Around the dial

Let's see; this week, I think we'll start with The Twilight Zone Vortex and season five's "You Drive," written by Earl Hamner Jr., and starring the great character actor Edward Andrews. As Brian says, it's "not terrible," but not the best, either. 

You can also read a nice remembrance of Swit by Terence at A Shroud of Thoughts. And while you're at it, check out his 21st anniversary post. I thought I'd been at this awhile, but he's got seven years on me!

It wouldn't be Friday without the "Sylvia Coleridge Season" at Cult TV Blog, and this time John is looking at the sci-fi series Out of the Unknown and the episode "The Dead Past," featuring a research tool that looks suspiciously like AI, especially in its trustworthiness and reliability.

In honor of the late Loretta Swit, RealWeegieMidget takes a gander at "Hail to the Chief," an episode of Supertrain, which manages to work in some improbable presidential political intrigue with Roy Thinnes playing a dual role. It's either very bad or very fun; find out which it is!

We haven't heard from Garroway at Large for awhile, but Jodie pops in this week to give us a portrait of "Garroway at peace": in this case, the peace of Laurel Hill Cemetery, where the great man was laid to rest. A short but moving piece.

At The Horn Section, Hal's back for another round of F Troop and the second season episode "Reach for the Sky, Pardner," with O'Rourke scheming to increase the amount of convention business coming into Fort Courage. As delightful as it is goofy.

A couple of classic pictures make the Broadcast Archives well worth checking out: first, a terrific picture of William Boyd in character as Hopalong Cassidy; second, an equally great picture of Bob Keeshan as Mister Mayor, a single-season Saturday morning show that took the place of Captain Kangaroo.  

At Drunk TV, Paul looks at the terrific third season of The Odd Couple, which captures the series at his creative best, including one of the great episodes of any sitcom: Felix and Oscar appearing on the game show Password, with Allen Ludden and Betty White as themselves.

Paul is back at Mavis Movie Madness with a plug for one of my favorite TV blogs, David Hofstede's Comfort TV, which you'll recognize from my many links to his site. If you don't make this part of your regular reading, you should. (He also gives yours truly a nice shout-out; the check is in the mail.)

Cult TV Lounge reviews the Mike Hammer telemovie Murder Me, Murder You, starring Stacy Keach as the world's most violent private detective. I recently wrote about how TV never really gets Hammer's essence, but Keach is almost always worth a watch.

The View from the Junkyard takes us to The A-Team and the episode "The Rabbit Who Ate Las Vegas," and you'll want to find out from Roger whether or not this episode can possibly live up to its title.  TV  

This week in TV Guide: January 17, 1959

Xe start off the week with Bob Johnson's very amusing article on James Garner and Jack Kelley, the "Maverick Brothers" of ABC's Sunday night series.

The two stars maintain separate lives; Johnson suggests that "the boys don't like to discuss each other," although I'm not sure that there's any particular animosity between them. Certainly Garner, who was the first Maverick, is also first among equals; his episodes have higher ratings, and his appearances outnumber Kelly's through the course of the season (of the 20 episodes so far this season, nine have starred Garner, six for Kelly, and five have featured both of them.

It's not hard to dissect Garner's popularity: his easy-going manner, the implicit humor he brings to the role, are all products of his acting talent—or, as he puts it, his lack of same. He's no actor, he insists, but a personality; in fact, he can't act. "I'll learn if I have to, but I haven't had to yet. I'm playing me. Bret Maverick is lazy. I'm lazy. I like to get the bit over with at the studio and get out of there. I like being lazy." He adds that he's never taken a script home to study, "and I don't plan to."

You might be familiar with the story behind Maverick, of how the first few episodes were played straight—stock Westerns—until bored scriptwriter Marion Hargroves inserted a stage direction that changed the series forever. "Maverick," he wrote, "looks at him with his beady little eyes." Garner loved it. "You can't say that about a star," the research department told Hargroves. Nonsense, replied Hargroves; he'd met Garner, and he does have beady little eyes.

Soon the series had made the transformation to a comedy, and the Maverick boys "have been subjected to more house gags, in stage directions by Hargrove and other writers, than any two other actors living." For example, when Kelly leaves the saloon, he doesn't just leave. "He sees his horse. He smiles. His horse sees him and just nods." Garner is described  as "ahr hero" or "an itinerant clergyman," and when he considers a problem, "we can see his flabby little mind make a small connection." There's even a situation where "His face shows resentment, frustration, anxiety and anything else the director thinks he can get out of him." These directions don't explicitly show up on screen, of course, but it influences the way Garner and Kelly play their roles, and more important it indicates the spirit that has infected the entire show.

Interestingly, Kelly thinks the show can go three more seasons after this one, but "Garner has other ideas." As to what those ideas are, Johnson doesn't really say; instead, he captures Garner talking about the recent satire the show did on Gunsmoke. ("It's a classic.") Garner's other ideas, however, don't include three more seasons of Maverick; he quits the series in 1960 in a dispute with Warner Brothers, a case he wins in court. He's replaced by, at various times, Roger Moore and Robert Colbert; ultimately, in the fifth and final season (as Jack Kelly predicted), reruns of old Garner stories alternate with Kelly's new shows. Maverick ends its run with a secure place in TV history, and a warm spot in viewers' hearts.

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One of Ed Sullivan's first great on-air challenges came from Steve Allen, who left Tonight to take over an NBC variety show which, at the beginning, aired opposite Ed. It didn't run as long as Ed's, of course, but then Allen said his goal was never to conquer Ed, but to coexist with him, which he did for three seasons. Let's see who gets the best of the contest this week.

Sullivan: Ed's guests are actress Celeste Holm; French singer Edith Piaf; musical-comedy star Pat Suzuki; operatic soprano Antonietta Stella; musical-comedy writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green, currently appearing on Broadway in a two-man show; comedian Alan Drake; and juggler Francis Brunn.

Allen: Steve's guests are actress Esther Williams and singers Vic Damone and Jennie Smith. A large part of tonight's show takes place in and around a swimming pool located in the studio. Steve dons a bathing suit to join Miss Williams in an aquatic comedy routine.

As far as stars go, it's hard to top Celeste Holm, Edith Piaf, and Comden and Green. As far as entertainment, Steve Allen in a bathing suit with Esther Williams, cavorting in a studio swimming pool—that says it all. It depends on what turns you on, which is why this week is a push.

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That man in the baggy blue uniform is Bob Keeshan, aka Captain Kangaroo, whose show stands out "amid the cacophonous carnival of TV attractions for children" featuring broad slapstick comedy and raucous peanut galleries. Instead, the good Captain (his name comes from the enormous pockets on his jacket, vaguely resembling a kangaroo's pouch) treats them to "beautiful music, dancing, unusual games and toys, live animals, amusing cartoons, simple studies of nature, and tips on how to make things." 

Keeshan's entire television career has been about children. For five years he played the voiceless Clarabell the Clown on Howdy Doody, and followed that up with two local kids' shows in New York. Talking about the philosophy behind his series, Keeshan stresses the importance of his "gentle lessions" he presents to his young viewers, which mirror those he's imparted on his own children. "One important lesson I try to teach my own kids is that gentleness in a person doesn't necessarily indicate weakness; and that good manners and thoughtfullness are necessary to a happy life."

He's an ambassador for UNICEF, and creator of the "Trick or Treat" campaign that encouraged kids to collect coins, rather than Halloween candy, for the UN organization. (He's pictured above talking about UNICEF with three of Sir Winston Churchill's grandchildren.) Its success had led him to travel to other countries, including a stop at the Brussels World's Fair, encouraging similar ideas. He has a long-term goal of creating a news show for children, explaining the issues of the day in a way that they can understand. (A forerunner of In the News, perhaps?) Says Keeshan, "Children are an important part of the world—today's world. We owe them an honest explanation of what's happening to it."

Reading this brief article, one sees many of the same qualities and concerns that Fred Rogers would teach to later generations of children, and it's unfortunate, I think, that Captain Kangaroo often gets overlooked amidst the deserved praise that we've lavished on Mister Rogers over the years. Is it because of the Captain's episodes (the show ran on CBS from 1955 to 1984) were, as was too often the case back then, wiped? Or did Mister Rogers' Neighborhood come along at a time when children's programming was even worse, relatively speaking, than it was when Captain Kangaroo started? I'm not sure which, but the two men were great admirers of each other, and the shows themselves were never in competition. I've written about Captain Kangaroo before, noting the irony that the "Love Generation" that viewed his program often displayed attributes directly at odds with those he strove to teach them. Regardless, it's good to remember the genuine concern Bob Keeshan had for his young viewers, and the lessons he worked so hard and so long to teach them.

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Lest we get too caught up in the panacea of the 1950s, Wednesday reminds us of the decade's downside, with Edward R. Murrow's The Lost Class of '59 (7:00 p.m, CBS), a report on six high schools in Norfolk, Virginia, that the state ordered closed rather than submit to a federal court order to integrate. Murrow interviews local and state officials, segregation leaders and their opponents, and four local students to get their views on the situation, which affects some 43,000 students, including the "Norfolk 17," 17 black students whose attempt to enroll sparked the crisis. 

The Lost Class of '59 turns a national spotlight on Norfolk, bringing "unwanted" attention to the school crisis. Shortly after the broadcast, a group of 100 business leaders take out ◀ a full-page ad in the Virginian Pilot, urging that the schools reopen; they concede that while they prefer segregated schools, it's time to acknowledge and accept the "new reality." A week later, on February 2, the schools are reopened; by that time, however, many of the affected students had scattered to other schools in other cities and states, while others stayed home, married, or joined the military. On the 50th anniversary, honorary diplomas were awarded to 1,300 seniors who lost the experience of their senior year in high school. 

Murrow and producer Fred Friendly receive a Peabody Award for The Lost Class of '59, "for their concise reporting and compassionate insight into the plight of the group most seriously affected by the struggle for integration.  

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On a very quiet Saturday, I'll give the nod to Perry Como's show (7:00 p.m., NBC). Perry's guest stars are Nat King Cole, the McGuire Sisters, and Dick Van Dyke. At 11:30 p.m., KDAL in Duluth has the movie Michael Shayne, Private Detective, starring Lloyd Nolan. It's actually a pretty good movie if you forget both the novels by Brett Halliday and the series starring Richard Denning. Opposite that, on WTCN, is I Led Three Lives, and this week "Herb Philbrick becomes embroiled in a Communist plot to infiltrate a labor union." What a shock.

Returning to the news beat for a moment, Meet the Press expands to an hour on Sunday afternoon (5:00 p.m., NBC) for an appearance by Soviet First Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan, next to Khruschev the most powerful man in the Soviet Union. Mikoyan was a survivor if nothing else, serving Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev, and was one of the rare top Soviet officals to retire rather than meet a violent death at the hands of a rival; although he was forced out by Brezhnev, he was "allowed" to die of natural causes in 1978. In the great panoply of Communist figures, Mikoyan was thought to be friendlier to the United States than most, one reason why was sent to represent the USSR at the funeral of John F. Kennedy. He's being interviewed here on the occasion of his second trip to America.

The second half of Meet the Press runs into competition from ABC, with the final round of the Binbg Crosby Pro-Am golf tournament from Pebble Beach, California. (4:30 p.m.) Then, as now, the stars are part of the attraction, and this year's batch is expected to include Bob Hope, Phil Harris, Desi Arnaz, James Garner, Bob Crosby, Fred MacMurray, Randolph Scott and Dennis O'Keefe. And then there's Der Bingle, of course. It's as fine a lineup of stars as you'll see anywhere on TV this week.

There are a few stars left over for Sunday evening, though, as Nina Foch stars in a special presentation of Agatha Christie's famed mystery Ten Little Indians. (6:00 p.m., NBC) In today's politically correct times, it would probably be known by its alternate title, "And Then There Were None." Fine with me; the original title of the story is even more problematic. At 8:00 p.m., it's G.E. Theater on CBS, starring Tony Curtis, in the David and Goliath story, "The Stone." (8:00 p.m., CBS)

An ad in this week's issue proclaims CBS's hour-long block of The Danny Thomas Show and The Ann Sothern Show on Monday as the "funniest hour on TV." I wouldn't know about that, not being a particular fan of either one—which leads me to ask whether, aside from us classic TV aficionados, anyone really remembers them anymore. I'm not being sarcastic in asking this question, just wondering what kind of a cultural footprint either of them left. Danny Thomas, of course, is probably best known for St. Jude Children's Hospital, but how many know that at one time he was considered "one of television's greatest comedians"? Just a thought. At any rate, Danny's guest tonight is Tennessee Ernie Ford (8:00 p.m.), which counts for something. Meanwhile, Ann Sothern (8:30 p.m.) resurrects the old question facing women of the time: do you choose a career, or marriage? To find out, though, you'll have to pass up Peter Gunn on NBC and The Voice of Firestone on ABC. 

If one night of Steve Allen (Sunday) is good, two nights must be better, right? Tuesday is the second night, and The Bob Cummings Show* is the occasion (8:30 p.m., NBC). Tonight, Bob tries to get rid of his girlfriend Betty (Joyce Jameson) by telling her that he can get her a job on Steve's show. Have you seen that one, Hal Horn? Even more significant than a second night of Steve, though, is the first night of Alcoa Presents (9:00 p.m., ABC), which you'll probably recognize by its subtitle: One Step Beyond. The much-loved supernatural cult series, presented by John Newland, will stick around for three seasons, joining a panoply that includes The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.

*Fun fact: According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, The Bob Cummings Show was the first series to debut as a midseason replacement. There's no citation to prove it, though. 

Lawrence Welk is one of the few stars to enjoy the distinction of two weekly prime time programs running each week; besides his better-known Saturday night extravaganza, he also has an hour each Wednesday. Initially known as Lawrence Welk Presents Top Tunes and New Talent, it now carries the title The Lawrence Welk Plymouth Show (6:30 p.m., ABC), and it has a distinction of its own: according to the always-reliable Wikipedia, the Welk Plymouth Show is the first television program to be aired in stereo; this was accomplished, "by ABC simulcast the show on its radio network, with the TV side airing one audio channel and the radio side airing the other; viewers would tune in both the TV and the radio to achieve the stereophonic effect." As corroboration, the program description notes that viewers watching the show on WTCN, the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis-St. Paul, "can hear this program in stereophonic sound by also tuning to radio station WTCN, operating on 1280 kilocycles." 

On Thursday, Cesar Romero guest stars as "The Gay Caballero" (not to be confused with Guy Caballero) on Zorro (7:00 p.m., ABC). I'll bet he steals the show. At 8:30 p.m., CBS's Playhouse 90 presents "The Velvet Alley," a Rod Serling play about a struggling writer who may have finally gotten his big break when he sells a script to—Playhouse 90. Art Carney makes a rare dramatic appearance as the playwright who has to ask himself whether success is worth selling your soul.

Speaking of show-stealing and meta stories, Phil Silvers is well-positioned to steal Friday in an expanded one-hour edition of his series (8:00 p.m., CBS) which is wonderfully, bizarrely meta. In it, Sydney Chaplin (actor and son of Charlie), playing himself, plans to use Bilko's life story for an Army musical. Bilko travels to Hollywood to meet the actor chosen to play him: Phil Silvers! Diana Dors, also playing herself, guests; later this year, she'll marry an actor who'll do pretty well in an Army sitcom himself—Richard Dawson.

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A word about the changing face of television production. While the movie studios have tried, once they realized that television wasn't going anywhere, to enter the TV production industry, the three studios that today dominate television are all independent from the movie moguls: Desilu, Screen Gems, and Revue. Together, as Dan Jenkins reports, the three of them will do an estimated gross of $100 million in this fiscal year, all of it in television. And their output far dwarfs that of their big-screen counterparts.

As an example, the three networks use an average of 36 hours of film in prime time each week, the equivalent of 24 feature films. Over the course of a 39-week television season, that amounts to an equivalent of 936 movies, more than four-and-a-half times the number of movies turned out by studios in 1958. And keep in mind that these figures don't include syndicated series or shows broadcast outside prime time.

Of the three, Screen Gems is the oldest, having started out in 1949 as a subsidiary of Columbia. Desilu represents "the ever-lengthening shadow of one man, Desi Arnaz," who has gone from being virtually shoved down CBS's throat by his wife, Lucille Ball, to become television's most successful producer, with three former motion picture studios and more soundstanges than are owned by MGM.* Revue, the third of the big three, grosses an estimated $40,000 per episode, multiplied by 39 episodes, for each of the series in its stable. Together, the three turn out 32 network and syndicated shows, representing 17 hours of television per week, "more than twice the footage of all the major and indpenedent movie companies combined." 

*And this is how, as the cover notes, Lucy and Desi became "America's Favorite Tycoons." 

There are, however, challenges on the horizon. Warner Bros. currently puts out four hours of television per week on ABC alone, including the aforementioned Maverick. Walt Disney has three film shows of his own on the same network, while other studios, including Ziv, "sausage-grinder of the syndication field," and George Burns' McCadden Productions.

For the most part, Jenkins notes, members from the motion picture industry have had little to do with the rise of television productions. Even when the studios have jumped into TV, they've chosen TV-trained executives, such as Harry Ackerman at Screen Jems, and Martin Manulis at Fox. Even in the case of rising contender Four Star Films, which was founded by movie actors Dick Powell, David Nive, and Charles Boyer, the organization was put together by radio-TV agent-producer Don Sharpe. 

Times will change, though. Remember not that long ago, we read about Lucille Ball selling out Desilu to Paramount. WB will become more and more prominent in television, and Disney will come to control just about everything. But in the meantime there is no question that the big three are part of Hollywood's new elite, in an industry that didn't even exist ten years ago.

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And now a moment to mention this week's starlet, 23-year-old Nancy Malone: 23, "red-haired and blue-eyed and freckled and pert." She's been acting since she was 11, and left school at 17 to appear in the Broadway play Time Out for Ginger. Since then she's appeared on many of the New York-based dramatic anthologies (Studio One, Armstrong Circle Theatre, Robert Montgomery Presents, the Hallmark Hall of Fame) and is currently a regular on the CBS sudser The Brighter Day, along with her dog, Miss Madrigal (five years old, half beagle, half dachshund, likes to chase squirels). 

Next year she'll take on her best-known role, that of Libby Kingston, aspiring actress and good-hearted girlfriend of Paul Burke's Detective Adam Flint, in Naked City. She'll remain on Naked City for three seasons; later, she'll be one of the stars on ABC's The Long Hot Summer. After that, she'll work her way up the entertainment ladder, moving into producing and directing (where she wins an Emmy and is nominated for two others), and does a stint as vice-president of television at 20th Century Fox. Always a pleasure to watch, she's an example of a starlet who makes good.

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Finally, some notes from the TV Teletype:

Bill Lundigan's new series Moon Flight, which is billed as a "new semidocumentary series abou tman's exploration of space," has gone into production. It will emerge with a new name, Men Into Space, when it airs this September on CBS. You can catch reruns of it on Comet if you're so inclined. And speaking of new series, that guest appearance by Tennessee Ernie Ford on Monday's Danny Thomas Show made an impact on the producer, who liked the character Ernie played on the show and thought it was a great idea for a new sitcom—not for Ernie, but for Andy Griffith. They're working on it now, and when it premieres as The Andy Griffith Show in October 1960, it will find a place in television history.

Dwayne Hickman is leaving the aforementioned The Bob Cummings Show at the end of this season for his own series, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, good for four seasons on CBS starting this fall. The detective series Peter Gunn, which debuted last September on NBC, has been picked up for the rest of the year—a full 39 episodes. And Dave Garroway has postponed his trip to Paris from April until early May; there's a funny ancedote about that trip in my interview with Jodie Peeler.

Finally, a note from the local section that Miss America 1959, Carol Ann Mobley, "is in town to crown the North St. Paul Jaycee Queen," and will be appearing with Arle Haeberle on her WCCO afternoon show Around the Town. I don't see any "Carol Ann Mobley" as Miss America, in 1959 or any other year. There is, however, a Mary Ann Mobley, who happens to be Miss America 1959. I hope the Jaycees that were expecting Carol weren't too disappointed. TV  

This week in TV Guide: September 17, 1955

Let's start the week off right with a look at two legends and their relationship to TV, beginning with Judy Garland and her television debut on next Saturday's 90-minute Ford Star Jubilee. It will be telecast live and in color (on the East Coast, anyway), with special guest David Wayne, playing the Fred Astaire role in a song from Easter Parade.

Garland is only 33 and without the gaunt look that we'd see a decade later—in fact, don't you think she looks like daughter Liza in the picture on that album cover below? And even though she cancelled the remainder of her national tour in order to do the special, she's nervous all the same. "I’ll probably come out on the stage, take one look at those three-eyed TV monsters and faint dead away," she says. "And then where am I going to find another medium to make my comeback?" 

Still, it's a time of excitement, and she's not going to worry about it. "I’ll just work my head off, get good and sick 30 minutes before air time, and by Sunday morning we’ll know whether or not I’ve laid an egg." The writer is confident that she won't. And I don't think she did, either; included in the show is the only video performance of "Over the Rainbow" while wearing the famous tramp outfit that she so often wore in concert. As a matter of fact, you can see most of the show here and decide for yourself. As I frequently say, we're fortunate we have this much of our television history still intact.

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From one legend to another: Frank Sinatra says he has no interest in doing television on a regular basis—it's "too tough," he says—but the networks keep coming after him, and he's not above doing the occasional special, such as this Monday's now-famous Producers' Showcase presentation of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" (7:00 p.m. CT, NBC) in which Sinatra plays the Stage Manager and introduces the song "Love and Marriage."* The cast includes Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint, the two teenagers at the heart of the story, plus Shelley Fabares and well-known character actors Paul Hartman, Ernest Truex, Sylvia Field, and Peg Hillias. 

*It's also the first of a long collaboration between songwritesr Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen. 

But back to The Chairman; he's happy with "Our Town" ("a great script"), but he says he doesn't have any TV plans for the future. "I like movies better," he tells Dan Jenkins, although he makes fun of an early effort, 1948's The Miracle of the Bells, now popular on The Late, Late Show, in which he plays a priest, "walking through the role with all the grace and animation of a wooden Indian" according to Jenkins ("Pretty awful, wasn't it?" Sinatra acknowledges.) A man can afford to do that when he has an Academy Award on the mantlepiece, which Sinatra won five years later for From Here to Eternity. "Takes a guy that long to learn how to act," he says. "You gotta keep watching all the other guys and pretty soon you absorb enough of it or it just rubs off on you or something. Anyway, you learn." He learns pretty good; later in the year he'll star in The Man with the Golden Arm, for which he'll receive another Oscar nomination the following year. And despite his protestations to the contrary, he's got one more TV series up his sleeve, a 1957 effort for ABC that was to combine dramatic efforts with occasional music specials.

That series fails (as did an earlier CBS effort in 1950), but no matter; he remains a powerhouse in records and movies, and his frequent singing specials are always ratings hits. This must be our lucky week, though; "Our Town" is available on YouTube as well, and you can see it here.

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Another week, another story about CBS's struggle to field a competitive morning show to go against Today. It seems as if this has been the case ever since television started, but that's an exaggeration; it's only been several decades. Anyway, we've already seen Walter Cronkite and Jack Paar try, and fail, to make a dent in NBC's dominance of the two-hour timeslot, but according to the New York TV Teletype, the network has a radical new idea: "Bill Leonard, local New York CBS commentator, will do feature stories; Charles Collingwood will continue with the news, and Bob Keeshan, original 'Clarabell' on Howdy Doody, will do a kid show, Captain Kangaroo."

Now, isn't that something? CBS does, in fact, cut The Morning Show down to an hour, and giving the second hour to The Captain. Paar actually stays with the show until the following year, when CBS moves him to a late-morning program of his own. Paar's replaced by Will Rogers, Jr.; that format lasts 14 months before Rogers is replaced in turn by country singer Jimmy Dean; that show runs for 45 minutes, with a 15-minute morning news program leading into Captain Kangaroo; the whole shebang lasts another nine months, after which CBS gives up altogether until The CBS Morning News debuts in 1963.

Meanwhile, Captain Kangaroo continues weekdays until 1982, when it's moved to the weekend in order to make room for an expanded CBS Morning News, hosted by Bill Kurtis and Diane Sawyer, which actually worked for while—before failing again. 

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Let's stay with the industry news for a bit longer. Dan Jenkins takes a not-so-fond look back at the summer season just ended; "If 'good riddance' is too strong a term, and it probably is, let it be said that it was a 'normal' summer. As such, it in no way measured up to the exciting promises voiced by the networks." Only one program, The $64,000 Question, emerged from the season to become a hit, and while Jenkins questions its cultural value, rest assured that it's going to become a symbol of television culture—cough, scandal—before long. 

Johnny Carson debuted his variety program on CBS*; the "bright young comic" is still in the launching stage, but when he takes off, it'll be quite a flight. Julius La Rosa, standing in for Perry Como, was "pleasant, if not inspiring." His old boss, Arthur Godfrey, turned the reins over to Frankie Laine, "who poses no immediate threat." Many of the "spectaculars" promised for the summer were less than special, including "One Touch of Venus," which I mentioned just a few weeks ago. Jenkins wastes fewer words than I did in describing it; it was "a bore." 

*You can find this on DVD, and while I think the makers would like you to mistake this for The Tonight Show, it's worth it anyway, to see his legendary career in its embryonic stage. 

I don't want to give the impression that everything was bad, though. Jenkins liked Ethel and Albert, the Peg Lynch-created crossover from radio, writing that it was "one of the few intelligently written husband-and-wife situation comedies extant and should be jealously preserved for the benefit of the American sanity." He also liked The Dunninger Show, starring the famed mentalist (you can read about the TV Guide profile here), calling him a pheonmenon, and adding that "there aren't many phenomenons on TV." Then or now, if you ask me. And the anthologies that continued throughout the summer, such as Studio One, were satisfying. 

All in all, says Jenkins, good television "is somewhat akin to the weather. Everybody talks about it, nobody does anything about it—yet occasionally, as though all by itself, along comes that rare day in June. It’s the waiting that can kill you."

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John Cameron Swayze, anchor of NBC's Camel News Caravan, is the latest to weigh in on the effect television has on children, and surprise: he believes they'll profit from it. 

While acknowledging that "a few programs are not what they should be," Swayze points out that "our youngsters' TV experiences are in no way limited to specifically designed 'children's programs,' either good or bad; their interest isn't limited to programs tailor-made for their particular age group." Because of its visual impact and sense of immediacy, "televisison has captured the child's imagination and boosted interst in areas of thought and activity often considered outside his own sphere." 

In support of his contention, Swayze points to his own experience with News Caravan; more than 35 percent of the mail he gets is from children between six and 16, a "tremendous response" from a demographic that's not the target market. In one week, he received letters from an entire New Jersey elementary class commenting on world problems; had a letter from a 14-year-old in Arkansas asking about use of the H-bomb for defense; heard from a 15-year-old with her views on the power struggle in the Kremlin; and had a 10-year-old write asking for ideas on the president's foreign policy." Many colleagues, he reports, have received similar kinds of mail from young viewers; among other things, he concludes, "we parents are slow to realize how much youngsters are interested in what’s going on in the world beyond their own particular family and school realm."

The lesson, he says, is that parents should "take advantage of this painless, entertaining 'schoolroom,' i.e., the TV set," and understand that children "are quite capable of interest in good adult programming." It's not enough to make sure they see they monitor children's programs; "a little effort should be put to surveying personally the type and quality of the many TV programs available and scanning daily schedules for shows overlooked that could spark their child’s interest." It might surprise them, as it surprised Swayze, to find out "they have been selling young folks a bit short when it comes to enjoying and profiting from the better type of so-called grown-up TV fare."

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We'll wrap things up for the week with a look at more programming highlights, beginning with the debut of Perry Como's one-hour primetime show (Saturday, 7:00 p.m., NBC). Perry's guests are an all-star lineup including Frankie Laine, Rosemary Clooney, Marion Lorne, Leo DeLyon, and Dave Barry. Como had hosted the three-times-weekly Chesterfield Supper Club since 1948, and his hour-long show is an instant hit, becoming the Kraft Music Hall in 1959, and remaining on the air until 1963, when Como decides to cut back to several specials per year.

On Sunday, it's the premiere of Famous Film Festival (6:30 p.m., ABC), notable for being the first primetime movie series on network television, featuring nearly three dozen recent movies from Britain. Tonight's premiere is Carol Reed's grim 1947 thriller Odd Man Out, starring James Mason in one of his greatest performances, supported by Robert Newton and Kathleen Ryan. If you're looking for something a little more lighthearted, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis are back to kick off the new season of the Colgate Variety Hour. (7:00 p.m., NBC) Included in tonight's features a satire on the recent differences of opinion between the two stars; Less than a year later, the partnership is dissolved. I wonder if the "differences" referred to here are what precipitated the break, or if it's something else. They're going up against Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town (7:00 p.m., CBS), tonight spotlighting the U.S. Navy's World Wide Talent Contest, with the finalists coming from all over the world. Julius La Rosa and the Marquis Chimps are also part of the fun. 

Besides "Our Town," Monday also features opera star Roberta Peters on Voice of Firestone (7:30 p.m., ABC), where in addition to the classics, she sings pieces by Noel Coward and Richard Rodgers. And later, on WTMJ in Milwaukee, Orson Welles' brings film noir to Shakespeare in his 1948 black-and-white adaptation of Macbeth, with Jeanette Nolan in her film debut as the murderous Lady Macbeth. (Midnight)

A pair of premieres are on tap for Tuesday, starting with Cheyenne (6:30 p.m., ABC), one of the three rotating elements of Warner Brothers Presents, and the only one to survive to a second season. Cheyenne is not only the first hour-long Western, it's the first hour-long show with continuing characters to survive beyond one season. Meantime, at 7:30 p.m. on CBS it's the inaugural episode of You'll Never Get Rich, later to be known as The Phil Silvers Show, starring Silvers in his most famous role as Master Sergeant Ernie Bilko. 

Wednesday, Arthur Godfrey and Friends begins the night for CBS (7:00 p.m.), which leads us to one of the week's cover stories, part two of Godfrey's feud with the press. The star himself shrugs off any significance to what's written about him; "I learned a long time ago to read as little as possible about myself," he told one interviewer. "First they build you up; then they tear you down." And such is the case with Godfrey; for years he enjoyed laudatory writeups from the press, but the tide began to turn with the firing of Julius La Rosa, when his role suddenly switched "from hero to villain, from crusader to bully." Says Ben Gross of the New York Daily News, "to see the Great Man requires the eating of more humble pie than trying to interview the Queen of England. He is the master of the brush-off, with a generally contemptuous manner toward newspapermen." Godfrey's vow to even the score in his upcoming autobiography doesn't help things any, and despite his best efforts he never regains the popularity he once enjoyed.

Thursday belongs to guest stars, with Nina Foch and Vincent Price starring on Climax! (7:30 p.m., CBS); naturally, Price is the heavy, and meets an untimely ending. Ida Lupino, one of the four stars of Four Star Playhouse, stars in "With All My Heart" (8:30 p.m., CBS), while Brian Donlevy and Bobby Van are the leads in "The Policy of Joe Aladdin" on Ford Theatre (8:30 p.m., NBC) And WTMJ's midnight movie is The Lie, with Lee Bowman as a man who wakes up to find a dead body in his room. How many times has this happened to you?

Throughout the week, the merchants of the modern Park Forest Plaza in Park Forest, Illinois ("60 modern stories! Parking for 3500 cars!") have been celebrating the "Park Forest-TV Guide Jamboree," and Friday features a musical-variety hour with local celebrities, headlined by a non-local celebrity: Sammy Davis Jr., who also crowns the queen of the festival. (3:00 p.m., WGN) In case you were curious, the Park Forest Plaza is no more, but it's not a victim of the recent downturn in retail malls; it came to an end in 1996. Later, on Edward R. Murrow's Person to Person (9:30 p.m., CBS), it's a great doubleheader: first Ed interviews conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montealegre; then his guest is Olympic legend Jesse Owens. Not a bad way to end the week, right? TV  

This week in TV Guide: July 10, 1982

Xomehow or other we seem to have found ourselves back in the '80s again, and while it seems like recent history when going through the TV Guides of the 1950s and '60s, it is, in fact, 40 years since this issue came out. And that makes me feel very, very old. 

One thing that should make us all feel young, though, is that the lead story then, as now, is that massive land mass in Eastern Europe, and whether you call it the Soviet Union or Russia, understanding what they're up to is a cottage industry. And, says Harrison Salisbury, former New York Times correspondent in Moscow, television has demonstrated some massive gaps in its understanding of what goes on inside the Soviet bloc. For even though the networks not only covered the same major stories that print journalists did, as well as uncovering some of their own, "the quality of network coverage during this [period] was, for the most part, erratic." 

Salisbury's complaints are familiar ones, both then and now: an emphasis on stories that have a visual component; lack of follow-up on major stories; and a lack of time given over to these stories in general. Although reporting on these stories may have been good, "good spot reporting is not enough to enable a concerned citizen or a serious decision maker the depth he needs to judge what is going on or what is likely to happen." Salisbury suggests that there needs to be more in-depth reporting on subjects such as the Soviet failures in agriculture and industry, the decline in Marxism within Soviet society, and the "shabby performance of the Red Army in Afghanistan." Moscow correspondents need to be talking more on American talk shows and news specials, and network news stars need to travel to Russia more frequently, giving the issues greater visibility.

Let's bring this forward to today. Russia is in the headlines as much as ever, and in an era when so many people get their news courtesy of social media, we see more than ever the need for accuracy and clear reporting. We all know about the stories concerning the Russia-Ukraine war that have recycled old pictures and presented them as current, thereby providing not only a deceptive view of the war, but often a biased one as well. We are learning that much of that reporting has been not only inaccurate, but has relied on estimates and projections from "experts" who have as little idea of what's really going on as you and I. 

What we needed then, and what we need now, is reporters and analysts who are experienced with the geopolitical situation, are knowledgeable when it comes to personalities and strategies, and above all are neutral in providing a clear picture of what's going on in a very confusing part of the world. We need to take an honest look at what's going on, not only in Russia but in Ukraine, and to present the situation warts and all, even if it goes contrary to the conventional story. We need to investigate the links between American politicians and leaders in both countries, much as was done during the Cold War. Instead, we face the same shortcomings that Salisbury complains about 40 years ago.

Salisbury concludes his essay by noting that his prescription for improved coverage is "a challenging task, but one, I believe, that is well within the scope of American television's almost unlimited technological capability." We're already 40 years too late—let's get on with it.

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If Judith Crist calls it a "first-class network movie week," you'd better believe it. And no matter what your tastes, there's something in store for you. 

For comedy lovers, it's the network premiere of The Last Remake of Beau Geste (Monday, 9:00 p.m. PT, NBC), a sendup of "every Foreign Legion flick around," with director/co-writer/star Marty Feldman as Digby Geste, "identical twin" of Michael York's Beau Geste, and a supporting cast that includes Trevor Howard, Ann-Margret, Peter Ustinov, Henry Gibson, James Earl Jones, and a cameo (on film) of the original Beau, Gary Cooper. It is, says Crist, a "[Mel] Brooksian blend of satire, slapstick and vulgarity." It also has "the general air of hilarious madness that make the movie a joy."

If music (and Barbra Streisand) is your thing, check out Funny Lady (Sunday, 8:00 p.m., ABC), the follow-up to Streisand's Funny Girl that is "that rare sequel superior to the original." James Caan and Ben Vereen round out the bill. For adventure, look no further than The Deep (Monday, 8:00 p.m., NBC), with Robert Shaw, Nick Nolte, Jacqueline Bisset and a wet T-shirt, all searching for buried treasure. For thrills, there's Rollercoaster (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., NBC), a "dandy thriller" about an amusement park mad bomber, with Timothy Bottoms, George Segal and Richard Widmark. And for something with a little bite to it, there's the made-for-TV movie The Killing of Randy Webster Wednesday, 9:00 p.m., CBS), based on a true story of a father's quest for the truth about his son's killing by a Houston policeman, which Crist calls "deeply affecting and cogent," and "potent" performances by Hal Holbrook and Dixie Carter as the boy's parents.

Some pretty good flicks on the local level as well, starting Saturday on Elvira's Movie Macabre Presents (8:00 p.m., KHJ), with Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers, starring Sharon Tate. Monday night with Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun (8:00 p.m., KTLA), with "only two intermissions"! Choose between that and The Pawnbroker (9:00 p.m., KHJ), a gritty, sobering drama with an Oscar-nominated performance by Rod Steiger. Tuesday evening, it's David Lean's magnificent epic Lawrence of Arabia (8:15 p.m., KABC), for which both Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif should have won Oscars. On Wednesday, the Z Channel has Gunn (12:00 p.m.), with Craig Stevens reprising his role as the suave jazz detective (but without Lola Albright and Hershel Bernardi), and KTLA's back with another two-intermission feature, Hour of the Gun (8:00 p.m.) Wednesday and Thursday, KTTV's midnight movie (more about that later) features Slaughterhouse-Five and Diary of a Mad Housewife, respectively, and Thursday at 9:00 p.m. on Z Channel, it's Blake Edwards' savage satire on the movie industry, S.O.B., with Julie Andrews, Richard Mulligan, William Holden, Robert Preston, and more. 

You know what? Judith Crist was right—that is a heck of a week.

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Let's not forget the sports scene, because there are a couple of major events on tap this week. On Sunday it's the world's most-watched sporting event, soccer's World Cup, live from Madrid (10:30 a.m., ABC). Soccer in the United States hasn't yet reached the level of popularity that it has today, and this is the first time the final has been broadcast live on American television since London in 1966. Before an in-stadium crowd of 87,000 and a worldwide television audience of more than two billion (possibly the largest television audience in history), Italy defeats West Germany 3-1 to win its first World Cup since 1938. Italy, by the way, missed this year's World Cup in Qatar. They also missed the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

Tuesday night, it's sports with a more American flair (even though it's being played in Montreal), the baseball's All-Star Game, aka the Midsummer Night's Classic, (5:00 p.m., ABC). Believe it or not, this used to be one of the biggest nights of the baseball season, one of the rare times when American League fans got to see National League teams, and vice versa. There was no red carpet show, no endless interviews with celebrities, no tie games because teams ran out of pitchers. It was an actual baseball game, played by two teams trying to win. Melvin Durslag, TV Guide's resident sports expert, has an accompanying article discussing the challenge that the two teams' managers will have getting all those stars (and their egos) into the game; it's hard to imagine giving the game even that much attention nowadays. (I don't think I've watched the game in over 30 years.) By the way, the National League wins this edition of the game, 4-1, the first All-Star game ever played outside the United States.

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And now some bad news, and if it isn't the end of the world, it's an end to a way of life. CBS has announced that Captain Kangaroo will no longer be seen Monday through Friday mornings, but will be banished to the weekend. They're doing this to clear the way for their morning news program to air in a better timeslot, opposite Today and Good Morning America. Peggy Charren, president of Action for Children's Television, lashed out at the network: "The most important educational institution in America is discriminating against children," she said. "The broadcasting industry should be ashamed of itself." 

Let's not pretend that there's any place for children's programming on network television weekday mornings; that's a ship that sailed a long time ago. Still, this is, I think, a stupid move by CBS. In clearing the way for direct competition against the other two morning shows, the network is signaling a retreat from its previous hard-news morning format, but the CBS morning programs, it all its many incarnations (they've had nearly 30 on-air personalities since 1982), never catches on; I wonder if the show's ratings were any higher than the good Captain's. The story notes that CBS will now have news continuously from 2:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. weekdays. Just what we needed—more news.

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I don't suppose we should blame Joseph Wapner personally for the plague—dare I call it diarrhea—of "courtroom" shows on TV today. If nothing else, it proves that you can always have too much of a good thing, even if this form of reality television was never that good to begin with.

But this is 1982, and a show like The People's Court still has a freshness to it, a "rich vein of real-life comedy and drama," as Ellen Torgerson Shaw puts sit. Executive producer Stu Billet talks about researching the idea at small-claims courts courts, where "I saw there was a constant audience watching the litigants." So he knew it was a good idea, but it still took him five or six years to sell the idea. "One network thought I should have Nipsey Russell and Charles Nelson Reilly as prosecuting attorney and defense attorney," he complained. (Perhaps they were just ahead of their time?) Finally, he turned to Ralph Edwards, the man behind This Is Your Life and Truth or Consequences, who immediately saw the potential for a hit. 

The key, though, was to find the right judge, and that's where Judge Wapner comes in. During his audition, (a real-life case), he was confronted with two litigants ready to duke it out. "Wapner told both parties to cut the hysterics and just present their testimony," and Billet and Edwards knew they had their judge. He's every bit as interesting a character as today's "judges"; he attended Hollywood High, once dated Lana Turner, and aspired to the stage before serving 20 years as a judge in small-claims court.* He likes the idea of showing people what the judicial system is really like, adding, "I think this show is better for young people to see than cops and robbers." Judges and attorneys like what they've seen so far; judge Harry Shafer says, "I see the humanity in it. I think people want realism, and it is real." Adds John Phillips of the Center for Law in the Public Interest, "It's a good exposure to the justice system—people get a sense of their responsibilities." 

*His father, a lawyer, used to appear on Divorce Court. 

Nowadays, we seem to have abandoned the idea that television can be both entertaining and informative; we rarely seem interested in anything more than scoring a cheap point or getting a cheap laugh. There's almost an innocence about the original People's Court, which is still on today, and still has a real judge (Marilyn Milian) as host. There are other courtroom shows have real judges as well. No wonder the courts are so backlogged—all our judges are on TV.   But Steve Harvey? Chrissy Teigen? Jerry Springer? (Well, at least he was actually a lawyer.) I don't know what the late Judge Wapner would think of my objections to today's shows, but I'd like to think that he'd sustain it.

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On Thursday night an ABC News Closeup (10:00 p.m.) reminds us that Vietnam is still recent history, and the wound caused by that war is still an open one. "Vietnam Requiem" takes its cue from a study showing that 34 percent of the Americans who saw combat were later arrested, most for the first time, for civilian crimes.

The focus is on five men, all of whom fought for the United States in Vietnam, all of whom are now in prison. The crime is not the focus; rather, it's "their recollections of nightmarish combat, disillusioning homecomings and difficult adjustments to civilian life." Included is the story of Albert Dobbs, a soldier described as "worth five men," who's still haunted by "the obscenity" of the war, and agonizes over an atrocity he says he committed: "I shot a family. Not for what they did; they happened to be where 17 of my friends were slaughtered. If I'm 1000 years old, I'll never forget [the family's] faces." 

There's also a mention of "post-traumatic stress disorder," and I wonder how many times that had appeared in the media up to that point? As a country and as a people, we handled this whole thing so terribly, terribly wrong: throwing them into a war we never should have been in to begin with, with no defined outcome and no way to win; then protesting against them and giving aid and comfort to the enemy; then treating them like forgotten men (at best) and scum (at worst) when they did return; then totally failing to account for the trauma they went through. If today's glorification of the military is overkill, and I think it is, then at least we can understand from where the pendulum had to swing back.

You can see this extraordinary documentary in its entirety here.

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Let's end on a hopeful note, rather than a downbeat one:

We'd be remiss if we didn't bring you all the color there is to see in an issue of TV Guide. The Melanie in question is Melanie Vincz, the first of eleven winners of KTTV's (Channel 11, naturally) search for the "Bedtime Movie Girls." The station says that over 500 women auditioned for the position; each of the eleven will spend one week as movie hostess. There isn't much online about the Bedtime Movie Girls, which clearly deprives us of a small but crucial bit of television history, although there's a picture and list of the winners here, and you can catch a promo for the Bedtime Movie here. Sounds like a research project for someone out there, doesn't it? Anyway, it just goes to show what we've lost with the disappearance of movie hosts from local stations. TV  

This week in TV Guide: January 17, 1959

We start off the week with Bob Johnson's very amusing article on James Garner and Jack Kelley, the "Maverick Brothers" of ABC's Sunday night series.

The two stars maintain separate lives; Johnson suggests that "the boys don't like to discuss each other," although I'm not sure that there's any particular animosity between them. Certainly Garner, who was the first Maverick, is also first among equals; his episodes have higher ratings, and his appearances outnumber Kelly's through the course of the season (of the 20 episodes so far this season, nine have starred Garner, six for Kelly, and five have featured both of them.

It's not hard to dissect Garner's popularity; his easy-going manner, the implicit humor he brings to the role, are all products of his acting talent - or, as he puts it, his lack of same. He's no actor, he insists, but a personality; in fact, he can't act. "I'll learn if I have to, but I haven't had to yet. I'm playing me. Bret Maveri k is lazy. I'm lazy. I like to get the bit over with at the studio and get out of there. I like being lazy." He adds that he's never taken a script home to study, "and I don't plan to."

You might be familiar with the story behind Maverick, of how the first few episodes were played straight - stock Westerns - until bored scriptwriter Marion Hargroves inserted a stage direction that changed the series forever. "Maverick," he wrote, "looks at him with his beady little eyes." Garner loved it. "You can't say that about a star," Garner says the research department told Hargroves. Nonsense, replied Hargroves; he'd met Garner, and he does have beady little eyes.

Soon the series had made the transformation to a comedy, and the Maverick boys "have been subjected to more house gags, in stage directions by Hargrove and other writers, than any two other actors living." For example, when Kelly leaves the saloon, he doesn't just leave. "He sees his horse. He smiles. His horse sees him and just nods." Garner is described  as "ahr hero" or "an itinerant clergyman," and when he considers a problem, "we can see his flabby little mind make a small connection." There's even a situation where "His face shows resentment, frustration, anxiety an danything else the director thinks he can get out of him." These directions don't explicitly show up on screen, of course, but it influences the way Garner and Kelly play their roles, and more important it indicates the spirit that has infected the entire show.

Interestingly, Kelly thinks the show can go three more seasons after this one, but "Garner has other ideas." As to what those ideas are, Johnson doesn't really say; instead, he captures Garner talking about the recent satire the show did on Gunsmoke. ("It's a classic.") Garner's other ideas, however, don't include three more seasons of Maverick; he quits the series in 1960 in a dispute with Warner Brothers, a case he wins in court. He's replaced by, at various times, Roger Moore and Robert Colbert; ultimately, in the fifth and final season (as Jack Kelly predicted), reruns of old Garner stories alternate with Kelly's new shows. Maverick ends its run with a secure place in TV history, and a warm spot in viewers' hearts.

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Before we get to this week's programs, I'd like to take a minute to mention the article on Bob Keeshen, aka Captain Kangaroo, talking about the philosophy behind his series. "One important lesson I try to teach my own kids is that gentleness in a person doesn't necessarily indicate weakness; and that good manners and thoughtfullness are necessary to a happy life."

He's an ambassador for UNICEF, and creator of the "Trick or Treat" campaign that encouraged kids to collect coins, rather than Halloween candy, for the UN organization. Its success had led him to travel to other countries, including a stop at the Brussels World's Fair, encouraging similar ideas. He has a long-term goal of creating a news show for children, explaining the issues of the day in a way that they can understand. (A forerunner of In the News, perhaps?) Says the good Captain, "Children are ain important part of the world - today's world. We owe them an honest explanation of what's happening to it."

It's also worth a moment to mention this week's starlet, Nancy Malone, the 23-year old who started out on Broadway ("Time Out for Ginger"), has guested in numerous television drama anthologies, and is currently appearing in the CBS sudser The Brighter Day, along with her dog, Miss Madrigal. Next year she'll take on her best-known role, that of Detective Adam Flint's girlfriend Libby, in Naked City, and later she'll appear in The Long Hot Summer.

After that she'll work her way up the entertainment ladder, moving into producing and directing (where she wins an Emmy and is nominated for two others), and does a stint as vice-president of television at 20th Century Fox. An example of a starlet who makes good.

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One of Ed Sullivan's first great on-air challenges came from Steve Allen, who left Tonight to take over an NBC variety show which, at the beginning, aired opposite Ed. It didn't run as long as Ed's, of course, but then Allen said his goal was never to conquer Ed, but to coexist with him, which he did for three seasons. Let's see who gets the best of the contest this week.

Sullivan: Ed's guests are actress Celeste Holm; French singer Edith Piaf; musical-comedy star Pat Suzuki; operatic soprano Antonietta Stella; musical-comedy writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green, currently appearing on Broadway in a two-man show; comedian Alan Drake; and juggler Francis Brunn.

Allen: Steve's guests are actress Esther Williams and singers Vic Damone and Jennie Smith. A large part of tonight's show takes place in and around a swimming pool located in the studio. Steve dons a bathing suit to join Miss Williams in an aquatic comedy routine.

As far as stars go, it's hard to top Celeste Holm, Edith Piaf, and Comden and Green. As far as entertainment, Steve Allen in a bathing suit with Esther Williams, cavorting in a studio swimming pool - that says it all. It depends on what turns you on, which is why this week is a push.

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On a very quiet Saturday, I'll give the nod to Perry Como's show (7:00 p.m., NBC). Perry's guest stars are Nat King Cole, the McGuire Sisters, and Dick Van Dyke. At 11:30 p.m., KDAL in Duluth has the movie Michael Shayne, Private Detective, starring Lloyd Nolan. It's actually a pretty good movie if you forget both the novels by Brett Halliday and the series starring Richard Denning. Opposite that, on WTCN, is I Led Three Lives, and this week "Herb Philbrick becomes embroiled in a Communist plot to infiltrate a labor union." What a shock.

Sunday is a day of substance; Meet the Press expands to an hour on Sunday afternoon (5:00 p.m., NBC) for an appearance by Soviet First Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan, next to Khruschev the most powerful man in the Soviet Union. Mikoyan was a survivor if nothing else, serving Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev, and was one of the rare top Soviet officals to retire rather than meet a violent death at the hands of a rival; although he was forced out by Brezhnev, he died of natural causes in 1978. In the great panoply of Communist figures, Mikoyan was thought to be friendlier to the United States than most. He's being interviewed here on the occasion of his second trip to America.

Following Meet the Press, Nina Foch stars in a special presentation of Agatha Christie's famed mystery Ten Little Indians. (6:00 p.m., NBC) In today's politically correct times, it would probably be known by its alternate title, "And Then There Were None." Fine with me; the original title of the story is even more problematic.

At 8:00 p.m., it's G.E. Theater on CBS, starring Tony Curtis. In 1960, after doing "The Young Juggler" for Startime, Curtis will swear off television for the world of movies. That's a year away, though, and so we can apreciate him this Sunday on G.E. Theater's story of David and Goliath, "The Stone." (8:00 p.m., CBS)*

*It probably only amuses me that when Tony Curtis appeared on The Flintstones, his character was named "Stoney" Curtis. 

Is this the funniest hour on television? Is it even the funniest hour on Monday? I wouldn't know about that, not being a particular fan of Danny Thomas, but he does have Tennessee Ernie Ford, which counts for something. Meanwhile, Ann Sothern resurrects the old question facing women of the time: do you choose a career, or marriage? To find out, though, you'll have to pass up Peter Gunn on NBC and The Voice of Firestone on ABC. Meanwhile, Patti Page's guests on her 9:00 p.m. ABC show are singer Julius LaRosa and ventriloquist Shari Lewis. It's not known whether or not Lamb Chop is included.

If one night of Steve Allen is good, two nights must be better, right? Tuesday is the second night, and Love That Bob* is the show (8:30 p.m., NBC). Tonight, Bob tries to get rid of his girlfriend Betty (Joyce Jameson) by telling her that he can get her a job on Steve's show. Even more significant than a second night of Steve, though, is the first night of Alcoa Presents (9:00 p.m., ABC), which you'll probably recognize by its subtitle: One Step Beyond. The much-loved cult series will stick around for three seasons.

*Fun fact: According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, Love That Bob was the first series to debut as a midseason replacement. There's no citation to prove it, though. 

Wednesday night presents a stark reminder of what 1959 is like. Edward R. Murrow narrates "The Lost Class of '59" (7:00 p.m., CBS), a report on six high schools in Norfolk, Virginia, that have closed rather that submit to a federal court order to integrate. Murrow interviews local and state officials, as well as four local students discussing the situation. On a less dramatic note, The Lawrence Welk Show airs on ABC at 6:30 p.m. There's a note in the listings that viewers watching the show on WTCN, the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis-St. Paul, "can hear this program in stereophonic sound by also tuning to radio station WTCN*, operating on 1280 kilocycles." Watching TV with stereo sound must have been something in 1959!

*Fun fact: WTCN-TV is now KARE, while WTCN-AM is now WWTC 1280, The Patriot. It's all-talk radio, in case you hadn't figured that out.

On Thursday, Cesar Romero guest stars as "The Gay Caballero" (not to be confused with Guy Caballero) on Zorro (7:00 p.m., ABC). I'll bet he steals the show. At 8:30 p.m., CBS's Playhouse 90 presents "The Velvet Alley," a Rod Serling play about a struggling writer who may have finally gotten his big break when he sells a script to - Playhouse 90. Art Carney makes a rare dramatic appearance as the playwright who has to ask himself whether success is worth selling your soul.

Speaking of show-stealing, Phil Silvers is well-positioned to steal Friday in an expanded one-hour version of his series (8:00 p.m., CBS) which is wonderfully, bizarrely meta. In it, Sydney Chaplin (actor and son of Charlie), playing himself, plans to use Bilko's life story for an Army musical. Bilko travels to Hollywood to meet the actor chosen to play him: Phil Silvers! Diana Dors, also playing herself, guests; later this year, she'll marry an actor who'll do pretty well in an Army sitcom himself - Richard Dawson.

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As for sports this week, the PGA tour heads to Pebble Beach for the Bing Crosby Pro-Am, the final round of which is carried on ABC. (Sunday, 4:30 p.m.) Then, as now, the stars are part of the attraction, and this year's batch is expected to include Bob Hope, Phil Harris, Desi Arnaz, James Garner, Bob Crosby, Fred MacMurray, Randolph Scott and Dennis O'Keefe. And then there's Der Bingle, of course.

If golf's not for you, you can tune in the NBA Game of the Week on NBC (1:30 p.m.), although it's not shown locally in Minneapolis-St. Paul. It's a key matchup between two of the best teams of the era, the defending champion St. Louis Hawks meet the team they vanquished in the finals last year, the Boston Celtics. As for why this game wasn't on TV in the Twin Cities? Could be that the local team, the Minneapolis Lakers, were playing at the same time and the game was blacked out. (They were playing the Philadelphia Warriors in Minneapolis that day.) You'll here more from the Lakers in the playoffs, as they upset the Hawks in the Western finals before losing to the Celts for the championship.

There's also basketball on Saturday afternoon (3:30 p.m.), although it's on so many different stations I can't tell if it was a network broadcast or a syndicated hookup (I suspect the latter). It's the Big 10 Game of the Week, with the hometown Minnesota Gophers playing the Purdue Boilermakers. However, I vote for hockey, with the NHL Game of the Week on CBS (1:30 p.m.) featuring the New York Rangers and Chicago Black Hawks from Chicago Stadium.

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Some notes from the TV Teletype:

Bill Lundigan's new series Moon Flight, which is billed as a "new semidocumentary series abou tman's exploration of space," has gone into production. It will emerge with a new name, Men Into Space, when it airs this September on CBS. You can catch reruns of it on Comet if you're so inclined. And speaking of new series, Tennessee Ernie Ford recently guested on Danny Thomas' series. The producer liked the character Ernie played on the show, and thought it was a great idea for a new sitcom - not for Ernie, but for Andy Griffith. They're working on it now, and when it premieres as The Andy Griffith Show in October 1960, it will find a place in television history.

Dwayne Hickman is leaving The Bob Cummings Show at the end of this season for his own series, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, good for four seasons on CBS starting this fall. The detective series Peter Gunn, which debuted last September on NBC, has been picked up for the rest of the year - a ful 39 episodes. And Dave Garroway has postponed his trip to Paris from April until early May - there's a funny ancedote about that trip in my interview with Jodie Peeler.

Finally, a note from the local section that Miss America 1959, Carol Ann Mobley, "is in town to crown the North St. Paul Jaycee Queen," and will be appearing with Arle Haeberle on her WCCO afternoon show Around the Town. I don't see any "Carol Ann Mobley" as Miss America, in 1959 or any other year. There is, however, a Mary Ann Mobley, who happens to be Miss America 1959. I hope the Jaycees that were expecting Carol weren't too disappointed.  TV