This week in TV Guide: October 25, 1969

This week's cover features William Windom, star of the NBC series My World and Welcome to It. My World is, for the time, a high-concept show combining live action and animation, as Windom plays cartoonist John Monroe, a thinly-disguised version of James Thurber (whose drawings are included in the series). It's a concept that's really ahead of its time, and if you count yourself a fan of Windom and/or Thurber, then you'll probably love it. Not enough did, however, as it ran for only the 1969-1970 season.

I remember watching it at the time and not really getting it, and it would appear this was a concern to others as well. Carolyn See suggests it "sounds a little like a wonderful cake with a few too many ingredients, or maybe an Indian recipe where you're expected to throw in the onion along with the coconut along with the pickled ginger and 23 other items besides." Windom, however, feels that for viewers willing to give it a chance, to "think outside the box" as we might say today, it's worth forgetting any preconceived notions you might have, particularly if you're a Thurber "purist" who might have trouble with his famous cartoons walking and talking. For those who do so, he says, "Then you can make the decision to take it or leave it alone." You might even wind up learning something about Thurber.

Windom's reputation with his colleagues is that of a man who is "charming and disarming" (former co-star Inger Stevens), is "not crazy about himself" (a worker on the My World set), may or may not still be a ladies' man (he's currently on his fourth marriage, and there will be one more before his was done), and "enjoys every role that life deals out to him." On that subject, he is adamant. "[T]he main thing in life is to participate," he says. "I read the other day that the average college graduate spends over two hours a day watching television. That's disgraceful. You shouldn't watch life, you should be out in it."  I wonder what he'd think of today's stare-at-your-screen culture?

William Windom seemed to defy typecasting. He firmly established himself as a good guy with his role as the Senator in The Farmer's Daughter, and yet he was often cast in guest roles as the villain: the smarmy, slightly greasy con man or killer, or the arrogant but weak authority figure. Later, of course, he'd go on to have a long, long run as Seth in Murder, She Wrote. It appears as if people accepted him as a bad guy as long as he was a guest star, but that he was destined to play the wise, humorous, good-natured type in a series. Whatever; I always enjoyed him, regardless of what he played, up until his death in 2012.

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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: Guests are Liza Minnelli, actor David Hemmings, Henry Mancini, composer-guitarist Mason Williams, Laugh-In's Judy Carne, the rocking Santana and the Trio Hoganas, aerialists. (According to the episode guide, comedians George Kirby and Charlie Manna were also guests, as was hand-shadow puppet-master Albert Almonzino.)

Palace: Host Engelbert Humperdinck presents Sid Caesar (with Maureen Arthur and Mickey Deems), Nancy Ames, Gladys Knight and the Pips, comedian Jack E. Leonard and English musical-comedy performer Lonnnie Donegan.

Well, this is an interesting pair of lineups.  As we move ever closer to 1970, we see a very different set of guests from what we're used to.  Sullivan's lineup, for example, features Judy Carne, one of the stars of the hippest show of the time; David Hemmings, who starred in Antonioni's iconic Blow-Up; Mason Williams, who composed "Classical Gas" and hung out with the Smothers Brothers; Liza Minnelli, now on the verge of moving beyond being Judy Garland's daughter and Santana, who apparently is ageless.

Englebert, who would get his own variety series in a few month, was ABC's attempt to clone the success they had with Tom Jones, but it didn't pan out. I don't think Nancy Ames ever evolved beyond the B list of the era's singers, and I've never been much of a fan of Gladys Knight, et al. Of all the guests on both shows, it's only Sid Caesar who really hearkens back to an older time. And I'm afraid this isn't going to be enough to save Palace; this week, Sullivan takes the title.

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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era.

This week Cleveland Amory goes back to school, or perhaps it's he who gives us a schooling in what makes for good television. It's ABC's school comedy-drama Room 222, which Cleve quite likes. It's a prime example of the move by sitcoms of the era to become more relevant, dealing with issues, such as race, which previously had not gotten a lot of attention. 

This is apparent in the very first episode, where he relates an uncomfortable conversation between history teacher Pete Dixon (Lloyd Haynes) and student teacher Alice Johnson (Karen Valentine). In her attempt to balance what we'd today call her "white privilege" with her lack of experience being around minorities ("I went to a segregated school," she explains), she tells Dixon, "I think it's so significant that you're colored." (As if he had anything to say in the matter.) Be honest: doesn't it make you wince to read something like that? Then she goes on to ask him, "do you prefer 'colored' or 'Negro' or 'black'?" to which Dixon replies, "I've always preferred Pete." 

Don't worry, though, that this is all the series is about. One of the things Amory really appreciates is how the characters—black as well as white—stay away from stereotypical characterization, showing various shades of grey instead of (pardon the expression) simple black and white portrayals. The writing and acting are both thoughtful, Amory says; "with a little extra work on the writing, a little extra care on the characterizations and, above all, fine acting . . . a half-hour show can give you more for your money than all the old hour-long bang-bangs and beat-beats put together" and in particular he singles out Haynes and Michael Constantine for praise. Based on the first two episodes he's seen, Amory finds Room 222 an engrossing new series, concluding, "more power—black and white— to it."

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This week's issue is from upstate New York, which gives us an interesting look at the sports programs of the week. The World Series is over, with the New York Mets having put the finishing touches on their remarkable championship run almost ten days before this issue came out,* and so for the most part the stage belongs to football.

*Remember when the World Series ended before Halloween?

CBLT, Channel 6, coming from Toronto, has Canadian Football Saturday at 2:00 p.m., with the Toronto Argonauts taking on the Ottawa Rough Riders in Ottawa. South of the border, ABC has a Big 10 showdown (2:45 p.m.) between Iowa and Michigan State—showdown being a relative word in this case, since these two former powerhouses have fallen on hard times; Iowa will finish this season 5-5, while Michigan State winds up 4-6. Saturday night belongs to hockey, as Hockey Night in Canada gives us the St. Louis Blues and the Maple Leafs in Toronto. (8:00 p.m, CBC)

On Sunday it's more conventional action, although CFTO in Toronto has another CFL contest, this one between the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Montreal Alouettes (2:00 p.m., CTV). NBC has the AFL doubleheader this week, with the early game giving us the Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins starting at 1:30, followed at 4:00 by the Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers. Meanwhile, on CBS' NFL coverage, most of the stations in the area get the St. Louis football Cardinals and the Cleveland Browns (1:30 p.m.), with CBLT picking up coverage of the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Colts. (2:00 p.m.)

And while Monday Night Football won't become a TV staple until next year, CBS makes a tentative foray into the prime-time market with a exhibition game pitting the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys. CBS supposedly turned down the chance for a weekly Monday night game, leading NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle to offer the package to ABC; the rest, as they say, is history. Perhaps as an indication of CBS' apprehension about football's drawing power, the game starts at 9:30, a half-hour later than next year's start time. That way, it's not so disruptive on the schedule—or the ratings.

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It's a big week on television as we approach November.  Let's check out some of the highlights.

On NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies at 7:30 p.m., it's the network broadcast premiere of the Oscar-winning Best Picture of 1963, Tom Jones. (The movie, not the singer.) It's an utterly charming, totally bawdy sex farce, with Finney* never better as the reprobate Tom, accompanied by a zany cast of bizarre characters. Judith Crist, in her stellar review, wrote that "Movies haven't been the same since," and it's hard to argue with that. You might not think you could produce such a farce out of a novel written in 1749, but Crist praises how the movie "captures [author Henry] Fielding's classic in all the glowing coarseness, robust wit, unadorned venality, forthright hypocrisy, social cruelty and elegant crudity." No wonder it's one of my favorite movies.

*Surely it was an injustice that Finney lost the Best Actor Oscar that year to Sidney Poitier, whom I've always liked. But his performance in Lillies of the Field can't hold a candle to Finney's.

Sunday it's the fourth showing of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (7:30 p.m., CBS), the third Peanuts cartoon to make the transition to television. Like A Charlie Brown Christmas but unlike the second cartoon, Charlie Brown's All Stars, it's become an annual tradition; I wonder how much of a role it played in making Halloween the big deal it is today?  One thing I do recall is from grade school, a year or two after this airing, when I was introduced to one of the "Halloween Carols" to which Linus alludes during the cartoon. To the tune of "Jingle Bells", the refrain went, "Pumpkin Bells, Pumpkin Bells/ringing loud and clear,/Oh what fun Great Pumpkin brings/when Halloween is here." Remember when those Peanuts cartoons were shown on network television?

On Monday, we see what ABC hoped would be a revolutionary scheduling concept: the 45-minute program. Not an hour, not a half-hour, just 45 minutes. And there are, of course, two of them, making up a 90-minute block. It all starts at 7:30 p.m. with the rock/pop variety show The Music Scene, and continues at 8:15 p.m. wth The New People, a kind of Lost prototype. ABC obviously hoped their target audience (e.g. young people) would tune in for the music, and just keep it on at 8:15 rather than flipping over to the already-started Laugh-In. They didn't. and by January both shows were off. Surprisingly, in 1976 ABC was to try this strategy again, this time in daytime, with General Hospital and One Life to Live expanding from 30 to 45 minutes. This was more successful, but by 1978 both shows had adopted the more conventional one-hour format.

Tuesday starts off with "The Desert Whales," the latest episode of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, narrated by Rod Serling (7:30 p.m., ABC). That's followed by The Red Skelton Show (8:30 p.m, CBS), with special guest star John Wayne, who's celebrating his 40th year in films. Opposite that, ABC's back with one of their made-for-TV movies, The Young Lawyers, which will return next season, with a slightly different cast, as a regular series. Whatever the viewers saw in the movie apparently doesn't translate to the series, which runs for a mere 24 episodes.

Wednesday has one of the hottest musical acts of the day, along with another big network movie premiere. The musical special stars Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, with special guest star Petula Clark. Herb Alpert (the "A" in A&M Records) and his trumpet are big stuff throughout the '60s, starting with "The Lonely Bull" and featuring five #1 hits; he and his band win six Grammys.

The movie premiere, on ABC's Wednesday Night Movie, is Georgy Girl, a bittersweet comedy-drama which earned star Lynn Redgrave an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.* Judith Crist calls it "offbeat and kooky and sentimental." You may not have seen the movie, but I'm willing to bet you might remember the theme song, which also was Oscar-nominated. The Seekers perform it here, in a clip from an American Bandstand episode of a couple years before:

*That year Redgrave went head-to-head against her sister Vanessa, who was nominated for Isadora. Neither Redgrave sister won.

Thursday's variety night if it pleases you. At 8:00 CBS has The Jim Nabors Hour, with Juliet Prowse as guest star. An hour later flip over to ABC, where This Is Tom Jones (the singer, not the movie) boasts Barbara Eden, Wilson Pickett and comics Hendra and Ullett. To round out the evening, turn to The Dean Martin Show (10:00 p.m., NBC), with Tony Bennett, Sid Casesar, Charles Nelson Reilly and Pat Henry.

Friday morning opens with Today (7:00 a.m., NBC), as Judith Crist makes one of her occasional appearances to preview this weekend's new movies. On The Mike Douglas Show, author Irving Wallace promotes his new novel, The Seven Minutes, which is about a book called The Seven Minutes. It's not as strange as it seems, although the story itself is much stranger. At 4:00 p.m. on NBC is a game show I freely admit I'd never heard of, Letters to Laugh-In, hosted by Laugh-In announcer Gary Owens, and featuring two of the show's regulars each week, along with two guest stars. The premise is that viewers send in their favorite jokes, which are then judged by a panel of four. This week, the two Laugh-In stars are Henry Gibson and Teresa Graves, who are joined by Jack Carter and Louis Nye. The show runs for four months. I wonder if it was even shown in the Twin Cities?

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If you've been reading these features for awhile, then you know one of the frequent subjects discussed in TV Guide is the effect on television on children. This week's article, as is often the case, is written by Edith Efron, and asks the question: what can children learn from television?

The process by which children develop their viewing habits is a fascinating one. At age two, the toddler, driven by an overwhelming curiosity, is captivated by "the light and bright and motion." By three, they understand what they're watching and have "distinct preferences." But by the time they reach elementary school, they're being bombarded by so many information and sensory experiences that "no one can untangle, with any precision," what the child picks up from TV as opposed to other sources.

In fact, the data on television's effect on children is often contradictory, as befits a discussion that has only been around for perhaps twenty years. While some experts suggest that "the brightest children are early starters" who would have watched TV from an early age, other studies claim that bright children who watch TV tend to fall behind children who don't. One thing that many experts on both sides agree on, however, is that by age 10 children start to get bored by television, and their viewing tends to decrease. Why? Because by that time children crave mental stimulation, and they don't find it on TV, which for them is a passive experience.

I can understand this. Though I'm often a harsh critic of the quality of TV, particularly in today's programming, I've always defended television in general, particularly the idea that someone who watches a great deal of it tends to be less creative , less communicative, not as smart. For example, I learned much of history not from my time in the high school of The World's Worst Town™, but by watching Alistair Cooke's America. My love of classical music started with Bugs Bunny cartoons, and my fondness for reading was cultivated by Captain Kangaroo. My desire to write, particularly fiction, came from watching movies and critiquing their storytelling as much as by reading, which I often did while watching television. (A habit I maintain to this day, to my wife's exasperation.)

I don't argue that everyone is like me; there are a lot of TV kids who became couch potatoes, and kids who never watched it who are far better at almost everything than I am. But I'll leave it to you, readers, to decide whether or not television is Savior, or Satan.

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Finally, a word about Joe Foss, host of Saturday afternoon's outdoors show The Outdoorsman (4:30 p.m., syndicated). Well, it takes more than a few words, actually, to do him justice. At this point in his life, he's just a TV host, but his accomplishments includes World War II hero (the leading ace in the Marine Corps), Congressional Medal of Honor winner, general in the Air Defense Command, governor of South Dakota, first commissioner of the American Football League, two-term president of the NRA, Director of the United States Air Force Academy, original host of The American Sportsman, and philanthropist. And what have you done today? TV

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This week in TV Guide: September 2, 1961

How to watch TV: 1. Walk over to set. 2. Turn on. 3. Watch.

Well, that's how I learned to watch television when I was a kid, anyway. Obviously, Leo Rosten has something a little more in mind. His idea, however, is even more radical: if you want better television, turn it off.

Rosten, political scientist, author and social critic, calls the current fare on television "dreary at best and ghastly at worst," but that doesn't make it much out of line from other forms of mass media; many newspapers are "sensational and shoddy," paperbacks "that are part of the alleged 'cultural revolution' are shallow and worthless," and "much of what appears on the Broadway stage is banal and unworthy of a civilized man's attention." In that sense, TV is no different. "The public appetite for the silly and the trivial, for sheer distraction, the national mania for "escape" and narcotic "fun"—these are so great and so widespread that one can only wonder how our schools and families and churches have turned out so many people whose taste is so abominable."

Just when you want to dismiss Rosten as another anti-television elitist, however, he confesses: "I love television. I do. I love it and I use it." It is a place to catch up with the news, to view superior dramas, to watch a sporting event without freezing. It gives him "access to a thousand things I could not otherwise experience." And that's the point: it's because Rosten loves television, and because it is here to stay, that he becomes outraged by bad programs. And that's why he says that "[p]arents can surely teach their children how to use TV—instead of letting TV use them." Television did not abolish parents, he notes, nor teachers, preachers and critics, "and I wish they would stop acting as if they were dead."

If you want better TV, Rosten says, vote by turning off the tube. "There is no swifter or more effective way of influencing Madison Avenue than by registering your vote for or against a program—that is, by listening to programs which are superior and by not listening to programs which are bilge." That we spend so much time agonizing over the quality of television programming is a direct indictment of—ourselves. "The chief trouble with television is nothing more or less than the lazy public which patronizes it with so little sense or taste or judgment." Networks would give us better shows, he concludes, "if enough Americans helped them by supporting excellence and throttling that venality which surrounds us." I wonder what he'd think of TV today?

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In the December 31, 1966 issue of TV Guide, Neil Hickey and Joe Finnigan wrote about a "TV disaster" called The Tammy Grimes Show. The reason I bring it up, and I'm counting on you to click on the link and check that article out for yourself, is because this week Edith Efron has a profile of "a truly unusual girl," none other than Tammy Grimes herself.

She's become a star, thanks to her turn in the Broadway hit The Unsinkable Molly Brown. "She drives critics and reporters into frenzied explosions of prose when they try to describe her appearance," Efron writes. One called her "a sexy little screwball," another described her as "sea spray in the Rockies, calypso in a New England cemetery, and Cinderella in a strip tease." And then there's that voice, that "grits like a key turning in a boudoir lock," that "combines froggy throatiness with an amusing squeak." "She talks in a stream-of-consciousness patter, appears to say whatever comes into her mind and almost never answers direct questions," according to a reporter who's interviewed her. There's an oversized quality to her, one made for the stage, that worked to her detriment on The Tammy Grimes Show.

However, says Efron, there's also a "savagely shy, withdrawn girl with wistful little eyes that nibble at one in sidelong glances, a girl with a twisted, crooked smile that looks more like a grimace of pain." She is a private person at heart, one uncomfortable talking about the things that mean the most to her. She admits that she's suspicious about people; "Sometimes I get terribly enthusiastic. I put them up on a pedestal. Then . . they fall down from the pedestal and I am disappointed." For a moment, as she tells Efron this, she seems to relax for the first time. Her desires are not the same as others; "They don't go after something because they want it. They're really not seeking pleasure for themselves at all. They just imitate each other blindly." When she says things like this, one wonders if she isn't talking about her ex-husband, actor Christopher Plummer, father of her daughter and future actress Amanda. ("I never saw a girl child who resembled her father so much. She looks like Henry the Fifth.")

Her desires are simple: the theater, one man, and children. She goes through two more marriages: one to actor Jeremy Slate, which lasts less than two years, and another to composer Richard Bell, which lasted until his death in 2005. Efron notes that once she broached the subject of happiness, she went back into her protective shell. Reading all this, it's easy to picture how this fits in to the disaster of The Tammy Grimes Show. Whether she was "let down" by people who convinced her they knew best about the show, if her personality wasn't suitable for the small screen, or if it was just a lousy show—we'll probably never know this for sure. What we do know is that Tammy Grimes is, as Efron puts it, an "unusual girl," or, as the press calls her, "a kook."

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Care for some morning baseball? Of course you do, and why not, thanks to the Mountain time zone. At 10:55 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, the Detroit Tigers face off at Yankee Stadium against the New York Yankees, with the American League's three top candidates for MVP: Norm Cash of the Tigers (who wins the batting title this season), and Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle of the Yanks. CBS brings you the games, with Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese (◄) behind the microphones. Meanwhile, on NBC the action begins at 11:00 a.m. both days, with Lindsey Nelson and Joe Garagiola calling the play-by-play. Saturday it's the Los Angeles Dodgers at the Milwaukee Braves; Sunday it's the Cleveland Indians in Baltimore against the Orioles. If baseball's not your thing, Wide World of Sports has the World Water Ski Championships from Long Beach, with Jim McKay and Jim Simpson reporting. (3:00 p.m., ABC)

It is indeed a really big shew for Sunday's Ed Sullivan (6:00 p.m. MT, CBS), a rerun from last year with headliners Bobby Darin, Edith Piaf and Trude Adams, plus comedians Wayne and Shuster, Jackie Kannnon, the late Lord Buckley (who died in November, 1960), impressionist Rex Ramer, and the Pompoff Thedy Family of clowns. It's too bad I don't have anything to put up against it, because Ed would be a sure winner.

We've got an article about the resurgence of interest in the Glenn Miller Orchestra, led for the last five years by Ray McKinley, who calls it "real music"; "The kids, brought up on a diet of rock 'n' roll, sit there bored until they begin to listen to the music. Then they join their parents on the dance floor. I guess they find the old folks are right, that our music is pleasant and danceable." Find out for yourself Monday on Glenn Miller Time (8:00 p.m., CBS)

Playhouse 90 has a provocative offering on Tuesday night (7:30 p.m., CBS). "Journey to the Day" shows us what takes place in a group psychotherapy session through the eyes of six patients in a state mental hospital and their doctor. John Frankenheimer directs a stellar cast including Janice Rule, Mike Nichols, James Dunn, Vivian Nathan, James Gregory, and a rare TV appearance by Mary Astor, with Steven Hill as their doctor. A half-hour later, NBC presents a drama about the famed news photographer Margaret Bourke-White (who was played by Farrah Fawcett in a 1989 TV-movie), focusing on her dramatic battle for recovery from Parkinson's disease. Teresa Wright stars as Bourke-White, with Eli Wallach as fellow photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt.

Jack Paar's in Berlin the latter part of the week, so his seat in New York is being filled by Orson Bean on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Fortunately, as far as I know there were no international incidents as a result of Jack's trip.

Thursday at 9:30 p.m. KCPX, the ABC affiliate in Salt Lake City, has Tightrope, the police drama starring the pre-Mannix Mike Connors as an unnamed undercover agent who assumes a different persona in each episode; while KTVB, the ABC affiliate in Boise, has The Case of the Dangerous Robin, a ZIV-produced crime drama starring the pre-Combat Rick Jason as an insurance investigator. It's the time slot that, until February, was the home of Take a Good Look, Ernie Kovacs' bizarre panel show, co-starring wife Edie Adams. Ernie and his wild sense of humor (he says he's 10 5/8 years ahead of his time) are the subject of an article by Dwight Whitney. The show was not terribly successful in its two-year stint; Kovacs insists it was a satire of a panel show, but Whitney says the problem was that "he tried to pull his punches, to kid himself and his audience into thinking they actually were watching a panel show." It is a given by now that Kovacs has the most, well, unique sense of humor in the business; Jack Benny once told him that "Normally I hate what I don't understand, but I love this." He is said to have spent $3,000 on one three-second gag ("the used-car salesman whose car dropped through the concrete."). Studio crew members have been known to fight for the privilege of working on his shows. Dutch Masters, his loyal sponsor (even though he smokes only Cuban cigars), loves him; they even liked Take a Good Look. Even though that show is now history, ABC has signed him for a series of specials—three this year, six next year, which he, sadly, will not live to complete. He's not for everyone, but I think Ernie Kovacs is one of the funniest men ever born, and while you can see his influence in many shows over the years, I've yet to see anyone succeed him. And speaking of influence: tonight's Tightrope features a character named "Emile Kovacs." Coincidence?

Another thing on Thursday: Rocky Marciano, the former heavyweight champion, is one of Groucho's guests on You Bet Your Life (8:00 p.m., NBC). His mother was a guest on last week's episode. Friday, KBOI has a classic episode of The Twilight Zone (10:00 p.m.) starring Keenan Wynn and Phyllis Kirk; besides being a humorous episode, it marks the first on-screen appearance of Rod Serling, who actually gets sucked into the story.

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There's an unbylined profile of Dwayne Hickman, star of Dobie Gillis. It's a standard look at a young, level-headed man who's become an accomplished young light comedian, but there's a quote in here I think is worth noting. Rod Amateau, producer-director of Dobie Gillis, says, "I will surprise you. There is Steve McQueen, who has a cute little personality and could be a very fine young light comedian. With that single exception, Dwayne is all alone. Jack Lemmon? He's not young any more." Now there's a thought—Steve McQueen? True, he does have a nice light touch that he displays from time to time, but the King of Cool as a light comedian? The star of Bullitt, The Sand Pebbles, The Magnificent Seven, The Towering Inferno, The Thomas Crown Affair? Yes, a very interesting thought.

Henry Harding's "For the Record" feature at the beginning of the programming section has some notes worth mentioning. There's Robert Wood, the manager of broadcast standards for NBC, i.e. the network censor, talking about the challenge he faces from the myriad number of complaints his office gets from "people or groups "who feel they have been maligned"—anyone from plumbers to milliners. "I don't blame them," he says, "but it sure makes things difficult. If we paid attention to all the complaints, our villains would be faceless, formless, backgroundless and with no visible means of support." And he's not even talking about sponsors, who've been known to meddle a time or two in the details of a story.

Rhode Island Senator John Pastore*, who's had more than one run-in with the television industry, has issued a stern warning to broadcasters about liquor commercials on television. Along with Washington Senator Warren Magnuson, Pastore has said that it would be "foolhardy" for the industry to try and get liquor commercials on television "in these trying times with criticism of the broadcasting industry mounting." The dividing line traditionally has been whiskey; beer and wine are OK to advertise, but nothing harder. Such commercials "would certainly be taken into consideration" when time came for a station's license renewal. The National Association of Broadcasters promises they'll keep their members in line. Pastore, you may recall, was the senator in front of whom Fred Rogers famously testified on the need for funding for public broadcasting back in 1969.

*Fun fact: Pastore won reelection to the Senate in 1970 by defeating an anti-war Catholic priest named John McLaughlin. McLaughlin would later leave the priesthood and become a political pundit and television host. His show—The McLaughlin Group.

I mentioned the New York Yankees earlier; well, WPIX, Channel 11 in New York City, is delirious about its ratings for Yankees baseball this season. They're up 16 percent, not because the Yanks are headed for another American League pennant (they are), but because the M&M Boys, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, are both threatening Babe Ruth's storied single-season record of 60 home runs. "Even former Brooklyn Dodger fans are watching, pulling against them, natch!" Maris breaks the record on the final day of the season, finishing with 61, while Mantle, hobbled by an injury, winds up with a mere 54.

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Finally, it's always good to catch up with the Letters section, to find out what the viewers of America are thinking.

Mrs. E. Schlenger of Stamford, Connecticut is one of a number of letter writers who thought to invoke Dorothy Parker in commenting on last month's article about Joyce Gordon, the glamour girl who wears glasses. She says, "As one of the many who wear glasses, I have come to realize that: "Men who make passes seldom stop at glasses!" Speaking as a man, I have no quarrel with this.

Diane Read Haeselbarth of Maywood, New Jersey, noticed that last month's article on "The Working Mother" was written by a man (George Lefferts, "unless we have another George Sand"), and has a bone to pick with him. "I am a college-educated, ex-newspaper reporter, but according to apparent Lefferts-Margaret Mead standards, I am now a simple, bored housewife." She concludes with an opinion that, a scant ten years later, would be quite unfashionable: "Let us hope for the sake of our own and future generations that the American woman has the sensitivity to recognize challenge in the world, wifehood and motherhood, if she is lucky enough to be so blessed." Hear, hear!

We end with a couple of anonymous letters on "Is Television Aimed at the 12-Year-Old Mind," from the August 19 issue. (You can see that kids and TV was a continuing topic in TV Guides of the time.) A writer in Kimberly, Wisconsin speaks up for the kids who aren't fooled by the pablum that television gives them: "They know what they want even if they put it forth in a childlike manner. The article proves that kids today won't be satisfied with shows that are mediocre, repetitious, uninteresting and unbelievable." Would that I had so much confidence it today's youth—but, of course, they don't watch TV.

The letter of the issue, however—if not of the year—comes from someone signing his/herself as "A 12-Year-Old" in DeWitt, New York, who offers a contrary opinion. "Where did you pick up those oblong 12-year-olds? All the kids around here love bank-bang, shoot-'em-up type of TV shows. As for classics, they're the squarest." And then: "P.S. Please withhold my name for certain personal reasons. Namely my mother." There's not much else one can say after that, is there?  TV

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Isn't it Devine, or, I've got a Froggy in my throat

I hope you'll indulge me this repeat piece from 2019, but I'm in the middle of a busy couple of weeks, and I'm afraid I don't have the time I'd like to prepare what I wanted to write, so I trust this will do. The friend to whom I refer has since passed away, but we discussed this show the last time we saw each other in person, and it gives me great pleasure to repeat it today. 

One of the pleasures that comes about from getting together with old friends after a long absence (aside from them picking up the check if they're not only old friends but also generous ones) is that you're apt to learn something new—not just what's new in their lives, but things that are new to you in general. And so, when we recently had breakfast with a friend whom we hadn't seen in six or seven years, and he found out about my interest in the minutiae of classic television, he shared his memories of a program I'd seen mentioned in TV Guides but knew nothing about: the children's show Andy's Gang.

(By the way, I know that headline above sounds like the title of a Rocky & Bullwinkle episode, and I don't even have anyone to blame for it, since, unlike writers for major publications, I have to write my own headlines. I'm not going to apologize for it, though, because to do so would undermine my confidence—and perhaps yours, too—in my ability to write headlines.)

The first year of my existence was the last year of Andy's Gang, which had begun on NBC in 1955, but actually traced its roots back much further, to 1944 and a radio program called Smilin’ Ed McConnell and his Buster Brown Gang that transitioned to television in 1951. Smilin' Ed was a genial, homespun man who'd been on radio since 1932 in a variety of roles before starting the Buster Brown Gang. The show's format was simple: an adventure story for openers, commercials for Buster Brown shoes, a novelty song or two, and a recurring gang of human and puppet characters, including McConnell's most famous creation, Froggy the Gremlin.

Ed McConnell died of a heart attack in 1954, and in 1955 the show was reborn as Andy's Gang. The new host was Andy Devine*, the lovable, raspy-voiced character actor who served as a sidekick to Roy Rogers in the movies, Wild Bill Hickok on the radio, and Jack Benny's "Buck Benny Rides Again" Western skits. The format remained basically the same as under McConnell, with Andy seated in a large easy chair, telling a story from his giant "Andy's Stories" book. There was no live studio audience; there had been one during McConnell's first few years, but as his health failed, producers used previously filmed reaction shots from kids, which were then intercut into the studio scenes to give viewers the sensation of a live audience, and this continued throughout Devine's years.

*Interesting fact: Ken Curtis, who played Festus on Gunsmoke, sang at Andy Devine's funeral in 1977. Curtis actually had a very nice voice, nothing at all like Festus's hillbilly twang.

The show retained the large cast of characters, now known as "Andy's Gang": Shortfellow the Poet, Alkali Pete the Cowboy, Midnight the Cat, Squeeky the Mouse, Grandie the Talking Piano, Gunga Ram, and Pasta Fazooli. The star of the show remained the irrepressible Froggie, who was summoned by Andy with the magic words, "Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy!" There would be a puff of smoke, and then Froggy would appear, saying, "Hiya, kids! Hiya hiya hiya hiya!" In the great tradition of children's show puppets, Froggy was the nemesis of the show's adult characters: an irreverent troublemaker, disdainful of authority, prone to practical jokes, interrupting other guests, and in general acting as a conduit of mayhem. Naturally, kids loved him, and he soon became the subject of all kinds of toys and other marketing tie-ins.

Here's what an episode of Andy's Gang looked like, complete with the Buster Brown intro.

And this is a typical scene of Froggy torturing one of his human foils, in this case Pasta Fazooli, played by the great Vito Scoti:

Andy's Gang was in the great tradition of such live-action kids' programs as Howdy Doody, Soupy Sales and Shari Lewis, certainly more anarchic than Captain Kangaroo or Watch Mr. Wizard, but no less warmly remembered by those who grew up with it. At breakfast that day, when our friend asked if I remembered it, he pulled out his cell phone and started showing YouTube clips like the one above, laughing and smiling all the time. There was, I think, a human connection between the kids' shows of then and their audiences, a connection made possible by the human host of the show, willing to lower himself to the level of a child, to allow himself to be one-upped by a child, in order to make that child feel a little taller. Not Fred Rogers, perhaps, but then it goes to show that there's more than one way to form that connection.

There aren't shows like this on Saturday morning TV anymore, because kids aren't watching Saturday morning TV anymore. If they're not spending time on the road in travel soccer leagues, they're playing video games on their phone. And what was that we were saying about human connections? TV

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Around the dial

t Cult TV Blog, John continues his "Tony Wright Season " by looking at two episodes of the 1954 Sherlock Holmes series, starring Ronald Howard as Holmes and Howard Marion-Crawford as Watson. It's a fun series, and the two episodes in which Wright appears are no exception.

David is up to Wednesdays in 1977 in his review of 1970s primetime television at Comfort TV. It's another dominant night for ABC, with a new hit in Eight is Enough and a returning one in Charlie's Angels; let's see what the other networks have to offer in competition.

Television presenter Robert Symes was a well-known personality on the BBC when he hosted The Model World of Robert Symes, a series dealing with his love of various types of models, which he would build and operate. Read all about it this week at Silver Scenes. 

If you watched any kind of variety show in the Sixties and Seventies, you probably saw Neil Sedaka performing at some point. Sedaka died last week at the age of 86, and Terence looks back on his legendary career at A Shroud of Thoughts. 

"The Island" is the latest episode of The A-Team to come Roger's way at The View from the Junkyard, and Face is the face of this episode, in which our heroes battle the bad guys, a drug gang trying to control a, you guessed it, island.

I've written before about Clellan Card, who played Axel, the beloved kids' show host of Twin Cities television, and Minnesota KidVid continues its look at his work, concentrating on the period 1953 to 1960. They don't make 'em like Axel anymore!

At Cult TV Lounge, it's a look at the 1999-2002 series The Lost World, based on the sci-fi adventure novel of the same name by the man responsible for the stories in the series that kicked off this trip around the dial: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A great way to wrap up the week! TV

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This week in TV Guide: November 1, 1969

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, and I'll say it here again: "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"—the more things change, the more they stay the same. Case in point: this week's cover star, Lloyd Haynes. star of ABC's successful new series Room 222.

Since Haynes plays a history teacher on television, it's natural that he has some ideas of his own about history, and some of it doesn't sound all that different from what one might read today. For example, he calls George Washington a bigot (where have I heard that before?), and is frustrated by the lack of visibility when it comes to the role of blacks in American history. South Bend, Indiana, his hometown, was run by the Ku Klux Klan and the Mafia when he was growing up.

He hit his stride during a stint in the Marines, which funded his education at City College and San Jose State, and then it was on to Heater-Quigley, where he worked his way up from office boy to production assistant, with the goal of eventually breaking into acting. After a series of successful guest spots in various series, he now has one of his own, and he's making the most of it.

And now, for some of you youngsters out there, if you ever want to understand what the 1960s were really like, I'm about to tell you. You see, Lloyd Haynes is "an enthusiastic aficionado of marathon encounter groups where people try to allieviate their Uptightness [sic] by spending several sleepless days and nights together screaming, touching, huging, nestling in 'human sandwiches,' and pouring out their most intimate feelings in continuous emotional and physical involvement." Not surprisingly, Haynes thinks "they're a gas," although they would be more likely to give me gas.

Haynes goes on to recount the time he was the only black in an encounter group. "A lady looked over at me and said, 'I hate you.' I asked why and she said, 'Because you're black.' She lived at Newport Beach or somewhere like that, you know, lily white. She figured if she could attack me, it would keep the others from finding out what was really wrong with her."

I mean, I don't want to insult any of you out there who may have taken part in groups like this (they're still out there, you know), but I don't see how anyone can read what I've just written without breaking out into hysterical laughter. It's just so, so.  (If you ever want to see a great parody of these new age group therapy sessions, check out Semi-Tough, the movie based on Dan Jenkins' wonderful novel.  I'd like to think we've come a long way from that white woman from Newport Beach, though I know we haven't come far enough. I'd also like to think we've come a long way from those ridiculous encounter sessions; I know that isn't true, either.

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During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premier variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup..

Sullivan: Ed's guests: Pearl Bailey, Petula Clark, comic impressionist David Frye, country singer Buck Owens, the country-rock sound of The Band, comic Rodney Dangerfield and the Feux Follets, French-Canadian folk dancers. (The quasi-official guest list also includes Lucho Navarro, voice impressionist doing sound effects, and Trio Rennos, humorous acrobats.)

Palace: Host Sammy Davis Jr. headlines a lively hour with Mama Cass Elliot, jazz great Lionel Hampton, pal Peter Lawford, singer Dana Valery, actor-singer Rosey Grier, and the Dells, classical-soul quintet.

It's a big week on TV for Sammy Davis Jr., as we'll see later on, and while Ed may have more stars—Pearl Bailey, Petula Clark, David Frye, Rodney Dangerfield—the star on Palace can do virtually everything they can do individually. (All right, there's no way he looks as good as Pet Clark, I'll give you that.) And that's just Sammy by himself; Sammy and Lionel Hampton are a great combo, Sammy and Peter Lawford make up almost half of the Rat Pack, and add Cass Elliot, by far the most talented of  The Mamas and the Papas, and you have a show that literally jumps off the screen. This week, Palace tap dances to the win. And as a bonus, here's Lionel Hampton and Sammy: five minutes that clinch the victory.

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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era. 

Cleveland Amory likes Marcus Welby, M.D. I say that because he spends the entire first paragraph explaining to us what a General Practitioner is, as well as something called a "house call." Certainly, it helps, for you whipperstappers out there who don't remember these things, but it also takes up a full 25% of the column, leaving that much less room for him to launch one of his attacks.

Which is a good thing, because Cleveland doesn't really have anything bad to say about this show. Both Robert Young, as the good Dr. Welby, and James Brolin, as his young assistant Dr. Kiley, are "very good," and the guest on the initial episode, Susan Clark, playing a young schoolteacher who's going to die, was "magnificent." It was, Amory writes, "the finest first episode of a show we have ever seen." Various scenes are played out with a delicate mixture of humor and drama, particularly in a scene where she tries to explain her impending death to her schoolchildren, and in another when Welby gives Kiley a lesson in bedside manner: "For most of us, death comes alone, in a hospital, in the middle of the night. There may be a nurse but it very much depends on whether she has compassion or whether even she is there. Miss Adams is alone—in the middle of the night."

The second episode, in which Welby is persistent in his attempts to break through to an autistic boy, was, says Amory, "almost equally good." And at the end of this review, Amory engages in what I think is a rare moment of self-reflection, a nod to the style for which he is so well-known. He refers to an exchange between Kiley and Welby, when the young doctor, in exasperation, says to Welby, "Who are you? Sigmund Freud or Annie Sullivan?" Replies Welby, "You're too old for whimsy and too young for sarcasm." And, concluding this unusually straightforward review, Amory notes, "For a show as good as this one, aren't we all?"

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I mentioned earlier that this is a big week for Sammy Davis Jr. While he's hosting The Hollywood Palace with his old friend Peter Lawford on ABC, he's also appearing opposite himself with Lawford and their old friend Frank Sinatra in Sergeants 3, (Saturday, 9:00 p.m., NBC) Then, on Tuesday, Davis stars in the made-for-TV suspense thriller The Pigeon (8:30 p.m. ET, ABC), in which he plays a private detective trying to protect a young woman who doesn't want protecting. He's joined by a very good cast: Ricardo Montalban, Dorothy Malone, and Pat Boone in his TV dramatic debut.

But in fact, you could cover almost all of the week just with the Rat Pack. The Chairman returns for his fifth television special on Wednesday (9:00 p.m., CBS), a one-man show in which Frank belts out some of his biggest hits, including "All the Way," "The Tender Trap," "My Way," "Fly Me to the Moon," "Please Be Kind," and "My Kind of Town." Responding to the changing times, he also takes a crack at more contemporary tunes such as "Little Green Apples," "A Man Alone," and "Goin' Out of My Head." With, I might add, slightly less success.

And Frank is back on Thursday night, starring with Dean Martin in the western 4 For Texas (9:00 p.m., CBS) with Anita Ekberg and Ursula Andress making up the four.* Charles Bronson is there as well, and Arthur Godfrey and the Three Stooges appear in cameos. The last half of 4 For Texas overlaps with Dean's own show (10:00 p.m., NBC), with another terrific lineup of stars: Bing Crosby, Eva Gabor, Jack Gilford and Dom DeLuise. 

*Along with Frank and Dean, of course. What did you think I meant?

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There's more to the week than the Rat Pack, though, believe it or not. (And don't tell Frank.) On Monday night at 8:30 p.m, President Nixon is scheduled to address the nation on Vietnam (the "Vietnamization" speech), and this presents an unusual challenge to the networks, since the speech comes smack-dab in the middle of the evening's entertainment. CBS lucks out; they have a block of half-hour sitcoms from 7:30 to 9:00, and so The Doris Day Show gets an unexpected night off. It's not so easy for NBC and ABC, however: NBC's movie Frankie and Johnny (starring frend-of-the-president Elvis) starts at 8:00 p.m. and gets a half-hour before being interrupted for the speech, before resuming at 9:00 (time approximate). ABC's solution is even more interesting: the hour-long Love, American Style, which also begins at 8:00 p.m., is interrupted not only for the president's speech, but for an ABC News analysis at 9:00, with Love, American Style returning at 9:30. Kind of ingenious, actually; it's made up of three separate stories, so they might be able to split the show in two without cutting into any of the stories.

ABC has some pretty adult movies on this week—adult not necessarily being a synonym for good, mind you—beginning on Sunday night with The Carpetbaggers (8:00 p.m.), starring George Peppard and Carroll Baker. Judith Crist, in what may be her Review of the Year, describes it as an "incoherent, vulgar and tedious 1964 screen version of Harold Robbins' smutty best-seller. By today's smut standards, though, it's pretty tame stuff. Heavens, Carroll Baker, as always exuding about as much sex appeal as a whole-wheat muffin, doesn't even get to strip!" It's challenged by Wednesday's presentation of Claude Lelouch's 1966 French art-house smash  it's A Man and a Woman, which copped a Best Actress nomination for Anouk Aimee. The "banal romance", Crist notes, is wrapped with "so many cinematic tricks and effects that Lalouch almost manages to obscure the vapidity of performance and superficialty of the content." It is, however, quite lovely to look at, so that "even thinking folk can indulge themselves in its simple-minded sentimentality." 

Also on Wednesday (10:00 p.m.), NET presents "The Heartmakers," a Science Apecial that examines the development of the artificial heart, featuring interviews with two of the most renowned heart surgeons of the day, Drs. Denton Cooley and Michael DeBakey. And on Thursday, for us early risers, Today (7:00 a.m.) has an interview with the three Apollo 11 astronauts, returning from their world tour. The moon must have been the only place that Bob Hope didn't go to entertain Americans in uniform, but Thursday evening, he stars in a 90-minute change of pace special (8:30 p.m., NBC). Rather than his usual mixture of skits, musical guests, and jokes, it's a full-fledged presentation of "Roberta," the musical comedy that made him a Broadway star in 1933. John Davidson, Janis Page, and Michele Lee costar in the show, taped at the Bob Hope Theatre on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas. And not to be left out, ABC offers This is Tom Jones (9:00 p.m.) with Connie Stevens, Matt Munro, the Moody Blues, and Shecky Greene, followed at 10:00 p.m. by It Takes a Thief, with Fred Astaire guesting in his second appearance as Alistair Mundy, Al's (Robert Wagner) master thief father.

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Not so fast, my friend! The Doan Report takes a look at the early ratings race, now that we've had a couple of months to digest the new shows. The most successful among the rookies are Marcus Welby, M.D., The Jim Nabors Hour, Room 222, and The Bill Cosby Show, and old favorites like Bonanza, Gunsmoke, The Jackie Glason Show, Mayberry, R.F.D., The Glen Campbell Goodtime Show, and Family Affair are, in the report's words, "looking strong."

On the other hand, there are those that aren't looking so hot, and most of them won't surprise you. ABC's experiment with 45-minute programming, The Music Scene and The New People, are said to be in "deep trouble," along with Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, the movie spinoff starring Monte Markham in the role made famous by Gary Cooper, and Jimmy Durante Presents the Lennon Sisters. You might, however, be surprised to see The Brady Bunch on the list of endangered shows, though after a slow start, the sitcom manages to "hang on" for five seasons, plus countless spin-offs and an enduring place in the hearts of many television fans to this day. Mission: Impossible, too, is said to be in trouble, and while there's little doubt that the series isn't the same without Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, it will continue until 1973. Not every series is so lucky, though; I Dream of Jeannie, one of NBC's "worries," will go off at the end of this season, as will newcomer Bracken's World and The Leslie Uggams Show, and The Ed Sullivan Show will continue for just one more season.

Of course, as one series leaves the air, another is set to take its place. With an eye toward some of its weak links, ABC is said to be lining up variety shows for Johnny Cash, Engelbert Humperdinck, and Pat Paulson. (Dick Cavett is also said to be on this list, but he unexpectedly winds up in Joey Bishop's timeslot after the latter quits his show.) They're also rumored to be preparing a version of The Odd Couple, with Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. CBS's summer hit Hee Haw is being primed for a return, and NBC's working on a hour-long show for Flip Wilson. Surprisingly, all of these make it on the air (with varying degrees of success, it should be added); however, there's no record of an Arte Johnson show ever hiting the small screen, and a pop show version of Harper Valley, PTA does make it—in 1980, with the former star of Jeannie, Barbara Eden.

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Edith Efron is back this week with the fourth in a series of articles on the relationship between television and children, this one asking the simple question: "What is TV doing to them?" Unfortunately, for such a simple question, there's no simple answer; instead, what Efron mostly gets is a series of contradictions.

For example, everyone agrees that parents could use some guidance in helping them determine what their children watch. The PTA has such an advisory group; so does the National Association for Better Broadcasting, a television watchdog. The two groups agree on virtually nothing; while the NABB says that Heckle and Jeckle is "a cartoon series of excellent quality," the PTA calls it "just a heap of rubbish." Likewise, NAAB says that American Bandstand "lacks grace and gaiety," while according to the PTA, it has "gentle manners, good taste and friendly gaiety."

Likewise, the American Council for Better Broadcasts has formed its own advisory group of critics to provide aid and comfort for parents; their recommendations are similarly contradictory. Their opinions on Gunsmoke run from "Too gory and violent" to "Suitable for family viewing," and when it comes to Lost in Space, it's either "Marked by violence, greed, selfishness, trickery and disregard for accepted values" or "imaginative, with good moral concepts." Thanks a whole hell of a lot, right?

Efron asks several pointed questions about the relationship between children and TV: What picture of Man is TV teaching our children? What picture of personal relationships is TV teaching our children? Moral conflicts? Sociopolitical problems? In almost every case, these and other questions can be answered "Take your choice." Writes Efron, "[C]ritics dedicated to child welfare are in belligerant disaccord about whether or not any given show is Ethical, True or Beautiful." Furthermore, "The quarrels range through every kind of programming that children see—everything except late-night fare." They can't even agree on the problems, so is it any surprise that they can't agree on the solutions?" Should television be realistic or soothing? Is a specific drama educational or pathological? It all depends on who you ask.

At the risk of engaging in amateur psychology, I think the rise of this question, which, in one form or another, has been around since the beginning of television, can be related directly to the state of the family in the changing times of the '60s. Increasingly, television is looked upon as a babysitter, and teens are becoming more autonomous in their viewing selections. Parents are less available to directly oversee the programs that their young children watch, and the generation gap makes it less likely that teens and their parents are even in the same room, let alone watching the same programs. (Ed Sullivan discovered this to his dismay; by introducing rock acts to the show, he actually highlighted the gap and wound up undermining the homogeneity of his audience.) Experts debated the effect of shows like Howdy Doody on children, but it's likely the discussion took place in an environment much changed by 1969.

And so, in the end, it's appropriate that we end this week the way we started. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Or, if you prefer, sic semper erat, et sic semper erit: "Thus has it always been, thus it shall ever be." If we've anything at all from the last six years of TV Guide, it's been that. N'est-ce pas?

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MST3K alert: Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959) Milwaukee TV Debut. A Florida game warden investigates mysterious deaths in the Everglades. Ken Clark, Yvette Vickers, Jan Shepherd, Michael Emmet, Tyler McVey, Bruno Ve Sota, Gene Roth. (Friday, 1:00 p.m., WTEV in New Bedford) This time, it isn't just the movie that sucks! We've got a hero who's a jerk, a sheriff who's an idiot, a cheap hussey, a fat guy, and monsters that suck the lifeblood out of their victims. I ask you, what more could anyone look for in a movie? TV

If you enjoy the content here and want to support my broader creative work, please consider making a donation at my Ko-fi page. Any amount you contribute helps me continue writing, researching, and sharing these articles and projects. Thank you!