"Coronet Blue" and the mysterious world of the amnesiac

"He calls himself 'Michael Alden,' but says that this is not his name. He claims not to know his real name, nor who he is, nor anything that happened to him up until two months ago. Tonight we explore the mystery that is amnesia—the loss of a person's memory, and with it, the loss of his humanity as well. I'm Walter Cronkite, and this is The 21st Century."

Obviously, this never happened. As classic TV fans know, "Michael Alden" is the character played by Frank Converse in the cult classic series, Coronet Blue. And, as our ersatz Walter Cronkite says, Michael Alden has amnesia. He was dragged half dead out of the water, murmuring the words "Coronet Blue." He has no idea what this means, nor about anything else that has happened to him up until the time he is rescued. He doesn't even know his own name; he picks the name Michael Alden because it's a combination of his doctor's first name and the name of the hospital where he was treated. For the remaining thirteen episodes, Alden will search for clues as to his real identity, and what "Coronet Blue" really means—while the people who tried to kill him look to finish the job.

It's a great idea for a television series, and had Coronet Blue existed in the real world (as is the case with many TV shows today), it's quite likely that Alden would have been an ideal subject for a science program like The 21st Century (which aired on CBS from 1967-1970; it's predecessor, The 20th Century, began in 1957). But just how plausible is the idea behind Coronet Blue? And how realistic is pop culture's depiction of amnesia?

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What do we know about Michael Alden? Not much. As Coronet Blue opens, he’s onboard a ship, one piece in a moving puzzle. It’s clear that he’s part of some kind of plot; a heist, perhaps, or some kind of undercover operation—we just don’t know. Quickly, it becomes apparent that something’s gone wrong, that his confederates have discovered something about him—he had ratted them out, he wasn’t who he claimed to be, something like that—and consequently he’s been targeted for death. There’s a struggle, he goes over the rail of the ship and into the water, the bad guys take a couple of shots at him (or are they good guys? We just don’t know), and after a time he’s dragged ashore, nearly dead, mumbling the words “coronet blue.” He recovers, physically. Mentally, however, he’s a mess. He doesn’t know who he is, how he got there, why someone would want to kill him, and he has no idea what “coronet blue” means. Michael Alden has amnesia.

In pop culture, the situation most like Alden’s is probably that of Jason Bourne, the character played by Matt Damon in the Bourne movies. Like Alden, Bourne is pulled out of the water after someone has tried to kill him; like Alden, he has no memory of his identity, although he retains his language and motor skills.

Both Alden and Bourne suffer from a type of psychogenic dissociative amnesia called “retrograde” amnesia. As opposed to "anterograde" amnesia, which affects the ability of the mind to form new memories, retrograde amnesia means the inability to recall things that happened before a specific date, usually the date of an accident or trauma. In both of these cases, we see how retrograde amnesia “tends to negatively affect episodic, autobiographical, and declarative memory while usually keeping procedural memory intact with no difficulty for learning new knowledge.”

Now, within this fairly broad diagnosis, there are two subsets which we could be dealing with. The first, “situation-specific” amnesia, sometimes called “suppressed memory,” means that memory loss is confined to a specific traumatic event, with the victim able to remember things that happened both before and after the event. In the Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare as a Child,” for example, Janice Rule plays Helen Foley, a woman who unknowingly suffers from such a condition: Helen has no memory of her mother’s murder, nor that the young Helen was a witness to the murder, until the appearance of a little girl (Helen when she was young; an apparition? A manifestation of her subconscious? It is the Twilight Zone, after all) brings her memory back in time to apprehend the murderer, who’s returned to eliminate the only witness—Helen.*  That’s an example of “situation-specific” amnesia.

*The moral of the story being that, at least if you’re a murderer, it’s best to leave well-enough alone.

However, Alden’s amnesia appears more likely to be a type known as “global-transient”; in other words, a major gap in the part of the memory that relates to personal identity. The most common illustration of global-transient amnesia is a “fugue state,” in which there is “a sudden retrograde loss of autobiographical memory resulting in impairment of personal identity and usually accompanied by a period of wandering.” That last is significant, because the premise of Coronet Blue is built around Alden’s attempts to find out who he is, resulting in travelling—wandering—to different parts of the country, searching for anyone or anything that can help him discover who he is. And what coronet blue means, of course.

It’s likely that Alden’s doctors would have checked for some type of brain damage or other organic cause of his amnesia; they didn’t find anything, but even with today’s advancements in medical science, it’s unlikely that his amnesia was caused by anything as mundane as the proverbial “bump on the head.” Most of the time, psychogenic amnesia is traceable back to some type of psychological trigger; with Alden, it’s almost certainly related to the attack on him at the beginning of the first episode.

I wonder, though: does he really want to remember? Or is it fear—fear of what he doesn’t know—that keeps his memory from returning? All the time, though, he remains focused on “coronet blue,” and it’s not just because the theme keeps playing in the background. Find out the meaning, he knows, and it’s likely he’ll be able to unlock the mystery.

That fear of finding out what his past might be, though—that leads us to an obvious question: is Alden’s amnesia genuine? Is he a reliable narrator, or is he withholding something from the viewers?

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There are at least four episodes from the great legal drama Perry Mason that deal with amnesia. The first season episodes "The Case of the Crooked Candle," and "The Case of the Desperate Daughter," the fifth season episode "The Case of the Glamorous Ghost," and the seventh season episode "The Case of the Nervous Neighbor" all involve Perry dealing with someone—generally a woman—claiming some form of amnesia.

Is there a significance in this gender distinction? Possibly. While there's no particular evidence to suggest that women are more susceptible than men to amnesia, the victim in "Glamorous Ghost," Eleanor Corbin, claims to be suffering from amnesia "after police find her running and screaming through woods near her apartment building." Doubtless someone would have referred to Eleanor as being "hysterical." And that term, as understood and applied to women, dates back over 4,000 years. The National Center for Biotechnology Information calls hysteria "the first mental disorder attributable to women, accurately described in the second millennium BC, and until Freud considered an exclusively female disease."

Therefore, with Eleanor displaying no signs of physical injury, the suggestion is that her amnesia is a  form of retrograde amnesia known as "hysterical reaction," one that does not appear to depend upon an actual brain disorder. Perry accepts this diagnosis, at least insofar as it provides him with the opportunity to stall for time while he tries to assemble the facts. The police, however, are suspicious: and for good reason, as Encyclopaedia Britannica notes darkly: "Although most dramatic, such cases are extremely rare and seldom wholly convincing."

In fact, malingering—that is, the rational output of a neurologically normal brain aiming at the surreptitious achievement of a well identified gain—is a constant threat in such cases. It's understandable, then, that law enforcement officials have long been leery about such diagnoses, and for years they’ve pushed for some kind of standardized test for amnesia. Unlike the M'Naghten rule, which tests for criminal insanity, judging the legitimacy of amnesia claims defies application of uniform standards. As one expert remarks, amnesia cases “differ in onset, duration, and content forgotten” to the extent that it cannot be broadly defined in legal circumstances. And in a landmark case in England in 1959, a jury was called on to determine whether a defendant was faking amnesia, making him legally unfit to stand trial. The jury ruled he was faking (and convicted him, to boot). In truth, most cases of psychogenic retrograde autobiographical amnesia resolve themselves on their own accord, so if Hamilton Burger is willing to be patient, he might well be able to wait his suspect out. And, in fact, Eleanor Corbin is faking her amnesia, a deception which is soon uncovered by the police.* Could Michael Alden be doing the same thing?

*Don't worry; Perry wins, in spite of his client—which is frequently the case.

The police were, it appears, suspicious of his claim; however, that suspicion was mitigated by the fact that he wasn't accused of having committed any crime. Indeed, the only crime apparent seems to have been perpetrated against him. But if he is faking it, it's reasonable to assume that the reason goes back to that mysterious scene at the beginning of the series. Which means that there's something in his past he's trying to hide, something very dark indeed. And he knows full well what it is.

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Even a series as reliable as The Fugitive has an amnesia episode. It's the ninth episode of the second season, "Escape into Black," in which Dr. Richard Kimble is caught in an explosion at a diner. He awakens in a hospital, badly injured, and with no idea who he is or what has happened to him. Fortunately, there's a social worker on the scene, one determined to look out for Kimble's interests even though he can't look out for them himself. Learning that Kimble had been asking about a one-armed man prior to the explosion, she renews the search herself. A good thing, too, because Kimble, having found out he's wanted for murder and with no idea of whether or not he's guilty, is on the verge of surrendering himself to Lt. Gerard.

We know how it ends, of course: Kimble regains his memory in time to escape Gerard and resume his search for the one-armed man. It's mighty convenient for us all that his problem clears up before the episode ends—but how likely is it?

Well, it's at least plausible. That same article from the Encyclopaedia Britannica notes that retrograde amnesia cases "usually clear up with relative rapidity, with or without psychotherapy." Once Michael Alden's doctors make their diagnosis (which, although it’s not mentioned by name, is almost certainly psychogenic retrograde autobiographical amnesia), then comes the treatment. Or at least it would, if Alden was willing to stand still for it. But he’s still running for his life, remember, and he realizes that he can’t afford to sit around undergoing extensive therapy to try and recover his memory. While that’s happening, the killers could catch up to him again, and this time they might not miss. (They could keep him in the hospital, of course, but then who knows if his insurance covers it, or even if he has insurance? It’s not as if they can look him up.) The treatment, however, would almost certainly have been a course of psychological therapy. Now, in the early decades of the 20th century, the therapy might have consisted of “truth serum” drugs such as barbiturates and benzodiazepines, and doubtless there are those who might wonder why his doctors didn’t try that. In fact, however, those drugs weren’t very successful in dealing with cases of amnesia—while they did make it possible for the patient to speak more easily about things, they also lowered the threshold of suggestibility, with the result that the information from the patient lacked reliability. By the 1960s, that kind of treatment would have been out.

It’s far more likely that a course of psychoanalysis would be suggested, and I think it’s intriguing that one of the possible diagnoses to come from such treatment would have been along Freudian lines, by suggesting that his amnesia was a form of self-punishment, “with the obliteration of personal identity as an alternative to suicide.” I wonder if that will come up in the course of the series? Is it possible that Alden’s apparent dual identity at the start of the series has to do with something so secretive, so horrifying, that his subconscious simply can’t deal with it anymore, with the result that he tries to sweep it all clean? In an early episode, someone shrewdly observes that he has an opportunity few people ever get: to make a brand-new start to life, with no baggage, nothing linking him to the past. Is that what he’s subconsciously trying to do, to divorce himself from something he doesn’t want to be reminded of? In such conversations, Alden invariably states that all he’s interested in is the truth of who he is, and if it turns out that there’s something bad in his past (in one episode, he thinks he might be a killer), well, so be it—that’s the risk he’s willing to take.

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And this, Walter Cronkite would probably discover, is where the story ends. In cases involving brain damage, doctors may be able to find a cause, and perhaps a cure. But Michael Alden's case remains a mystery. It is likely, but not certain, that his amnesia will eventually clear up. It may happen relatively quickly, or it may take a protracted period of psychoanalysis. But as to how or why it happens, and how or why it resolves itself? And what the amnesiac goes through, a man without a past, whose continued survival depends on reclaiming that past? It is, surely, part of the mysterious world of the amnesiac. One thing is for certain, however: the trauma that Michael Alden faces is one that most of us will never have to deal with.

There is, however, another kind of amnesia, one which probably would not have been covered on The 21st Century, but which would certainly be included on any contemporary science show dealing with the memory. And, unlike that portrayed on Coronet Blue, this one is fickle and pernicious, and it strikes with impunity.

Dementia. Alzheimer's.

Wendy Suzuki, a professor of neural science and psychology in the Center for Neural Science at New York University, hosts a popular podcast at Live Science. Back in 2005, she did an episode with her friend and colleague Neal Cohen, a professor at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, The topic: amnesia in pop culture. The emphasis is on movies rather than television, though their discussion of the Bourne movies is reflected in our discussion here. (If you're looking for realistic portrayals of amnesia, don't bother with 50 First Dates; check out Memento instead.)

I suppose you could call Alzheimer's a form of retrograde amnesia, although it works backwards, wiping the most recent memories first while leaving the oldest intact until the end. It's mostly anterograde, though: unlike Michael Alden, there will be no new memories for someone suffering from dementia, for those new memories will simply disappear. And there is no hope that the situation will resolve itself.

One of the realizations that comes from this awareness, Suzuki says, is that at the end of the day, the only thing you have for certain is the present, the knowledge that you have to live fully in the moment. If you can’t remember all the details, at least you can be content that at the moment you were 100% there.

My current "present" consists of observing a culture and a world that seems bent on total self-destruction. While it would be wrong to say that it dominates every waking moment of my life, it can make the prospect of living in this present a profoundly depressing one. As Peggy Lee might ask, if this is all there is. . . The thought of being fully present in this life, with no past, no future, nothing at all but what is right here and right now—well, that falls somewhere between terrifying and unbearable. Pray God, it ends soon, because nobody wants to be 100% here.

Yet it could be my future, or yours, or anyone out there. Not simply from fate, or bad decisions, but because it's something that strikes at you, and tears at you, until there's literally nothing left.

Don't wait; that should be the moral of the story. Do your living now, while you can, while you can still live in the present. That's what Michael Alden does, in Coronet Blue. He does it because he has no choice. And really, neither do we. Life is not meant for inertia, but for movement. Forward movement. However you can, wherever you can, whenever you can. Even if you're not like Michael Alden.

But we have a couple of advantages over Mike: for one thing, he doesn't know who's shooting at him, but we know who's shooting at us. Life is firing the bullets, and the one thing of which we can be certain is that one of them, somewhere, has your name on it, and another one has mine. For another, most of us don't have to worry about our series being cancelled before we find out the answers.

There's only one problem with this analogy, of course. We don't know what "coronet blue" means either. TV  


A note before you comment: Yes, I know that Larry Cohen, the show's creator, has since explained what "coronet blue" means and who Michael Alden really is. But if you know that, please don't discuss it in the comments section. The show's available on DVD and Blu, and I don't want it spoiled for anyone yet to see the series. This means you!

This week in TV Guide: July 15, 1967

I'd suppose most of you are familiar with Desilu Productions, if for no other reason than the number of times its logo appears at the end of your favorite programs, from The Untouchables to Mission: Impossible to Star Trek—and, of course, the series of sitcoms starring its president and 60-percent owner, Lucille Ball. Desilu has, under Lucy's leadership, become the largest TV-producing facility in the world, and as Dwight Whitney picks up the story, Desilu has become the target of Charles Bluhdorn, owner of the $650 million conglomerate Gulf & Western Industries, who not long ago added Paramount to his financial empire.  

The executive suite which Lucy occupies is oak-paneled, once occupied by Joseph Kennedy and Howard Hughes; she gave it a womanly touch that probably would leave Joe shaking his head. But don't think that this is all fun-and-games for her, one of those adventures that her TV-self might be involved in; since buying out her ex-husband Desi Arnaz in 1962, she's turned a loss of more than $665,000 into a profit of $830,000, and she's shown a deft hand at choosing good advisors ("and having sense enough to listen to them"). She has what Whitney describes as an "almost fanatical" loyalty to her people, and evokes a similar loyalty from them. She agreed with Fred Friendly's recent complaint that CBS chose to air a Lucy rerun rather than vital Vietnam hearings. 

She's also proved to be a strong advocate for the shows her studio produces, including Star Trek, which she championed, and Mission: Impossible, "a show which she had bulled through over strong opposition both from within her own studio and, particularly, from [CBS]." And then there's her own show, which CBS values to the tune of $350,000 annually and which she perennially hangs over the heads of network executives, with the threat that "I have other things I want to do." Her most recent contract with CBS provides "financing for the show at a record $90,000 per half hour, two one-hour CBS-financed Lucy specials, and a deal for future daytime stripping of her present series which [her advisor] estimates will bring in excess of $7,000,000 to Desilu before it is through."

Lucy knows that times are changing in the industry. "A company in TV alone cannot survive today’s market. You have to make 20 pilots to get three. How do you amortize that?" She knows that Bludhorn's offer makes sense—it would give her about $10 million of G&W stock, and it would be arranged to give her a "substantial" capital gain—and it would ease the "ataggering interest burden" on the $3 million she borrowed to buy Desi out. Still, she remains reluctant throughout the process until, impressed by Bludhorn, she agrees to the merger. 

Was it worth it? Many people at Desilu will complain in the future about Paramount's management of the company, how it no longer has the buzz of a family enterprise which it once had, and many of its properties will suffer from penny-pinching and corporate interference. Lucy, following the merger, will found her own new production company, Lucille Ball Productions, which continues to profit from residuals from Here's Lucy. And nobody ever thought twice about the idea of a crazy redhead running a major studio.

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While The Hollywood Palace is on summer break, ABC fills the Saturday night time slot with Piccadilly Palace, a London-based variety show starring the iconic British comedy duo of Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise. We'll stop in from time to time during the summer months to see who has the best lineup..
Sullivan:  Ed's guests in this rerun are Ginger Rogers; singers Johnny Mathis, the Lovin’ Spoonful and Abbe Lane; comics Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, and Bob King; the tumbling Three Kims; and puppet Topo Gigio. 

Piccadilly:  Guests are singer Frankie Avalon and the New Vaudeville Band, with regular Millicent Martin.  Hosts Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise do some wild impressions of Julius Caesar, and Samson and Delilah; and Wise offers an improbable version of Grieg’s Concerto in A Minor. Frankie sings "What Is This Thing Called Love?" and "I Could Write a Book" while the New Vaudevlle Band sings "If I Had a Talking Picture of You" and "Finchley Central." Millicent sings "Window Wishin'"

Piccadilly Palace is just different enough from Ed—the show is centered around the skits of Morecambe and Wise—that the matchups become imprecise. Having said that, I'm no particular fan of either the Lovin' Spoonful or the New Vaudeville Band, and Morecambe and Wise's skits sound ridiculously funny. But Stiller and Meara can be very clever, and with Ginger Rogers and Johnny Mathis, chances are Sullivan takes the week.

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There's a lot of history in this week's programs. Not the kind of history that necessarily shows up in the books, but history all the same. It's something I've stressed since I started this project all these years ago: the idea that TV Guide represents a history book, a pop culture mirror, all kinds of things besides what's on TV tonight.

Here's an example of something that is in the history books, although you might not all be familiar with it. It's the CBS News Special "How Israel Won the War" (Tuesday, 10:00 p.m.), with Mike Wallace leading the look at Israel's devistating victory in what came to be known as the Six-Day War, including interviews with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Army Chief of Staff (and future prime minister) Itzhak Rabin. We've grown used to endless wars, in these last few decades; the idea that a major war could be conducted, and won, in less than a week, is almost hard to imagine. 

Tensions in the Middle East were, then as now, at a heightened level, which came to the boiling point when Egyptian president Nassar closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, and ordered the UN emergency force out of the area. On June 5, as the UN personel were evacuating, Israel launched a preemptive strike, wiping out Egypt's air defenses and occupying the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Jordan and Syria entered the war on Egypt's side, but a ceasefire was agreed to on June 11. There were more than 20,000 Arab casualties, while Israel suffered fewer than 1,000.* The politics, as well as the ramifications from the war, can be debated, but it created a mystique about the efficiency of the Israeli military that would continue for decades. 

*Elsewhere in this issue it is mentioned that Ted Yates, NBC's acclaimed reporter, was killed in Jerusalem during the war.

Next we head ringside, for what's being billed as a "heavyweight elimination fight" between George Chuvalo and Joe Frazier, live from Madison Square Garden in New York (Tuesday, 7:00 p.m., syndicated). This refers to the June 20 decision to strip Muhammad Ali of the heavyweight title after he refused draft induction. (Ali was also sentenced to five years in prison for draft evasion, fined $10,000, and banned from boxing for three years. His conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1971.) 

This "elimination fight" business in the ad is a bit misleading; the World Boxing Association did set up a tournament involving the top eight heavyweights, the winner of which would be their new champion. Frazier, however, declined to take part in the tournament, instead continuing to build up his undefeated record, and Tuesday's fight against Chuvalo will be his toughest test yet, one which he'll pass with flying colors by stopping Chuvalo in a fourth-round TKO. It's likely that the only "elimination" aspect of this fight was that whoever lost was out of the running for the time being. 

In March 1968, Frazier defeats Buster Mathis in the inaugural event at the new Madison Square Garden to win recognizition by the New York State Athletic Commission (and five other states) as its heavyweight champ. Frazier defeats Jimmy Ellis, the winner of the WBA tournament, in February 1970 to win the undisputed championship; he'll retain that title with an epic victory over the reinstated Ali in March 1971.

And then, there's the revolution that wasn't. The supersonic transport—SST—was supposed to be one of the great aviation advancements of the 20th century, revolutionizing transatlantic flight. That it wasn't is a fascinating story in and of itself, but in 1967 the promise of the SST is still alive, if not yet functional, and forms a major thread in "The Aviation Revolution," an NBC News Special reported by Chet Huntley. (Wednesday, 9:00 p.m.) The report looks at the challenges facing commercial aviation, including overcrowding skies, increasing noise pollution, and pressure on designers and builders.

In 1967 the SST is still in the planning stages; the United States, Britain and France, and the Soviet Union are all designing SSTs, with Boeing working on the American version. Controversy continues to dog the plane, though, with concerns about sonic booms and the plane's effect on the ozone layer causing a lengthy and contentious debate that results in Congress killing funding for the SST in 1971, and banning overland commercial supersonic flights over the United States. When the Anglo-French Concorde begins service in the mid-1970s, it's prohibited from flying into New York City, although the ban is eventually overturned. (The Soviet version, the Tupolev Tu-144, began flight in 1975.) Even after environmental concerns are overcome, though, the SST fails to become profitable, and both versions are eventually retired from use. So much for the plane of the future

By the way, here's a footnote for you: In 1967, Boeing was still headquartered in Seattle; when the city was awarded an NBA expansion team (which, ironically, began play in 1967) the team took the name SuperSonics, in tribute to the forthcoming plane. Today, there is no SST, and the Seattle SuperSonics are now the Oklahoma City Thunder. And if you want more irony, the FAA sonic boom tests that so conerned congress were conducted in 1964—in Oklahoma City. 

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Here's some more sports: the final round of the British Open, telecast live via Early Bird satellite from the Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake (Saturday, 7:30 a.m., ABC). Unlike major tournaments today, which run from Thursday-Sunday, the Open plays from Wednesday through Saturday, with any playoff round held on Sunday; this schedule lasted until 1980. As for the tournament itself, ◀ Roberto De Vicenzo, whom you may remember from the more unfortunate day when a scoring error cost him the Masters, wins the Open by two shots over the defending champion, Jack Nicklaus.

Competition of a different kind: the Miss Universe Pageant, live from Miami Beach (Saturday, 10:00 p.m., CBS; tape-delayed in PT). Bob Barker is the host in the Convention Center, June Lockhart hosts the TV broadcast, and singer Jean-Paul Vignon is the musical guest. The winner is Miss USA, Sylvia Hitchcock from Alabama. This is, incidentally, the first time hosting the Miss Universe Pageant for Barker; he'll host both this and the Miss USA pageant through 1987.

A quartet of notable guest stars appear on Thursday's reruns, starting with Daniel Boone (7:30 pm., NBC), which has Jimmy Dean playing a banjo-strumming woodsman on the lam from a murder charge. At the same time over on CBS, Tallulah Bankhead plays herself as Lucy's new neighbor on The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour; in order to impress her, Lucy tries to talk Fred and Ethel to pose as her maid and butler. Later on, Vincent Price is Count Sforza on F Troop (8:00 p.m., ABC), and the troopers at Fort Courage are convinced that he's a vampire responsible for the disappearance of Wrangler Jane. And finally, Reginald Owen, known to most people here as  Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol, guests on Bewitched (8:30 p.m., ABC) as Aunt Clara's boyfriend, Ocky, and he comes along just in time: Clara has just blacked out the entire Eastern Seaboard.

Friday night features a couple of classics on local TV. First, on KHSL in Chico, it's the chilling Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life" (7:00 p.m.), in which ►Billy Mumy casts anyone who makes him angry into the cornfield. Later, it's the supurb Twelve Angry Men (9:00 p.m., KXTV in Sacramento), with Henry Fonda single-handedly holding up the dignity of the judicial system. Interesting to note that the description refers to it as "an adaptation of Reginald Rose's TV classic"; for many years, the TV version, which appeared on Studio One and starred Robert Cummings in the Fonda role, was thought lost; it's since been recovered, but I'd imagine that nowadays very few people know about it and think only of the movie version. Personally, I think you could make a case that Cummings dones a better job than Fonda, but that's just me.

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On Coronet Blue (Monday, 10:00 p.m., CBS), Denholm Elliott and Juliet Mills guest star in a story that features Alden (Frank Converse) caught between a fugitive revolutionary and the gunmen out to get him. Coronet Blue has been the surprise hit of the summer season—but Richard K. Doan warns its fans that they'd better "prepare themselves to be left dangling." You see, the program, which was approved by Jim Aubrey (one of his "last ventures before his fall as CBS-TV czar") for the 1965-66 season. After Aubrey was bounced, his successor, Jack Schneider, "thought it a poor show and shelved it." However, producer Herbert Brodkin, who had a firm contract with the network for 13 shows, went ahead and shot them. This year, CBS decided to burn off the series in order to recoup some of its investment, and scheduled 11 of the 13 episodes for the summer. Without, of course, an explanation of the cryptic storyline. (Even if CBS wanted to continue the show, star Converse had already moved on (no pun intended) to N.Y.P.D. on ABC.) 

I'm sure many, if not most, of you are familiar with the Coronet Blue debacle, but here's an excellent article at Television Obscurities that goes into detail, including how the mystery was supposed to e wrapped up. You can see it on DVD, and while it may not live up to its mythic status, it's still fun.

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MST3K alert: Teen-Age Crime Wave (1955). Three dangerous juvenile delinquents take refuge in the home of a farmer and his family. Tommy Cook, Mollie McCart, Sue England. (Thursday, 3:300 p.m., KHSL) Let's see, so far we've had Teen-Age Caveman, Teen-Age Strangler, and Teenagers From Outer Space, so I suppose this would be the natural succession. Our three stars are the three teens holding the family hostage, but of course one of them has to be the weak link, allowing the plot to fail. Well, what did you expect—In Cold Blood? And if those actors are teenagers, then I'm Truman Capote. TV  

This week in TV Guide: August 12, 1967

There are times when, as a cultural archaeologist, you just shake your head at your good fortune. Take this week's opening story, written by Michael Fessier, Jr., who takes us backstage at what those Dating Game weekends are really like, by following a young couple who'd been paired up on a recent program. 

Our celebrity bachelor is a guy named Mike Reagan, 22, whose father happens to be governor of California. He's rather unpolitical in real life, but in time, he'll become a radio talk show host and political commentator; a chip off the old Gipper, so to speak. His date is 20-year-old starlet Sheryl Ullman, who stars in a bunch of Elvis Presley movies and winds up as one of Dean Martin's Golddiggers. Sheryl chose Mike from a panel of three bachelors, the other two being actor Sal Mineo and UCLA football star Norman Dow. Their reward is a fabulous weekend in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia. 

Fessier wants to learn more about how all this works, so he stops by Chuck Barris Productions—you knew, of course, that Barris had to be part of this somehow. The boss, unfortunately, is busy, so Fessier winds up talking with Mike Hill, the executive responsible for planning the Dating Game trips. Now, it's my theory—based on Barris's later claim that those trips to exotic international locations were just cover for his other job as a CIA assassin—that he's unavailable because he's over in Southeast Asia somewhere, but there's nothing in Fessier's article to substantiate this, unless Barris somehow gets to him later on.

Mike and Sheryl spend much of their time posing for photos—"One more in color," "One more in black and white"—before heading out for a Saturday night on the town: specifically, as guests of honor at a dinner dance being held by their home for the weekend, the Empress Hotel. They dance a bit ("the only ones on the floor") to music that's described as "pre-Guy Lombardo." The next day there's a visit to the wax museaum, followed by dinner at the Oak Bay Marina. This is breathlessly reported on the radio (Victoria is a place "hungry for even a whiff of glamor"), but what they didn't report as that the couple "returned to their suite, watched an old Brian Donleavy movie on television and retired to their separate chambers." This is different from The Bachelor, isn't it?

On the trip home Monday, Mike muses about his date. "She'll probably marry some millionaire who'll make me a star," he says. "I guess she thinks I'm some kind of nice boy or something." For Sheryl's part, she finally kicks loose at the wrap party, "high-kicking and free as a bird." "I really enjoy life," she says.

Alas, there's to be no storybook ending. Of Sheryl, Mike says, "I dig her and I don't dig her," while Sheryl vows the first thing she'll  do when she returns home is "call my agent."

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While The Hollywood Palace is on summer break, ABC fills the Saturday night time slog with Piccadilly Palace, a London-based variety show starring the iconic British comedy duo of Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise. We'll stop in from time to time during the summer months to see who has the best lineup..
Sullivan:  Ed's guest in this rerun are actors Eddie Albert and Carroll Baker; comedians Allan Sherman, Pat Cooper and Stiller and Meara; singers Sergio Franchi, the Four Tops, and the Kessler Twins; the Suzuki Violins; and trampolinist Dick Albers.

Piccadilly:  British comedians Morecambe and Wise are the permanent hosts of Piccadilly Palace, so by definition there's a limited guest lineup, but this week it is pianist Peter Nero and the rockin' Tremeloes. Singer Millicent Martin is part of the permanent cast.

Well, this really does bring into focus what it means when you're talking about the dog days of summer. There may have been individual bits and pieces of Piccadilly Palace that stood out, but on sheer volume Ed has the edge. Allan Sherman, Stiller and Meara, the Four Tops, Sergio Franchi. I don't know about you, but I'll take Sullivan by majority decision.

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I don't know if Cleveland Amsory ever spent a day of his life fishing. Maybe when he was a kid, but I've always assumed that he was born full-grown, with a pipe in his mouth and a pen between his finters. At any rate, everyone has to to on vacation sometime, so let's assume that wherever he is this week, he's having a good time. 

Usually when Cleve is out, we just skip the week's review, but this week I'm making an exception, as guest reviewer Burt Prelutsky takes a look at one of the great cult classic shows in summer replacement history, Coronet Blue. The show's cult was, I think, based primarily on its being an enigma, in more than one way: first, the hero, Michael Alden (Frank Converse), doesn't know who he is, and doesn't know why someone wants him dead. All he knows is that when he was rescued, half-dead, from drowning in New York harbor, he was mumbling the words, "Coronet Blue." Second, the show, which took two years to make it to television, ended without the mystery ever being resolved; it became a surprise hit during the summer, but by that time it was impossible to reunite the cast to continue the story. 

We may not know what "Coronet Blue" means, but we do know what Burt Prelutsky thinks about Coronet Blue: it is, he writes, "pretentious, boring and badly written." Of Alden's quixotic quest for his past, which drives the action each week, he says, "Go on he does—into one of the prize cockamamic shows of all time. There were enough hokey subplots an dcliche characters in that first 60-minute episode to keep most TV series running for a dozen years." And of Converse's performance as Alden, [he] does a lot of dopy things with his eyes that are supposed to denote, I suspect, the desperate plight of a man in search of his identity. It doesn't quite come off that way. What it really looks like, to tell you the truth, is like an actor doing a lot of dopey things with his eyes." 

At least we're not left guessing what Burt thinks. Thing is, having bought the series when it came out on DVD a couple of years ago, I'm in substantial agreement with much of what he says. Now, I'm willing to accept the amnesia premise—as dramatic devices go, it's got possibilities. Some of the stories, particularly as the series went on, were among the best the show had to offer. And I thought that the supporting characters, especially his friend Max (played by Joe Silver), were quite good. But I'm all in on his assessment of Converse—I liked him a lot as a tough detective in N.Y.P.D., and Michael Alden could have used some of that edge to his personality, as opposed to merely throwing punches without really knowing who he's striking out at. 

Coronet Blue's biggest problem, in the end analysis, is that it's not The Bourne Identity, which took a similar premise and ran with it at such high velocity that you didn't have time to look for any inconsistencies. And Frank Converse isn't Matt Damon, whose Jason Bourne had more edges to him than Gillette, and was too busy trying to stay alive to make cow eyes at sympathetic women. I liked Coronet Blue more than Prelutsky does, but it's a series that could have been so much better than it was. And wasted potential is something you just can't forget.

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It doesn't seem possible, but American Bandstand celebrates it's 10th anniverary on Saturday with the second of a two-part show featuring the Mamas and the Papas and the Supremes, while Dick Clark talks about how the music scene has changed during the decade and interviews former Bandstanders. (12:30 p.m. CT, ABC) Over on NBC, the baseball Game of the Week continues coverage of the torrid American League pennant race with three of the four contenders: most of the country gets the Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins, but in Minneapolis the home team blackout means we're getting the Baltimore Orioles (the odd team out) visiting the Detroit Tigers (1:00 p.m.) And on Critics Award Theater (11:30 p.m, WCCO), it's a movie that asks the same question I've been asking about this website for years: How to Be Very, Very Popular. 

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King is the guest on Sunday's Meet the Press (1:30 p.m., NBC), and later in the afternoon an NBC News Special called "The Documentaries of Ted Yates" (5:00 p.m.) looks at the work of one of television's finest journalists; Yates was killed in June while covering the Six Day War. His widow, Mary, would later marry Mike Wallace. On a lighter note, Rich Litle is on Candid Camera (9:00 p.m., CBS), pranking a secretary by impersonating famous men on the phone.

On Monday Martha Raye begins a week-long stint as Mike Douglas's guest host (4:00 p.m., WCCO). Mike is this week's cover story, and Patrick Walsh says of him, "Talk is [his] stock in trade—and millions of housewives are eager to buy." Nowadays we think of daytime talk as consisting of self-help, celebrity puff pieces, armchair psychoanalysis, or cooking tips, but Mike Douglas was a real talk show host whose show ran in syndication from 1961 to 1982. Unlike other daytime hosts (Merv Griffin, Dick Cavett), Mike never made the move to prime time, being content to provide easy-going, middle of the road entertainment to an older, mostly female audience. And that's what's most interesting about this article, the emphasis on "housewives" and "grannies" who can't get enough of Douglas' "wholesome as whole-wheat soda bread" show, even though he had his share of controversial guests (Dick Gregory, Stokley Carmichael). How the culture has changed since then.

Get up early Tuesday morning to watch Today, (7:00 p.m., NBC) as guest host Burgess Meredith interviews Star Trek stars William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. This evening, The Fugitive airs its last rerun before the two-part series finale that results in the exoneration of Dr. Richard Kimble and the apprehension of the One-Armed Man (9:00 p.m,. ABC). I've read that the final episode aired in August because the decision to end the series was made too late in the season to have the story ready an earlier; nonetheless, as far as I know, except for shows that went off the air immediately after their finale, no other series has done this, and I don't know why. Not only was it extremely effective, there was little competition from the other two networks. As you can see, the anticipation is building.

Wednesday is probably the most enjoyable night of the week; on part one of the latest Batman adventure (6:30 p.m., ABC), the villainous Catworman (Julie Newmar version) plans to steal the voices of British rockers Chad and Jeremy, playing themselves. Eddie Albert and Eva Gavor play dual roles on Green Acres (8:00 p.m., CBS), showing how their ancestors once crossed paths. Boris Karloff is the guest star of what must have been a fun episode of I Spy (9:00 p.m., NBC), playing a scientist working on an anti-missile system, who gets caught up in Quixotic escapades.

On Thursday night ABC's Summer Focus takes a look at the 1968 presidential contenders. It's easy to look at these shows in retrospect and make fun of them, but if the show was anything like the write-up for it, it proved to be remarkably prescient. For the Democrats, "the man is President Johnson. If he bows out, look for a bitter fight on the convention floor." As I say, you couldn't get more right than that, although I'm not sure they intended for the Democrats to take the word "fight" literally. As for the Republicans, the close-up quite accurately identifies Nixon as the front-runner, although "he must enter the primaries to prove that he is still a vote-getter," and Mike Reagan's father as a "fast-rising GOP star." They speculate on Nelson Rockefeller as a candidate who could win a deadlocked convention. (He would, in fact, finish second to Nixon, and just ahead of Reagan.) And yet, for all that, it barely scratches the surface of 1968.

Friday, Jimmy Stewart is the host for a visit to the World Boy Scout Jamboree (8:00 p.m., ABC) held earlier this month at Farragut State Park in Idaho. For music fans, the highlight is an NET special on Duke Ellington (10:00 p.m.), featuring the Duke at the Monteray Jazz Festival, and including interviews with Earl "Fatha" Hines and Jon Hendricks.

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There's a short bit in The Doan Report about the networks taking yet another look at prime-time news programs, this time the idea of a show that would fill the last half-hour of the night's schedule. These kinds of ideas come up all the time; it seems as if there was never an era when there wasn't serious discussion about prime-time evening news, most of the time involving the perennially ratings-challenged ABC, but this one specifically mentions NBC as the network most likely to check it out, with the others to follow if it's a success. It isn't, and they don't.

There's also a note, kind of cynical if you ask me, about how audiences are more likely to watch a taped drama such as Death of a Salesman, which recently scored big ratings on CBS, if they think they're watching a movie. ABC plans to capitalize on this "misunderstanding," as all ten of their upcoming dramas are remakes of well-known movies such as Dial M for Murder. Their plan is to advertise them not as they'd originally intended, with the title A Night at the Theater, but simply as a special presentation. Imagine a television network trying to trick its viewers into thinking they're seeing something other that what's actually on. I'm shocked, shocked, at the thought.

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Finally, I don't know if I've ever written about That Girl, the series with Marlo Thomas, but this Thursday's episode gives us a real cultural snapshot. From the listings: "No matter how you add it up, Ann and boy friend Don face a delicate situation: They're stranded with newlyweds in a hotel—that has only two vacant rooms." It's clear what the dilemma for Ann and Don is: they can't share a room because they're not married, but if the two men take one room and the two women the other, they'll be separating the newlyweds, something the other couple wants no part of. This is interesting for so many reasons: first, the idea of an unmarried couple sharing a hotel room is nothing today—hell, probably most of the couples in hotels aren't married—or at least not to each other. Thing is (and I'll admit I haven't seen the episode, so this could be a moot point), this very type of scenario (unmarried couple sharing hotel room) has been a stalwart of the screwball comedy for decades. You can hang a bedsheet down the middle of the room, you can have the guy sleep on the floor, etc. etc. In other words, there's a myriad number of ways they could handle this. I wonder which ones they used?

For sure, you wouldn't see this dilemma on TV today. TV  

"Coronet Blue" and the mysterious world of the amnesiac

He calls himself 'Michael Alden,' but says that this is not his name. He claims not to know his real name, nor who he is, nor anything that happened to him up until two months ago. Tonight we explore the mystery that is amnesia—the loss of a person's memory, and with it, the loss of his humanity as well. I'm Walter Cronkite, and this is The 21st Century."

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Obviously, this never happened. As classic TV fans know, "Michael Alden" is the character played by Frank Converse in the cult classic series, Coronet Blue. And, as our ersatz Walter Cronkite says, Michael Alden has amnesia. He was dragged half dead out of the water, murmuring the words "Coronet Blue." He has no idea what this means, nor about anything else that has happened to him up until the time he is rescued. He doesn't even know his own name; he picks the name Michael Alden because it's a combination of his doctor's first name and the name of the hospital where he was treated. For the remaining thirteen episodes, Alden will search for clues as to his real identity, and what "Coronet Blue" really means—while the people who tried to kill him look to finish the job.

It's a great idea for a television series, and had Coronet Blue existed in the real world (as is the case with many TV shows today), it's quite likely that Alden would have been an ideal subject for a science program like The 21st Century (which aired on CBS from 1967-1970; it's predecessor, The 20th Century, began in 1957). But just how plausible is the idea behind Coronet Blue? And how realistic is pop culture's depiction of amnesia?

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What do we know about Michael Alden? Not much. As Coronet Blue opens, he’s onboard a ship, one piece in a moving puzzle. It’s clear that he’s part of some kind of plot; a heist, perhaps, or some kind of undercover operation—we just don’t know. Quickly, it becomes apparent that something’s gone wrong, that his confederates have discovered something about him—he had ratted them out, he wasn’t who he claimed to be, something like that—and consequently he’s been targeted for death. There’s a struggle, he goes over the rail of the ship and into the water, the bad guys take a couple of shots at him (or are they good guys? We just don’t know), and after a time he’s dragged ashore, nearly dead, mumbling the words “coronet blue.” He recovers, physically. Mentally, however, he’s a mess. He doesn’t know who he is, how he got there, why someone would want to kill him, and he has no idea what “coronet blue” means. Michael Alden has amnesia.

In pop culture, the situation most like Alden’s is probably that of Jason Bourne, the character played by Matt Damon in the Bourne movies. Like Alden, Bourne is pulled out of the water after someone has tried to kill him; like Alden, he has no memory of his identity, although he retains his language and motor skills.

Both Alden and Bourne suffer from a type of psychogenic dissociative amnesia called “retrograde” amnesia. As opposed to "anterograde" amnesia, which affects the ability of the mind to form new memories, retrograde amnesia means the inability to recall things that happened before a specific date, usually the date of an accident or trauma. In both of these cases, we see how retrograde amnesia “tends to negatively affect episodic, autobiographical, and declarative memory while usually keeping procedural memory intact with no difficulty for learning new knowledge.”

Now, within this fairly broad diagnosis, there are two subsets which we could be dealing with. The first, “situation-specific” amnesia, sometimes called “suppressed memory,” means that memory loss is confined to a specific traumatic event, with the victim able to remember things that happened both before and after the event. In the Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare as a Child,” for example, Janice Rule plays Helen Foley, a woman who unknowingly suffers from such a condition: Helen has no memory of her mother’s murder, nor that the young Helen was a witness to the murder, until the appearance of a little girl (Helen when she was young; an apparition? A manifestation of her subconscious? It is the Twilight Zone, after all) brings her memory back in time to apprehend the murderer, who’s returned to eliminate the only witness—Helen.*  That’s an example of “situation-specific” amnesia.

*The moral of the story being that, at least if you’re a murderer, it’s best to leave well-enough alone.

However, Alden’s amnesia appears more likely to be a type known as “global-transient”; in other words, a major gap in the part of the memory that relates to personal identity. The most common illustration of global-transient amnesia is a “fugue state,” in which there is “a sudden retrograde loss of autobiographical memory resulting in impairment of personal identity and usually accompanied by a period of wandering.” That last is significant, because the premise of Coronet Blue is built around Alden’s attempts to find out who he is, resulting in travelling—wandering—to different parts of the country, searching for anyone or anything that can help him discover who he is. And what coronet blue means, of course.

It’s likely that Alden’s doctors would have checked for some type of brain damage or other organic cause of his amnesia; they didn’t find anything, but even with today’s advancements in medical science, it’s unlikely that his amnesia was caused by anything as mundane as the proverbial “bump on the head.” Most of the time, psychogenic amnesia is traceable back to some type of psychological trigger; with Alden, it’s almost certainly related to the attack on him at the beginning of the first episode.

I wonder, though: does he really want to remember? Or is it fear—fear of what he doesn’t know—that keeps his memory from returning? All the time, though, he remains focused on “coronet blue,” and it’s not just because the theme keeps playing in the background. Find out the meaning, he knows, and it’s likely he’ll be able to unlock the mystery.

That fear of finding out what his past might be, though—that leads us to an obvious question: is Alden’s amnesia genuine? Is he a reliable narrator, or is he withholding something from the viewers?

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There are at least four episodes from the great legal drama Perry Mason that deal with amnesia. The first season episodes "The Case of the Crooked Candle," and "The Case of the Desperate Daughter," the fifth season episode "The Case of the Glamorous Ghost," and the seventh season episode "The Case of the Nervous Neighbor" all involve Perry dealing with someone—generally a woman—claiming some form of amnesia.

Is there a significance in this gender distinction? Possibly. While there's no particular evidence to suggest that women are more susceptible than men to amnesia, the victim in "Glamorous Ghost," Eleanor Corbin, claims to be suffering from amnesia "after police find her running and screaming through woods near her apartment building." Doubtless someone would have referred to Eleanor as being "hysterical." And that term, as understood and applied to women, dates back over 4,000 years. The National Center for Biotechnology Information calls hysteria "the first mental disorder attributable to women, accurately described in the second millennium BC, and until Freud considered an exclusively female disease."

Therefore, with Eleanor displaying no signs of physical injury, the suggestion is that her amnesia is a  form of retrograde amnesia known as "hysterical reaction," one that does not appear to depend upon an actual brain disorder. Perry accepts this diagnosis, at least insofar as it provides him with the opportunity to stall for time while he tries to assemble the facts. The police, however, are suspicious: and for good reason, as Encyclopaedia Britannica notes darkly: "Although most dramatic, such cases are extremely rare and seldom wholly convincing."

In fact, malingering—that is, the rational output of a neurologically normal brain aiming at the surreptitious achievement of a well identified gain—is a constant threat in such cases. It's understandable, then, that law enforcement officials have long been leery about such diagnoses, and for years they’ve pushed for some kind of standardized test for amnesia. Unlike the M'Naghten rule, which tests for criminal insanity, judging the legitimacy of amnesia claims defies application of uniform standards. As one expert remarks, amnesia cases “differ in onset, duration, and content forgotten” to the extent that it cannot be broadly defined in legal circumstances. And in a landmark case in England in 1959, a jury was called on to determine whether a defendant was faking amnesia, making him legally unfit to stand trial. The jury ruled he was faking (and convicted him, to boot). In truth, most cases of psychogenic retrograde autobiographical amnesia resolve themselves on their own accord, so if Hamilton Burger is willing to be patient, he might well be able to wait his suspect out. And, in fact, Eleanor Corbin is faking her amnesia, a deception which is soon uncovered by the police.* Could Michael Alden be doing the same thing?

*Don't worry; Perry wins, in spite of his client—which is frequently the case.

The police were, it appears, suspicious of his claim; however, that suspicion was mitigated by the fact that he wasn't accused of having committed any crime. Indeed, the only crime apparent seems to have been perpetrated against him. But if he is faking it, it's reasonable to assume that the reason goes back to that mysterious scene at the beginning of the series. Which means that there's something in his past he's trying to hide, something very dark indeed. And he knows full well what it is.

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Even a series as reliable as The Fugitive has an amnesia episode. It's the ninth episode of the second season, "Escape into Black," in which Dr. Richard Kimble is caught in an explosion at a diner. He awakens in a hospital, badly injured, and with no idea who he is or what has happened to him. Fortunately, there's a social worker on the scene, one determined to look out for Kimble's interests even though he can't look out for them himself. Learning that Kimble had been asking about a one-armed man prior to the explosion, she renews the search herself. A good thing, too, because Kimble, having found out he's wanted for murder and with no idea of whether or not he's guilty, is on the verge of surrendering himself to Lt. Gerard.

We know how it ends, of course: Kimble regains his memory in time to escape Gerard and resume his search for the one-armed man. It's mighty convenient for us all that his problem clears up before the episode ends—but how likely is it?

Well, it's at least plausible. That same article from the Encyclopaedia Britannica notes that retrograde amnesia cases "usually clear up with relative rapidity, with or without psychotherapy." Once Michael Alden's doctors make their diagnosis (which, although it’s not mentioned by name, is almost certainly psychogenic retrograde autobiographical amnesia), then comes the treatment. Or at least it would, if Alden was willing to stand still for it. But he’s still running for his life, remember, and he realizes that he can’t afford to sit around undergoing extensive therapy to try and recover his memory. While that’s happening, the killers could catch up to him again, and this time they might not miss. (They could keep him in the hospital, of course, but then who knows if his insurance covers it, or even if he has insurance? It’s not as if they can look him up.) The treatment, however, would almost certainly have been a course of psychological therapy. Now, in the early decades of the 20th century, the therapy might have consisted of “truth serum” drugs such as barbiturates and benzodiazepines, and doubtless there are those who might wonder why his doctors didn’t try that. In fact, however, those drugs weren’t very successful in dealing with cases of amnesia—while they did make it possible for the patient to speak more easily about things, they also lowered the threshold of suggestibility, with the result that the information from the patient lacked reliability. By the 1960s, that kind of treatment would have been out.

It’s far more likely that a course of psychoanalysis would be suggested, and I think it’s intriguing that one of the possible diagnoses to come from such treatment would have been along Freudian lines, by suggesting that his amnesia was a form of self-punishment, “with the obliteration of personal identity as an alternative to suicide.” I wonder if that will come up in the course of the series? Is it possible that Alden’s apparent dual identity at the start of the series has to do with something so secretive, so horrifying, that his subconscious simply can’t deal with it anymore, with the result that he tries to sweep it all clean? In an early episode, someone shrewdly observes that he has an opportunity few people ever get: to make a brand-new start to life, with no baggage, nothing linking him to the past. Is that what he’s subconsciously trying to do, to divorce himself from something he doesn’t want to be reminded of? In such conversations, Alden invariably states that all he’s interested in is the truth of who he is, and if it turns out that there’s something bad in his past (in one episode, he thinks he might be a killer), well, so be it—that’s the risk he’s willing to take.

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And this, Walter Cronkite would probably discover, is where the story ends. In cases involving brain damage, doctors may be able to find a cause, and perhaps a cure. But Michael Alden's case remains a mystery. It is likely, but not certain, that his amnesia will eventually clear up. It may happen relatively quickly, or it may take a protracted period of psychoanalysis. But as to how or why it happens, and how or why it resolves itself? And what the amnesiac goes through, a man without a past, whose continued survival depends on reclaiming that past? It is, surely, part of the mysterious world of the amnesiac. One thing is for certain, however: the trauma that Michael Alden faces is one that most of us will never have to deal with.

There is, however, another kind of amnesia, one which probably would not have been covered on The 21st Century, but which would certainly be included on any contemporary science show dealing with the memory. And, unlike that portrayed on Coronet Blue, this one is fickle and pernicious, and it strikes with impunity.

Dementia. Alzheimer's.

Wendy Suzuki, a professor of neural science and psychology in the Center for Neural Science at New York University, hosts a popular podcast at Live Science. Back in 2005, she did an episode with her friend and colleague Neal Cohen, a professor at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, The topic: amnesia in pop culture. The emphasis is on movies rather than television, though their discussion of the Bourne movies is reflected in our discussion here. (If you're looking for realistic portrayals of amnesia, don't bother with 50 First Dates; check out Memento instead.)

I suppose you could call Alzheimer's a form of retrograde amnesia, although it works backwards, wiping the most recent memories first while leaving the oldest intact until the end. It's mostly anterograde, though: unlike Michael Alden, there will be no new memories for someone suffering from dementia, for those new memories will simply disappear. And there is no hope that the situation will resolve itself.

One of the realizations that comes from this awareness, Suzuki says, is that at the end of the day, the only thing you have for certain is the present, the knowledge that you have to live fully in the moment. If you can’t remember all the details, at least you can be content that at the moment you were 100% there.

My current "present" consists of a months-long struggle to find permanent employment, while contending with various aches and pains, and observing a culture and a world that seems bent on total self-destruction. While it would be wrong to say that these things have dominated every waking moment of my life, it makes the prospect of living in this present a profoundly depressing one. As Peggy Lee might ask, if this is all there is. . . The thought of being fully present in this life, with no past, no future, nothing at all but what is right here and right now—well, that falls somewhere between terrifying and unbearable. Pray God, it ends soon, because nobody wants to be 100% here.

Yet it could be my future, or yours, or anyone out there. Not simply from fate, or bad decisions, but because it's something that strikes at you, and tears at you, until there's literally nothing left.

Don't wait; that should be the moral of the story. Do your living now, while you can, while you can still live in the present. That's what Michael Alden does, in Coronet Blue. He does it because he has no choice. And really, neither do we. Life is not meant for inertia, but for movement. Forward movement. However you can, wherever you can, whenever you can. Even if you're not like Michael Alden.

But we have a couple of advantages over Mike: for one thing, he doesn't know who's shooting at him, but we know who's shooting at us. Life is firing the bullets, and the one thing of which we can be certain is that one of them, somewhere, has your name on it, and another one has mine. For another, most of us don't have to worry about our series being cancelled before we find out the answers.

There's only one problem with this analogy, of course. We don't know what "coronet blue" means either. TV  


A note before you comment: Yes, I know that Larry Cohen, the show's creator, has since explained what "coronet blue" means and who Michael Alden really is. But if you know that, please don't discuss it in the comments section. The show's available on DVD and Blu, and I don't want it spoiled for anyone yet to see the series. This means you!