This week in TV Guide: November 19, 1955

The holiday issues of TV Guide are always my favorites, not only because they offer special programs, but because they bring back memories of Thanksgiving and Christmas past. This week, we go all the way back to 1955, and what we'll see is that, for all its differences, there are still so many similarities between Thanksgivings then and now.

Take parades, for instance. Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has already become a television staple, with this year's coverage hosted by Buffalo Bob Smith, and including special appearances by Danny Kaye and his daughter Dena, Lee Acker and Rin Tin Tin, and Hopalong Cassidy. The parade, then as now, is on NBC, but it starts at a much later time than we're used to—11:00 a.m. Eastern—and the running time is but one hour, not the three hours of today's bloated broadcast. It's also preceded by two other parades: the J.L. Hudson parade in Detroit, hosted by ventriloquist Jimmy Nelson and his dummy, Danny O'Day (10:15 a.m., ABC), and the Gimbels parade from Philadelphia (10:15 a.m., WCAU, with the national audience joining at 11:30 a.m. on CBS). Considering this is the Philadelphia edition of TV Guide, it's not surprising the close-up is heavy on details, but I've never seen one that includes the entire parade lineup; kind of cool, don't you think? Anyway, the Detroit parade runs for 45 minutes, while Philadelphia takes the prize at an hour and 45. 

(The parade action actually starts on Thanksgiving Eve, with coverage of the Bamberger's Parade of Lights, from Newark, New Jersey (6:00 p.m., CBS). The Bamberger's parade (sponsored by the department store of the same name) was held from 1931 to 1957, and was on Thanksgiving Day until the last couple of editions. Coverage of this year's parade is hosted by CBS newsman Charles Collingwood, and features Abbott and Costello, Phil Silvers, Captain Kangaroo, and Rin Tin Tin, among others. I think having something big on Thanksgiving Eve is a great idea, myself.)

Something else that's the same on Thanksgiving: football! At noon, it's the Detroit Lions in their annual Turkey Day classic, taking on the Green Bay Packers (ABC), followed by the traditional college clash between Texas and Texas A&M (2:00 p.m., NBC). Although the Packers and Lions don't play each other every Thanksgiving nowadays, they're playing in this Thanksgiving of 2025, while A&M and Texas play on Black Friday. As I said, it's the same, only different.

For some people—not me, but there are some—the highlight of Thanksgiving is the National Dog Show. That wasn't on back in 1955, but that's not to say there wasn't special programming on Thursday afternoon: what better than the seventh annual Longines Wittnauer Thanksgiving Television Festival (5:00 p.m., CBS), hosted by  Frank Knight, and featuring Basil Rathbone, Burl Ives, the famous Longines Symphonette and the Choraliers under the direction of Eugene Lowell, and the Corps de Ballet. You don't see programs like that anymore; I guess their time ran out. 

I don't know whether or not networks even bother with first-run programming on Thanksgiving night nowadays, but in 1955 they did, and the highlight of tonight's anthology dramas may well be Climax! (8:30 p.m., CBS) which features "Portrait in Celluloid," written by Rod Serling, directed by John Frankenheimer, and starring Kim Hunter, Jack Carson, Audrey Totter, and Don Taylor in the story of a writer's agent who's spent years living off the one great writing success of his own, an Oscar he won back in 1929. Now, he finds himself with an opportunity for a comeback in the shape of a young writer who's written a great script. What's interesting about this is parallel to Serling's own writing career: the tag line for "Portrait in Celluloid" contains a line about an award-winning writer who "finally learns he can't bank forever on a single success." Serling himself was in a similar spot, identified almost exclusively as the author of the award-winning teleplay "Patterns." It wouldn't be until the next year that Serling was able to break from that pattern (no pun intended) with "Requiem for a Heavyweight." 

Not a bad Thanksgiving, do you think? Nary a turkey in sight.

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As you know, there are few television genres bigger in the mid-1950s than the quiz show, and we have two examples in this week's issue to prove it. First up is Kathy Pedell's look at the man with all the questions, Dr. Bergen Evans. Evans, longtime English literature professor at Northwestern University, is known as the "question authority," responsible for the questions you hear on quiz shows from ABC’s Down You Go to CBS's The $64,000 Question. Speaking of Evans, Question's associate producer, Mert Koplin says, "The man is a Biblical authority, is writing a dictionary on contemporary American usage of words and knows literature the way a professor of the subject should. He could pull whole series of questions out of his head without once reaching for a book." And yet Evans describes himself as a "good research man," who knows little about jazz and nothing about baseball; those questions get farmed out to other authorities. He "reaches for books often," and won't use any question if the answer can't be authoritatively verified.

On the matter of what constitutes a "fair" question, Evans is firm: it should be "one which asks for information an expert in the field would be reasonably expected to know." In fact, what he'd really like to see is "to bring on a renowned scholar, quiz him on his specialty and throw him to the wolves." He says "There isn’t a man alive who couldn’t be stumped by a question in his field," and points to conversations he's had with his colleagues at Northwestern, in which he asks them if they'd be willing to serve as the expert that a contestant is allowed to consult for the final $64,000 question. (Similar to the phone-a-friend gimmick from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?) "All said, 'No.' The reasoning: If the contestant turned to the expert for help and if the expert let him down, the blow would be terrible. The expert has too much to lose and not enough to gain."

Anyway, Evans doesn't choose the final questions actually used on the programs; he groups them according to difficulty level, then works with Koplin and executive producer Steve Carlin to choose 66 of them (one for each of the eleven levels in Question), from which Koplin and Carlin make the final choices. "That's a decision," Evans says, "which I'm happy not to have on my conscience.

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On the flip side, there's Dan Jenkins's review of the NBC quiz show The Big Surprise, which, no surprise here, is the network's answer to the aforementioned $64,000 Question, the CBS megahit. Jenkins, in the great tradition of Our Critic Cleveland Amory, does not mince words: the first edition of The Big Surprise "took all the worst features of Question, This Is Your Life and Strike It Rich, putting them together with a fine and total disregard for a maxim once propounded by playwright Moss Hart: The members of an audience may not know— or even care—why a show is wrong, but they certainly know it is wrong."

With nowhere to go but up, the show was quickly retooled, dropping its gimmick of rewarding people who'd done good deeds, added an "electronic brain" element, and "took off at a hard gallop toward its one purpose in life: to give away, if humanly possible, $100,000, thus topping the loot given away by 'that other show.'" The problem is that, again no surprise, Question is a much better show than Surprise, and while it can't match the $100,000 grand prize, it more than makes up for it with "careful planning and showmanship." Even veteran quizmaster Jack Barry can't save this turkey, for it's unlikely that "his wealth of experience has prepared him to emerge unscathed from his present assignment." In 1956 (yes, the show lasts that long), Barry will be replaced as host by Mike Wallace (bet he never talked about that on 60 Minutes), and even later we'll find out that The Big Surprise was part of the quiz show scandal. Are we surprised?

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The Big Surprise happens to air on Saturday night (7:30 p.m., NBC), with Mrs. Kyra Shirk going for $100,000 in the category of ballistics. However, your better bet is to cast your lot with Ford Star Jubilee's brilliant presentation of Herman Wouk's "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial" (9:30 p.m., CBS), which Wouk adapted for the theater from his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The story, which takes place entirely within the courtroom, stars most of the original Broadway cast, including Lloyd Nolan as Captain Philip Queeg, Barry Sullivan as defense attorney Barney Grenwald, and Frank Lovejoy as Lt. Stephen Maryk, the man accused of staging the mutiny. Charles Laughton, who directed the play on Broadway, rehearsed the cast for tonigh's broadcast, which is directed by Franklin Schaffner. I've always believed that The Caine Mutiny to be a deeply flawed story, with Wouk's misplaced sympathy for Queeg challenging the reader's own judgment, but there are no complaints with this adaptation.

Sunday is a good day for cultural enlightenment, starting with the Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of George Bernard Shaw's satire "The Devil's Disciple" (4:00 p.m., NBC), produced by and starring Maurice Evans, with Ralph Bellamy, Teresa Wright, and Margaret Hamilton. It's one of Shaw's so-called "Plays for Puritans," in which all ends well but "love doesn't make the world go round." Meanwhile, Omnibus has Oliver Goldsmith's 18th-century comedy of manners, "She Stoops to Conquer," starring Michael Redgrave and Hermione Gingold. (5:00 p.m., CBS). Later on, ABC's Famous Film Festival, the first primetime network movie series, which featured British movies made within the past decade or so, airs the television debut of The Lavender Hill Mob (7:30 p.m.), the 1951 comedy classic starring Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway in a scheme to rob a bank of a treasure in gold. 

Sid Caesar and his crew satirize Anchors Aweigh-style movies on Caesar's Hour (Monday, 8:00 p.m., NBC). That's followed by a program of Thanksgiving music on Voice of Firestone (8:30 p.m., ABC), and then Robert Montgomery Presents (9:30 p.m., NBC) has the story of a female mystery novelist who becomes involved in the murder of a young girl whose name is the same as that of a character in one of the novelist's stories. To complicate things, the authoress was apparently the last person to see the young girl alive. Geralding Fitzgerald and Alfred Ryder star.

Former First Daughter Margaret Truman is a special guest on the Playwrights '56 presentation "Daisy, Daisy (Tuesday, 9:30 p.m., NBC), which stars Tom Ewell and Jane Wyatt in the story of an author who helps publish a gushy romance written by "a dying 17-year-old Australian girl." Nancy Walker helps Red Skelton celebrate Thanksgiving on his show (9:30 p.m., CBS), featuring a fish peddler (Red) whose hopes for a romantic dinner go afoul when the turkey he's supposed to bring flies away. 

Besides the Banberger's Parade, Wednesday sees some pre-Thanksgiving festivities in the form of "The Courtship of Miles Standish" on Matinee Theater (3:00 p.m., NBC), based on the poem by Longfellow. On Father Knows Best (8:30 p.m., NBC), "Jim is very proud of Kathy, who has written the best Thanksgiving Day poem in the fourth grade, until he hears the poem. His disappointment increases when plans for a family dinner go awry." Oh, dear. Rod Serling returns for a second look this week; besides his script for Climax! on Thursday, he's the author of "Incident in an Alley" on The United States Steel Hour (10:00 p.m., CBS), with Farley Granger starring as a rookie policeman tortured by guilt after being forced to kill a young boy in the line of duty.

Is there anything else on Thanksgiving that we haven't already covered? Well, there's Assignment India (5:00 p.m., NBC), narrated by former ambassador Chester Bowles, an hour-long color documentary on India, including an interview with Prime Minister Nehru, and rare clips of Gandhi. The score is by Alan Hovhanness, the great American 20th century composer; quite a coup to have him working on a television program. And Johnny Carson's guest on his early primetime series (10:00 p.m., CBS) is William Bendix, star of The Life of Riley.

The week ends (and the shopping season begins) with an interesting episode of Crossroads (8:30 p.m., ABC) entitled "The Good Thief"; it's the true story of Army chaplain Fr. Emil Kapaun, who resisted torture and brainwashing by his Chinese Communist captors during the Korean War, and tried to help his fellow POWs by stealing from Communist food stores. Fr. Kapaun died in captivity in 1951, and for his efforts he was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in 1951, the Legion of Merit in 1955, and the Congressional Medal of Honor in 2013; he was declared a Servant of God by the pope in 1993. James Whitmore plays the Fr. Kapaun, and you can see that episode, by the way, on YouTube.

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And now a word about Jack Benny, the man on this week's cover, the "top man" in the business of comedy, and without doubt one of the most loved entertainers in the business. Benny, says one friend, "is the kind of guy every kid should have as an uncle. He’s as honest and comfortable as an old shoe. He’s decent. He laughs at even the most terrible jokes—the kind kids are full of. He could even get ’em interested in their violin lessons. And he’s rich without making a big thing of it." An associate of his calls him "the kind who will be sitting in a hotel room with his press agent and suddenly want breakfast—and who will reach over for the phone and call Room Service himself. Forty-nine out of 50 comics wouldn’t dream of doing that—unless they wanted to put on an act." And he belies the "nice guy" curse that has been the kiss of death for more than one Hollywood performer.

He's also one of those rareties, a comic who shares the spotlight wth others, who doesn't care who gets the credit as long as the audience laughs. He's had a guest list over the last few years that is second to none, and he's effusive in his praise of other comics. His secret, in his own words, is simple: "If a comic situation is basically honest, it’s gotta be funny. If I were a lousy violin player, this routine wouldn’t be funny. But I’m a pretty good violin player. I’m just good enough to make a fluff look funny." (Would that more "comedians" took that advice today.) He also knows how to keep his team happy and together; two of his four main writers have been with him for a dozen years; Don Wilson has been on the show for 21 years, and Rochester for 17; Hilliard Marks, the producer, is on his 10th season, and Ralph Levy, the director, as been there for five.

Now 61, there were rumors that his twice-monthly show might move to airing weekly; he considered it, but ultimately rejected the idea. He did, however, agree to appear in several episodes of CBS's Shower of Stars, and as a concession to his workload, he decided to drop his radio show of 21 years. Regardless of how long or where he is, though, you can be sure his fans will follow. It's good to know that sometimes nice guys do finish first.

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Finally, here's a reminder from TV Guide that it's not too early to start thinking about those Christmas gift ideas. My point here isn't the incredible price ($5 for one year!), it's just that this ad is so darn festive! It's a great way to usher in the Christmas season, don't you think?

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This week in TV Guide: November 16, 1968

It's Sunday, November 17. A perfect fall day, perhaps a slight chill in the air, but not quite close enough to December for snow. Thanksgiving's coming up a week from this Thursday, and the wife wants to make sure everything's in shape for when the family comes over. So after church, you might have spent some time outside, raking the last of the leaves, or freshening up the trim around the windows, finishing up the Honey-Do list.

Afterwards, you're ready for a little time to yourself, so while the missus is at the store getting things for dinner and the kids are playing outside, you settle in to your barcalounger with a cold brew and a snack and turn on TV to catch the late football game. You have your choice, but instead of the NFL's Rams-49ers on CBS, you decide to go with the AFL game on NBC, pitting the New York Jets against the Oakland Raiders, a showdown between the two best teams in the league.

And what a game it is; with Joe Namath of the Jets and Daryle Lamonica of the Raiders trading touchdown passes, the two teams go back and forth throughout the game. The Raiders lead 14-12 at the half, but early in the 4th quarter Namath launches a 50-year touchdown pass to his favorite receiver, Don Maynard, and the Jets take a 26-22 lead. By now your wife is home and dinner's cooking; the kids have finished their homework and everyone's ready to eat, but it's been a long game, what with scoring and penalties and incomplete passes, it's already dragged well past the time you would have expected it to be done. After a Jets field goal, the Raiders drive down the field and Lamonica tosses a 22-yard touchdown to the great Fred Biletnikoff with four minutes left to tie the game 29-29. Then, with a little over a minute to play, another field goal puts the Jets back in the lead, 32-29. "Can you keep it down?" you yell to your impatient wife, "I'm watching the game! It's almost over!"

Indeed it is, although you don't know it at the time. Not until after the Jets kick off, and suddenly you find yourself watching not the end of the game, but the beginning of—a movie? "What the hell is this?" you shout, jumping out of your chair, spilling your drink, your face as red as a beet. Your wife comes in, admonishing you: "Not around the children." You don't care. "What the hell is this," you repeat, "this, movie? The game's not over! What happened to the game? The game!" You have a few more choice things to say, things that can't be repeated on a family site. Then you pick up the phone and call the local station. It's no use; the game won't be back. Outraged, you call the sports department of the local newspaper; it takes several attempts, because the line is constantly busy (from others complaining, you assume), but finely you get through to someone, and if anything you become even angrier: it turns out that Lamonica wasn't quite done yet, and with 42 seconds left he threw a 43-yard touchdown pass to put the Raiders back in front 36-32. On the ensuing kickoff, the Jets fumbled; it was run back by the Raiders for another touchdown, making the score 43-32, which is how it ended. You don't know it right now, and you probably wouldn't care if you did, but you've just been a witness to one of the most famous football games ever played and never seen, one that even would up with its own name: the Heidi Game.

A number of sources, including this article and Jeff Miller's history of the AFL, Going Long, provide the rich details that prove Talleyrand's saying, "It is worse than a crime; it is a blunder."A succession of increaingly abusrd events guaranteed the game's place in infamy. Network executives tried to reach Dick Cline, NBC's broadcast supervisor, to tell him to keep the game on the air; they weren't able to get through to him because the lines were jammed by concerned viewers themselves worried that the end of the game wouldn't be shown. After the switch was made, the network president, Julian Goodman, himself called to demand that they go back to the game, but it was impossible to reach a technician who could throw the switch. Once NBC became aware of the furor erupting, they ran a crawl on the bottom of the screen telling people the final score; the crawl ran during one of the most dramatic moments in the movie, infuriating those who actually preferred Heidi to football.

Cline's dry recitation of the facts in subsequent interviews, including his response to Goodman's demand to resume the game ("Well, I'll try."), and the equally dry coverage of the events by David Brinkley on the Huntley-Brinkley Report the next night, make anniversary recaps of the game hilarious to watch. One of the funniest occurred in 2003, when the NFL Network commemorated the game's 35th anniversary by preempting their regular schedule to broadcast the movie Heidi (the first non-sports related programming the network had ever shown), only to interrupt the movie at the climactic moment, when Klara walks without her wheelchair,* to replay the final minute of the game and the two Raiders touchdowns that most of the nation had missed back in 1968.

*The same point in the movie at which NBC chose to craw the final score across the bottom of the screen, ruining the movie's emotional high point. Turnabout is fair play, one assumes.

The Heidi Game becomes far more than a great football game; it makes the front page of the New York Times, is featured on evening news broadcasts, and proves to television executives the appeal of pro football. Never again will a football game take second fiddle to anything. But to get to that point, it has to start somewhere, and November 17, 1968 is that day.

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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's target this week is the new CBS sitcom The Doris Day Show. And I use the word "target" unreservedly, given that this is as savage a review as we've ever read from Cleve. For instance, referring to the show's main title, with Dodo singing her best-known hit "Que Sera, Sera," (translated, "Whatever will be, will be," Amory remarks, "In this show, whatever will be, will be, all right, but it won't be good." This, he stresses, is not to be taken as an attack on Miss Day, although "she is photographed through so many filters that you feel she is not on TV but on your radio—but never mind. If she's too far away to think of as the girl next door, think of her as the girl next to the girl next door."

With that out of the way, he continues, "Unfortunately, it is now necessary to discuss—and now you can get mad—the rest of the show." Take the idea behind the show, for example, but "don't lose it, because the producers of this show sure did—if indeed they ever had one." Two of the regulars, played by Denver Pyle and Fran Ryan, number among the the two most irritating people on television. The kids aren't any better, but "don't blame them. Presumably they don't write the lines, although we wouldn't bet on it." Of supporting player James Hampton, he says, "Even when he's not on, he's a threat—there is always the chance that he will appear."

There are plots in the episodes, although Amory realizes most people won't believe that statement, but "they are buried under so many layers of cotton-candy writing, not to mention the thunderous laugh track, that they deserve better. Like, for example, internment with attendant ritual, at Forest Lawn." And that's one of the nicer things he has to say. In fact, he is convinced that The Doris Day Show is not only no more interesting than the average person's everyday life, it's "a good deal less so." And to those of you who may doubt this, Our Critic has a challenge for you: "Tonight, instead of tuning in on the show, don't. Just sit around in your kitchen with your family and friends. Ask whether anyone would like a glass of milk. If someone says either yes or no—terrific. You've got your dialogue. You want action, too? All right, get up and butter some bread. Ask Grandpa if he wants some. He shakes his head. Ah, something's wrong. Wonderful, you've got a plot." And, presumably, nowhere to go but up.

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At The Doan Report, Richard K. Doan looks at the role TV played in the recent presidential election, and wonders just how great a role it was. Richard Nixon's campaign spent more than half of his $18-20 million stockpile on TV shows and spots; many observers felt the campaign "raised the political uses of TV to a new art." Hubert Humphrey, on the other hand, was hurting for funds, and what television he did do was "generally undistinguished," and yet he came a whisker or two of beating Nixon. What does it all mean?

ABC's Howard K. Smith makes the call 

As far as Election Night coverage, ABC (to no one's surprise) finished with the fewest viewers by far. However, they were the first network to (correctly) call Illinois for Nixon, giving him the Electoral College victory; they made the call at 7:15 a.m. CT, and signed off 45 minutes later. CBS and NBC, "aghast at ABC's audacity," held off for an additional two hours before making the same call. I've seen the coverage from all three networks on YouTube, and the only difference between the three is that ABC, convinced that their projection desk had enough information to make the call, went ahead and did it. Back in the day, they used to call something like that a scoop.

Elsewhere, the ratings axe is claiming the first casualties of the season. NBC is giving the heave-ho to The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show at the end of December; the network isn't yet sure what's going to take its place, although it could be Strange Report, a London-based show starring Anthony Quayle. In the event, the replacement turns out to be My Friend Tony, which Cleve reviews here. (Strange Report winds up on the 1969 fall schedule.)

The big changes are coming at ABC, where six series have already been sacked: The Ugliest Girl in Town, The Felony Squad, The Don Rickles Show, the second night of Peyton Place, Journey to the Unknown, and Operation: Entertainment. That's Life is on the brink, but the network is hoping to save the musical-comedy series. Among the series lined up as replacements: This Is Tom Jones, Let's Make a Deal (moving over from NBC), What's It All About World? (starring Dean Jones), Generation Gap (a quiz show), and Section 8, from the Laugh-In stable. I wonder: did Section 8 wind up being Turn-On?

The Teletype offers us a look at some additional series making it out of development limbo in time for the 1969 fall schedule. Michael Parks' Then Came Bronson debuts as a pilot in March of that year before becoming a regular series on NBC in September, joining Bracken's World, a movie-studio drama that NBC had been considering, and ABC's Bill Bixby vehicle The Courtship of Eddie's Father, for which that network had just ordered a pilot. The only clunker in the list is a proposed CBS sitcom starring Minnie Pearl. Don't worry, though; she'll make it on Hee Haw.

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One show not on the chopping block is Family Affair, and perhaps the person with the most challenging role in the show is none other than 19-year-old Kathy Garver, "the most soundly upstaged young thing in television!" according to Dick Hobson. She has to deal not only with two adorable little kids, but Sebastian Cabot, a master of upstaging, as well. Well, if all that is true, it's not keeping Kathy awake at nights. "I don't worry about that," she says. "After all, I am the only ingenue on the show and I do get the most fan mail." She will admit, however, that she'd rather like a little more to do. "ON days when I come in and I have only one or two scenes, I blow my mind because I'm bored sitting no matter where I am. I like to be doing things every minute."

Kathy's life seems to be built around that philosophy: in addition to Family Affair, she's a senior at UCLA, where she's been a cheerleader ("I like to yell and scream.") and majors in speech. She's also national teen chairman for the March of Dimes, for whom she's traveled around the country, speaking to 150,000 teens; honorary chairman of the State Youth Conference for teh Mentally Retarded; and, until recently, wrote a monthly column for a fan magazine. Kathy, if you're reading this somewhere, I'm exhausted just typing this. 

Producer Ed Hartmann says she's the one person in the cast required to act, since she's a 19-year-old playing a 16-year-old. She acknowledges that she's always looked younger than she really is, "and I seem to be getting younger looking all the time." In fact, so convincing is she as a sweet sixteen that her fan mail includes money from teen-age boys who send her five-dollar bills on her birthday. (Little do they know that five dollars makes a great contribution to the March of Dimes.) And, just like any other teenager, she dates. In fact, a recent date with a dentist provided quite the experience when he received an emergency call to treat a toothache, requiring her to fill in as his dental assistant. "I had a little plastic thing and I put a bib around the patient and I got him some water and it was really fun. I like to be needed." Let's see Sebastian Cabot play that role. She's still active as a prolific voice talent, and just as charming—and youthful—as ever.

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November is a sweeps month, so it's not surprising we see a lot of specials and the like on the schedule this week.

NBC gives us back-to-back specials on Saturday night, preempting Saturday Night at the Movies: first, Tennessee Ernie Ford (8:00 p.m.) hosts an hour of music and "topical comedy" (written by head writer Digby Wolfe, who named and helped create Laugh-In), with special guests Lucille Ball, Andy Griffith and the Golddiggers. That's followed by Jack Benny's Bag (9:00 p.m.), described as a "'with-it' hour for Waukegan's favorite flower child," starring Phyllis Diller (in a spoof of The Graduate) and Dick Clark, and featuring cameos from Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau and Rowan and Martin. If you're looking for something slightly more serious, check out On the Beach (10:30 p.m., WMT in Cedar Rapids), one of the darknest movies of the decade, starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire in the story of a world slowly dying following a nuclear war. Be prepared for bad dreams after watching this one.

Our Sunday potpourri, in addition to the infamous Heidi, includes the broadcast premiere of The Sons of Katie Elder (8:00 p.m., ABC), starring John Wayne and Dean Martin. Judith Crist calls it "pleasant and lighthearted," and I'd say that's about right. If you want more of The Duke and Dino, the late movie is Rio Bravo (10:45 p.m., KRNT in Des Moines), which also offers us Angie Dickinson, Ricky Nelson, and Walter Brennan. On a musical note, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (8:00 p.m., CBS) presents a show in the round featuring songs from Donovan, Dion, and Jennifer Warren; due to the continuing musicians' strike, the show's music is provided by the Jimmy Joyce Singers. 

Monday and Tuesday nights, NBC unleashes an epic blockbuster, El Cid (8:00 p.m. both nights), with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren in the film biography of Spain's national hero. Crist praises it as "a dazzler, a historical jam-crammed with castles and crowds and battles galore and enough jousts and tournaments and armored extras to satisfy the most arden medievalist among us." El Cid has a running time of three hours and four minutes, although I suspect some of that was edited out for television. By the way, remember when longish movies were split into two parts? Sometimes, as in this case, they'd air on consecutive evenings, but I can remember when you might have to wait several days, if not an entire week, for the conclusion.
 

For centuries, scientists (and science fiction writers) have been captivated by the search for "The Criminal Chromosome," the extra Y in the XYY chromosome that may cause of violent behavior; and the possibility of being able to preemptively "cure" such antisocial individuals through genetic tests and treatment. On the locally produced news program Spectrum (Tuesday, 9:00 p.m., WHBF in the Quad Cities), research geneticists and public health officials discuss the latest scientific findings and what they may promise for the future. 

Wednesday night is the season premiere of the Hallmark Hall of Fame (6:30 p.m., NBC) which makes sense since the company's got greeting cards to sell, and Christmas is right around the corner. (There'll be another episode next month, just in case anyone missed the reminder the first time.) This episode is, alas, not one of the series' more distinguished efforts: "A Punt, a Pass and a Prayer," starring Hugh O'Brien as an aging pro quarterback, trying to come back from a serious injury, who refuses to believe the glory days may be over. As a story it has great potential, but it's always difficult to watch actors trying to play athletes, and while the storyline has potential (an aging football star tries to come back from a serious injury), it falls short of what one might have expected from Hall of Fame. Don DeFore, Betsy Palmer, and Shelly Novack co-star. That's followed by a special edition of Kraft Music Hall (8:00 p.m., NBC), as Roy Rogers and Dale Evans host the Country Music Association Awards, including performances by Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell, Jeannie C. Riley, and Tammy Wynette.

Thursday is dominated by friendly, familiar names. The episodes aren't themselves particularly special, but the titles are comforting to see: Daniel Boone (6:30 p.m.), Ironside (7:30 p.m.), Dragnet (8:30 p.m.), and The Dean Martin Show (9:00 p.m.) on NBC (the latter with Gordon MacRae, Bob Newhart, Abbe Lane, and Paul Lynde); Hawaii Five-O (7:00 p.m.) and The Thursday Night Movie (8:00 p.m., John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn, with Richard Widmark and Carroll Baker) on CBS; and The Flying Nun (7:00 p.m.), Bewitched (7:30 p.m.), and That Girl (8:00 p.m.) among the offerings on ABC. No specials, just a night of, as my friend David Hofstede might put it, Comfort TV.

Friday gives us NBC's 90-minute wheel series The Name of the Game (7:30 p.m.), tonight featuring Robert Stack's investigative reporter Dan Farrell working to clear a woman currently on death row. Assisting Farrell in his efforts is Peggy Maxwell, played charmingly by Susan Saint James. As Leslie Raddatz relates, Susan's rise to co-star of a weekly series is nothing short of astonishing: having worked as a model for three years, she walked into the office of Universal's casting director and told her "Now I want to act." Finding out that Saint James' previous experience was limited to six acting lessons, Monique James suggested that she take some more lessons and then come back and do a scene. But that wasn't good enough for Susan; she came back the next day and did a scene from Barefoot in the Park that was so good that James signed her up and took her over to the producer and director of Fame is the Name of the Game, the film that served as the pilot for the series. "I thought they might do a test on her, so I'd have some film. That was all I had in mind." Instead, they had her memorize a scene, which she did in five minutes, and nailed it. She was cast in the movie, without a screen test. From there, Universal put her in the pilot for It Takes a Thief, and the rest is history. She'll win an Emmy for Name of the Game; still in the future are her most famous roles: Sally McMillan in McMillan & Wife, and Kate McArdle in Kate & Allie. Not bad, for someone who only took six acting lessons. 

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Finally, I mentioned that Christmas is just around the corner, and proof of that is a string of ads for Mattel's new toy line, which they have helpfully pointed out to parents by letting them know when their commercials can be seen on TV.

For example, there's this reminder that on Tuesday night, you can catch commercials for Strange Change, "the toy that turns time capsules into monsters over and over again!" on I Dream of Jeannie at 6:30, while Skediddle Kiddles and Disneyland See 'n' Say can be seen on The Avengers, also at 6:30. Incidentally, if you want to see how Strange Change works, or if you had it when you were little and just want to relive the memories, here's a clip of it in action.

I loved the Matt Mason toys when they came out. I was already a long-term space buff at that point, and I collected all the different astronauts, along with the moonwalker, the space station, the play set, and other things, I'm sure. This could well be the very commercial; I'm surprised they couldn't find a science fiction series to put this on.

Since Barbie was born, has there ever been a time when she wasn't a best seller? Parents who saw her on Get Smart! and made a mental note were the smart ones.

Finally, a more somber sign of the times—here's an ad you wouldn't have dreamed of seeing six months ago. How quickly things change.

TV