutz in international competition, seen here on Wide World of Sports), and West German champion Ina Bauer (would you believe she actually has a figure skating move named after her?).
The set-up on this shot is a faithful reproduction of Chet and David's convention layout. As for the mayhem — perhaps a preview of Chicago '68?
On Thursday's highlight is "Dizzoner the Penguin," part two of the Batman story that began yesterday, a very funny satire on politics that lines up well with next week's elections. (7:30 p.m., ABC) Aside from the obvious jab at politics itself—Batman, campaigning against The Penguin for mayor of Gotham City, confidently says that "I’m convinced the American electorate is too mature to be taken in by cheap vaudeville trickery. After all, if our national leaders were elected on the basis of tricky slogans, brass bands, and pretty girls, our country would be in a terrible mess, wouldn’t it?"—the episode's highlights include the clever wordplay used for the names of the episode's characters: Gotham City mayor Lindseed (New York mayor John Lindsay), third-place candidate Harry Goldwinner (Barry Goldwater), and the pollsters Gallus, Rooper, and Trendek (Gallup, Roper, and Trendex); and the obligatory brawl that breaks out during a jewelry store robbery, with cameos by TV personalities playing reporters covering the story as if it was a political convention: Dennis James as Chet Chumley, Allen Ludden as David Dooley, Don Wilson as Walter Klondike, and Jack Bailey as the moderator of a debate interrupted by the robbery. I think you can guess who they're supposed to be.Oh, and there's also Paul Revere and the Raiders!
Friday features a pair of movies for the whole family, beginning with the ABC special Hans Christian Anderson (7:30 p.m.), the 1952 musical starring Danny Kaye, and featuring classic Frank Loesser songs including "Thumbelina" and "The Inchworm." Jeanmarie and Farley Granger co-star. Later in the evening, the CBS Friday Night Movie is 1964's First Men in the Moon (9:00 p.m.), with a cameo appearance by Peter Finch, and special effects by the great Ray Harryhausen. Perhaps it's not quite the way it plays out for Apollo 11 in three years, but with H.G. Wells, it's hard to go wrong.
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At The Doan Report, NBC president Julian Goodman says the network may introduce a prime evening hour each week, starting next fall, that will be dedicated exclusively to news, public affairs, and cultural programming. (You know, the kind you don't need pay-per-view to watch.) It would reduce the number of specials aired by the network each year; they've already cut back to about a dozen this year, as opposed to the 40 or more that they aired a few years ago. Pat Weaver must be spinning in his grave hearing that.
Meanwhile, ABC's thinking about devoting not one but two movies on Wednesday nights beginning in January. Under this plan, Batman would be followed by Off to See the Wizard, a Disney knockoff featuring movies from MGM. (This would include movies such as Flipper, Tarzan, and Clarence, the Cross-eyed Lion, all of which have been turned into weekly series on other networks.) Wizard would be followed by The ABC Wednesday Night Movie. In the end, Wizard doesn't premiere until the fall of 1967, on Friday night rather than Wednesday.
Speaking of movies, Chevrolet denies rumors that they offered the producers of the James Bond movies $3.5 million for the television rights in an attempt to "get back at Ford for knocking Bonanza off its top ratings perch with the ABC showing of The Bridge on the River Kwai." I guess such machinations aren't restricted to politics.
And remember that article from a couple of weeks ago on television's coverage of Vietnam? Well, CBS News president Dick Salant made a trip to Saigon earlier this month. His conclusion: "If the public will tolerate it, we’ve got to tell more in words and less in pictures."
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MST3K alert: Night of the Blood Beast(1958) An alien entity takes control of an astronaut’s body. Michael Emmet, Angela Greene, Ed Nelson, Tyler McVey, Ross Sturlin. (Saturday, 1:15 a.m., KCRA in Sacramento) You have to imagine what the prospect of manned space travel was like in the late 1950s—a total unknown, when we didn't even know if the human body could survive the stress, let alone what might happen to him once he made it into outer space. It's a trope that stretches from B-movies like this to The Twilight Zone, and everywhere in-between. And I hope it never goes away. The MST3K version is combined with a really bad short, "Once Upon a Honeymoon," which features Virginia Gibson before she wound up on ABC's Discovery. Well, I guess everybody has to start somewhere. TV
On Sunday February 12 (11:30 a.m. CT), NBC's Meet the Press presents a special one-hour edition with William Manchester, author of the controversial book The Death of a President, the authorized account of the assassination and funeral of John F. Kennedy. Manchester is to be quizzed by Alistair Cooke, whom we'll get to know better as host of Masterpiece Theatre but at this point is the American correspondent for The Guardian; Chuck Roberts, White House correspondent for Newsweek, who was in Dallas and flew back on Air Force One with President Johnson; Robert MacNeil of NBC, the network's man in Dallas who covered the assassination; and Meet the Press producer Lawrence Spivak. Edwin Newman is the moderator.
To understand why Manchester's book is so controversial, one has to step back in time to shortly after the funeral. The Kennedy family realized that books about the assassination would come out; they worried about how both the event itself and the family would be depicted. In an effort to control the story, they had commissioned Manchester, who had earlier written a flattering article about JFK, to write the book, and have exclusive access to family, friends, and political allies of the late president.
Once the manuscript had been produced, however, the family began to have second thoughts. There were concerns that Manchester had revealed too many personal glimpses into the family's life, that Manchester's prose was "overwrought," and that his unfavorable portrayal of Lyndon Johnson could prove troubling to Robert F. Kennedy's political ambitions. Jacqueline Kennedy had spoken frankly and personally with Manchester, but now feared the thought of those revelations in print.* Bobby Kennedy, who was fanatically loyal to Jackie, got into the middle of the dispute. An agreement for a four-part serialization in Look magazine was, RFK charged, a breach of the agreement that "the final text" was not to be published until approved by the two Kennedys. Manchester countered that Bobby had been in agreement that the book should be published as soon as it was finished, to avoid playing a part in the 1968 elections and also to counter the Warren Report critics, and that in fact Look was Kennedy's preferred magazine of choice. Lawyers were called, negotiations were conducted, Manchester himself almost suffered a nervous breakdown over the interference by the Kennedys and their Boston cronies. When Jackie went to court, Manchester went to Meet the Press to tell his side of the story.
*Mrs. Kennedy later admitted that she never actually thought the public would read the book, but that it “would be bound in black and put away on dark library shelves.
In the end, things were settled. As the family saw their popularity take a dive in the polls (people suspected the worst about their efforts to control the story, and that doesn't even take into account the conspiracy buffs already in full swing), Bobby decided he'd had enough; a drop in the polls is never welcome news for a politician. As Spivak says on Meet the Press, everyone involved "has been hurt or somehow damaged—you, Mrs. Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, President Johnson and the book itself." The two parties settled out of court, with Manchester removing 1,600 words from the Look serialization and seven pages from the book—"less than one percent," according to Manchester. Look hits the newsstands at the end of January and immediately sells out; the book, published in April, becomes an instant bestseller. But, as Alistair Cooke would later note, "the dispute is already more famous than the book."
I've not been able to find any video of the program, but if you're interested, you can read the transcript of the sometimes-contentious interview here. And you don't even have to send ten cents to Merkle Press to do it.
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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.
Palace: Host Sammy Davis Jr. welcomes Mickey Rooney, Liberace, singer Kaye Stevens, comic Lee Tully, the acrobatic Mascots, and Mr. and Mrs. Bob Top, English high-pole roller skaters.
Sullivan: Scheduled guests: comic-actor Jack Gilford, who appears in a sketch with comedienne Nancy Walker; comics Joey Adams, Joan Rivers and Richard Pryor; singers Sally Ann Howes, Jerry Vale and Lola Falana; the rock 'n' rolling Young Rascals; dancer Peter Gennaro; and teh roller-skating team of Ravic and Babs.
Short and sweet. Sammy Davis Jr. If there hadn't been anyone else on the show, Palace still would have won. As it is, include Mickey Rooney and Liberace, and you've got it made. Palacedances to this week's title.
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Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever we get the chance, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era.
"Well, you can look if you want to," Cleveland Amory begins in his review of CBS's new sitcom Mr. Terrific, "but do me a favor, will you? Don't expect, along the [air] waves, any raves. For the fact is, Mr. Terrific, like its Siamese twin, Captain Nice, is not only not terrific, it's pretty terrible."
Mr. Terrific, for those of you unfamiliar with the title, is a superhero spoof starring Stephen Strimpell as Stanley Beamish, a mild-mannered gas station attendant who, with the help of a special pill, gains superhuman strength and the ability to fly, which he uses to help fight crime. The problem, according to Amory, is that despite his new superpowers, "he still remains basically the same stumblebum he always was." And since the pill apparently only works on him, the government has to make do with its imperfect hero. There wouldn't be much of a show otherwise, would there?
Speaking of strength, the show is not without its own, chief among them the "peerless performance" of John McGiver as the head of the government agency for which Stanley moonlights as Mr. Terrific; I'd expect no less from a pro like McGiver; there is, as Amory says, only one of him. But—and here we'll let Cleve's comments on the second episode serve for the entire series, "the individual shortcomings of the script, the acting and the directing were matched only by the innate tastelessness of the whole idea." In fact, the whole thing can be summed up by an acknowledgement from Harley, another government agent. "Stanley is accident prone. Even when he does something right, it's an accident." Concludes Amory, "The same might be said, at almost any moment, of this show."
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I don't think we've ever had the chance to look at dueling ice shows, have we?
First up, on Monday, is your 1967 Ice Capades (7:00 p.m., NBC), hosted by Jimmy Durante and featuring Jimmy Dean and the Supremes. The Ice Capades first appeared on NBC in 1965, and their annual show ran through 1970, with various hosts such as Arthur Godfrey, Lorne Greene and Florence Henderson. (These ice shows are something of a regular occurrence on NBC; later in the year, Ed Ames hosts a similar presentation of the Ice Follies.)
Not to be outdone, Milton Berle hosts Holiday on Ice (one of the Ice Follies' bitter competitors) Thursday night (9:00 p.m., ABC). Perhaps a little more glamour here; whereas Capades show was taped in Rochester, New York, Holiday on Ice comes to you from Paris. Berle ought to be a good MC for this; it's much like his hosting jobs on his other variety shows, and there are probably plenty of pretty girls in skimpy outfits for him to leer at.
Interestingly enough, the Ice Capades went out of business in the mid-90s, while in 1979 the Ice Follies merged with Holiday on Ice. There's no limit to themed ice shows out there even today, though.
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And now a brief pause for some culture, and I'm not talking about what you'd find in a petri dish, either.
On Monday, Gilligan's Island and the aforementioned Mr. Terrific are preempted for a musical rendition of Pinocchio by New York's Prince Street Players (6:30 p.m., CBS). This is just one of a number of productions of classic family stories that Prince Street Players did for CBS between 1965 and 1970, including Jack and the Beanstalk, The Emperor's New Clothes, and Aladdin. Fortunately, several of them exist on YouTube—including Pinocchio!
Wednesday, KTCA, the public broadcasting station, has An Age of Kings (7:00 p.m.), a continuing series of the Bard's historical plays. You'll see this pop up throughout the '60s, especially the early part of the decade—it was made by the BBC in 1960. Later the same evening, WTCN has The Wars of the Roses (8:30 p.m.), another BBC production of Shakespeare's first series of historical plays, made in 1965. I find it interesting that this was being shown on commercial, rather than public, television; possibly it was some kind of syndicated package similar to when Edward the King was broadcast in America in the mid-70s.
Friday night, NET Opera Theatre (7:00 p.m., WDSE) presents Jack Beeson's opera Lizzie Borden, based on the ax murderess of the same name. The production is from the acclaimed world premiere staged by the New York City Opera in 1965, adapted for the television stage. The music is modern and at times atonal, and Beeson has taken liberties with the story for dramatic effect, but it makes for compelling viewing both as an opera and a television production. The broadcast is a prime example of the advantage to staging an opera in a television studio (as opposed to simply bringing in cameras to cover a live performance, as is done with the Metropolitan Opera's HD broadcasts), giving viewers camera angles and views that would be impossible to replicate in a live theater broadcast. Following the opera, there's a half-hour profile of composer Beeson, looking at his work methods and motivations.
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Some other selections from the week:
The Golden Globes are broadcast Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. on NBC, hosted by Andy Williams. You remember the Golden Globes, don't you? I know they've only been off television for one year, but memories are short, nowadays. Anyway, I wrote a while back about the Golden Globes and their colorful history; for a few years the awards were actually presented on Andy's variety show, but this year they get their own place in the sun. It's a short spotlight, though; the show still runs for only an hour, but that's plenty of time to give out a handful of awards, most of them to the movie A Man for All Seasons. You'll recall that this would have been during the period of time when winners were actually tipped off in advance that they were bringing home the award; it was often the only way to get them to attend the show. Today, the problems faced by the Hollywood Foreign Press Assocation, presenter of the Globes, are not so much because of being colorful, but colorless, shall we say.
One of the great Star Trek episodes of all time airs on Thursday (7:30 p.m., NBC)—"Space Seed." It introduces us to a ruthless dictator played by Ricardo Montalban, and without it we'd never have gotten this immortal scene.
OK, maybe it didn't last that long. . .
The cover story this week, by Leslie Raddatz, is on Steven Hill, the original head of the Mission: Impossible team. After decades of reruns with Peter Graves as Jim Phelps*, it can be a little surprising to remember that for the first season of Mission: Impossible, it was Hill's Dan Briggs who listened to the recordings at the beginning of each show and pulled the same pictures out of the dossier each time.
*Who is not a traitor to his country, no matter what Brian DePalma thinks.
Hill is very good in the role, with just the right amount of menace to suggest that, if things were to get tough, Dan Briggs could get even tougher. It doesn't work out, though, and the reasons are clear in the article. Hill is an observant Orthodox Jew who leaves the set on Fridays in order to get home before sundown, and does not work on Jewish holy days, and while his beliefs are respected, there's no doubt that it puts a crimp in shooting a complicated television series. Many times Briggs' visible role is limited to the beginning and end of the story, and there's at least one episode in which he isn't seen at all. His level of involvement in each week's mission is seldom as large as it becomes for Jim Phelps in future seasons. So it's one year and out for Steven Hill, but don't worry too much—Law & Order will be by in a couple of decades, and he'll get ten seasons out of that.
Our starlet of the week is "comely" Pat Moore, who is moving from a $60 per hour model to a bit player in television (a semi-regular on Hullabaloo and Perry Como, but with no speaking lines) and commercials (where, as is usual in commercials, her voice is dubbed). For her, the big time is simple: being able to talk.
In the TV Teletype, we're told that Batman producer Howie Horwitz is "looking for a Batgirl to 'fight evil' next fall. Batman won't know her real life identity and vice versa." Thanks to retrovision, we do know the identity of Batgirl, though—the lissome Yvonne Craig, who packs quite a kick.
And speaking of Batman. . .
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Dwight Whitney spends some quality time with Adam West, learning about what it's like being the star of the hottest television show around. His portrait of West paints a restless man who has already been married and divorced twice, an ambitious man who gave up a successful radio show in Honolulu (and his second wife) when Hollywood called, an actor who wants to be thought of in the same company with Marcello Mastroianni. Batman, Adam West says, "will make it possible for me to do what I want to do the way I want to do it." And that is? "Like be a big fat star."
Lest this sound too serious though, there's a wonderful bit at the beginning of the article that is pure West, speaking in that stiff, breathless staccato full of odd pauses, as campy and self-deprecating as we've come to see him in the years since Batman. The scene: West's dressing room trailer as he prepares for the day's shooting.
"It's hero time," says Adam West lightly, tugging the top of the tights up over the flat of his stomach and starting on the skintight tunic. "In a moment I will step from this humble dwelling and, to the plaudits of the crowd, plummet from a platform fully three and a half feet high."
The chant "We want Batman!" rises in shrill crescendo. "Ah, the adulation!" he continues, undulating like a Girl Scout in a tight girdle. "Oh, I love it, basking in the sincere warm smiles of the little children. What! You say Chief O'Hara isn't working today? Oh, I miss the Chief. The family's disintegrating—Robin off to college, Aunt Harriet drafted and being shipped to Vietnam. Oh, the heartbreak of it all. Here, give me that!"
His dresser hands him the tiny gray skullcap worn beneath the Batman helmet. West places it with exaggerated care. "I wonder if I should go out and bless the crowd? No, perhaps not." He jams the fiberglass-and-nylon helmet down over his ears. "Marvelous bit of haberdashery," he mumbles. "It's hot. The sound bounces. Can't hear. My nose pinches and gives me a cleft palate. Can't see. And I owe it all to that peerless Prince of Trivia, our producer Bill—'Bull'—Dozier, who refuses to supply me with a seeing-eye dog. Now off to give another Academy Award-winning performance."
[...]
"Sign my autograph, Batman, please!"
"Later, kids," says the Caped Crusader coolly. "Got to rescue Alfred from the clutches of that infernal scoundrel, The Archer."
"Aw, Batman, you couldn't hurt a flea!" says one.
"Yeah," replies Adam West amiably. "Disillusioning, isn't it?"
And that, my friends, makes this whole blog worth it.
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