This week in TV Guide: February 1, 1969

I think I've written this before—by the way, people sometimes think writers are able to remember pretty much everything we've ever written, and that we're able to recall things at a moment's notice. I'll have someone ask me why I had Winter do what he did on page 142 of The Car, and meanwhile I'll be thinking, "I wrote that?" And when you tell them, they'll ask you in an insinuating way if you actually write your own material. Well, I'd gladly take someone up on that offer, but I'm afraid you'll like them better than you like me, and then the gig will be up. 

But I digress (and I think I've written this before as well). I think I've written this before, but one of the first things I look for in a TV Guide is a hook, something that I can start off with, which usually allows the rest to fall into place. I've even been known on occasion to reject an issue because there was nothing there to get me started. Those cases are few and far between, but still, unless I'm familiar with an issue, there's that moment of suspense: will I find what I'm looking for, something that jumpstarts the week. Does this issue of February 1, 1969, have anything for me?

And there it is:

I'm assuming that most of you know the story of Turn-On, the shortest-lived television series of all time (based on the fact that some local affiliates were cancelling it during the broadcast), a show that has become synonymous with the word "fiasco" to the point that it's listed in the dictionary under F instead of T. (OK, I made that last part up, but a guy can dream, can't he?)

The TV Guide of May 17, 1969, goes in-depth on what it called "The Biggest Bomb of the Season" (yes, I do remember having written that), and it's interesting to look back on how intense the response to Turn-On was, particularly by ABC's affiliates. Robert Doubleday of KATV in Little Rock, one of the show's most outspoken critics, said the network should have listened to people like him warning that "most people still have standards of taste and morality." "It would be a good idea," he said, "to load those people who do those TV series into Greyhound buses and take them on a trip across the country to show them how the rest of the people live."

What's particularly interesting to me is that we have the next week's TV Guide which, due to printing deadlines, still lists the never-seen second episode (here's a clip from it, proving at least that it exists), and one could speculate on what would have happened had the show not been pulled from the schedule so abruptly. Would it simply done its 13-week run and then disappeared? Would the controversy have been replaced by ambivalence, even disinterest? (That might have been even worse.) Would the humor have gotten tamer and lamer as time went on, or would the producers have doubled down on it? Might it even have caught on in certain circles, such as college campuses? Most important of all, what would Cleveland Amory have thought of it? I'll leave all this to people smarter than me to figure out, but it makes for amusing speculation. 

Remember, all this was long before it became customary for a network to pull the trigger on a program so quickly.* Up to that point, the show voted Most Likely to Be Remembered as a Total, Abject Failure was The Tammy Grimes Show, and that at least made it for four episodes before it was yanked. (According to TV Guide, that was a disaster, but not a bomb.) And then there's Jackie Gleason's You're in the Picture, another of television's famous Titanics; true, the show wasn't very good, but one could argue that it's remembered more because of Gleason's brilliant apology the next week. Technically, I suppose you could describe it as a single series consisting of one episode of Picture, one episode consisting of Gleason's apology, and eight episodes of The Jackie Gleason Show, the talk show that filled out the ten-week run. 

     Fixed.

*Nine of the ten shortest-lived series of all time, including several that didn't make it to a second episode, have come since 1995. 

There have been others since then; Andy Griffith once had two series cancelled in the same season. And I believe there have been a couple of series that were actually cancelled before they aired. But few of them have the fame, or infamy, of Turn-On. When a network acts this drastically, there's no way to keep it quiet, and Turn-On probably became more famous because of it than if it had simply run its course. After all, we're still talking about it, right?

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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: Tentatively scheduled: singers Sergio Franchi and Vikki Carr, the rocking Vanilla Fudge and Temptations, comedians Stiller and Meara, Jacques d'Amboise of the New York City Ballet and the Antonettes, novelty act.

Palace: Host Don Adams swings the spotlight on singers Tony Martin and the Lettermen, dancer Barrie Chase, comic Joey Forman, Ruth Buzzi and Alan Sues of Laugh-In, the juggling Half Brothers and illusionist Igor Kio from the Moscow State Circus.

Neither show has a great lineup this week, neither show has a bad one. I'm not a great fan of Laugh-In (personal preference only), so Alan Sues and Ruth Buzzi aren't going to do anything for me. Barrie Chase is a terrific dancer, but then so is Jacques d'Amboise. I think, although I'm not positive, that Sergio Franchi and Vikki Carr edge out Tony Martin and the Lettermen, so on that very narrow basis, I'm giving the edge this week to Sullivan.

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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. 

For those of you who thought that perhaps Cleveland Amory didn't come out during the daytime, guess again. Thanks to a week in bed with the flu, Cleve had the opportunity to become acquainted with Dark Shadows. "At the end of the week, by which time we had decided that this series was, in our considered judgment, the worst in the history of entertainment, we found that when Saturday came and there was no show, we missed it." And that, he says, is the key to the success of this gothic soap opera: "[T]he worse it is, the more you'll love it." 

But wait: it gets better. "No matter how terrible you may think an idea is—wait, hold your judgment. The execution of it will be so bad that, in retrospect, the idea seems terrific." The same goes for the dialogue; "once you've seen that action, you will look back on that dialogue as manna from heaven combined with the balm of Gilead." Nobody, but nobody, escapes Cleve's tongue. Joan Bennett, who played Elizabeth Collins Stoddard until she was killed off a few weeks ago, "plays this part as if she'd just forgotten where she'd put it." But then, considering your star is Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid), "your friendly neighborhood vampire," who's been dead for 200 years, anything is possible. Frid "is at his best—i.e., worst—when he's discovering something for the fourth time that somebody else has already discovered for the third." And then there are the children, Amy and David (Denise Nickerson and David Henesy): "We swear to you that if we see those two talking to that ghost Quentin through that disconnected telephone one more time, we will call them on a connected telephone and read them his review collect."

Does Amory really like Dark Shadows? What do you think? He concludes with a look at Dan Curtis, the executive producer of Dark Shadows. He declares that he "dreamed the whole story of Dark Shadows during, he says, 'a big sleep in upstate New York.' " Says Cleve, "In that case all you can think, or hope, or even pray is that Mr. Curtis never, ever gets that tired again."

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It's too bad Turn-On overshadows the rest of the programming on Wednesday, because it's a notable night of entertainment, beginning with the Hallmark Hall of Fame production of "Teacher, Teacher" (7:30 p.m. PT, NBC) starring David McCallum as a tutor trying to rebuild a life shattered by drinking and divorce; Ossie Davis, a handyman denied other opportunities because of his race; and Billy Schulman as the retarded youngster who becomes central to their lives. "Teacher, Teacher" goes on to win critical and popular acclaim, as well as an Emmy for Outstanding Dramatic Program; Schulman, himself retarded, is nominated for Supporting Actor. Even if Shakespeare is too highbrow for today's Hallmark Channel, you'd think that a moving story of redemption like this—no, Hadley, don't go there again. Just don't. (You can watch it here.)

"Teacher, Teacher" ends just in time for you to switch to ABC for part one of Sparticus (9:00 p.m.), the epic adaptation of Howard Fast's novel about a slave revolt against the Romans in the 1st Century B.C., directed by Stanley Kubrick, written by Dalton Trumbo, and starring Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, and Tony Curtis. Judith Crist is of two minds about it; it's the rare epic that deals with serious political and social issues, with fine performances particularly from the supporting characters, and has moments that are "literate and even witty." On the other hand, it's also "uneven and dawdling," and Curtis provides "unwitting low-comedy relief as a Bronx-accented Roman poet." Part two airs at the same time next week; Crist thinks "the timing of the film may be helped immeasurably."

With all of that, it's easy to overlook Kraft Music Hall (9:00 p.m., NBC) with Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme in "What It Was Was Love," an original suite of songs written and arranged by Gordon Jenkins "as a scrapbook for Steve and Eydie," who had one of the most enduring marriages in show business. With St. Valentine's Day just around the corner, it's not a bad reminder of the important things in life.

Wednesday is the best night of the week by a long way, but there are some other shows of interest, such as Firing Line (Sunday, 7:00 p.m., NET), when William F. Buckley Jr. is joined by our own Cleveland Amory and former bullfighter Barnaby Conrad to discuss animal rights. I also like the program on opposite it, a 1967 BBC production of The Mikado (7:00 p.m., KPIX) starring Cyril Ritchard in the title role with the famed British comedian Harry Worth as Ko-Ko; according to the always-reliable Wikipedia, it's the first-ever color presentation of the Gilbert & Sullivan classic.

There's some prime-time boxing on Monday, which I'm fairly sure I would have watched with my grandfather; George Chuvalo takes on Buster Mathis in a bout between two of the world's top heavyweights, live from Madison Square Garden (7:00 p.m., syndicated). First Tuesday (Tuesday—duh—9:00 p.m., NBC), the Peacock Network's monthly newsmagazine, includes a look at American preparations for chemical warfare, including "animals dying 44 seconds after exposure to nerve gas; human volunteers and animals in 'infection studies'; the manufacture of nerve gas and nerve gas artillery shells; and, briefly, top-secret Pine Bluff (Ark.) Arsenal, a pilot 'germ production' plant." My former home of Minneapolis was the site of chemical warfare experiments in the 1950s; I'll let the morality of all this stand without comment. And on Friday, NBC pre-empts Star Trek for the third-season opener of Experiment in Television (10:00 p.m.), "This is Sholom Aleichem," a series of skits based on the life of Yiddish writer whose short stories were adapted into Fiddler on the Roof. After tonight's episode, the show will be seen on Sunday afternoons, which is probably a good thing. 

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I shouldn't forget mentioning a couple of articles of interest. First is Leslie Raddatz's profile of Stephen Young, co-star of ABC's Judd, for the Defense, and since Judd is a program I thoroughly enjoy, I figured I should mention a word or several about it. We find out that the Canadian Young was good enough to earn a tryout with the Cleveland Indians, and he still plays hockey every Sunday night at an arena in Culver City. He's "very aggressive," according to a fellow actor, "but it's a charming aggressiveness. He has a fantastic faith in himself." Carl Betz says Young "just waits to pounce on his lines," and producer Harold Gast says "He's always looking for more to do, so we try to give him a bigger part." He's also popular with his fellow actors; one calls him "a real doll," and another says, "Most of these young actors get fat heads, but not Steve." He's very good in Judd, occasionally getting the lead but never overshadowing Betz. He's also young enough that he's still around today, with his last acting role coming in 2013.

And then there's Robert Musel's witty article about the 74 year-old British aristocrat who's putting his 23-acre French estate up for sale for only $1.2 million. His name is Edward Windsor, although his friends call him David; we know him better as the Duke of Windsor, formerly and for a short time ("Ten months and . . . I can't remember the days . . . oh, 18 days.") he was King Edward VIII. He and his wife, the Dutchess of Windsor, also known as Wallis Warfield Simpson, are being profiled by Harry Reasoner for this week's 60 Minutes (Tuesday, 10:00 p.m., CBS). 

The Duke comes across in Musel's article as a man with a dry, self-effacing sense of humor; at one point Reasoner asked him about the desk on which he signed his abdication—would he leave that for the buyer? "Why not?" the Duke shrugged. And after lighting the logs in the fireplace, he looked around for a place to put the match. "I can't leave it in the ash tray or the Duchess will complain," he confided to Musel. "I am very well house trained."  

Reasoner skillfully guided the Duke through the interview. asked. At one point he asked, "How did you feel when you were no longer King?" The Duke smiled faintly. "It was a great relief. But I enjoyed my work for my country." He didn't think his abdication made much difference in the long run; "I think about it," he admitted, but added, "I don't think I would have changed to course of history by not abdicating, not in a constitutional monarchy like Britain." After taking Reasoner on a tour of the grounds ("I probably don't have enough money to buy this building," Harry warned), the Duke sank gratefully into a chair. "Never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lie down," he explained. (My kind of guy.) "What's the authority for that?" Harry asked. "Old age," the Duke replied. "After 60 something's bound to hurt."

The Duke and Duchess come across as charming, pleasant, enjoyable. A young English girl working with Reasoner and his team, remarked that "If there had been television in 1936, if the British people had been able to see her as she really is, there might not have been an abdication." Musel isn't sure; after all, the issue was that Mrs. Simpson was divorced. And how likely is it that they'll ever allow an English King to marry a divorcee?

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Finally, there's one more premiere this week that bears mentioning. On Friday night at 7:30 p.m, ABC presents the debut episode of a new variety show starring an exciting young Welsh singer: This is Tom Jones. Not only does it last longer than Turn-On, it's a lot cooler. And, like Stephen Young, Tom Jones is still around. And you know what? He's still cool. TV  

This week in TV Guide: March 23, 1968

It turns out that today's moviemakers didn't invent the superhero universe after all. Fifty years before 

Marvel and DC came to dominate the big screen (and increasingly the small one as well), their animated counterparts were involved in taking over Saturday morning kids' shows.  here’s something new in the world of Saturday morning kids’ shows. With the exception of a few standards, such as The Flintstones, we are left with, in the words of Robert Higgins, the "Weirdo Superheroes." As Higgins notes in one of this week's cover stories, "three-quarters of the cartoons being aired on all three networks fall into the Weirdo Superhero category." 

But where did the "Weirdo Superhero" come from? To a great extent, from where you’d expect it to come: comic books in general, and Marvel in particular. Says Stan Lee, who helped create (among others) Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and Iron Man), "Superheroes had been around for a million years. We revitalized them." The "revitalized" superhero includes character traits that kids can identify with—"hang-ups," as Lee calls them, such as acne, sinus trouble, and dating girls, problems that even their superpowers couldn’t overcome. Within the superhero genre is a sub-category—the “ugly hero,” such as The Thing. "People can identify with someone who’s not beautiful," Lee says by way of explanation. "You say, 'That guy could be me.' But you still feel superior to him." I wonder of Christopher Nolan watched these before he made his Batman trilogy?

The angst-ridden superhero is designed to appeal to the growing awareness and sophistication of modern kids. "Children today are highly sophisticated," says Ed Vane, head of ABC’s daytime programming. "They don’t suspend that sophistication on Saturday morning." The superhero is then grafted onto a format that has been a staple of children’s programming since the days of the Saturday matinee serial: the action-adventure genre.

This doesn’t come without drawbacks, though. Dr. Fredric Wertham contends that "Television—and its display of violence—comes to the child with adult approval," and that it’s foolish to think this doesn’t have an impact on the child. This is television’s eternal conundrum, with what might be TV’s version of Schrödinger's Cat: is it plausible to posit that viewers can be influenced by commercial content and not by the content of the program itself?

I’d interject here that there’s violence, and there’s violence. Violence has always been relative – NBC’s Larry White points out that “when we were kids, our parents had no idea what we were seeing in the movies on Saturdays.” I would strongly resist the idea that watching Bugs Bunny or the Road Runner or Tom and Jerry makes children more violent. That is, literally, “cartoon” violence, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to agree with Dr. Schramm here that any child who’d look to drop an anvil on his playmate because he saw it happen to Wile E. Coyote probably has a screw loose somewhere anyway.

But if the “Weirdo Superhero” is supposed to relate to children in a different, more relevant, more realistic (or “sophisticated,” if you prefer) way, does it then stand to reason that the child sees this violence in a different, perhaps more malignant light? And isn’t it interesting to note how much this argument parallels the argument about video games? Does the violence in the stunning realism of today’s video games somehow influence the effect it has on children, inuring them to the impact of the violence?

For all this, there’s only a brief mention of what struck me from the very outset when I looked at that Saturday schedule. I call it "creative poverty," and Higgins gives a specific description of what’s lacking: comedy. There’s no comedy in these cartoons. The Flintstones, which continues to run on ABC, is of course based on a sitcom, and Bullwinkle creator Jay Ward’s George of the Jungle (also on ABC) probably comes the closest to a new cartoon that’s simply funny. The Three Stooges, violent though it may be, is slapstick comedy. Take away the comedy, and you’re left with The Sopranos. Ward acknowledges the dearth of comical cartoons but acknowledges that "They’re [Weirdo Superheroes] getting the ratings and that’s all the networks care about."

Children's television could be so much better, you and I both know that. But if there's one virtue to be found in these shows, it's to remember the Golden Rule: whoever has the gold rules. These cartoons make money for the networks. and that's what counts. Still, ABC's Vane looks wistfully at what television's capable of: "We'd love to give the kids Reading Room or A Day at the Planetarium. We'd be applauded by many—and watched by absolutely no one." The pity is, he's probably right.

 

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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: singers Jimmy Dean, Nancy Sinatra, Diana Ross and the Supremes, and Spanky and Our Gang; comedians George Carlin, and Lewis and Christy; magician Dominique; and Charlie Cairoli, clown act.

Palace:  Host Phil Harris introduces Bill Dana as Olympic skier José Jiménez; England's Hendra and Ullett; Sid Miller and Rose Marie; comic magician Jacques Ary; singers Abby Lane, Philip Crosby, and the rocking Hollies.

This is from the short-lived, ill-advised period when ABC moved Hollywood Palace from Saturday to Thursday night. In the new timeslot, it found itself up against Dean Martin, which is probably why it didn't last there very long. As for the matchup, there's not a lot to differentiate this week's matchup. Ed offers Jimmy Dean, the Supremes, and George Carlin; meanwhile, the very funny Phil Harris hosts "Comedy at the Palace," and while it might not be politically correct today, I always liked Dana's José Jiménez character. Not the best week, not the worst. This week's verdict: Push.

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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. 

Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, says Cleveland Amory, is everything that That Was the Week That Was wasn't. Whereas the former was "too cute and smug, and often too labored as well," Laugh-In is "a genuine, ingenuous breath of fresh fare." 

Laugh-In is one of the sensations of the season, and let Cleve count the ways. It is faced-paced, with fresh features as well as faces; the music is excellent; and the technical mix of the various segments is seamless. The cast—and if you need a reminder at this point, it includes Judy Carne, Eileen Brennan, Goldie Hawn, Henry Gibson, Gary Owens, Jack Riley, Roddy Maude-Roxby and Jo Anne Worley—is uniformely good, with Worley outstanding among them. And their fresh approach has a way of making even old jokes funny.

This is not to say that Laugh-In is a perfect hour. For one thing, an hour is, Amory thinks, a half-hour too long; humor is a very difficult thing to sustain over 60 minutes. "[T]he same jokes which in the first half-hour might have turned us on, in the second all too often turn us, and the set, off." Thirty minutes seems to be about right. The second drawback, oddly enough, lay with the hosts themselves. Dan Rowan's put-downs wear well, but Dick Martin's put-ons "are, more often than not, a bit much with which to put up." I can understand that; Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" routine is one of the funniest comic bits of all time, but to hear a variant of it, week after week, could get, well, weak. Still, Cleve gives it a strong grade: "A for effort, B for performance and C for—see it."

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One of the great controversies of the 1950s involved Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth's sister, and her romance with the divorced Group Captain Peter Townsend. A marriage between the two was vetoed by the Church of England, which at the time forbade divorce and remarriage (head of the church: Queen Elizabeth), and in 1960 she married the photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, who upon marriage became the Earl of Snowdon. Tuesday night at 9:00 p.m. CT, CBS Reports presents "Don't Count the Candles," a photographic essay by Lord Snowdon on aging. (It ought to be mentioned in fairness to all concerned that Lord Snowdon was an excellent and perceptive photographer, particularly with portraits.) In addition to pictures depicting ordinary people dealing with various aspects of getting older, there are interviews with people at both ends of the aging spectrum, from Twiggy to Noel Coward to Field Marshal Montgomery. BBC interviewer Derek Hart is the host; the show will go on to win two Emmys.

For her part, Margaret turned out to be the black sheep of the royal family—well, until Harry, that is— having scandalous love affairs, saying outrageous things, and in general embarrassing the rest of the family at every opportunity. My mother always thought Margaret did those things on purpose, and while I don't know whether or not there's any empirical data proving this, it doesn't require an advanced degree in psychology to suggest that Maggie was getting back at Liz for what happened with Townsend. The only thing that could have made this story better was if the stymied Group Captain went on to become a rebellious rock musician, but such was not the case.

Eventually, Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon will divorce (a droll line from the always-reliable Wikipedia notes that their marriage was "accompanied by drugs, alcohol, and bizarre behaviour by both parties such as Snowdon's leaving lists between the pages of books the princess read for her to find, of 'things I hate about you'"); Snowden goes on to marry (and divorce) the former wife of film director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, while Margaret never remarries, but carries on, shall we say, a colorful life.

As was the case with the Ingrid Bergman story we looked at a couple of years ago, the saga of Princess Margaret illustrates once again of how perspectives on marriage have changed over the years.  It was one thing for Margaret, not even the heir to the throne, to scandalize Church and Country by marrying a divorced man; it is, apparently, something else that the current heir is, in fact, married to a divorced woman with whom he apparently conducted an affair while married to his former wife. Again, no judgement here, merely observation.

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Here's a look at the highlights of the week:

Saturday: If you need further evidence as to how sports expands to fill the available space (even if it isn't really available), Saturday gives you additional proof. In 2021, this Saturday marks the beginning of the NCAA basketball tournament; this Saturday in 1968 marks the end, as Sports Network Incorporated presents the championship game between UCLA and North Carolina, telecast live from Los Angeles. (9:00 p.m.) Unlike the rival NIT tournament (aka the runner-up tournament), which airs Saturday afternoon at 1:00 p.m. on CBS (Dayton defeats Kansas 61-48), the NCAA tournament has yet to make it to network TV, and so a syndicated lineup of stations carries the UCLA-North Carolina final, which UCLA wins 78-55 for its second consecutive title and fourth in the last five years. Viewers around the country are impressed by the Lew Alcindor-led Bruins—unless you live in the Twin Cities, because the game isn't shown here. WTCN, the independent station in the Twin Cities, normally carries syndicated specials like this, but tonight Channel 11 has the final of the Minnesota State High School Basketball Tournament, one of the biggest sporting events in Minnesota; the third-place game begins at 7:00 p.m., and the championship game around 8:30 p.m.* 

*Edina High School wins its their third consecutive championship; they'd also won two consecutive hockey championships. I hated Edina; everyone hated Edina. It was an affluent suburb of Minneapolis; everyone called them cake-eaters.

Sunday: For many years NBC has featured a variety special built around one of the big touring ice shows, the Ice Follies. Not only does it give Shipstads & Johnson the opportunity to induce us to marvel at large spectaculars staged on ice*, it also gives the network a chance to show off some of its own talent in the role of host. Last year, for example, Ed Ames, costar of NBC's Daniel Boone, hosted and sang two of his hit songs, "My Cup Runneth Over" and "Try to Remember." This year (8:00 p.m.), it's the turn of the aforementioned Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, probably doing the shtick that Cleveland Amory finds so endearing.

Monday: Armstrong Circle Theatre was a staple of television history through the Golden Age and into the early 1960s. Alternating with the U.S. Steel Hour, Circle Theatre transitioned from a straight anthology to a series specializing in docudramas of historical events, many relevant to the time. When it was resurrected by ABC in the late 1960s, it was as a prestige vehicle for musical theater productions made for TV. Tonight (8:30 p.m.), it's Cole Porter's delightful Kiss Me, Kate, the musical version of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew," starring the then- real-life husband-and-wife team of Robert Goulet and Carol Lawrence as the battling lovers Fred and Lilli. Notwithstanding the live musicals that NBC and Fox have produced the last few holiday seasons, musical comedy is yet another genre all but gone from television.

Tuesday: If Lord Snowden's "Don't Count the Candles" is a meditation on the twilight of life, ABC's documentary "How Life Begins" (6:30 p.m.) takes viewers back to the very beginning. Executive Producer Jules Power predicts that his program will be controversial: "I expect some people to severely criticize this program." The show focuses on the science of human reproduction, from "the fertilization of the egg, cell division, embryonic development and the delivery of a child." I'd imagine there was some controversy about the show, complaints that television was dealing graphically with a subject matter best left to parents, and so on. I also suspect, as Power goes on to say, that there will be many "approving letters from parents, teachers and community leaders who will say it's about time TV dealt candidly with this subject."

Wednesday: The Avengers (6:30 p.m., ABC) presents the new companion to John Steed, Tara King, played by the shapely Linda Thorson. In tonight's story, Steed and King investigate the Alpha Academy, "where a fanatical headmaster is training youths for the domination of space." But to do so, they're going to have to deal with the hero of Friday night's WTCN movie—see more below.

Thursday: It's the premiere of the 1958 big-screen A Night to Remember, the definitive telling of the sinking of the Titanic, on the CBS Thursday Night Movie (8:00 p.m.). Based on the best-seller by Walter Lord, the movie stars Kenneth More as Second Officer Lightoller, one of the officers who performed nobly that night. Judith Crist called this a "not to miss" movie, a "thrilling document of the 1912 disaster at sea" with Kenneth More leading a supurb cast that "artfully permits the drama of life to supersede that of art." As any reader knows, I've been fascinated by the Titanic almost all of my life—I absolutely know that I watched this movie that night. It's one of the few times I can be that sure about something I watched that long ago.

Friday: At 6:30 p.m., WTCN leads things off with the sports documentary Jesse Owens Returns to Berlin, Bud Greenspan's masterpiece about the American Olympian's return to the site of his greatest triumph: the four gold medals he won at the politically charged 1936 Berlin Olympics. As well as being educational, it's a stirring, even moving, portrait of the dignified Owens, and a reminder of when athletes let their accomplishments in the arena speak for themselves. You can see it at YouTube, of course. Easter is April 7, so it's no surprise that tonight's Hallmark Hall of Fame (8:30 p.m., NBC) has a Biblical theme. It's James Daly and Kim Hunter in a repeat showing of Henry Denker's acclaimed 1961 drama "Give Us Barabbas." (That's on YouTube as well.) And that Channel 11 movie I mentioned earlier? It's I Aim at the Stars (9:00 p.m.), the biography of German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (played by Curt Jurgens), mastermind of Germany's V-2 rocket who later became one of the brains behind the American space program. According to Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff (and other sources as well), the bitter joke in England was that the movie should have been called, I Aim at the Stars but Sometimes Hit London. TV  

This week in TV Guide: January 19, 1980

I don't generally review consecutive issues from the same year, but this week's issue offers something that's just too good to resist.* It was just last week, as I write this, that we were introduced to the term "Megxit," and while I'm already sick to death of it, as a television historian it's a gift of manna, because this week we have the premiere of a new costume drama from Britain that couldn't be more timely: the six-part miniseries Edward & Mrs. Simpson.

*Besides, I didn't have any other issue from this week, and since I promised 52 new issues this year, I didn't think it was a good idea to go back on that promise three weeks into the new year.  (Feel free to thank me for my thoughtfulness.)

Back in 1975, Mobil had sponsored the national broadcast of a 12-part British series, Edward the King, the colorful story of King Edward VII. The series was marketed directly to commercial stations; nearly 50 of them picked up the series (including 27 network affiliates, wreaking havoc with network programming), which turned out to a huge critical and commercial success. For an encore, it was decided to show another drama concerning British royalty, one that had a twist sure to appeal to the Colonies: Edward & Mrs. Simpson, which told the story of King Edward VIII and his ill-fated love affair with American divorcee Wallis Simpson, a romance which caused the king to eventually abdicate his throne in order to marry "the woman I loved."

Bob Bach, associate producer of the original What's My Line?, tells a wonderful story in his TV Guide Background feature about what a TV junkie Wallis Warfield Simpson was, belting out the themes to the Murial cigar and Skippy peanut butter commercial jingles at a table in New York's El Morocco while Bach and Dorothy Kilgallen looked on; she and the Duke were great fans of WML, and TV in general. "We watch all the shows," she told Bach, who meditated on the idea that "this man, once 'By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India,' sitting up there in the Waldorf Towers watching Strike it Rich or The Big Payoff." It just goes to show that television, unlike the British class system, knows no boundaries.

The Windsors photographed by Karsh in 1971,
a year before the Duke's death.

To get back to the main story, the world was captivated by the romantic drama taking place during Edward's efforts to marry the twice-divorced Simpson, even while the British public was, for the most part, kept in the dark due to the British press' self-imposed censorship. Had Edward chosen to marry Wallis despite her previous marriages (the Church of England, at the time, disapproved divorce and remarriage), the government would have been forced to resign, and a constitutional crisis would have resulted. Rather than give up Wallis, Edward chose to abdicate, making his brother George the king—and, indirectly, resulting in the conflict we have today.

Leave it to the British tabloids to cut to the heart of the matter by pointing out that Meghan Markle, the apparent center of the current drama, is the second American to throw the monarchy into turmoil. "You have a very popular and senior member of the royal family who falls for an American divorcee and his world falls apart. Sound familiar? Talk about history repeating itself," writes Virginia Blackburn in The Express. One commentator compared Markle to a combination Wallis Simpson/Yoko Ono, a comparison that flatters nobody. Frankly, I've already spent enough time thinking about these two twits that I can see the appeal of a root canal without anesthesia as an alternative. The Windsors were often viewed as superficial social dilettantes, members of café society; yet Harry and Meghan manage to give them class by comparison.

While Edward & Mrs. Simpson failed to reach the heights of Edward the King, either with critics or viewers, it still radiates a sense of dignity that today's psychodrama fails to reach. It's a sure bet that the story of Megxit will make it to television as well, but you can bet it won't be on something like Mobil Showcase. Look for it on whatever sleazy reality channel offers them the most money.

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James MacGregor Burns is one of America's most respected political scientists and an expert on the Presidency, and in this election year, he addresses one of the questions of the campaign: can any candidate deliver on what they promise? "Since the start of our Government in 1789, the nub of the problem of Presidential leadership has been Congress," he writes in this week's issue. "All the 'strong' Presidents have had to invent ways of putting across their legislative programs." We've certainly seen that in the last few Presidencies, haven't we?

President Carter's problem, according to Burns, is "a modern case in Presidential-Congressional frustration." After a brief honeymoon period, Carter's determination to "not play old, Washington-type politics" has resulted in his bills being "lacerated or lost in the labyrinthine channels of Congressional committees and subcommittees." The Carter administration lacks "a clear and convincing set of goals," as well as "the political skill and electricity necessary to line up Congressional support." Burns, an advocate of a strong Presidency, wonders if the fragmentation of power that the Founders deliberately designed is the right one for the times. The only alternative, he says, is "strengthening our party system," which in the old days drew the separated powers of Government together. "Parties both supported and stabilized Presidential power" back then, he says. That may be the only chance we have in 1980 to "prevent holy wedlock from turning into holy deadlock."

We'll get the first indications into this on Monday night at 11:30 p.m. ET, as both CBS (Walter Cronkite, Morton Dean, Bruce Morton and Roger Mudd) and NBC ("NBC News correspondents") present coverage of the nation's first presidential test, the Iowa Caucuses, delaying the start of late-night programming. On the Democratic side, President Carter wins a decisive victory over his only serious challenger, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, 59%-31%, setting the standard for the Democratic race. It's a different story for the Republicans, as George Bush upsets Ronald Reagan 31%-29%, with Howard Baker coming in third at 15%. It leads to the dramatic "I am paying for this microphone" moment for Reagan in his 1:1 debate with Bush in Nashua, New Hampshire. Reagan routs Bush in the primary by over two-to-one, spelling the end of Bush's "Big Mo" and propelling Reagan to the nomination and. subsequently, the Presidency.

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For those of you who might not be as politically inclined, this week brings another contest that might interest you: the Super Bowl.

Super Bowl XIV takes place Sunday at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, with the defending champion Pittsburgh Steelers going against the (sort-of) hometown favorite Los Angeles Rams on CBS. You might say the coverage starts on Saturday at 5:00 p.m. with CBS Sports Spectacular's Super Bowl-themed "Battle of the NFL Cheerleaders" pitting the Minnesota Viking Parkettes (so named because the team's original cheerleaders were the St. Louis Park High School Parkettes) against the Miami Dolphin Starbrites. I don't know how I missed that when it was on. (Thankfully, we've passed on from the Super Night at the Super Bowl era.)

CBS's Super Bowl Sunday begins at 2:30 p.m. with coverage of the final round of the Phoenix Open golf tournament, one of the few sporting events that actually insists on being held the same weekend as the Super Bowl. (Winner: Jeff Mitchell, by four strokes over Rik Massengale. OK, the winners haven't always been the biggest names.) That's followed by a special 90-minute The NFL Today, renamed for the day as The Super Bowl Today, including commentaries by Jack Whittaker and Andy Rooney and analysis by John Madden. Finally, at 6:00 p.m. it's the game itself, with Pat Summerall and Tom Brookshier behind the mic, Cheryl Ladd singing the national anthem, and a halftime show featuring Up with People doing "A Salute to the Big Band Era." Yup, times have changed, haven't they? The evening wraps up with 60 Minutes, sometime around 10:00 p.m. Oh yeah, the game: Pittsburgh rallies in the second half to beat the Rams 31-19, successfully defending their championship, and becoming the first time to win four Super Bowls.

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That brings us to a look at some of the shows attracting attention this week. We do have a Kirchner-Midnight Special matchup this week, but it isn't much of a contest. Don Kirshner's Rock Concert (Saturday, 1:30 a.m., WAVE) has Bob Welch, Maxine Nightingale, America, and comic Denny Johnston, while The Midnight Special (Friday, 1:00 a.m., NBC) celebrates its seventh anniversary with Captain & Tennille hosting, and past performances by Rod Stewart, Donna Summer, Steve Martin, Linda Ronstadt, Barry Manilow, the Jacksons, Willie Nelson, and Olivia Newton-John. I can't say that many of these acts float my boat, but on sheer star power, Special takes the win.

Saturday offers the kind of special programming that reminds us again that Saturday used to be a big TV night. The Love Boat (8:00 p.m., ABC) has one of those two-hour star-studded voyages that they're known for, with Loni Anderson, Eve Arden, Pam Grier, Robert Guillaume, Rich Little, Denise Nicholas, Donny Osmond, Richard Paul, Slim Pickens, Marion Ross, and Richard Roundtree. Meanwhile, CBS debuts the western The Chisholms as a weekly series (8:00 p.m.), starring Robert Preston and Rosemary Harris; it had originated as a miniseries in 1979. That's followed at 10:00 p.m. by The Beatrice Arthur Special, yet another example of a series star getting her own variety special (see Lynda Carter from last week); the "outrageous, hilarious, musical special from a multi-talented superstar" includes appearances by Rock Hudson, Melba Moore, and Wayland Flowers & Madame. I swear, this sounds like something you would have seen on SCTV.

Bob Hope is back for another of his NBC specials Monday at 9:00 p.m., celebrating the songs from Bob's career in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio and movies. Joining Bob are the aforementioned Bea Arthur, Debby Boone, Diahann Carroll, and Shirley Jones. (I'll bet at least the Kraft recipes are good.) Speaking of which, the Hollywood TV Teletype reports that NBC will be airing a six-hour retrospective looking at Hope's 30 years of entertaining at military bases worldwide; you'll be able to see it February 3 and 10. Tom Snyder gets out of the late-night spotlight at 10:00 p.m., with an hour of celebrity interviews; his subjects are Clint Eastwood, Bo Derek, Gary Coleman, and Barry Manilow. It's too bad the network didn't give Tom more time; he always was at his best with long-form interviews.

A Happy Days-esque series, Goodtime Girls (not to be confused with The Golden Girls or The Goodbye Girl) debuts Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. on ABC, with Annie Potts, Lorna Patterson, Georgia Engel, and Francine Tacker as four girls enduring various hardships during World War II. Worst of all—the man shortage. At 9:00 p.m., it's dueling TV-movies: CBS's GE Theater presents Once Upon a Family, starring Barry Bostwick in what Judith Crist calls "a California version of Kramer vs. Kramer," with a fine performance from Bostwick, and excellent support from Nancy Marchand as Bostwick's mother, and Marcia Strassman as his new love interest. That's up against NBC Theatre's Death Penalty, with Colleen Dewhurst as a dedicated psychologist trying to save a 15-year-old killer from the electric chair. Crist labels it "plodding, predictable and dated," and calls Dewhurst's performance "surprisingly monotoned."

Wednesday features another star-studded special (I don't know what else you'd call it), The Tenth Annual Entertainer of the Year Awards (9:00 p.m., CBS), with George Burns (in his lecherous old-man period) hosting, and starring Benji, David Copperfield, Wayland Flowers & Madame, Mitzi Gaynor, Gilda Radner, Kenny Rogers, Doc Severinsen, Red Skelton, Suzanne Somers, Donna Summer, Tanya the Elephant, Rip Taylor, Gino Vannelli, The Village People, Dottie West, and Robin Williams. For those of you keeping score at home (or even if you're just reading), that makes two appearances on shows this week by Wayland & Madame, two by Bea Arthur, two by Dottie West (she's also on Merv Griffin's show Tuesday), Gilda Radner (she was also in Saturday Night Live, which was a rerun from 1977), two by Robin Williams (including Mork & Mindy), and probably six by Doc Severinsen, if he's on all five episodes of The Tonight Show. Speaking of which, it's only the third week of the year and already Johnny's got the week off*; his guest hosts this week are Kenny Rogers on Monday (whoops—that makes two appearances for him this week as well), David Letterman on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and George Carlin on Friday. One of George's guests is Donna Summer, so she's on TV twice this week!

*Or maybe he's still off from the holidays; with him, it was always kind of hard to tell.

The highlight on Thursday is the sixth annual People's Choice Awards (9:00 p.m., CBS), hosted by Mariette Hartley, Bert Parks, and Hollywood columnist Army Archard. It's an odd pairing; Mariette's looking for James Garner, Army's looking for someone to interview, and Bert's looking for Miss America. Anyway, we can be sure that they weren't as controversial as Ricky Gervais. The thing about the People's Choice Awards is that, having been voted on by the public, they're a pretty good barometer of what's popular at the time. The TV winners: Alan Alda is the Favorite All-Around Male Entertainer, Carol Burnett the Favorite All-Around Female Entertainer, Dallas the Favorite Dramatic Show, M*A*S*H the Favorite Comedy, Hart to Hart the Favorite New Program, and its stars Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers the Favorite Performers in a New Program, and Gary Coleman as the Favorite Young TV Performer.

Friday it's the final episode of Shirley Jones's comedy-drama Shirley, ending its 13-week run. Why did a show starring the mother of The Partridge Family only last 13 weeks? Here's the description: "A recent widow moves from a big city to a small town with her three children, her stepson and her housekeeper." Perhaps that lack of imagination has something to do with it. Oh, and that means Shirley Jones was on twice this week as well! Friday night's TV movie is Mother and Daughter: The Loving War (9:00 p.m., ABC), and it makes us all feel old that the "mother" is Tuesday Weld. As Judith Crist says, "Tuesday in middle-age?" It just doesn't seem possible.

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Finally, you've read me complaining, as recently as last week, about the lack of intellectual heft of the modern TV Guide compared to, say, 1980. However, it seems as if the publishers didn't think that even this was enough.

"Panorama's informative and entertaining articles explore television and its impact on you and everything it touches. From the news to the arts. From the people to the programs. From the sports arena to the political arena. From the present to the future." Throw in the past, and that, in a nutshell, is what I try to do with this website.

Panorama only lasted 17 months, from February, 1980 to June, 1981. Walter H. Annenberg, publisher of TV Guide and Panorama, told The New York Times that ''Our subject matter proved successful in attracting advertising, but circulation results proved beyond doubt that few readers were interested in our editorial content.'' I had a chance to read one issue of Panorama, the June, 1980 issue as it turns out, and I thought it was pretty good—I wasn't into the history of television as much as I am now, although I doubt that even a subscription from me would have saved it. Fortunately, all 17 issues of Panorama have been preserved and are available here. Perhaps, when I run out of TV Guides to review, I'll start in on these and see what the future of TV looks like from the past. TV