This week in TV Guide: December 28, 1963

There's something about the cover of this issue I really like. It's colorful and cheerful and fun (the picture at left really doesn't do it justice), and perhaps after the grim last month, it was meant to suggest a bright and hopeful future.

But as we all know, looks can be deceiving. Take the young woman on the cover, 17-year-old Patty Duke, Academy Award winner and star of The Patty Duke Show, in which she plays twin cousins Patty and Cathy Lane. This show was a modest success, running for three seasons and producing a well-remembered theme song. The article itself (written by an unbylined author) wasn't particularly flattering, commenting on Duke's lack of personality; one might say, as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, that there was no there there. The most common explanation comes from her "rags to riches" story, and some "unhappy" experiences "which have since been amply covered with sugar." In the words of "sophisticated" observers (who prefer to remain anonymous), she seems "just too surgary," the kind of girl "who just isn't there." Says one, "God knows, she's nice enough, but I always have trouble remembering what her face looks like." I wonder if, today, we'd recognize the face of the person who said that?

Duke's horrific childhood is vaguely alluded to in the story, which refers to her having been "abandoned by her father and partially relinquished by her mother," leaving her to a set of " 'make-believe' parents [John and Ethel Ross, her managers and guardians] who, despite their devotion ("They've built my whole life," Patty says, "in and out of acting." have "stressed her career." That "devotion," we now know, included sexual abuse, financial manipulation, changing her name, and plying her with alcohol and drugs while keeping her a virtual prisoner. Nor does it take into consideration her 1965 marriage to director Harry Falk (likely done to escape the Rosses), a marriage during which she "had repeated mood swings, drank heavily, became anorexic, and overdosed on pills a number of times." Given all this, plus a later diagnosis of bipolar disorder, it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that she came across as little more than a programmed robot with no independent thoughts of her own. This really is one of those articles that becomes so much more interesting when you know the rest of the story.

Victimization has become something trendy over the years, but there seems to be little doubt that Patty Duke was a victim: of her parents, of her managers, of the industry, of many of the men in her life. I wonder how much of this information would have been available to an enterprising reporter back in 1963? I know we didn't like to talk about things like that back then, and perhaps there wasn't any particular source that could have shed light on all the goings-on in her personal life. And yet, it seems as if it would have been more productive to do a little more digging than to be free with the snide insinuations and comments that make up so much of this story.

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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. 

To round out Cleveland Amory's first year as TV Guide's critic, we take a look at a program that's been on—well, it seems as if it's been on forever, even though its star is younger than Cleve. Only 39, if you're to believe him, but then he was 39 as well when the show started, so believe what you want. But, to quote Fred Allen (as Cleve does), there are two kids of jokes: "funny jokes and Jack Benny jokes." And to criticize the Jack Benny jokes is almost as unkind as "criticizing old friends." Not just unkind, but wrong.

The best way to enjoy The Jack Benny Program, according to Amory, is to "guess the joke and, when you've got it, go along with it—the way you go along with a gag." And if you don't get it the first time around, you'll have another chance, because "nothing is ever thrown away." And why not? There's an old saying that an old joke is old because it's also a good joke. Whether we're talking about Jack's age, his stinginess, his vanity, it's all been built on a solid foundation of Benny's character development that has been honed over some 30 years. And, in fact, we don't even need jokes to make the point; his pause, his hurt stare at the audience, invariably accompanied by "Well!" would be meaningless without the viewer's familiarity with Jack's stage persona. And Benny himself says it couldn't have happened deliberately; "My show-business character developed into a person who is a sort of composite of all the faults of everybody. If my writers had set out to make me into that all at once, 30 years ago, I don't think I'd have lasted two months."

Besides the writers, with whom Jack was always generous in sharing credit, that "character" includes a team that's been with him almost as long as he's been on the air: announcer Don Wilson for 30 years, musical director Mahlon Merrick for 29 years, Rochester 26, and Dennis Day 24. And two of those writers, Sam Perrin and George Balzer, have served over 20 years. You don't have that kind of longetivity, that kind of success on both radio and television, without doing something right. And Jack Benny has more than just something going for him. He's been at it now for 180 times two months, and, as Amory concludes, "it seems fitting to say, if he will pardon the expression, Happy New Year, Jack."

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For college football fans, this is the week of weeks.  The appetizer is served on Saturday, with the Air Force Academy taking on North Carolina in the Gator Bowl (12:30 p.m. CT, CBS); we've also got one of the premier all-star games in football, the East-West Shrine Game from San Francisco (3:30 p.m., NBC), for those players whose schools didn't find their way into one of the year's nine bowl games—meaning there are a lot of good players in it.

The real deal comes Wednesday, with the New Year's Day quad-fecta (is that a word?), featuring the de facto de facto showdown for the national championship between Texas and Navy at the Cotton Bowl (12:45 p.m., CBS). Now, let me explain that peculiar description: in 1963, the final Associated Press and United Press International polls, which determined the unofficial national champion (there being no tournament back then to crown an official champion), were taken at the end of the regular season. The bowl games were seen as exhibitions, rewards to the players for a good season. They were put on by chambers of commerce, held in warm-weather locales where people could go to have fun, and watch a football game as part of a festival that often included a parade, a college basketball tournament, and other events. So entering New Year's Day, the season was over and the title race had already been decided. The de facto national champion was Texas, having finished the season undefeated at 10-0.

But there's a twist: their opponent, the Naval Academy, is the nation's #2 ranked team, with a record of 9-1, as well as the Heisman Trophy winner and most exciting player in the country, quarterback ◀ Roger Staubach.* Exhibition game or not, if Navy defeats Texas, there are going to be a lot of people looking at the Midshipmen as the true de facto national champions. So there you have it.  The game doesn't really count, but it does. The championship has already been decided, but it hasn't. Had Navy won, there would have been no little bit of controversy.

*Staubach was to be on Life's November 29, 1963 cover.  AfterFK's death, the magazine scrapped 300,000 already-printed copies.

And there were a lot of people rooting for Navy. Remember, the Naval Academy, alma mater of the late President Kennedy, is travelling to the city in which he was assassinated less than six weeks ago. Emotions are running high (as part of the trip, the Middies were taken to the sixth floor of the School Book Depository to see where the assassination happened), and Big D, suddenly the most hated city in the most hated state in America, is desperate to regain its self-esteem, which can only be helped by having its state university win the national title.

In any event, the whole thing is an anti-climax; Texas wins the game handily, 28-6.

In these times before prime-time football, the Cotton Bowl has to share the spotlight with the Orange Bowl in Miami, pitting #5 Auburn vs. #6 Nebraska (12:30 p.m., ABC) and the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, between #9 Alabama and #7 Mississippi (12:45 p.m., NBC), all of which were joint opening acts for the Granddaddy of Them All, the Rose Bowl, from Pasadena, with #3 Illinois and unranked Washington (3:45 p.m., NBC) which ended the college football season. As an added bonus, both of NBC's games are broadcast in color! Good games, good times.

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But to get to New Year's Day, you have to go through New Year's Eve, which culminates with Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians. (Tuesday, 11:15 p.m., CBS, shown on a one-hour tape delay in Minneapolis to coincide with midnight in the Central time zone.) He's joined by Allen Ludden, Dorothy Collins, and the Willis Sisters. They're not in their traditional stomping grounds at the Waldorf Astoria, though—for the first time, they're broadcasting from Grand Central Station in New York City, as part of the Bell Ringer Ball for Mental Health. 

Plenty of New Year's cheer earlier in the night as well, with all the action coming at 9:00 p.m.: Garry Moore celebrates the Eve with a party featuring Chita Rivera, Roy Castle, and singer Melodye Condos. (CBS) Over on NBC, Andy Williams, for his last special of the year, welcomes Fred MacMurray and the Williams family. And on ABC, it's coverage of the King Orange Jamboree parade, taped earlier in the evening, with Jim McKay and Olympic champion figure skater Carol Heiss reporting; according to the Miami News, a half-million spectators lined the parade route for the festivities. 

Speaking of parades, if you want 'em on New Year's Day, you've got 'em. CBS kicks things off at 10:00 a.m. with the Cotton Bowl Parade from the State Fair grounds in Dallas (which is where the Cotton Bowl stadium is located), hosted by Chris Schenkel and Pat Summerall; Schenkel will be back later in the day to broadcast the game. At 10:45 a.m., the network switches to coverage of the 75th Rose Parade from Pasadena, where the Grand Marshal is former president Dwight Eisenhower; future president Ronald Reagan and Bess Myerson return as hosts. NBC's broadcast begins 15 minutes earlier, with Arthur Godfrey and Betty White doing the honors. ABC joins in the fun with coverage of the Mummers Parade from Philadelphia (11:00 a.m.), the first time ever on national TV for the legendary parade. Although ABC's broadcast runs for 90 minutes, that's only a small segment of the all-day parade, which lasts for most of the day before it's done. Parade coverage is in color on all three networks, and their coverage continues until the football starts.

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Saturday night, filling one-half of the time slot of the recently departed Jerry Lewis Show, it's the Hollywood Deb Star Ball 1964 (8:30 p.m., ABC), in which we meet "the lovely Deb [for debutante] Stars, slated for future stardom by major Hollywood studios." There are ten altogether; let's take a look at how well they did. There's Meredith MacRae, daughter of Gordon and Sheila MacRae, who just happened to be the hosts of the show; she did pretty well for herself. There's Katherine Crawford, daughter of Roy Huggins, creator of The Fugitive, The Invaders, and other TV hits, who is profiled elsewhere in this week's issue. There's Chris Noel (who had been profiled in the previous week's issue), whose remarkable life led her from a modest Hollywood career to her vocation as a radio host and entertainer stationed in Vietnam for the Armed Forces Network, travelling to locations considered too dangerous for Bob Hope and other celebrities. There's also Susan Seaforth, who as Susan Seaforth Hayes remains one of the queens of daytime dramas on Days of Our Lives. One of her Days co-stars, Brenda Benet, perhaps as well known for being Bill Bixby's ex-wife, is there as well. There's Linda Evans, future star of The Big Valley and Dynasty. And there's Claudia Martin, Deano's daughter, Shelly Ames (daughter of actor Leon Ames), Anna Capri, and Amadee Chabot, who all scored minor successes. See if you can match them with their pictures on the right!

On Sunday, it's the television premiere of the documentary The Making of the President 1960, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winner by Theodore H. White, with narration by Martin Gabel (7:30 p.m., ABC). The documentary was completed prior to Kennedy's death, and is being presented unchanged except for a brief prologue by White. Documentary versions of his 1964 and 1968 books were made as well, but not the 1972 edition, which itself ended the series.

We often see changes to the daytime television lineup around the start of the new year, and Monday sees one such debut: the venerable Let's Make a Deal (1:00 p.m., NBC), with Monty Hall hosting this series where "[c]ontestants can win prizes by answering questions or trading—with the chance that any prize may disguise something much more valuable." You'll notice that there's no mention of outrageous costumes, signs, or other flamboyant behavior from potential contestants; that evolved organically, as a way to increase one's chances of being chosen. As you can see from the original pilot, things started out quite differently. 
On Tuesday morning, author Richard Condon is the guest on Today (7:00 a.m., NBC). Condon is most famous, of course, for his novel The Manchurian Candidate, written in 1959. The movie version, which came out in 1962, was rumored to have been withdrawn from circulation following JFK's assassination, though that was an urban legend. Condon is likely promoting one of the two books he'll have published in 1964: either An Infinity of Mirrors or Any God Will Do.

With the football done for the day, CBS has a live news roundtable Wednesday evening called Years of Crisis (6:30 p.m.), in which CBS correspondents gather to discuss the events of the past year and their probable effect on the future. In case you were wondering, those events included the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, the death of Pope John XXIII and election of Pope Paul VI, the overthrow of the Diem regime in South Vietnam and the escalation of American involvement in the war, the continuing Ecumenical Council in Rome (Vatican II), Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech in the March on Washington, and more. Yes, 1963 was quite a year, and yes—it will have far-reaching effects on 1964 and beyond. Even to this day.

Victor Borge's annual "Comedy of Music" special (Thursday, 8:00 p.m., ABC) preempts Jimmy Dean this week; the Great Dane's guests are tenor Sergio Franchi and frequent Borge foil Leonid Hambro. It ought to be a fun show, and here's a clip from it. After that, Kraft Suspense Theatre (9:00 p.m, NBC) presents "The Deep End," the story of a woman who suspects the death of her twin sister was not an accident; Ellen McRae, Aldo Ray, Clu Gulager, and Tina Louise head a fine cast, and if you're wondering who Ellen McRae is that she'd get top billing (besides playing the dual role of the sisters), you might recognize her from the name she adopted later: Ellen Burstyn. 

Friday, you'll be drawn, as I was, to The Jack Paar Program (9:00 p.m., NBC), where Jack's guests include "the Beatles, Britain's top rock 'n' roll group" (clip here) along with Paul Lynde, Peggy Cass, and Jack Douglas and his wife Reiko. We're still a month away from the Fab Four's appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, and it was just the past November that they started to get significant airplay on United States radio. They're coming, though; we just haven't felt the blast yet.

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A couple of weeks ago, Richard Gehman had Jerry Lewis on the analyst's couch to look at why his series was a failure. This week, he's got an appointment with Joey Bishop, who has quickly earned a reputation as one of the most difficult people in Hollywood. His sitcom, The Joey Bishop Show, has started its third season, and the question being asked by most people is "Why is it on?"

Bishop has insisted from the start on doing things his own way; "I didn't come here to Hollywood to learn comedy. I came to expose mine," he says. His attitude has caused writers, actors, directors, and others to flee his show, and by insisting on running things, he has made more mistakes than people had expected. "His first season was a disaster, the second not much better. Thne fact that there is a third season mystifies many people in the industry." And yet—ratings are up, and after witnessing first-hand how a scene was changed at Bishop's insistence, Gehman admits that the retooled scene—done Bishop's way—was much funnier than it was before.

Problems persist. One actor told Gehman that "[t]he Bishop program was the most unpleasant experience of my life." During the first season alone, a director and four actors left, and in the second season a comedian and a writer-director departed the scene. Danny Thomas, the executive producer, reportedly threw up his hands in exasperation, unable to find anyone who would work with Bishop. What is it about him that rubs people the wrong way?

Gehman looks at the influence of Bishop's show-business idols, specifically Frank Sinatra, who discovered him, and Jack Paar, who gave him television exposure. "Some of their arrogance—the necessary cockiness of deep insecurity—has rubbed off on him," Gehman notes, using them as Freud might treat a patient's parents. He also looks at those who've worked successfully with Bishop; he stops short of calling them sycophants, but does not that they tend to be "those upon whom he can depend, meaning those who will do exactly as he says." Moody and sometimes misanthropic, he can sit for hours at a time, concentrating; "no one in television tries harder for perfection." People on the show seem to understand this a little better now.

Bishop comes across as a man who, for years, has learned to depend on himself more than anyone else. He has confidence in his own talent, and his ability to know the best way to utilize it. He is, by his own admission, a worrier by nature, and he's spent plenty of time worrying about the success of his show, and his career. He rightly points out that it's his neck on the line, after all. Is it the best way, how he handles people and conflicts and situations? Maybe not. But, as Bishop points out, "Is there anybody in this industry who does it any different?"

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MST3K alert: The Rebel Set (1959) The operator of a Hollywood coffee house hires three beatniks to assist him in a robbery. Gregg Palmer, Kathleen Crowley. (Thursday, midnight, WCCO) Missing from that sparse list of credits is the coffee house operator, played by none other than Edward Platt! Chief as a bad guy! You can't depend on anyone, I guess. It also features Don Sullivan, whom we last saw in The Giant Gila Monster. Anyway, it's also a bad movie, with some very funny riffs involving assassins, train robberies, Scott Baio, and Hercule Poirot. TV  

Classic television that's a turkey - well, not really

When it comes to holiday-themed episodes, it seems to me as if Thanksgiving has never been quite as popular as Christmas (although there have certainly been classic episodes, from Bob Newhart to Friends), but that doesn't mean they don't exist. For example, TV Party has a great sample lineup from the 1950s here. So in the spirit of the season, here are some clips of our own, some nostalgic and others frivolous, all of them part of what makes Thanksgiving special.

The day always begins with parades. I've shared this before - it's an exceptionally clear clip from the Hudson's Parade in Detroit, 1962. Captain Kangaroo, Mr. Green Jeans and Mr. Moose are in the studio, and newsmen Dallas Townsend and Bob Murphy are on the parade route. This was one of the three parades that CBS carried in their "Thanksgiving Parade Jubilee," the other two being in New York and Detroit (with Toronto added later).


One of the most famous college football games ever played was on Thanksgiving - the 1971 "Game of the Century" between undefeated and top-ranked Nebraska and undefeated, #2 ranked Oklahoma. Watch this when you have some time - it's an unforgettable game, even if the wrong team won. (And check out the commercials!)


Of course, variety shows have never found a holiday they didn't like, and Perry Como did them particularly well.  Here is Perry's 1962 Thanksgiving eve show, which I think I've covered elsewhere in the archives.





Lawrence Welk's charmingly corny rendition of Plymouth Rock kicks off this special from 1958, when it was known as The Lawrence Welk Plymouth Show.


What would a holiday be without cartoons?  Here's Rankin-Bass' The Mouse on the Mayflower from 1968.


Or a sitcom? Here's the 1951 Burns and Allen Thanksgiving show.


As for the more recent past, there's the epic"Turkey Drop" from WKRP in Cincinnati, perhaps the most famous Thanksgiving clip ever.



And we'll end with this memorable message from Red Skelton in 1952.


What they're all saying is this: Happy Thanksgiving!

To which I add my own sincere wishes for a wonderful and blessed day, for we all indeed have much to be thankful for.

This week in TV Guide: November 20, 1971

It was called the "Game of the Century," the showdown on Thanksgiving Day 1971 between undefeated, #1 ranked Nebraska and undefeated, #2 ranked Oklahoma.  There had been similar amounts of hype for other games in days past, most recently the 1969 end-of-the-season clash between #1 Texas and #2 Arkansas that President Nixon himself flew down to attend, and the 1966 Notre Dame-Michigan State game that changed college football forever.  But as sporting spectacles go, few college football games have ever lived up to their billing the way this game does, served up to an ultimately exhausted national television audience somewhere between the mashed potatoes and gravy and the pumpkin pie.

Nebraska and Oklahoma were not only undefeated coming into the game, but totally undefeated.  The Sooners led the nation in scoring, averaging 45 points a game, while the Cornhuskers had won their ten games by an average of 27 points, allowing only 50 points in the process.  With the nation's leading offense facing the nation's leading defense, something had to give.  ABC's cameras were there to cover it as part of their Thanksgiving doubleheader with their number one announce crew of Chris Schenkel and Bud Wilkinson, and there's no question, even before the kickoff, that the game overshadows anything the NFL has to offer that day.

And what a game it is, everything it was expected to be and more, see-sawing back and forth and leaving everyone involved emotionally drained.  Nebraska, behind a spectacular punt return from future Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Rodgers, leads 28-17 going into the fourth quarter before the magnificent wishbone quarterback Jack Mildren rallies Oklahoma to take a 31-28 lead with barely seven minutes to play.  Alas for Oklahoma fans (including me), it won't be enough, as Nebraska grinds out a late drive and scores with 98 seconds to play, outlasting the Sooners 35-31.  Nebraska will go on to demolish the new #2 team, Alabama, 38-6 in the Orange Bowl, winning their second consecutive national championship.  Oklahoma, defeating Auburn in the Sugar Bowl 40-22, finishes second.  Colorado, losers only to Nebraska and Oklahoma, finishes third - the only time three teams from the same conference (the Big 8) finish 1-2-3 in the final polls.

To this day, Nebraska-Oklahoma 1971 is considered one of the greatest games ever, and maintains a special place in the memories of fans.  Certainly the high quality and nonstop thrills of the game itself has something to do with, but perhaps in addition it's the Thanksgiving day scheduling, with many families watching the game together.  Whatever the case, it's drama that's seldom been equaled, and rarely surpassed.

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One of the swell things about Thanksgiving, from my TV Guide-reviewing perspective, is that because it falls at different times of the month I can write about it more than once a year.  And this is a great Thanksgiving to write about.  It starts, as always, with parades.  CBS, as is its wont back in the day, presents a kaleidoscope of festivities from Detroit, Philadelphia, Toronto and New York, with Bill Baird and his marionettes hosting the overall broadcast, and CBS stars (Bob Crane, Greg Morris, Beverly Garland, June Lockhart and Herschel Bernardi among them) covering the parades themselves.  Meanwhile, NBC has its traditional broadcast of the Macy's parade, with Joe Garagiola and Jack Paar's daughter Randy hosting the pre-parade show, and Lorne Greene and Betty White assuming their traditional roles identifying the balloons, floats and bands.

There's more football as well.  In addition to the Game of the Century, ABC has a prime-time nightcap between Georgia and Georgia Tech at 7 p.m. CT.  Meanwhile, the NFL's covered by NBC, presenting Kansas City and Detroit at 11 a.m., and CBS following with Los Angeles and Dallas at 2:30.

And what would the day be without cartoons?  At 11 a.m., CBS has A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, sponsored by General Mills*, with Orson Bean as the voice of the Yankee in Mark Twain's beloved classic.  Following the football, NBC's back with a double-header of its own: The Cricket on the Hearth, an adaptation of the Dickens story, starts it off at 2 p.m., with an all-star voice lineup including Danny and Marlo Thomas, Roddy McDowell, Hans Conried, Ed Ames and Paul Frees.  That's followed at 3 p.m. by The Mouse on the Mayflower, presented by McDonalds, with Tennessee Ernie Ford, Eddie Albert, Joanie Sommers and John Gary as the celebrity voices.

*It would be nice to report that General Mills owns King Arthur Flour, as it would make such a perfect tie-in.  Alas, such is not the case.

Aside from ABC's football, there's nothing extraordinary about Thursday night, sadly.  CBS has a double feature of news programs, beginning with 60 Minutes and followed by a special on the American Dream.  NBC has Ironside, now occupying a new date and time, followed by Dean Martin, with guest stars Carol Channing and Dan Blocker.  Interestingly enough, none of these programs are reruns; the networks must have figured there'd be an audience out there for their regular programs.

One more note about holiday programming - it doesn't quite end on Thursday.  ABC has a great Friday planned for those kids out there on break, presenting their regular Saturday morning lineup in a cartoon festival from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.  (Included: The Reluctant Dragon and Mr. Toad, Jerry Lewis, The Road Runner, The Funky Phantom, Lidsville, The Jackson 5ive and Bullwinkle.)  That's followed by a special presentation of ABC's NBA game of the week, with the Baltimore Bullets playing Pete Maravich and the Atlanta Hawks.

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I was hoping that the cover blurb, "TV Newsmen's Favorite Patsies Fight Back," named some names, but the "favorite patsies" are businessmen undergoing training and coaching from public relations agencies used to preparing people to meet the media.  Oh well.

In other news, NBC is worried about its ratings.  The Doan Report covers how the Peacock Network has just cancelled Sarge, The D.A., The Funny Side, The Partners and The Good Life.  I have a vague recollection of some of these; if you don't remember them any better than I do, that's a good explanation for why they're no longer on the air.  Doan notes that the most unusual aspect to the announcement is that it's made so early; the shows won't be going off the air until the end of the year.  As for replacements, there's a Jack Webb number that's slated to premiere in January; it doesn't even have a cast yet, but it does have a title - Emergency!  And then there's the British import that NBC is hoping will be its answer to All in the Family.  It's an adaptation of Steptoe and Son called Sanford and Son.  I'd say those two turned out pretty well.

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As far as movies this week, there are only two that Judith Crist has any time for - South Pacific on Born Free, Sunday on CBS, with a lot of lions.
ABC Wednesday night, with Mitzi Gaynor and Rossano Brazzi, making its network TV debut, and

And seeing how dominant football is over Thanksgiving week, it's perhaps only appropriate that George Plimpton's series of ABC specials debuts on Friday night.  Plimpton, who's best known for his seminal book Paper Lion, in which he details his adventures as a journalist going through training camp with the Detroit Lions, is at it again, this time with the Baltimore Colts.  It's a fun special on its own, but at the same time kind of proof that you can't go back home again.  When it comes to football and Plimpton, Paper Lion will be what everyone remembers.

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I've had many things to say about living in the World's Worst Town™, but it does provide one with a different perspective when it comes to television, particularly shows that weren't available in our market, and we'll see an example of that this week.

All in the Family is on the cover, supporting a feature piece on star Carroll O'Connor.  It debuted in January of 1971, and already it has become a national sensation, dealing with sensitive topics in a most unsensitive way, using frank language, and giving America a portrait of the family that is decidedly not that of Donna Reed and Father Knows Best.  I was not yet 11 when the show premiered, but I remember liking it for the 18 or so months that it was on before we moved out of the Twin Cities in August of 1972 - as was the case with many viewers at that point in time, I failed to see that Archie Bunker was a character being satirized, and actually agreed with most of what he said.  Because there was no CBS affiliate in that God-forsaken town, I would not see an actual episode again until returning to the Cities in 1978.

During that time, the Norman Lear-helmed sitcom solidifies its place as the nation's top-rated, and most talked-about, television show.  But even though the show wasn't available to us, I was able to keep track of what was going on (thanks to TV Guide and the newspapers), so I had a very good idea of what was what.  I learned more about the world, about politics, about how television shows had their own agenda.  By the time we returned to civilization, I wouldn't have had anything to do with the show, and haven't to this day.  I think it's a show that doesn't age well - it's not only dated, but polemic in a most unsubtle way, and it did the family unit no favors with its crassness.  But, you see, I picked up most of that by reading about the show, rather than watching it.  My opinion of the show, and my fervent hopes that another series would knock it off its #1 perch, were formed from a distance, yet it's as vivid to me as if I'd had the opportunity to watch every episode.

Those six years I spent in exile shaped my outlook on many shows of that era.  Sometimes I mention it specifically in these articles, and other times it simply informs my writing.  My image of ABC in the mid-70s, the years the network truly came to prominence, have been affected by not being able to watch them, sometimes creating a mystique about a certain series, other times causing me to somewhat underestimate a show's cultural impact.  I missed many of the years in which CBS had its Saturday-night Murderers Row of sitcoms (including All in the Family, but also Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, and M*A*S*H, followed by Carol Burnett, but reading about them in the TV Guide each week lent Saturday nights an air of urbane, adult sophistication.  Who wouldn't have wanted to live in the Newharts' apartment in Chicago, or next door to Mary's home near the lakes?  Some of the shows had already premiered by the time we moved to the boondocks, but they reached their pinnacle while I was gone, and except for the times when we might be back in Minneapolis on vacation, they were lost memories.

I bring this up because I think the same thing can happen reading through the TV Guides from my youth, before I could appreciate what was actually on.  I particularly like that word mystique, because it's easy to feel that way about shows one never saw.  I've been able to track down a fair number of them through the years, the ones that particularly attracted my attention when I read about them, or that I had had a vague memory of having seen, and while many of them are quite good, a good number of them are less than that.  Which proves that the Golden Age wasn't all golden, that the memory can play tricks on you, and that older isn't necessarily better.  But you know what?  I don't think I would have had it any other way. TV  

Happy New Year!

As a New Year's teaser, I thought I'd end 2012 with this video from the New Year's Eve 1965 broadcast of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Now, there are a couple of notable things about this clip.  First, it includes the rarely-seen 15-minute opening of the show, from 11:15-11:30pm ET.  See, Tonight originally ran for an hour and 45 minutes, back to the days when local news was usually only 15 minutes.  However, as the Jack Paar era gave way to Carson, and local news organizations matured in their coverage, more and more stations expanded their news to a full half hour.  NBC affiliates either showed Tonight on a delay after the news, or they just skipped the first 15 minutes altogether.

Needless to say, Carson soon tired of having his monologue cut, and from February 1965 on, he refused to do those first 15 minutes, leaving it to Ed McMahon and then-bandleader Skitch Henderson.  So this video offers us with a rare opportunity to see what those 15 minutes were like.  NBC eventually dropped that segment completely, and Tonight cut back to 90 minutes, and eventually to its current 60 minute length.  I would call this unfortunate, except I can't think of anyone who could be interesting enough for 90 minutes anymore.

However, for me the more interesting part of this clip comes just past the 6:00 mark, when we see NBC's schedule for New Year's Day.  And this, I have to say, perfectly encapsulates my memories of January 1.  The morning starts with the Orange Bowl Parade, taped the previous night (the parade, like the game itself, was a nighttime affair; NBC eventually showed the parade live as well), followed by the Tournament of Roses Parade.  And then, my highlight: NBC's Bowl Day Triple-Header, starting with the Sugar Bowl (Missouri over Florida), continued with the Rose Bowl (UCLA shocking #1 Michigan State), and ending under the lights at the Orange Bowl (Alabama dispatching Nebraska).  The triple-header was only made possible by the Orange Bowl's move to prime-time the previous year, and would continue until the Sugar moved to ABC in 1970.  But for me (and a lot of people, I suspect), not having to change the channels all day was a mighty appealing idea.


The games were different back then, as was almost everything else.  This year the national championship doesn't get settled for another week, and the luster of all of the games has been diminished.  I accept this as a fact of life; you can't live in the past forever, no matter how hard you try.  I do feel sorry, though, for those who never experienced those simple pleasures the way we did.

But then, that's what this blog is about.

Happy New Year everyone, and thanks to all of you for making this such a satisfying year.  We'll all meet again next year!

This week in TV Guide: December 29, 1973

Ah, what an issue. We have the end of one year and the start of another, the early days of one New Year's Eve tradition and the waining days of a second, and a whole raft of bowls, including one of the greatest college football games ever played.

***

First, the football.  As I alluded to in my article earlier this week, years of segregation (officially or unofficially) had left the Sugar Bowl as the weakest of the Big Four New Year's games, and by 1973 ABC had moved the game to New Year's Eve, in an effort to build an audience apart from the Cotton Bowl on CBS, against which the Sugar Bowl was usually shown.* This year would be different, though, as the game hosted a marquee matchup for the ages: top-ranked, undefeated Alabama vs. third-ranked, undefeated Notre Dame for the national championship.**

*Until 1965 the Orange Bowl had been an afternoon game as well, meaning that all three - Sugar, Cotton and Orange - were more or less on opposite each other, giving the Rose Bowl, then as now, clear sailing.

**Second-ranked, undefeated Oklahoma was on probation, making them ineligible for a bowl game.  It was understood that if Notre Dame defeated Alabama, they would leapfrog the Sooners into the number one spot.

It had been dark and rainy during the day, with tornado warnings in the area, and at one point ABC sports head Roone Arledge allegedly wondered out loud if he might be able to persuade the two schools to postpone the game for a few days, so that the weather wouldn't play a factor.  Absurd, I know - even he didn't have that kind of power back then.  (Today, who knows?)  At any rate, the moment passed and the game kicked off as scheduled. The lead seesawed  back and forth, and late in the fourth quarter Notre Dame, nursing a slim one-point lead, found themselves staring at third and long from inside their own five-yard line. In a daring bit of play-calling, the kind that wins national championships, Notre Dame QB Tom Clements, from his own end zone, hit Robin Weber on a play-action pass for 35 yards and the first down. Notre Dame would hang on to win this magnificent first-ever meeting between the two college giants, 24-23, and claim the national championship. 


The next year the two teams would meet again, this time in the Orange Bowl.  Alabama was again undefeated and top-ranked; Notre Dame was an also-ran at 9-2, but in Ara Parseghian's final game as coach, the Irish would beat the Tide again, 13-11.

Notre Dame vs. Alabama for the national championship.  Sounds familiar, doesn't it?  I wonder who's going to win this time?

***

The 1974 Rose Parade on independent WTCN

A great lineup for New Year's Day.  CBS kicked things off at 9:00am CT with the Rose Parade preview, featuring hosts Bob Barker and June Lockhart and Grand Marshal Charles Schulz.  NBC countered with the Junior Orange Bowl Parade (the King Orange Jamboree Parade had been shown the previous evening), followed by their own parade preview show, hosted by Doc Severinsen.  At 10am CBS was back with the Cotton Bowl Parade, while independent Channel 11 carried the syndicated Rose preview show, which I'm guessing might have come from KTLA in Los Angeles.

The bowl games started at 1pm, with the Cotton Bowl on CBS.  (Nebraska 19, Texas 3), followed at 3:45 with the Rose Bowl on NBC (Ohio State 42, USC 24), and concluded with the nightcapper, also on NBC, the Orange Bowl (Penn State 16, LSU 9).  Back then college football games didn't run four hours; NBC even scheduled a recap of the day's coverage for 9:45, before the local news.

***

More sports?  A quadruple-header of college football on Saturday: in the afternoon it's the Sun Bowl on CBS (Missouri 34, Auburn 17), the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl on ABC (Houston 47, Tulane 7) and the East-West Shrine Game on NBC (East 35, West 7); ABC has the nightcap, the Gator Bowl (Texas Tech 28, Tennessee 19).

Sunday belongs to the pros, with the NFC and AFC championships.  In the NFC, Minnesota defeated Dallas 27-10, while in the AFC it was Miami over Oakland by the same score.  The Dolphins would defeat the Vikings in the Super Bowl two weeks later, the second of the Vikings' four defeats.  By contrast, this year the NFL's regular season won't even be done on December 30.

Here's something else that's changed: the NHL played hockey!  The local game was the Minnesota North Stars vs. the New York Rangers on Sunday night (Rangers won, 4-3) and NBC presented a special Friday night edition between the Rangers and the Boston Bruins (the Rangers won that one as well, 4-2).

***

And now the news.  In The Doan Report, Rhode Island Senator John Pastore calls again for hearings on television violence.  Like that did a lot of good.  And there's a new movement to curb the proliferation of network reruns.  In favor: unions, who hope that more episodes will increase studio employment.  Opposed: the networks, who claim that cutting back on reruns would pose a significant financial hardship.

Speaking of episodes, the new year used to introduce what was called the "Second Season," when the networks introduced their first wave of replacements for their failed shows, and so a number of series make their swan songs this week: Tenafly and the anthology Love Story on NBC, and Roll Out! on CBS.  Roll Out! was the  network's attempt, some thought, to copy M*A*S*H's  success with World War II, while Tenafly was notable for being one of the first series to feature a black in the lead role, with James MacEachin as a former police detective turned private eye.

And with the shifting of the schedules, a few favorites prepare for new timeslots.  ABC's Toma, which would become Baretta next season, prepares to move from Thursday to Friday to make way for two new series, Chopper One* and Firehouse.  Neither would make it past the Second Season.  Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law is also on the move, from its Wednesday time to Saturdays.  An upcoming CBS series, Dirty Sally, is previewed on Gunsmoke.  That one didn't go far, either.

*A type in TV Guide rendered this series "Hopper One."  Perhaps that's why they weren't able to find an audience; the audience wasn't able to find the show.

And then there's a series that did make just a little splash.  On PBS' Masterpiece Theatre, a postscript indicates that "Next week: 'Upstairs, Downstairs,' a 13-part drama about life in Edwardian England" will begin.  As I recall, that went over a bit more than those other series...

***

A while back, reader JB suggested we expand our "Sullivan vs. The Palace" feature to include a couple of the definitive 70s-era music shows: NBC's The Midnight Special and ABC's In Concert. Both shows aired on Friday nights after the late local news, and both premiered in 1973; Midnight Special on February 2 and In Concert on November 24.  Of the two, Midnight Special would have the more lasting fame, running until 1981 and remaining available through best-of DVD sets, while In Concert, running every other week as part of ABC's Wide World of Entertainment, departed these mortal broadcast coils in 1975.  With that said, let's take a look at what each show had to offer on the first Friday of 1974.

The 90-minute Midnight Special featured a compilation show spotlighting million-seller artists, including the Edgar Winter Group, Jim Croce, Loggins and Messina, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, Billy Preston, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, the O'Jays, and Gilbert O'Sullivan.  The hour-long In Concert countered with Seals and Crofts, Jessie Colin Young, Eddie Kendricks and Walter Heath.

This isn't really a fair fight; Midnight Special is cherry-picking its best acts from the year, so it isn't hard to assemble an all-star cast.  Nevertheless, when your big guns are Seals and Crofts, you're in trouble.  The verdict: the clock strikes twelve for In Concert; a special night for the winner, The Midnight Special.

I'll offer this matchup whenver the occasion arises, and as a bonus I'll throw in the syndicated Don Kirshner's Rock Concert whenever it's in the listings.

***

And since we're on the subject of comparisons, there was something else on Monday night besides the Sugar Bowl - the battle of the network New Year's Eve programs.  On NBC it's the second edition of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve*. which comes from the ballroom of the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA and features host George Carlin, Billy Preston, the Pointer Sisters, Tower of Power and Linda Ronstadt, with a live cut-in to Dick in Times Square as the new year approaches.

*Yes, you read that correctly.  The first two New Year's Rockin' Eve shows were telecast not on  Clark's longtime partner ABC, but on NBC.  In 1972 the show was called Three Dog Night's Year's Rockin' Eve, hosted by - appropriately enough - Three Dog Night, and also taped on the Queen Mary.  Beginning in 1974, the show would add Dick's name to the title and would move to ABC, where it remains to this day.

Ironically, ABC's Wide World of Entertainment would counter-program that night with American Bandstand's 20th Anniversary Show, starring - of course - Dick Clark.

Meanwhile, on CBS Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians would make their 18th consecutive New Year's Eve appearance on TV, having started on CBS radio in 1929.  Guy's sole guest was singer Barbara McNair.  Among the pieces the Royal Canadians would play that night, besides "Auld Lang Syne": "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown."  This clip is from three years later, but I think you get the picture.



Channel 4, the CBS affiliate in Minneapolis, always tape-delayed Lombardo's show so that it would ring in the new year at midnight Central time.  To fill in the gap until Lombardo's show started, local children's TV host John Gallos would host an annual airing of Laurel and Hardy's The Music Box.  To this day, I'll associate The Music Box with New Year's Eve.

***

And that kid on the cover?  That's "Mason Reese, 7-year old huckster."  Back in the early 70s, Reese was ubiquitous on television, appearing on commercials for Ivory soap, Post Raisin Bran, Perdue chicken, Underwood chicken spread, the Zayre store chain, and more.  If he wasn't pitching products, he was chatting it up with the likes of Dick Cavett and Mike Douglas.


When asked how he liked the business, he replied, "It's fun.  You get to travel around and meet lots of important people and shoot crap with the cameramen." TV  

Behind the Close-Up: the 1962 Rose Bowl

If there was anything particularly notable about the 1962 Rose Bowl, you’d think a native Minnesotan would have heard about it. That game occupies a somewhat exalted position in the history of Minnesota sports, being the last time the University of Minnesota went to the Rose Bowl* (or any major bowl for that matter); and while the game doesn’t approach the historical significance of the 1961 game, which featured the Gophers’ beloved national championship team, it still remains a high point in Gopher football. And besides, that championship team was defeated in the Rose Bowl by Washington, whereas the ’62 team was victorious over UCLA.

*A drought so long that every team in the Big Ten – including Northwestern, the league’s longtime doormat, and Nebraska, which didn’t even join the Big Ten until last year – has been to the Rose Bowl since Minnesota’s last appearance.

So, at best, one might look at the 1962 Rose Bowl as a historical footnote; interesting, perhaps, to Minnesotans, but otherwise no more, or less, special than most editions of that storied game. And unless I miss my mark, that’s what Professor Kurt Kemper thought as well, at least until one day…

“In particular, I just found a fragment one time in a popular history about UCLA football where they happened to note that UCLA had threatened to boycott the Rose Bowl. I had grown up in Los Angeles as a UCLA fan, and I had never heard this before. It astounded me. The more I went looking, the more and more I found, and it just sort of morphed into this whole project.”

That project is Kemper’s book College Football and American Culture in the Cold War Era, and the Rose Bowl in question is the 1962 game. Kemper’s book doesn’t deal with television per se, but as is often the case, this listing from TV Guide belies a tumultuous current of social change, lurking just under the surface, ready to burst forth.

***

The 1962 Rose Bowl was shaping up to be a unique one.  The longtime contract between the Big Ten and Pacific 8* to send their champions to the game had expired, and there was reason to believe that it would not be renewed in time for the 1962 game - if in fact it was renewed at all.  For this reason, the Rose Bowl committee had unusually "wide latitude" in selecting the game's participants.

*The game's host conference underwent many name changes throughout the years, being known as the Pacific Coast Conference and the Athletic Association of Western Universities before settling down as the Pacific 8, later to become the Pacific 10 and Pacific 12, depending on how many schools were in the conference at the time.
  
The stakes were high.  Rose Bowl was considered the "grandaddy of them all."  It was the first bowl game, and by far the most prestigious.  For many years it was understood that the Rose Bowl winner was the champion team of the year, and even after the introduction and maturity of the other "Big Four" bowl games - the Sugar, Cotton and Orange - the Rose Bowl remained the gold standard.  It was played in the largest stadium, before the largest crowd, with the largest radio (and later television) audience.  When discussions of a national championship playoff first started, it was a given that the championship game would be played at the Rose Bowl.

The game started out matching the West coast champion against the best team from the East, and as the game grew in stature and lore, it became every young boy's dream to one day play in it.  Teams from around the country had competed for the honor of playing in Pasadena - programs as storied as Notre Dame and Alabama had won there, but so had the Ivy League's Harvard and Columbia, and tiny Washington & Jefferson had played mighty California to a scoreless tie in 1922.

The Rose Bowl’s ties to the Big Ten were not in fact that deep, only dating back to the 1947 game, and the conference's initial involvement was actually quite controversial; one sportswriter pointed out that the arrangement made the Rose Bowl in essence a “closed shop,” cutting off those dreams of young football players who had the misfortune of not playing for one of the ten Midwestern schools in the conference.. Read in this light, one could see that the possibility of looking outside the Big Ten for an participant was not necessarily the worst thing that could happen to the game.

Likewise, the Big Ten wasn't all that crazy about committing to the game.  This sentiment was especially strong at Ohio State, where many of the professors had come to see the athletic department as having undue influence over the university as a whole.  This is especially important within the Cold War context of the time; Kemper notes regarding the opposition from faculty members (particularly in the Humanities department), "They really thought that this was the Republic’s hour of need, that this was a period of great peril for the nation and that this was the type of service that university personnel could offer: to study the problems of society. They thought these efforts were really being hindered by the university’s obsession with football." Before the drama of the 1962 Rose Bowl was through, they would be heard from.

Many teams were mentioned as possible Rose Bowl contenders, but the focus of the game’s organizers eventually settled on two powerful Southern teams: Alabama and Louisiana State.  Both schools had powerful incentives for playing in the game: Alabama had a history in the Rose Bowl, having played there six times in the past (winning four); LSU was eager to break out of the Sugar Bowl rut into which they had fallen.  Excitement about the possibility of a Rose Bowl appearance was high on both campuses and, initially, among West Coast football fans as well. Fred Neil of the Los Angeles Herald-Express wrote, "The sportswriters' No. 1 choice is Alabama because everyone thinks they have a better team. I think they (the Rose Bowl) will look favorably on LSU. The Big Ten teams under consideration are dull, and there's little reaction to our going to the Big Ten with hat in hand and begging them to play us."  However, complications were not long in coming, and they dealt with race.  Not the race for the championship, nor the arms race, but the issue of racial equality.

***

There was a good reason why LSU had so often played in the Sugar Bowl.  New Orleans, home of the game, was one of the most racially segregated cities in the United States, and for years LSU had, by state fiat, been barred from competing against integrated teams.  It was simply assumed that LSU, if it qualified, would be one of the two teams in the game. For LSU, the game had ceased to be much of an incentive; head coach Paul Dietzel essentially told athletic director Jim Corbett, "If you want this team to play in the Sugar, YOU'LL have to take 'em."

Dietzel's comment was an indication of the changing situation. By 1961 the legal requirement against integrated competition had been overturned, but the school still maintained a policy of avoiding "integrated extracurricular activity," which could be anything from school dances to bowl games.  In fact, the 1961 baseball team, which had won the SEC championship, declined to play in the NCAA tournament out of concern that they would have to play an integrated team. 

But football wasn't baseball, and now, with a possible Rose Bowl invite dangling in front of them, supporters of a change in the school's policy saw their opportunity.  Rose Bowl fever was rampant in Baton Rouge, and even staunch segregationists admitted that they were excited by the prospect of a trip to Pasadena.  With the possible bid as bait, the school ultimately reversed the policy in November, allowing for the possibility of LSU playing an integrated team in a bowl game (although not integrating their own team).  As Kemper notes, "By placing the issue in terms of a national sporting culture unrelated to integration," supporters of integration carried the day.  It was acknowledged that the policy change would allow LSU to compete on a national level.  "When faced with the choice of regional values that isolated southerners or national values that celebrated American distinctiveness and unity, many southerners willingly embraced the latter because they could tell themselves the two were unrelated."

The role of football was a key point when it came to understanding the position of similarly-segregated Alabama.  "Accepting that segregation created division within the South and hostility from without, white southerners embraced the game of football because it represented both Southern and American ways of life."  Alabama had in fact played integrated teams before, notably Penn State in the inaugural Liberty Bowl* in 1959.  The school's policy seemed to suggest, more or less, that playing an integrated team outside of Alabama was fine as long as nobody made a Federal case out of it. 

*For the first five years of its existence, the Liberty Bowl was played in Philadelphia, hence its name.  It would not be until 1965 that the game would settle permanently in Memphis. 

As Alabama rose to the number one ranking in the country, Rose Bowl fever reached a peak.  But then there was a twist, as socially active students at UCLA (which would play USC for the West Coast Rose Bowl bid) began raising the possibility of a boycott of the Rose Bowl should a segregated team be selected.  The free-speech movement was already divisive on the campus, and the specter of mass protests against the game, and possibly at the game itself, raised red flags.  Especially harsh on the topic were two Los Angleles sportswriters, Melvin Durslag* of the Los Angeles Examiner and Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times.  Murray in particular wrote provocatively, with column titles such as "Bedsheets and 'Bama," and noted that sports could no longer be separated from society as a whole:  "The real news . . . had everything to do with the smell of roses and the color of the players."

*A frequent contributor to TV Guide, by the way.

 Anger rose throughout Alabama, and concern.  The desire to keep football isolated - segregated, if you will - from the larger social scene was clearly threatened by the actions of the student activists at UCLA and their allies in the press.  Alabama remained the top choice of Rose Bowl officials, but did the Crimson Tide feel the same way?
 

***

In the end, as is oft the case, the final outcome belied the drama that had preceded it, perhaps helping to explain why the entire episode has faded into the historical background.

LSU made the first move.  Earlier in November it announced formally that it would not play in the Sugar Bowl, perhaps hoping it would force the hand of the Rose Bowl committee.  However, it was clear to the school that the top-ranked Tide remained the committee's first choice and, fearing it would wind up playing in no bowl at all, preemptively accepted a bid to the Orange Bowl to play Colorado.

For Alabama, the concerns had less to do with either football or academics, and more with the school's (and the state's) reputation.  Concerned that accepting a Rose Bowl bid "would have allowed all of the scorn, rage, and disgust many felt toward the state and the region to be directed at the football team," the university announced that they would go to New Orleans and the Sugar Bowl, where they would play Arkansas. Much of the available evidence suggests that a Rose invitation was indeed offered (even prior to Ohio State's season-ending defeat of Michigan to win the Big Ten title), but declined, although no Alabama official would ever go on the record as admitting such.

Rose officials then turned back to the Big Ten, whose champion - undefeated, once-tied Ohio State - although not contractually obligated, would remain an attractive choice.  However, in Columbus the battle between academics and athletics had finally come to a head, as the faculty council met to consider the invitation.  As Kemper points out, "These faculty members were not against the Buckeyes having an athletic program. The problem was with the fact that football, in their minds, was the tail that was wagging the dog. So their hope, in terms of denying the Rose Bowl, wasn’t just some sort of childish temper tantrum, but was an effort to try to get people’s attention -- particularly those whose only connection to the university was the football program -- to help them realize that there’s a serious business going on here."  The council voted 28-25 to decline the invitation.  They hoped their decision would "vastly improv[e] the university's reputation as an academic institution fit for service in a Cold War political economy."  It may have done that, but it also set off riots on the Columbus campus, with students threatening to march on the state capitol.  The Buckeyes would stay home for the holidays.

Finally, with nowhere else to turn and with dissension rising within the Rose Bowl committee, an invitation was extended to Minnesota, defending national champions and the second-place team in the Big Ten. Ironically, had the Gophers won the Big Ten title, the conference's no-repeat rule would have prevented them from making a second successive trip to Pasadena.  However, since they'd finished second, the option was technically still available, and the Gophers accepted.*  Interestingly enough, in January of 1962 it would be the University of Minnesota that would cast the deciding vote as to whether or not the Big Ten would renew its contract with the Rose Bowl.  Having been assured that the contract would require not the Big Ten champion but instead a "representative team," Minnesota voted in favor, and the contract passed.

*The no-repeat rule, which existed in both the Big Ten and Pac-8, prohibited a conference champion from making back-to-back appearances in the Rose Bowl, in order to "spread the wealth" of experiencing the great game.  The no-repeat clause apparently did not anticipate the possibility of a conference champion declining the invitation.

So, to someone looking at the TV Guide from January 1, 1962, there would appear to be nothing out of the ordinary.  A Big Ten team was in the Rose Bowl*, the SEC champ was in the Sugar Bowl, and a highly-regarded LSU team travelled to Miami.  More along, nothing to see here.

*The 1962 Rose Bowl would be the first telecast in color.

***

Since then, the Rose Bowl has changed in numerous ways.  In the early 1970s, both the Big Ten and the Pacific 10 voted to end the "no-repeat" rule.  When the Rose Bowl became part of the Bowl Championship Series in 1998, even Big Ten-Pac 10 matchups were no longer guaranteed.  By 2012, with the Big Ten sending an 8-5 Wisconsin team that had finished in third place in its own division (upsetting Nebraska in a conference championship game they qualified for only because the two teams ahead of it were ineligible due to bowl bans), it would be hard to argue that the Badgers would have fit the 1962 definition of a "representative team."  The Rose Bowl had become, in essence, just another bowl game - a big one, to be sure, but no longer the "granddaddy" except in name.

The race issue would continue to evolve as well.  It was becoming increasingly apparent that a policy of segregation would continue to isolate Southern schools within the larger college football community, limiting not only their bowl opportunities but their national exposure.  This process would perhaps come to a head in 1966, when Alabama's undefeated, untied team would wind up third in the final national standings, trailing both Notre Dame and Michigan State (who had tied in their "Game of the Century"), in part because the school lacked a "national" footprint.  From then on, pressure to integrate and to look outside the South for opponents would increase.  Texas would win the 1969 national championship with an all-white team, but it  would be the last time college football would see a segregated champion.

The story of the 1962 Rose Bowl is a fascinating mess, as so much of history tends to be.  It's too bad that we aren't more familiar with the story, because it provides a stunning contrast with the state of college athletics today.  It's not that college football is more important per se - after all, when seen in the context of the Cold War, it assumes a great deal of significance.  Rather, it has become important in different ways.  The prestige of the university, with which the Ohio State faculty was so concerned in 1961, has now taken second place to the financing of the university and its athletic programs.  Mainly through the influence of television, the money behind college football has grown so immense, and the schools have become so dependent on that money, that no institution in its right mind would refuse a multimillion dollar payday on the grounds that their mission was being hindered by an "obsession" with football.

It is truly the story behind these TV Guide Close-Ups.

This week in TV Guide: November 27, 1965

There was, once upon a time, an era in which the biggest college football game of the year was played on the last weekend in November.  It was the game between Army and Navy, played at Philadephia Stadium, attracting well over 100,000 people each season.  The teams were perennially among the best in the nation; Army won the national championship in 1944 and 1945, while Navy finished the 1963 season ranked #2, and in the twenty years between 1945 and 1965 the two schools combined to produce five Heisman Trophy winners.

By 1965, however, things had changed.  For one thing the venue in which the game was played, although it was the same stadium, was now called John F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium.  For another, the two teams had started their long decline into football irrelevance.  The symtoms weren't readily apparent; the 1965 teams were said to have had "disappointing" seasons (4-5 for Army; 4-4-1 for Navy, who'd lost Roger Staubach to graduation the previous year), and a crowd of 102,000 was expected, including President Lyndon B. Johnson.  The teams played to a 7-7 tie.

It seems as if we're always talking about how dramatically televised sports has changed over the years, and here's another example.  Later that Saturday afternoon, CBS's NFL Countdown features live reports on the "NFL college-player draft," being held at the Summit Hotel in New York.  You'll note first of all that the draft is being held in November, rather than April of the following year.  It's not only before the end of the college season, it's also before the NFL season ends. 

Today, of course, the draft is a TV spectacle, with two nights of prime-time coverage on two separate networks (ESPN and NFL Network).  Draft parties are held in cities throughout the country, and TV draft experts are a cottage industry.

But that's not to say that the pro football draft in the 1960s was without drama.*  For one thing, the NFL had competition from the AFL.  Each league held their own draft, with the result that most of the top players were drafted by a team from each league.  The battle to sign the top draft picks was fierce, and stories abounded of scouts from one league hiding players in hotel rooms under fake names, spiriting them away in the trunks of cars, and doing anything they could to keep them away from their rivals in the other league.  Many college players made a ceremony of coming to terms with a professional team, often signing the contract under the goal posts after their final college game.  (Some others, of course, signed before their final game, but that's another story for another time).  With the increased competition came, naturally, increased salaries, which went through the roof.  This ended in 1967, when as a precursor to the NFL-AFL merger the two leagues for the first time held a common draft, in which all teams took part, alternating picks.  It was an end to the bidding war between the leagues, although the era of big-money contracts was here to stay.

*Not to be confused with the military draft, drama of a different kind altogether.
 

***

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..

Ed Sullivan: Ed's scheduled guests are Victor Borge, songstress Petula Clark, musical-comedy star Sally Ann Howes, singer Glen Yarbrough, comedian Jackie Vernon, band leader Sammy Kaye, the 1965 Look Magazine :All-America football team, juggler Rudi  Schweitzer and the Little Angels of Korea, children's choir.

Hollywood Palace:  Hostess Janet Leigh welcomes song parodist Allan Sherman; "F-Troop's" Forrest Tucker, Ken Berry and Larry Storch; the comedy team of Rowan and Martin; singer Andy Russell; table-tennis champion Bob Ashley; and magician Michael de la Vega.

This is an interesting week for both shows.  Victor Borge was always a delight on any show in which he appeared; Sally Ann Howes was a Broadway star, at the time appearing in What Makes Sammy Run?  Jackie Vernon  - well, we all know him from this.  And Petula Clark was a very big star at the time.  (This clip may very well be from this broadcast.)


On the other hand, Janet Leigh was a big (and very attractive) star in her own right, and Allan Sherman was Weird Al before Weird Al was. Here he is on an earlier episode of the Palace, satirizing a song by, well, Petula Clark.


The F-Troop gang is funny (especially Larry Storch), and Rowan and Martin (in their pre-Laugh-In) days were all right, but ultimately I think Ed has the edge.  The verdict:  Sullivan, by a nose.

***

There's a distinct military theme to this week's issue; in addition to Army-Navy, there's a feature on how newsmen are covering the growing conflict in Vietnam, and the cover story - Bob Crane, aka Colonel Hogan, and Cynthia Lynn, Colonel Klink's secretary Helga, as well as Hogan's on-screen romantic interest (and off-screen as well, according to several accounts).  It's the first season for Hogan's Heroes, and you can tell there's still some uncertainty about staging a sitcom in a POW camp, although several cast members make the point (with which I agree) that there's a big difference between a POW camp and a concentration camp, which would have been strictly off-limits.

Hogan bears more than a passing resemblence to Phil Silvers' character Bilko; Crane himself describes the show as "halfway between Combat! and McHale's Navy - with a little bit of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. thrown in."  He bristles, however, at comparisons between the characters of Hogan and McHale; "I'm not Joe Buffoon," he says, and I've always thought that was one of the secrets to the show's success.  Quinton McHale was a good Navy captain, but it's impossible to imagine him going any higher.  Robert Hogan, however, is a different sort of character altogether.  He's already a colonel, conducting an audatious undercover operation about as far behind enemy lines as one can get, and the decision of the producers to let the humor flow naturally makes Hogan that much more believeable.  Not only can you believe that this man will do whatever it takes to carry out a mission (including killing, if necessary), it would come as no surprise to see Hogan rise to the rank of general, at the very least.  (But then, we've discussed that before.)

***

Last week of November, Christmas is on the way, right?   We're always complaining about how Christmas seems to come earlier and earlier - and it does.  But we have to remember that as far as television goes, the purpose of a Christmas special is to move merchandise.  And with Thanksgiving now a full three days in the past, it's now open season, and ABC is on tap with the first special of the year, a wonderfully strange musical called The Dangerous Christmas of Red Riding Hood, with the 19-year old, pre-Cabaret Liza Minnelli (focus of an accompanying story by David Newman and Robert Benton) as Red, Cyril Ritchard as Lone T. Wolf, and Vic Damone as the Woodsman (and Red's romantic interest).  But in some of the strangest casting ever seen on a TV special, The Animals (better known for this) appear as the Wolf Pack, a group of Lone's hangers-on.  You have to think they're wondering what in the world they're doing on this show*, but they play it with a kind of insouciant charm that suggests they finally decided to just have fun with it.  (By the way, the show's listed as a "children's" Christmas story, but there are a few adult double-ententes that make me question that.)

*Not to mention what their agent was thinking of.

Liza's mom, Judy Garland, is still alive at this point, and Liza has a boyfriend,* soon-to-be-husband Peter Allen.  As for Liza herself, she says movies hold no excitement for her, that performing before a live audience is where it's all at.  Interesting, since some of her greatest fame has come from movies: The Sterile Cuckoo, Cabaret, and Arthur.  Oh, well - times change.


*Or should that be "boyfriend"?

It's not a Christmas special per se, but Julie Andrews does have a Christmas album coming out, and there's no better way to promote it than to appear on television, even if you're not going to sing anything from it. (The period between Thanksgiving and Christmas has always been a fertile period for specials, seasonal and non-seasonal alike.) It's billed as "The Program All America Has Been Waiting For," although I don't recall having been in a fevered rush to see it.  Anyway, her NBC special was probably quite good, with her special guest Gene Kelly.  (And, in smaller print, The New Christy Minstrels.)   I could've included a picture of the close-up from TVG, but this album cover is so colorful I decided to use that instead.

***

Other interesting odds and ends for the week: the Saturday matinee movie, Hellcats of the Navy, featuring the future President of the United States and his wife, Nancy, in her next-to-last role.  The King Family has their Thansgiving show, which thanks to the vagueries of local stations that show programs from multiple networks, is shown the week after Thanksgiving.  A Sunday afternoon NBC news special entitled "Who Shall Live"* explores the process of determining which patients on the waiting list will get available organ transplants.  Andy Williams' special guest on Monday night is Richard Chamberlain, star of Dr. Kildare, which conveniently airs in the slot immediately before Andy.  Liza Minnelli's back on Wednesday night in another special, CBS's Ice Capades of 1966, hosted by Arthur Godfrey and featuring Roger Miller - I think it's safe to say none of the three do their performing on ice.  There's an ad for the "John F. Kennedy" 1964 coin sets, featuring the brand-new Kennedy half-dollar, a great Christmas gift for a member of your family.  Three months after retiring as manager of the New York Mets, Casey Stengel is Hugh Downs' guest on Today.  And there's a brief obituary of Allen B. DuMont, one of television's unsung pioneers, who'd died two weeks before.

*Perhaps anticipating Obamacare?

Finally, one of those little things that amuse me, if no one else. NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies features 1954's The Long, Long Trailer.  The stars of the movie are Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez,but The Long, Long Trailer is listed as the second movie appearance, although her scenes were deleted, of the eight-year-old - Liza Minnelli!  Of course, it might have helped that the director was her father, Vincente Minnelli. TV