What's on TV? Friday, September 9, 1955

Happy Labor Day! This week, I direct your attention to WGN's Hi Ladies, and the Mike Douglas that hosts that show is, indeed, the same Mike Douglas that we all know and love from his long-running, eponymously named, talk show. Douglas first hit it big in 1945 as a guest on Strike it Rich, did a stint as singer with Kay Kyser's band, voiced Prince Charming in Disney's Cinderella, and had a national radio program. Eventually, a friend of his who worked at WGN urged Douglas to audition for the station's show Luncheon Party, where the station's general manager saw him and said "Sign him up!" His career would endure more ups and downs in the years to come, but in 1961 he started his talk show, and it was all-up from there on. This week's listings come from Chicagoland.

What's on TV: Wednesday, July 1, 1953

You might have noticed Hal LeRoy guest-hosting for Arthur Godfrey on Arthur Godfrey and Friends. The Old Redhead had hip-replacement surgery (on both hips!) in Boston last month, which was a pretty revolutionary procedure at the time. His recuperation lasts four months, during which time he broadcasts his radio program from a studio constructed at his farm in Virginia. The whole nation seems preoccupied with Godfrey's recovery; later in the year, they'll be preoccupied with him in a different way—when he fires Julius LaRosa—but, of course, that's another story. This week's listings are from Chicago.

What's on TV? Wednesday, April 6, 1955

We're so used to seeing Andy Williams as host of his own show, we hardly ever think of him as a guest on someone else's show, but of course he wasn't always a big star, and he had to start out somewhere. And if you'd had this 1955 issue from Chicago, you'd have known right where to find him. The Williams Brothers had just broken up in 1953, and in 1954 he began a regular gig on Steve Allen's Tonight Show. His first summer replacement show would be in 1957; he would have two others in the following two years. The Andy Williams Show as we know it began in 1962, and the rest truly is history.

What's on TV? Wednesday, March 23, 1966

Johnny Carson's in Hollywood this week; before he made his permanent relocation to the famous Burbank studio, he used to spend at least a couple of weeks out there every year. After he moved there from New York, he did come back to the Big Apple at least once that I can remember, but never after that. And now, of course, most of the shows are back in New York. I guess in these days of modern travel, it doesn't matter that much, but it does demonstrate not only how decentralized the entertainment business is, but how true it is that Hollywood isn't what it used to be. We're in the other part of the state this week, with the Northern California edition.

What's on TV? Thursday, September 23, 1954

There's nothing particularly notable about today's listings other than this: it comes from 70 years ago today. That may not seem like a big deal to those of you who take TV for granted, and perhaps it isn't. But if you're of a certain age, you can remember when TV was a modern marvel, something you didn't take for granted, and when you look at it that way, it is kind of a big deal, or at least something that gives you pause. It will probably not happen in my lifetime, but at some point we'll be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first commercial television broadcast; we won't have a copy of that show, of course, but when TV hits 100, we'll at least be assured that it isn't going away. Today's listings come from Chicagoland.

What's on TV? Sunday, March 20, 1955

Some small but interesting tidbits in today's listings: singer Caterina Valente makes her American TV debut on the Colgate Comedy Hour; she's unknown enough that her first name is misspelled "Katerina." (She, along with Gordon MacRae and Kaye Ballard, make a formidable lineup, but I'd still give the edge to Ed Sullivan.) At 8:00 p.m., ABC carries a simulcast of Walter Winchell's 15-minute radio program; you might get a glimpse of him later at one of his favorite haunts, Sherman Billingsley's Stork Club, where tonight Billingsley welcomes Les Paul and Mary Ford. And if you're looking for a movie or two to watch, it's your day; there are no less than 18 of them on between the five stations in the Chicagoland Edition, and even though many of them are only an hour long, that should still fill the bill for fans of the flix.

What's on TV? Sunday, December 25, 1955

Merry Christmas, everyone! As TV Guide mentions in its Christmas programming preview, the networks will be devoting Christmas Day almost exclusively to special programming. We covered some of these on Saturday, but that was only the tip of the Christmas tree, so to speak, so let's see what else is in store in this Chicagoland edition.

With Christmas Day falling on Sunday, many of the morning's regular religious programs have a Christmas theme, including Look Up and Live (8:30 a.m. CT, CBS), with Merv Griffin, Bruce Buckley, and the Mary Anthony Dancers providing the musical entertainment, plus jazz expert Rev. Alvin Kershaw. WTMJ is back with a Christmas morning service from Mt. Olive Lutheran Church (9:00 a.m.), and NBC presents the Christmas Day Service from Washington National Cathedral (10:00 a.m.); this is another tradition which NBC carried into the 1980s. 

The CBS science program Adventure (2:30 p.m.) shows how Christmas is celebrated in different parts of the world, with a remote from a convent in Bethlehem, Connecticut that displays Nativity sets from all races and cultures. That's followed at 3:00 p.m. by This Day We Celebrate, with informal Christmas readings are given by Rosalind Russell, Danny Thomas, Ann Blyth and Frank Lovejoy. At 4:00 p.m., Omnibus presents a semi-staged performance of Handel's "Messiah" with Leonard Bernstein conducting the Symphony of the Air. Fortunately, that broadcast has been preserved, and can be seen here (part one) and here (part two). On You Are There (5:30 p.m., CBS), Walter Cronkite and his reporters join George Washington in his famous Christmas crossing of the Delaware.

Even Dr. Benjamin Spock gets into the act; his childcare advice program (2:00 p.m., NBC) features a choir and narration of the Christmas story. And while it's not, strictly speaking, a Christmas show, Meet the Press (5:00 p.m., NBC) has, as its special guest, poet Robert Frost, talking about the place of poetry and the poet in American culture. Norman Cousins is among the panelists.

In primetime, ABC offers a special Christmas presentation of the movie classic The Red Shoes (6:30 p.m.), starring Moira Shearer, and featuring a ballet based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale of the same name. (A pity it wasn't shown in color, but you can see that here.) On NBC, It’s a Great Life (6:00 p.m.) repeats its Christmas show, "There Is a Santa Claus," in which a small boy’s faith in Santa is restored and three skeptics see something to astonish them. The Loretta Young Show (9:00 p.m.) sees its star return from her illness to play a waitress whose faith in the Christmas spirit is restored in "Christmas Stopover." Over on CBS, Ed Sullivan's Christmas show (7:00 p.m.) is for the kids, with an ice show, puppets, animal acts, and bell ringers. And on Appointment with Adventure (9:00 p.m.), "A Touch of Christmas" stars James Daly in a story of Civil War soldiers at Christmastime.

The day ends with WBKB's midnight triple feature of half-hour made-for-TV Christmas stories: "Christmas for Sweeney," "Joe Santa Claus,' and Vincent Price's "Christmas Carol." Combined with the programs we looked at on Saturday, it shapes up to be quite a day, doesn't it? 

What's on TV? Monday, November 9, 1953

To regular readers familiar with these 1950s Chicago editions, it must seem unusual to see a second Milwaukee station listed along with WTMJ. It's WCAN, a CBS affiliate, and we're fortunate to see it here, because it wasn't around very long. It commenced broadcasting on September 6, just two months ago, but ceased operations in February 1955 after less than two years. Why? For the answer, which naturally involves lawsuits, you can check out the always-reliable Wikipedia. For a look at what's on TV this fine day in Chicagoland, keep going!

What's on TV? Friday, September 23, 1955

We looked at that big Park Forest event on Saturday, and I'm not sure anything else is going to compare to that today. You may have noticed, however, if you're an observant viewer of these Chicagoland editions, that we have a new station in the lineup: WTTW, the educational station. It began a two-days-a-week test schedule on Monday, with programs being broadcast between 4:00 and 10:00 p.m. every Monday and Friday while its permanent studio is being constructed. They're expecting to go to a full 30-hours-per-week schedule in the fall. So you can't say these little news items aren't educational. 

What's on TV? Tuesday, March 30, 1954

Even though I’ve done many of these daily listings from the 1950s, I never stop being impressed by how many programs were broadcast back in the day. Of course, many of the daytime serials were 15 minutes, a carryover from radio, and other than the dramatic anthologies, most primetime shows were half an hour. (Fun fact: the first hour-long, non-anthology drama with continuing characters to be renewed for a second season was Cheyenne. It was also the first hour-long Western.) And we think people have short attention spans now! I wonder, though: one of the problems with contemporary television is that there’s too much original content—something like 600 series, if I remember. Nobody can watch it all, even if they wanted to. Maybe if they cut them to 15 minutes, we’d have a chance. Your issue this week is from Chicagoland.

What's on TV? Monday, January 2, 1956

As promised on Saturday, we have here the New Year's festivities pushed one day to Monday, but other that the date, everything remains the same. It's only the second time that the Tournament of Roses parade has been televised in color, and I imagine those viewers with a color set in their homes are suitably impressed. There's more to the day than parades and football, though; an episode of NBC's Medic dealing with the role of the anesthesiologist casts an actual anesthesiologist due to the complexities of the machinery involved; one of the actresses playing a nurse is also a nurse in real life. Talk about realism, but then James Moser, who created the show (and later would create Ben Casey) was a writer for Dragnet, so he knew something about realism on TV. After that, Robert Montgomery Presents features a trio of one-act plays with an intertwined theme: boys faced with decisions that could change the course of their lives. And on Studio One, Ralph Meeker plays a social worker trying to keep a boy who's just left reform school from making the same mistakes again. I've seen that episode; it's very good, with Meeker cast against type. Anyhow, there's plenty more to see from this Chicagoland issue.

What's on TV? Thursday, November 18, 1954

Art Linkletter's guest on today's House Party (1:30 p.m., CBS) is the legendary film director Mack Sennett, creator of the Keystone Kops, models for many of today's world governments. He worked with many of the biggest names in Hollywood, and his contributions to the film industry earned him an honorary academy Award in 1938. Although he'd been retired for nearly 20 years, he'd appeared on This is Your Life with Ralph Edwards earlier in the year. Kind of cool to think that as early as 1954, TV could bring you a piece of nostalgia. The listings are from Chicagoland.

What's on TV? Saturday, September 11, 1954

To be perfectly honest—and that's a terribly important thing around here, in case you hadn't noticed—there's not a whole lot to report on in Chicagoland today. We push on, nevertheless, and find some tidbits worth knowing. For instance, I'm the Law, a first-run syndicated police show on WBBM starring movie tough-guy George Raft (who, at least in the handful of episodes I've seen, is remarkably wooden) and is produced by Lou Costello and his brother, Pat. You can see Lou and his partner, Bud Abbott, in the morning on WBBM. Meanwhile, WNBQ has NBC's Canadian Football coverage, with one of two games from the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union (the Eastern Conference for short), and WGN has a White Sox game. WBKB has the science fiction serial Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, and, perhaps surprisingly, you'll soon be reading about that as one of the shows I've been watching. And then, of course, there's the Miss America pageant, so I guess there is something important after all.

What's on TV? Thursday, August 26, 1954

I've probably mentioned this before, but one of the great losses in contemporary television is that of local programming. In turning America into one big market, we've seen local stations become centralized, homogeneous, without any of the regional dialects and quirks that we see in these old issues. In this issue we have variety shows, "musicals," interview programs, and local sports; granted, we're talking about Chicagoland here, but even smaller markets used to have their share of locally produced shows and news documentaries. Nowadays the primary local program is an endless soft news program that combines elements of all of the above, along with a healthy dose of infomercial-like programming. Is this an adequate evolution of programming? You be the judge.

What's on TV? Monday, May 24, 1954

It might be good to remind younger readers out there that books—yes, books—used to be a big deal. I bring this up because I think we can see something like a parallel to today's business methods in tonight's broadcast on Robert Montgomery Presents, "The Power and the Prize." It's based on a novel by Howard Swiggett, and according to the listing, "the book by Mr. Swiggett is being dramatized for TV concurrently with its publication as a novel. This is believed to be a TV first." Reminds me of how movies were being released in theaters and on streaming services at the same time in the aftermath of the virus. Undoubtedly, the book was being promoted with an "as seen on TV" vibe in hopes of selling more copies. Did it work? I don't know, but the television adaptation didn't stop Hollywood from making a big screen version of it just two years later, starring Robert Taylor, Burl Ives, Mary Astor, Cedric Hardwicke, and Charles Coburn. It didn't do that well at the box office, for what it's worth.

Don't miss the rest of today's listings, from the Chicago edition, including the Studio One episode "A Man and Two Gods," written by Gore Vidal, who did a lot of TV writing in the day.

What's on TV? Wednesday, March 30, 1955

Naturally there's more on TV tonight than the Oscars, as you can see in this Chicagoland TV Guide. Disneyland (6:30 p.m., ABC) has a tour of two of its fabled lands, Fantasyland and Adventureland, including a conversation between Kirk Douglas and Peter Lorre about their movie 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. NBC warms the Oscar audience up with This Is Your Life; the honoree is never listed in the issue because the show is live, but tonight it happens to be three-time Oscar winner Walter Brennan, surprised right there on the red carpet! And if you're not in the mood for movie stars, Willie Pep and Gil Cadelli might be seeing them if there's a knockout on CBS's Pabst Blue Ribbon Bouts at 9:00 p.m. Not bad for a Wednesday night.

What's on TV? Wednesday, January 27, 1954

These early 1950s Chicago TV Guides have an interesting way of describing programs—short and to the point, and kind of colorful. Take this description of Irv Kupcinet's show: "Gossip and interviews." Well, yes. Herbie Mintz: "Melodies, old and new." OK, it you say so. Some of them are kind of banal, but no less truthful, such as Winston Burdett's news program: "A look at the headlines." Can't deny that. On Kids' Karnival: "Clowns entertain the kids." (Funny; I thought that was C-SPAN.) Stuart Brent's show: "Advice and information for women." And Dorsey Connors' pre-late news show (labelled "Ideas"): "Reading in bed." Things really were simpler back then, weren't they?

What's on TV? Friday, September 3, 1954

Xaptain Video and His Video Rangers, at 6:00 p.m. on WGN, is one of the last stalwarts of the DuMont network. Debuting in 1949 and lasting until 1955, it was the first science-fiction series on television; since it ran as a five-days-a-week serial (and sometimes on Saturday as well), the series totaled more than 1,500 episodes, as well as a wealth of toys and other commercial tie-ins. (You can still find them in antique stores and at various nostaligia shows.) Unfortunately, very few episodes exist, but while the special effects were crude and the show suffered from the typical pitfals of early live television (the always-reliable Wikipedia says cast members could sometimes be seen turning away from the carmeas so they wouldn't be seen laughing, it still remains one of the halmarks of early television, and a historic feature of this Chicagoland issue.

What's on TV? Monday, June 21, 1954

I usually introduce these listings with some trite phrase like, "Find your favorites!" but the challenge with any random day in the early 1950s is finding shows that any of us, even me, have heard of. In choosing Monday, I've tried to provide a few you've heard of, and a few more that deserve recognition as part of the Golden Age: I Love Lucy, Voice of Firestone (which appears here as "Concert"), Burns and Allen, Robert Montgomery Presents (one of the best of the anthologies), Death Valley Days, Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, Bob and Ray, and prime-time boxing. And of course, The Today Show is still on the air, 67 years later, even if you don't live in the Chicagoland area. Find your favorites!

What's on TV? Saturday, June 11, 1955

How did I choose this particular date for this week's listings? Well, in truth, not much changes in television from one week to the other, especially over the period of a few months in the middle of the television season. And as I look back on some previous issues from 1955, I see that I've already done Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, which narrows the range somewhat. And since daytime shows are pretty consistent across the week, that leads me to bypass Monday in favor of the weekend offferings. So Saturday it is, which brings some pleasures of its own, as you can see in these Chicagoland listings. And something else to note: for the first time in our perusal of these 1955 issues, the television week begins on Saturday, rather than the Friday we've seen in the past. It becomes a TV Guide tradition for decades.