Around the dial

Last week I was interviewed by Mark Atley, where we talked not only about what I write, but the writing process itself. It was a nice change of pace, to talk not just as a classic TV historian, but as a writer. You can read it here; by the way, I'd encourage you to subscribe to Mark's Substack while you're there.

There are many tributes to Gene Hackman, whose death (along with his wife and dog) was reported yesterday. Amongst our cohort here, you can find recollections from Maddy at Classic Film and TV Corner and Trav at Travalanche. 

Sportscaster Al Trautwig also died during the week, and while his primary fame may have been from his coverage of New York-based sports teams, he was also a familiar face on broadcast and cable TV as well, covering everything from the NHL to the Olympics, with a lot in-between. Inner Toob has an appropriate, typically quirky tribute.

At Cult TV Blog, John has a post on the Interlude films, short films that were presented as interludes during live drama broadcasts to give the actors a breather; they were also used to fill the time between the end of the time period between children's programming and adult broadcasting. It's a wonderful, eccentric little piece of TV history, as well as what the interludes say about how British television was run in the 1950s. (There's a little inside joke there.)

At Comfort TV, David has some thoughts on that Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary montage of skits that wouldn't be considered "acceptable" today. What does it say about the future of comedy when you're forced to justify it to future generations?

The View from the Junkyard returns to the world of The New Avengers, as Roger looks at the episode "Faces," a thrilling story involving doppelgangers that puts our three heroes into a state of constant doubt, and overcomes any disbelief we might have in the concept to begin with.

At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence offers a tribute to the 75th anniversary of Your Show of Shows, the legendary comedy variety show that made icons of Sid Casesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris, and continues to be considered one of the great shows of all time. TV  

This week in TV Guide: May 17, 1958

Although Danny Thomas is on the cover of this week's issue, the article within is actually about Marjorie Lord, the "second wife" to Thomas' character, Danny Williams, on his successful sitcom.

 
Lord joined the show in the fourth season, after Williams' "first" wife, Jean Hagen, left the show (partly, it has been said, because of her acrimonious relationship with Thomas). The writers solved the problem by killing off Hagen's character Margaret between seasons; when the show resumed for its fourth season, Danny Williams was now a widower, it being explained that Margaret had "died suddenly" According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, this was the first time a main character had ever been killed off in a sitcom, though it certainly wouldn't be the last.

There are, generally speaking, three reasons why an actor leaves a television series: they're tired of or unhappy with the role, they leave because of a contract dispute or are simply fired, or they leave due to illness or death. It's always a roll of the dice when a cast change is made - some shows, like The Danny Thomas Show, adapt without missing a beat. Some, like M*A*S*H, evolve into a series with a much different tenor, while Doctor Who famously made the change in lead actors into an integral part of the show, introducing The Doctor's ability to change appearance through regeneration - a little trick that has enabled the series to continue (with one lengthy break) for over fifty years. Some, such as Bewitched, create a whimsical "which Darrin do you like best?" history, with fans forming camps behind one or the other actors. Some shows, like Route 66, suffer either artistically or in the ratings when they change main characters, losing whatever chemistry made the show a success; these series generally wind up in the cancellation bin.

The article itself doesn't go into the reaction that must have occurred when Hagen's character was killed off, noting only that "her absence has not hurt the popularity of the show, which has consistently landed in or near TV's Top 10." It will remain on television until 1964, which seems to qualify this change as a success. It could have been a failure though, and one wonders, if the recast show had bombed and it therefore became an accepted fact that you couldn't recast a main character, what television history might have been like.

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Starting in 1954, Steve Allen helmed his own NBC variety show which, at the beginning, aired opposite that of Ed Sullivan. It didn't run as long as Ed's, of course, but then Allen said his goal was never to conquer Ed, just to coexist with him, which he did for several seasons. Let's see who gets the best of the contest this week. 

Sullivan: Ed's guests include French entertainer Maurice Chevalier; Sophie Tucker; comedian Jack E. Leonard; song stylist Sallie Blair, Carol Lawrence and the West Point Glee Club.

Allen: Steve's guests are comedians Lou Costello and Sid Gould; TV disc jockey Dick Clark; singers Beverly Kenny and Ronnie Deauville; columnist Abby Van Buren and Maurice Gosfield.

I've mentioned before that I enjoy these shows because they can tell you who was big at the time, but there's another level to it. You're really big if you don't have to be identified. For example, we're told that Maurice Chevalier is a French entertainer, that Dick Clark is a TV disc jockey, that Lou Costello is a comedian. But Sophie Tucker is just, well, Sophie Tucker. She was a singer, a very popular entertainer of the first half of the century, known as "The Last of the Red Hot Mamas." You might as well have mentioned "Western actor John Wayne"; that's how unnecessary a description is. Now, you're probably going to ask me about Maurice Gosfield. Well, he was no Sophie Tucker, but you might remember him as Pvt. Doberman on The Phil Silvers Show, or voice of Benny the Ball on Top Cat, and that's good enough for me. But I digress, don't I? This week's winner is Sullivan, by a song.

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On a special 90-minute episode of NBC's Sunday afternoon news program Outlook, Chet Huntley looks at the forecast for the next ten years for Israel. The discussions center around irrigation, immigration and military training, all of which have played significant roles in Israel's history.

Now, the odds are that any ten-year period you look at in Israel's future is going to include either at least one outright war or multiple military conflicts of one kind or another. In this case, it's the Six-Day War of 1967, in which the Israelis launched a preemptive strike against Egypt, which had been massing troops along the common border. At the request of Egyptian president Nasser, who suffered massive losses in that initial attack, Jordan and Syria also became involved. When the dust had settled, less than a week later, Israel had scored a decisive military victory, capturing the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. It was a dramatic demonstration of the country's willingness to act aggressively and unilaterally to any perceived threat to its security. When you recall that the duration of wars used to be measured in centuries, the idea of a major war lasting less than a week is shocking.

Since then, the region has been no stranger to continued turmoil. If you were to choose another ten-year period, you'd likely run into the Olympic Massacre in Munich in 1972,  the Yom Kippur War in 1973 (in many ways the sequel to the Six-Day War), the first Gulf War in 1991, and countless low-level exchanges and terrorist incursions, not to mention the raid on Entebbe*. You also would have seen the peace accords between Israel and Egypt, and Israel and Jordan.

*Many of which have been made into television movies and documentaries. One could do an entire piece, if not a book, on how the Middle East conflict has been portrayed on television.

Really, has there been any country in the post-World War II era that has had as dramatic a history as that of Israel? And I wonder if any of this could have been foreseen in Chet Huntley's report?

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Keeping with the political theme, on Tuesday at 8:30 p.m., President Eisenhower delivers what is described as a "major address on the national economy" to the American Management Association, live from the Astor Hotel in New York City, and introduced by Vice President Nixon.

I find this interesting on multiple levels, none of them concerning the actual content of the speech. For one thing, it's is being carried only on NBC; CBS and ABC both have their regular programming. That suggests the White House didn't ask all three networks for airtime. So did they purchase the time from the network, or did NBC cover it as if it were a news event? Did Eisenhower supporters purchase the time on behalf of the president? The likely answer—at least to me—is that the American Management Association bought the time themselves. Not only does it give the president's speech visability, it raises the profile of the AMA. 

Nowadays a speech like this would be shown on the news channels—if, of course, it met their definition of news—and it wouldn't be any big deal. But in an era when Americans still weren't used to having their president as a regular visitor in their living room, this might have attracted quite a bit of attention. Only the fans of The Bob Cummings Show will resent it.

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We're just on a political roll, aren't we? On Wednesday, Kraft Theatre (8:00 p.m., NBC) presents, live, part two of "All the King's Men," adapted by Don Mankiewicz from Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer-Prize winning political Gothic horror novel, and directed by Sidney Lumet. I have to admit that until reading this issue, I was familiar only with the 1949 movie, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture, as well as a Best Actor Oscar for Broderick Crawford's magnificent performance as the demagogue Willie Stark. In the television adaptation, Neville Brand stars as Stark, with Maureen Stapleton as political operative Sadie Burke, the role that won a Supporting Actress award for Mercedes McCambridge, and Fred J. Scollay as journalist Jack Burden, played in the movie by John Ireland.

Over the years, we've seen many television adaptations of well-known movies. Offhand, I don't know if any of those movies were as successful as All the King's Men had been. I also don't know if All the King's Men had yet appeared on home television in 1958; if not, I can certainly understand why a made-for-TV version would have been an attractive proposition. I do know that this Kraft Theatre production was critically successful; it made a star of Neville Brand, whom Time described as a "relative unknown" prior to this performance. Maureen Stapleton was nominated for an Emmy, and she and Brand won Best Actress and Actor at the 1958 Sylvania Television Awards. Too bad it's not online, but a kinescope does exist at the Wisconsin Historical Society. 

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You know, that's just about enough with politics; let's get on to something more interesting.

I've written off-and-on during this time period about Sid Caesar, who was never quite able to recapture the magic of his years with Imogene Coca on Your Show of Shows; as his star faded, he also struggled with an addiction to alcohol and drugs. In 1958, he's hosting Sid Caesar Invites You, his third series; he's been doing television, much of it live, more or less constantly for over eight years. It's no real surprise, then, that we read in the news and notes section that Caesar "is reported physically ill as a result of the severe strain of this current season." As a result, he's "had to reach into his happier past and buy sketches used on the Show of Shows which made him famous." A comic genius, and a troubled man.

We also read that the eccentric actor/comedian/pianist/composer Oscar Levant, currently hosting a talk show in Los Angeles, is being looked at to possibly have his show transferred to a national audience. I like Oscar Levant a lot: he had an acid, mordant wit; he was a complete neurotic who spent significant time in various mental institutions; a classical pianist who studied with Arnold Schoenberg, worked with Aaron Copeland, and was friends with George Gershwin and Al Jolson; a sidekick to actors like Fred Astaire in movie musicals, providing a necessary antidote with his sarcastic humor; and, as we read, a talk show host. As he once said, "There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line."

Here he is in one of the very rare recordings of his own show, with guest Fred Astaire. The quality is pretty bad, but it gives you a very good feel for the show:


And here is a recording that demonstrates his classical music credentials, performing Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F Major from An American In Paris:


Like Sid Caesar, a very troubled man—and a very, very talented one.

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The highlight of this week's sports calendar is the second jewel of horse racing's Triple Crown, the Preakness Stakes, telecast live on from Pimlico in Baltimore (Saturday, 3:30 p.m., CBS). Tim Tam, the Kentucky Derby winner, adds the Preakness to his resume, and becomes a heavy favorite to take the Belmont Stakes in three weeks, only to succumb to injury in the home stretch, finishing second to Cavan. His consolation prize: a long and successful stud career. Oh well—there's more than one way to measure victory, I guess. On Sunday, The Dinah Shore Show (8:00 p.m., NBC) features "actress" Ginger Rogers, "husband-and-wife acting team" Ida Lupino and Howard Duff, and "comedy duo" Mike Nichols and Elaine May. (See Sullivan vs. Allen for an explanation of that joke, if you've forgotten.) That's a winner in any book. 

Film director King Vidor (The Champ, Duel in the Sun, War and Peace; nominated for five Academy Awards) plays himself in an episode of Burns and Allen (Monday, 7:00 p.m., NBC), looking for an emcee for the annual Screen Directors' Guild dinner. George Gobel, whose show alternates every other Tuesday with Eddie Fisher's, has Fred MacMurray as his guest for the last show of the season (7:00 p.m., NBC). Dan Duryea stars in the U.S. Steel Hour drama "Hour of the Rat" as a war veteran suffering from what we'd now call PTSD, who's vowed to kill the Japanese officer who made life in a prison camp a living hell (Wednesday, 9:00 p.m., CBS). Friday, Natalie Wood is one of the guests on The Frank Sinatra Show (8:00 p.m., ABC), while Jack Carter is the interviewee on Ed Murrow's Person to Person (9:30 p.m., CBS).

And what about Thursday, you ask? Well, it's one more trip into the world of politics, as President Eisenhower dedicates the opening of the new WRC radio and TV facilities in Washington, D.C. (1:30 p.m., NBC). And why do we care? Well, this:

At 1:23 into this brief video, NBC head David Sarnoff presses a button and the picture transitions from black-and-white to color; this valuable bit of footage is the oldest piece of color videotape in existence. It really is a striking image, isn't it? It's not the first colorcast, but just seeing the transformation shows us why television would never be the same, and I think that's the right note on which to end the week, don't you? TV  

This week in TV Guide: April 24, 1953

A couple of weeks ago, when I wrote about the issue with Eve Arden on the cover, one of our readers commented that it was too bad I didn't write anything about her. Well, you know how it is—time and space, and I'm not talking about Doctor Who. I like Eve Arden too, and I love her sense of humor, especially her delivery. Well, I get a second chance this week: she's mentioned as one of the "Funny Females" that can be found all over the airwaves. Not just Arden, but Lucy, Imogene Coca, Gracie Allen, Gale Storm, and others. Which raises the question: why are there so many funny women on TV?

Dr. Bergen Evans, who moderates the show Down You Go, thinks that it's because women can succeed faster in television than in other, male-dominated professions. You see, afternoon soaps, which have a dominant female audience, thrive on "weak male characters and strong women."  When hubby comes home, however, they have to revert to "chiefly comic" roles. "They will have to be attractive but giddy, blundering with charming impetuosity from one absurdity to another, to be rescued at last by the superior and forgiving male. That will make hubby beam." He's speaking partly with tongue-in-cheek, but I think there's something to this; We know stories about how men feel threatened by smart, clever women (never mind that Bogie always seemed to be attracted to them, and always seemed to get them), and that women often had to hide that intelligence in order to get ahead. But who really has the last laugh? That character that Dr. Evans is describing sounds a lot like Lucy, and she did turn out to be quite a television mogul, didn't she?

Dr. Miles Murphy, a professor of psychology, believes that women succeed in comedy because they don't face the same constraints that men do, the need that many men seem to have to appear respectable. Does this mean that comedy isn't respectable? I don't think so; I think it more likely means that women are less self-conscious than men might be about letting themselves go. Dr. Yale Nathanson, who practices psychology, looks at the ways in which women are often charged with holding families together and says that comedy is a relief, "the escape valve that lets off the pressure of responsibilities or worries."  I admit, though that I'm partial to the explanation from anthropologist Ashley Montagu, who points out that "women are, on the whole, so much more appealing than men," and adds that it was inevitable that they would take over television entertainment. "Women possess the qualities of warmth and sympathy which immediately draw their fellow human beings toward them. Men may be clever, but it is the women who are good"

As for Eve Arden, "She's witty, easy on the eyes but generally finishes second to the male." THe first two are true enough, but second best? Just because she doesn't get Mr. Boynton? My wife says she never could understand what Connie Brooks would see in him. And anyway, it's not called Our Mr. Boynton, is it?

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We’re always looking at Ed Sullivan’s competition around here, and in the first half of the 1950s, that competition is NBC’s Colgate Comedy Hour and its stable of rotating hosts. Colgate and Sullivan's Toast of the Town have been going head-to-head every Sunday since 1950. Let’s see how it looks this week.

Sullivan: Ed presents a preview of "Never Let Me Go" with Clark Gable & Gene Tierney. Guests: singers Roberta Peters & Jan Peerce; Willie West & McGinty, comedy team; and the Marquis Monkeys. Also the four Copa Girls, and comedian Wally Boag.

Comedy Hour: Bud Abbott and Lou Costello host this week, with guests Hoagy Carmichael, Teresa Brewer and the Amin Brothers.

Sullivan often presented movie previews on Talk of the Town, so you can't really consider Gable and Tierney as guests; otherwise, the competition would be pretty much over. As it is, Roberta Peters and Jan Peerce are two of the biggest stars that the Metropolitan Opera has to offer (I wonder if they were appearing together in anything that season?) Willie West & McGinty were second-generation vaudevillians carrying on an act that had been around since the turn of the century, and I'm guessing the Marquis Monkeys are better known as the Marquis Chimps. On the other hand, Abbott & Costello are big box office, and combined with Hoagy Carmichael and Teresa Brewer, that's a formidable group of headliners. Maybe if Gable was actually on with Ed. . . this week's nod goes to the Comedy Hour.

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What, from this issue, speaks to us today? The man on the cover is Ralph Edwards, and in 1953 he was a TV star, with his show This Is Your Life. It began on the radio, as was the case with so many shows of the period, and after four years, in 1952, it transitioned to television. It remained on NBC until 1961, and was revived a couple of times along the way. Does the name mean much to you today? What about the idea of surprising people with the story of their life, including voices and appearances from friends, co-workers, and family? To tell you the truth, it doesn't do a whole lot for me; I don't think I'd want my life story played out in public, and this guy sure didn't.

Does Mister Peepers speak to you? It had a great cast, with Wally Cox starring in the title role of the mild-mannered Robinson J. Peepers, before he became the voice of the mild-mannered Shoeshine Boy, alias Underdog. (I should ask, first; does Underdog speak to you?) You'd recognize some of the other names in the cast: Tony Randall, Jack Warden, Marian Lorne, Ernest Truax. I confess that other than scattered clips, I've never seen an episode, but I've been told that it holds up pretty well. This issue features a look at some of the gadgets that have become a trademark of the show's humor (a trick locker, a sagging gooseneck desk lamp, Peepers' shaving mirror). Of course, besides Peepers and Underdog, Wally Cox is probably best-known as one of the original regulars on The Hollywood Squares.

And then there's Jackie Gleason, the Great One. I would like to think that he still speaks to a lot of people, but then I'd also like to think that whoever succeeded Ed McMahon as spokesman for Publishers' Clearing House is going to show up at our door any day now, and I'll welcome that person with open arms, social distancing or not. At any rate, this week's lead story goes behind the scenes to show us the writers' room, where all those great Gleason bits come from; I take some comfort from reading about how even professional writers who compose professional jokes can have writer's block, struggling to come up with an idea that takes off, especially when dealing with someone as larger-than-life as Gleason. And speaking of the Great One, it comes as no surprise that he disdains things such as rehearsals, not even bothering with the script until the day before the show. But once he gets involved, watch out; he controls everything from the music performed on the show (and how the music is performed) to the camera angles for the dance routines. Says an observer, "I've often marveled that the show ever gets off the ground. Week after week I'm frankly surprised that it does. Somebody appears to be a genius around here—and my guess is that it's Gleason."

The TV Teletype asks questions. Will he or won't he? Danny Kaye is demanding $200,000 for a three-minute guest spot on an unnamed show. "Producers are convinced he made his asking price intentionally prohibitive" because he's not ready to move to the new medium. That won't come for another decade, but when he does, he'll meet with much success. Does he or doesn't he? Red Skelton is threatening to move to ABC in the fall with a filmed show. It doesn't happen, though: Red, who's currently on NBC, instead moves over to CBS, where he'll remain until he returns to NBC in 1970. Does this speak, can you hear it?

It can be a challenge, in these early, unshaped days of television, to know what to look for, to identify that which is significant, to find what speaks to us today. It seems so long ago. And yet all these people, and those you read about below, they do speak to us. They've helped to form the cultural world we live in today; even if you haven't seen This Is Your Life, everyone knows the premise and recognizes the spoof. We live in their world, after all, and we're richer for it, whether we hear them calling us or not.

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Cultural programming (i.e. the classy show) on TV isn't dead yet, and we've got several examples this week, even if they aren't in prime time. On Saturday, NBC Opera Theatre presents part one of a two-part Der Rosenkavalier, Richard Strauss' magnificent opera, at 3:30 p.m. (part two airs next week). Then, at 2:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon, NBC's back at it with a two-hour Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of Hamlet (left), starring the great Maurice Evans (also known as Sam's father on Bewitched), Ruth Chatterton, Joseph Schildkraut, Sarah Churchill and Barry Jones; TV Guide calls it "the epitome of high level entertainment." In one of those unfortunate scheduling moments that people are always complaining about in the pre-VCR days, CBS's Omnibus (3:30 p.m.) has a terrific show of its own, including a dramatic reading from A Tale of Two Cities, a dance performance by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, a look at the latest exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and a short story by James Thurber. It's great stuff—providing you're willing to skip the last hour of Hamlet—and it's the kind of thing that you can see, if not all the time, with far more frequency than you see today.

(One of the reasons we don't see programming like this anymore is because weekends are dominated by sports. Well, this weekend all we have is a horse race on Saturday, and a pair of Cubs games Saturday and Sunday. Makes you wonder how people freaked out by the virus-induced sports meltdown would have reacted back then.)

On Monday night the classics continue, as the enduring Voice of Firestone (7:30 p.m., NBC) features opera stars George London and Dorothy Warenskjold performing hits from both opera and musical theater. There's music of another kind on Tuesday; on Dinah Shore's thrice-weekly show (6:30 p.m., NBC), Dinah "welcomes Nashville, Tennessee to the network* and goes to a senior prom, singing "Tennessee Waltz" and "Dear Hearts and Gentle People." Later on, it's Milton Berle's Texaco Star Theater (7:00 p.m., NBC), and Uncle Miltie's guests are Bob Cummings, the aforementioned Wally Cox, and Lisa Kirk. Arthur Godfrey hasn't fired Julius LaRosa yet, so you'll see him Wednesday on Arthur Godfrey and Friends (7:00 p.m., CBS), along with friends including Frank Parker, Marion Marlowe, Janette Davis, and the Maguire Sisters.

*WSM, according to Wikipedia; the radio station of the same name is home to the Grand Ole Opry.

Thursday night Amos 'n' Andy (7:30 p.m., CBS) puts the Kingfish in a spot; a computer error results in a vocational guidance center grading him as an artistic genius. Next, it's Dragnet (8:00 p.m., NBC), as Sgt. Friday investigates the case of a man who apparently died from a heart attack—that is, until they find traces of poison in his system. On Friday, Dr. Bergen Evans—you remember, from the article on funny women—hosts Down You Go at 9:30 p.m. on DuMont; earlier, one of those funny women, Eve Arden, tries to help Principle Conklin make a good impression for "Board of Education Day" on Our Miss Brooks (8:30 p.m., CBS) And at 10:00 p.m., WBKB's Jim Moran hosts the fourth annual "Chicago Fights Cancer" Telethon, where you can see "Show Biz Greats" help hit a goal of $100,000 for the American Cancer Society. And who knows? You might win a 1953 Hudson!

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There's a nice article this week on 20-year-old Judy Tyler, aka Princess Summerfall Winterspring on Howdy Doody. You might remember her from this 1956 issue in which she shared the cover with Ed Sullivan; you might also remember her for the somewhat, shall we say, colorful aspects to her life that I mentioned at the time—with the kinds of details that don't make it into the pages of TV Guide, at least not in the 1950s.

But here all is goodness and light. The profile mentions how she's always wanted an acting career (her parents were both entertainers), and how, "[a]t a time most girls were concerned with dolls, Judy was modeling for Harry Conover. And that's not all, I want to say, but I won't. We don't, after all, know, although based on what we've learned, we can't help but wonder. But there's no question that Judy's got talent, and she's well on her way to having a big career; she's already won a national beauty contest, had her own show on WOR, and appeared in movies and as a bit player in nightclub acts. She married in 1950, when she was 18. She currently makes between $25,000 and $30,000 a year, which isn't chicken feed in 1953.

She'd just finished Jailhouse Rock with Elvis when she and her second husband were killed in an auto accident in 1957, when she was just 24. I prefer not to think of her that, or the other things; better to picture her as she is here, 20 years old, with a whole life to live and a career that seems limitless.

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There was a time—indeed, a very long time ago now—when, if something was wrong with your television, you didn't just up and buy a new one. You see, back then, TVs were—well, when they first came along they were pretty much a luxury item, and even after they became more commonplace, they were still pretty expensive relative to the amount of money the average household had. They weren't disposable items, in other words. So when something happened to your set, if the sound went bad (or you had no sound at all), or if suddenly black bars started appearing across the picture, you'd call a television repairman.

The repairman would come out to your home and remove the back of your set (as that repairman is doing at left) to see what the problem was. Televisions were made of tubes, resistors and capacitors, things that could be repaired or replaced, and it might be a case of merely changing a couple of tubes, like you might change the spark plugs on your car's engine; otherwise, he'd wind up putting the set in his truck and taking it back to the shop, where he'd repair the set and then bring it back to you, along with a bill for parts and labor.

The problem, which you would constantly be reminded of by the media, was that many television repairmen were crooks. They'd charge you for parts that didn't need to be replaced, or tell you they'd spent more time working on your TV than they actually had. They had the same reputation as auto mechanics, but since by then the television, like the family car, had become indispensable, you either asked your friends who they used or you picked a name from the phone book* and hoped for the best.

*A big book with names, addresses and telephone numbers in it. I'll tell you about it sometime.

The ad at the left is something you definitely would not have seen in any TV Guide from the past 40 years or so. There are several other ads in this issue for individual repairmen. It looks like good business to me; after all, if you're having trouble with your TV, why not trust someone who advertises in TV Guide? Notice that several of the shops offer "day & night" service, because you never know when your set might go on the fritz, and if you're like me, you're not going to want to wait until the next day to see if it can be repaired.

There's no question that times are different today; I think the last time I had a TV repaired was in 1988, and that only bought me a few more years at best. It's said that most modern televisions can be repaired, and it can save you a lot of money by having someone look at it, but I wonder if most people do that, or they just buy a new TV. Still, there's something about getting rid of an otherwise perfectly good appliance, like a television, just because a small part might not work. I hate the idea of planned obsolesce, but that kind of philosophy is itself obsolete. There's something about this ad that I like; it reminds me of my childhood, and of the shows from that time period. Just don't ask me to give up my big-screen TV. TV  

This week in TV Guide: January 25, 1958

Well, look who's back: Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. It's been four years since their legendary Your Show of Shows went off the air, and in the meantime both have tried solo efforts without being able to duplicate its success. Now they're together again, for Sid Caesar Invites You, a new Sunday night effort. They say this will be a bit different from Your Show of Shows, which was a 90 minute variety program. This will be shorter, at only 30 minutes, and will stick to comedy.

There will also be some new bits, and anyone expecting to see the same skits and characters as in the old shows will be mistaken. "We looked at some of the old Caesar-Coca kinnies [kinescopes] a couple of weeks ago," says producer Hal Janis, "and it was like looking at museum pieces. Sid and Imogene both have grown as comedians in the past seven years."

It would be nice to say that the new show was a smash, making time stand still and all that, but it would also be untrue. Someone once said it's difficult to catch lightning in a bottle twice, and whatever magic it was that made Caesar and Coca a smash in the early '50s no longer exists in 1958. Sid Caesar Invites You lasted but four months, and though both stayed in show business for many, many years, neither ever reached the heights that they once had, back when television was young.

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No single dominant moment this week, so let's spend our time doing something we don't do often enough: just see what's on TV.

On Saturday it's one of those this-happens-to-me-all-the-time instances, Perry Mason's "The Case of the Haunted Husband." "After Mason arranges bail for a woman charged with auto theft, a man's body is found in her hotel room." The woman, quite sensibly, is now charged with murder, despite the fact, as Mason's defense will show, that the police barely investigated the case at all before lighting on the most obvious suspect. There will be no bets taken on the outcome of the case.

So when did
Miss Manners
get married?

Here's an interesting sign of the times on Sunday's Ed Sullivan show - among Ed's guests (the next-to-last mentioned, in fact) we find "Buddy Holly and the Crickets, a rock-'n'-roll group." Notice that they aren't "the rockin' Buddy Holly and the Crickets," or "Buddy Holly and the Crickets, rock-'n'-rollers." No, they're just "a rock-'n'-roll group." "That'll Be the Day" had hit #1 on the charts just four months previously, with "Peggy Sue" following up at #3, and this is already the second appearance for the group on Sullivan, their first having come only the month before. In all likelihood, Buddy Holly was far better known than the listing in TV Guide would suggest; even so, this issue captures him on the very cusp of superstardom. Thirteen months later, he would be dead.

Something else on Sunday night, G.E. Theater. In this episode, Alan Ladd makes a rare television appearance as a frontier sheriff running for reelection, who discovers he's losing his hearing. Because he's afraid the town's criminals would take advantage of his disability if they knew, he decides to keep it a secret. It's an interesting question, whether or not the voters deserve to know about the health of their sheriff, who's also a candidate. It's understandable why he might not want to reveal his growing deafness, but things like that have a way of becoming a slippery slope, and once you use one excuse, it's easier to use another, and another. Should he resign and let his deputies take over? Not having seen the episode, I'm not sure how I feel about the ethics involved - what about you?

For Monday we'll take a look at a show from north of the border, on CKWS, which offers the type of program we're only too familiar with in this country: a political talk. This one is from John Wintermeyer, a member of the Ontario Liberal Party. I'd love to be able to report that Wintermeyer went on to become Prime Minister or something like that, but he never rose higher in the political world than leader of the party in Ontario, a position he held until 1963. The talk runs for 30 minutes and is followed by a rerun of The Millionaire, which Wintermeyer might have been envious of since he was also Shadow Finance Minister.

Tuesday's Schlitz Playhouse of Stars (10:30pm, CBS) gives us an example of the interesting relationship between theatrical movies and television. It's "The Lonely Wizard," starring Rod Steiger. Steiger is far from an unknown quantity; in 1954 he'd copped a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for On the Waterfront, and he's acted in many big screen movies before and since. In the early '60s Steiger's talent really comes to the forefront: a nomination for Best Actor for The Pawnbroker in 1964, an evil politician in Doctor Zhivago in 1965, an Oscar for Best Actor for In the Heat of the Night in 1967. At this point in time television was thought to be a medium for young actors on their way up (Charlton Heston, Clint Eastwood), or veterans on their way down. Steiger doesn't really fall into either category; although he's certainly a star on the big screen, his best days in movies are still ahead of him and he's not too big a name to appear on the small screen. Above all, Steiger is a working actor, one who always wants to be active, and for him a role is a role is a role, whether in movie theaters, Broadway stages, or television studios.

On Wednesday it's Date With the Angels, a sitcom that had been pretty much forgotten until star Betty White staged her career comeback a few years ago. With White suddenly a hot commodity, it didn't take long before this series, as well as White's Life With Elizabeth, found their way onto DVD and into stores. It's actually the last show of the series; the show wasn't a great experience for White, who called the show "run-of-the-mill" and said that it "was the only time I have ever wanted to get out of a show.Next week White will resuscitate her old variety series, which will fill out the rest of the season.

ALL: HADLEY TV GUIDE COLLECTION

Thursday, it's Ronald Reagan's former wife and the future star of Falcon Crest, Jane Wyman, host and occasional star of NBC's Jane Wyman Presents the Fireside Theater (10:30pm). She's not in this week's episode, a story of mystery and intrigue. In "A Guilty Woman," Jan Sterling is paroled from prison after having served seven years for the murder of her fiancee. She's released to the custody of her good friend Virginia Grey, but as time progresses Jan "begins to realize something new" about Virginia. Do you suppose there may be some doubt as to who committed the murder?

Speaking of murder, on Friday, ABC's The Court of Last Resort (8:00pm) presents us with one of those real-life moments. The cases in the series are based on the real-life Court of Last Resort, founded by Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner to investigate crimes for which the wrong person might have been convicted. The most famous case which the Court investigated was that of Dr. Sam Sheppard, the Cleveland osteopath who'd been convicted in 1954 of murdering his wife, but the Court of Last Resort investigated many such cases, the findings of which were often written up in Argosy magazine, and Gardner remained committed to the Court until his death in 1970.

This week's episode is "The Phillip Huston Case," in which the Court takes on the case of a man convicted of a shotgun killing. Eager to keep the Court from digging too deeply, the authorities offer Philip Huston parole in order to fend off the investigation. A parole, like a pardon, implies a certain degree of guilt; a similar situation actually occurred in the Sheppard case, when Sheppard's new attorney, F. Lee Bailey, began to find out things that made state officials too uncomfortable and they likewise began to float the idea of such an offer. Under Bailey's prodding, Sheppard made it clear he was going for broke - guilty or innocent. He was eventually acquitted in a retrial in 1966.

***

Care for some sports? On Saturday afternoon at 2:00pm, dueling telecasts of what would have been seen as minor sports back in the day: CBS presents an "ice hockey" matchup between the Detroit Red Wings and Boston Bruins from Boston Garden, while NBC counters with pro basketball, pitting the Minneapolis Lakers and New York Knickerbockers from Madison Square Garden. At 9:00pm CKWS, the Canadian station, has CBC's Hockey Night in Canada with the Chicago Black Hawks and Montreal Canadians from the Montreal Forum.

Not an ad for
boxing!

At 4:00pm, it's ABC's All-Star Golf, with a match between two top players of the day, Mike Souchak and Stan Leonard. There are several golf series similar to this in the late '50s through the mid '60s, shows such as Shell's Wonderful World of Golf, where the world's best played on courses around the world, and Big Three Golf, which featured Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. It's before tournament golf becomes the dominant form of televised golf, and the appeal lies in the format, which features two name golfers in a head-to-head match, with all the "dead spots", i.e. the time it takes for the players to walk from one shot to the next, cut out, allowing the match to be edited into an attractive, one hour package.

At 4:30pm, NBC covers what's still considered a major sport - horse racing - with the Royal Palm Handicap from famed Hialeah Park in Florida. It's very rare today to see significant coverage of any horse racing aside from the Triple Crown races and the Breeders Cup at the end of the season, but in the late '50s a race such as this, which must have been considered a big race, is a pretty common sight on Saturday afternoon television.

There's still prime-time boxing to look forward to as well. ABC's turn comes on Wednesday, when Wayne Bethea fights Young Jack Johnson in a heavyweight bout, while on Friday NBC has light heavyweights Yvon Durelle and Tony Anthony. I wish I could tell you these fighters went on to become big names in the business, but - no.

***

What about culture? It's here this week as well, starting on Sunday with what sounds like an intriguing episode of CBS' morning show Camera Three. It's a play entitled "Mark Twain's Nightmares," and notes that for most of his life, Twain suffered from nightmares. (I did not know that.)  In this scenario, one of Twain's dreams yields a meeting with some of his own characters, critics and biographers. Interesting idea.

Sunday afternoon, it's an episode of NBC's Omnibus, surely one of the most fascinating, and missed, shows in television history. Hosted by Alistair Cooke, it combined music, drama, comedy, science - really, anything you could think of - in a program that was not only educational but entertaining as well. Think of it as what PBS might have been. Anyway, this week it's a special 90 minute presentation of Offenbach's comic opera La Perichole, based on the production being done by the Metropolitan Opera, staged by and co-starring Cyril Ritchard, who would also be familiar to TV viewers of the time as Captain Hook in Mary Martin's Peter Pan. And on Monday night, it's ABC's venerable Voice of Firestone, with two of opera's best-known stars, soprano Lisa Della Casa and tenor Cesare Valletti.

In fact, the number of music programs on TV this week is almost, though not quite, staggering. Lawrence Welk has two programs, his eponymously-named one on Saturday and the Top Tunes version on Monday. Arthur Godfrey has a couple as well; besides his regular variety show, there's Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. We've also got regular series by Perry Como (NBC), Red Foley's Country Music Jubilee (ABC), Polly Bergen and Your Hit Parade alum Gisele MacKenzie as well as the aforementioned Your Hit Parade (all NBC), Dinah Shore (NBC), Patti Page (The Big Record, CBS), Pat Boone (ABC), Tennessee Ernie Ford (NBC), Rosemary Clooney (NBC), Frank Sinatra (ABC), Patrice Munsel (ABC) and Country Hoedown (CBC), and I'm sure I'm missing some. That's in addition to variety shows hosted by Steve Allen, Ed Sullivan and Red Skelton. It's almost impossible today to think of what kind of talent you'd need to fill all those shows, let alone who they'd be.

***

Finally, a brief mention of what might otherwise have appeared as little more than a footnote. It's the 7:00pm sports on WTRI, Channel 35, an ABC affiliate in Menands, a suburb of Albany. As you know if you read the Monday TV listing, I generally include the name of the local newscaster, sportscaster, etc. when it's included. And at 7:00pm on WTRI, we begin a 15 minute sports update hosted by Howard Cosell. Now, it's not unusual for a local anchor to step up to the big time, and Cosell had a relationship with ABC since the mid-50s. In fact, I'm not suggesting Cosell was broadcasting from WTRI; if anything, the show was probably emanating from WABC in New York. Still, could anyone in 1958 have looked in on this show and imagined Howard Cosell would have become the sensation he did?  I'm not making it up - I'm just telling it like it is. TV  

MST3K: how talking back became an art form

Last month I started a look at the classic TV shows that make up my weekly viewing habits. Today, we continue our look at the Hadley household's Saturday night with a show that made it from a local Minneapolis-St. Paul TV station to the big time - or at least basic cable.  

I was still living in Minneapolis back in November 1988, and because my grandmother didn't have cable TV, I wasn't able to watch the Thanksgiving night Texas-Texas A&M game on ESPN.*  Left to my own devices with the available over-the-air stations, I settled on Channel 23, one of the local independents.  It probably didn't mean as much to me then as it does now, but the fact that I'm able to recount the details means it must have made some impression.

*I did record it though, and got to see it when I got home.  A&M beat Texas 28-24, and I was happy.  Now that I live in Texas, I still root for A&M.

KTMA was having a science fiction marathon that Thanksgiving, and at 6pm they premiered a double-feature of supermarionation movies under the umbrella of a new series they called Mystery Science Theater 3000, hosted by a local comedian named Joel Hodgson*.  I figured, what the heck, why not?

*A friend of mine saw him doing standup in a local comedy club, and was invited to come up on stage and battle him in a game of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.  He lost to Hodgson, several times, after which Hodgson revealed he'd nailed the head of his robot down so it couldn't pop up.  Gotta love a guy like that.

The premise was pretty simple - science fiction movies with commentary provided by a guy and two robots, who appeared as silhouettes on the bottom of the screen.  The comments were snarky (although that's not what we called them back then), and laced with pop culture references.  I got it, liked it - and then I don't think I ever watched another episode.  Four months or so later I moved to Maine, where of course there was no KTMA, and pretty much forgot all about it.

A few months after that I read that Comedy Central was adding Mystery Science Theater 3000 to their lineup.  "Hey," I thought (or words to that effect), "I remember that show.  They made the big time - great!"  I probably started watching it after it debuted, showed it to my wife, explained how I'd first seen the show back in Minneapolis.  This time I kept watching it.

It was a funny show then, it's a funny show now.  We loved the jokes - they appealed to the absurd sense of humor we both have, and we even got most of the more obscure, foreign film-type references.*  There was the time Joel tried to play Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" on electric bagpipes made out of a vacuum cleaner, for example.  Or how any movie with Lloyd Bridges was laced with Sea Hunt jokes, while Peter Graves got the Biography treatment.  The dumber the humor, the better we liked it.  And let's face it, those movies were pretty bad.  No matter how much Joel and the 'Bots trashed them, they deserved it.

*But then, we like Dennis Miller too, so what do you expect?

One of the biggest appeals of the series was how "everyman" it was, creating a television show out of something that almost all of us do: talk back to the screen.  Of course, in the hands of these guys, riffing on bad movies became an art form.  But as we watched the show, we discovered something important: you didn't have to be well-educated to riff, you didn't have to have seen every Ingemar Bergman movie ever seen (although it helped), you didn't need to be a Hollywood star or even a television writer to do it.  Anyone could do it, and if you watched enough of MST3K, you could even hold your own with them.  Another thing we discovered: some people appreciated our talking during a movie - while others didn't.  The ones who did continue to be our friends.*

*I'll admit I can be somewhat irritating when I get on a roll, especially if it's during a show that my wife likes but I think is stupid.  Despite that, sometimes she can't help but laugh at something I say.  However, the fact that I know when I've pushed it far enough and it's time for me to leave the room is part of the reason we've been married 22 years.

Adam West, host of Turkey Day '94

The highlight of the year was the Turkey Day marathon, 24 hours of MST3K (as it had come to be called), starting at 11pm CT on Wednesday night and running all through Thanksgiving day and evening.  I didn't give up parades and football completely, but we were usually good for four or five episodes off and on throughout the day.  It really was addictive - the more you saw, the more you wanted to see.  I think it was Turkey Day, particularly the year when Adam West did the bumpers leading into and out of each episode, that sealed MST3K as one of my favorites.  I even survived the traumatic change from Joel to Michael J. Nelson as host - they were different, but both funny.  It was one of the few shows I've watched that really was laugh-out-loud funny.*

*My personal favorite: "It Conquered the World," with Peter Graves and Lee Van Cleef.  The movie actually holds up, which is more than you can say for most of them, but the commentary is priceless.  Check it out, particularly the period from the end of the movie through the closing credits.


When the show finally left the air quite a few years ago, it became one of those nostalgia things, fondly remembered but secure as a part of the past.  Then, a couple of years ago, it came back - kind of.  Shout!, which did the MST3K DVDs, restarted the Turkey Day tradition as a mini-marathon running on Shout!'s YouTube channel, with best-of (or worst-of) episodes from the show's original run.  Suddenly, it was back as part of our lives.  Then, last year, they included commercials for a coming theatrical event for RiffTrax, a live sort-of MST3K featuring Nelson and two of the voices from the show (but no robots, alas) riffing on a perfectly dreadful movie, Santa Claus.  It was a wonderful, hilarious evening.  And from that point on, MST3K was back as part of my TV lineup.

If you're a fan of the show, you know that a big part of its early days was the propensity of viewers to tape the show and then circulate the tapes to their friends - the high-tech version of word-of-mouth.  One of the by-products of that is that most of the episodes are on YouTube, many of them in pretty good shape considering the source.  Thanks to the wonders of Google Cast, it's now easier than ever to stream your laptop on to your television*, and with that a new Saturday night tradition, same as the old Saturday night tradition, was born.

It's the nightcap to our Saturday night viewing most weeks, and, as was the case last week when we saw an episode we hadn't seen before - "War of the Colossal Beast," a sequel to "The Amazing Colossal Man," it's a particular treat.  It's also a great way to go to bed with a chuckle, which, considering Sunday will always be "the day before we have to go back to work," is the very best we can hope for.

Next time: the detective who took a licking and kept on ticking - or sleuthing, as the case may be.

Sid Caesar does opera: October 10, 1955

I posted this at the other blog a couple of weeks ago, but thought it might be appreciated over here as well.  It's a wonderful spoof of the opera Pagliacci by Sid Caesar and his merry band of crazies, as seen on NBC's Caesar's Hour broadcast of October 10, 1955.  Don't worry; you don't have to understand opera to appreciate it; you don't even have to speak Italian.  Sid sure isn't!



I just saw Pagliacci last month on one of the Metropolitan Opera's HD presentations, so this is particularly timely.  The thing of it is, I don't believe Caesar was considered a highbrow, elitist comedian.  Literate and intelligent to be sure, but at the same time there's a lot of slapstick involved in his bits.  As well, you probably remember his famous send-up of This Is Your Life that he did on his previous series, Your Show of Shows with Imogene Coca, which indicates his proclivity to satirize conventions with which the audience would be familiar.

And that brings me to my point, which is that the costume, the pathos of the story, all the trappings we see in this skit - they're as iconic to opera as the image of a large woman with pigtails, a horned helmet, and a breastplate and shield.  What's more, they're images that people know even if they don't know much of anything else about opera.  The television audience - the "middlebrow" audience of which Terry Teachout frequently writes - would have been expected to recognize these images, to know the gist of what Caesar is lampooning.  Far from being incomprehensible, the skit was written and performed in order to entertain, to make people laugh - and that entertainment quotient depends on a general familiarity with the premise.  The television audience of the mid-'50s would have had that familiarity.  Would mainstream audiences today?  I doubt it.  That's unfortunate; not only do we lose a good amount of comedy because of that, the topical comedy we do get comes from an incredibly fragmented society, targeted not to a general audience (I don't think such a thing exists anymore) but to a very small niche.  And today's niche for opera humor - well, you've heard the one about the number of angels on the head of a pin, right?

The writeup of this skit at by the person who posted it at YouTube is very good; take a minute to read it if you can, as it shows just how it matches up with the actual opera.  And if you're interested in seeing the actual Pagliacci (a wonderful piece, by the way; I don't think the Met production did it justice), you can see it in its entirety here.  Don't be afraid - it's a short opera.

Around the dial from the Wild West to the stars!

I'm always interested to read reviews of series I haven't seen yet, whether because they were before my time or simply weren't on my radar when they did air.  At The Horn Section, there's a good review of the 1967 Western series Hondo, which starred Ralph Taeger and aired on ABC.  I've always been intrigued by Westerns from this era; the genre was in its death throws on TV, although stalwarts such as Bonanza, Gunsmoke, The High Chaparral and The Big Valley would continue on.  Nevertheless, relevancy was in the air, and with shows such as Judd for the Defense, The Mod Squad and The Storefront Lawyers either broadcasting or around the corner, it's interesting to see networks continue to turn to the past (often by interjecting allegorical storylines meant to seem relevant) in an effort to create successful programs.

We're living in a new apartment, and I have to admit I'm looking forward to decorating the place for Christmas.  I'm not, however, in a great hurry to hasten along the year, especially since we've been enjoying a very pleasant spring here in Texas.  That doesn't stop me from checking out Joanna Wilson's Christmas TV History, which this week has a great piece on 1966's Green Acres Christmas episode.  I know I watched Green Acres some when I was a lad (although I was never a fan of Eddie Albert), but I have very few memories of specific episodes, this one included, so it's always nice to read about this bizarre and often surrealistic series.

Jack the Ripper continues to fascinate us, doesn't he?  Perhaps its because so many questions remain as to the real identity of the Ripper, perhaps it's the allure of the Dickensian image we have of London during the murders, or maybe there's something more sinister in the subconscious of each one of us.  At Classic Film and TV Cafe, Rick gives us two classic television shows that dared to take on the world of Jack, Thriller and Star Trek.  Notice how many of these types of episodes incorporate time travel in one way or another, either through transporting our protagonists back to London, or whisking the spirit of Jack to our present times.  Either way, it almost always makes for an exciting story.

Speaking of Star Trek (they don't call me the master of segues for nothing), The Flaming Nose pays tribute to the late Leonard Nimoy with a list of favorite Mr. Spock episodes.  There are some wonderful moments in these stories, though I have to admit a personal preference for the moment in "The Trouble With Tribbles" when Spock dryly comments on Kirk's distain for Baris, "He simply could not believe his ears."  Wonderful double-meaning there.

I couldn't possibly pass up this entry at The Last Drive In, since the opening graphic leads off with a plug for the State Fair of Texas, which we all know is the greatest state fair in the land.  It's an exploration of ten tasty television trivia tidbits, reminding us of everything from Lieutenant Columbo's fondness for chili to Officer Bill Gannon's willingness to try almost anything.  Is it a coincidence that I'm writing this at lunchtime?

At Comfort TV, David gives a thumbs-up to Adam-Michael James’s The Bewitched Continuum (which I similarly praised here), and then talks about other episode guides that would make great additions to your television library.  I can only speak first-hand to one of them, Ed Robertson's terrific The Fugitive Recaptured and I'd offer Brenda Scott Royce's Hogan's Heroes: Behind the Scenes at Stalag 13 as one that ought to be checked out,

Catching up on something I should have mentioned earlier, Kliph Nesteroff is back with another great interview at Classic Television Showbiz, this one a witty, insightful chat with Dick Cavett.  While I've always thought that Cavett was a little too-self centered in his interviewing technique, I've come to appreciate over the years that he's also one of the best interviewers that's been on television - certainly heads above any of the chucklefests that pass for talk hows on TV today.  I don't suppose we'd be able to sit still for him today though, do you? TV