This week in TV Guide: January 12, 1974

Looking back through the years, I have, more than once, used the terms "Super Bore" or "Stupor Bowl" to refer to the Super Bowl. The game is only a small part of what has grown to encompass special commercials made for the occasion, pregame and halftime concerts featuring superstar artists, and marathon analysis both before and after the game. (It doesn't hurt that there have actually been some pretty good games the last couple of decades, but face it—that's just a bonus.)

Back in the 1970s, though, the game was the thing, to paraphrase Shakespeare, and over the first seven editions, the "ultimate game" hadn't really delivered much. Several of them had been blowouts, the two games won by the AFL had been huge upsets but not all that interesting, and the closest game—Baltimore's 16-13 victory over Dallas three years ago—had been so full of mistakes by both teams pit was called the "Blunder Bowl."

Al Stump uses the "Super Bore" line in his preview of Sunday's Big Game between the defending champion Miami Dolphins and the NFC champion Minnesota Vikings, from Rice Stadium in Houston (3:30 p.m. ET, CBS). Even in its infancy, the game had a feeling approaching "near-lunacy," with the game being the last thing on anyone's mind; Washington defensive back Mike Bass recalls having to attend three team press conferences, photo events, program signing parties, team busses stalled in traffic jams (last year's game was played in Los Angeles), besides practicing for, you know, the game. "Things are so wild that you're distracted—to the point where you can't perform normally on the field. At the kickoff, those 22 cats out there are in trouble, man." Not surprisingly, the game itself was "dull and a letdown, with some spectators walking out before the Dolphins finally beat the skins 14-7."

Stump calls these past games "a bore, and, at times, a farce," where the teams "make an abundance of errors and do little scoring." Coaches, feeling the pressure and fearing defeat, run ultra-conservative game plans and use even tighter defenses than the regular season. There have been few spectacular plays in Super Bowls (only four times has a runner gained 20 or more yards on a single run), and no last-minute comebacks. And in those seven games, a total of only 12 touchdown passes have been thrown. (In fact, there have only been 25 touchdowns in total scored in the game's history.) 

That doesn't stop CBS from offering up today's contest as the "ultimate game," utilizing 14 color cameras and six miles of cable, and "[n]o fewer than 15 experts will be trotted out, or roughly one expert for every five players who'll see action." But, then, who says it's about the game? "The past seven Super Bowls have sold 543,852 tickets, taken in $25 million and paid $8.7 million to the athletes. NBC and CBS, investing $17,750,000 for telecast rights since 1967, now reach 28 milion homes and some 75 million people. A cool 10 million words have been filed from Super Bowl press boxes." That's what the Super Bowl is all about, Charlie Brown. 

As I mentioned at the outset, the Super Bowl has come a long way since these early days. The networks spend more and more money to broadcast the game to more and more viewers, while commercials sell for extraordinarily obscene amounts of money (in 1974, 30 seconds sold for $103,000, while last year, a half-minute commercial would cost you $7 million.) The game was played in the afternoon back in 1974 (preceded by an NBA game), and the pregame show was only 30 minutes long. The half-time entertainment was provided by the University of Texas Longhorn Band, with Miss Texas, Judy Mallett, playing the fiddle. Networks didn't bother to try and introduce a promising show in the coveted post-game timeslot; Super Bowl VIII was followed by the local news. 

As for Super Bowl VIII? Well, it fit the pattern to a T; the Dolphins dominated early and often with its ground game; Miami quarterback Bob Griese through only seven passes (completing six, for 63 yards total), while the Dolphins rushed for almost 200 yards on 53 attempts. No touchdown passes were thrown by either team. The final score was Miami 24, Minnesota 7, and it wasn't even that close.

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

James Stewart's transition to television as star of his own series has not, Cleveland Amory says, been a smooth one. In his previous try, the "unlamented" Jimmy Stewart Show, he played a college professor "with all the authority of a nervous giraffe." Now, as a high-powered country lawyer in the 90-minute Hawkins, airing as part of CBS's new Tuesday Night Movies wheel series, he returns to "the kind of role that made him famous—the barefoot boy with chic." And while he has all the gestures down pat, it's the kind of character that has always had a limited range; "At its best, it makes you nostalgic for some of Mr. Stewart's old films. At its worst, it makes you wonder what you ever saw in them."

We could just stop right here, because this gives you the jist of Cleve's thoughts on Hawkins, but we continue because 1) he has more to say about why he feels this way, and 2) I have two more paragraphs to fill. The problem with a series like Hawkins, is that it plays to all the cliches we've come to expect from shows with a cornpone sense of things. Take Stewart's character, for instance, whose name is Billy Jim Hawinks. (He has a cousin, "R.J.," played by Strother Martin, and a nephew, "Jeremiah," in case we didn't get the point.) As the series is structured, Hawkins is often retained to travel to the big city to defend big shots, which gives it the fish-out-of-water trope of McCloud, plus the aw-shucks jurisprudence that Andy Griffith would put to more effective use in Matlock. Hawkins plays up this angle, which we know is false to start with because otherwise he wouldn't have such a reputation that the big shots hire him instead of, say, F. Lee Bailey. 

The plots don't help out. One involved one of Billy Jim's kinfolk who's killed in a Civil War recreation, and Hawkins not only has to defend the man accused of the crime (who happens to be thoroughly unlikable) but also has to prevent an old feud from flaring up. Even Lew Ayres, who played a Civil War historian, couldn't save this one. Neither could Julie Harris, in another episode that involves a rich old man who's murdered by his much younger wife; "there is," Amory observes, "one time when Billy Jim gets driven off the road," but as far as suspense goes, "that was it." It's all too bad, because James Stewart, throughout his career, gave ample evidence of being able to play a character with a very sharp, and vary dark, edge. Something like that might have helped Hawkins make it past one season, although Stewart himself asked that the show be cancelled becaue he didn't believe the scripts could measure up to the quality he'd been used to working with. It's another case, I fear, of what might have been.

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Two of television's definitive rock music shows, NBC's The Midnight Special and ABC's In Concert, faced off on Friday nights in the early '70s. Whenever the two slug it out, we'll be on hand to see who's better, who's best.

Midnight: Host Smoke Robinson welcomes blues group Paul Butterfield's Better Days, soul artists Eddie Kendricks, Johnny Taylor, Edwin Starr and Ann Peebles, and rock group Grin. Smokey sings "The Tracks of My Tears," "The Tears of a Clown," "Mickey's Monkey," "Show and Tell."

Concert: An all-oldioes show featuring Jerry Lee Lewis, Del Shannon, Little Anthony, Freddie Cannon and Rufus Young. Songs include "Great Balls of Fire," "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On'" (Lewis), "Runaway," "Handy Man" (Shannon), "Hurt So Bad" (Little Anthony).

The emphasis is on the oldies this week, and the winner depends in large part on what suits your taste. As for me, it'll be tough to beat Del Shannon and The Killer, so the summary is short and sweet: Concert has the fire this week.

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Having looked back at last Saturday's writeup, I think I fell short when it came to looking at what was actually on TV. That doesn't mean it was bad; I wouldn't have given it to you if I'd thought that. But let's see what's up besides the Super Bowl and our rock shows.

It's a big week on the movie front, dominated by a trio of John Wayne classics, foremost among them being with the second showing of The Duke's Oscar-winning turn in True Grit (Sunday, 7:30 p.m., ABC). Judith Crist finds it irrestible, "one of the rip-roaringest, snortingest (and belchingest) entertainments in a long time." It is, she says, "early John Wayne in spirit, the latter-day Wayne in the flesh." The previous night, on the same network, we're treated to the fourth telecast of The Sons of Katie Elder (Saturday, 8:30 p.m.), "still as good-natured and simple-minded as ever," with Wayne as the eldest of the Elder boys, and Dean Martin next in line, "and you can write the script yourself." The week wraps up with the third showing of The Undefeated (Friday, 8:30 p.m., CBS), with Rock Hudson sharing the bill. It's "spiced by brawls, massacres, murders and executions. Just a good clean all-American entertainment." Hey, it works for me. 

It's a tribute to John Wayne's star power that this triple-header relegates to second place the network television premiere of From Russia with Love, the second of the James Bond adventures (Monday, 9:00 p.m., ABC, and what a movie week they're having!), with Sean Connery as dynamic as ever as the superspy, Robert Shaw and Lotte Lenya as the heavies, and Daniela Bianchi as "the major sexpot" (although I don't think that's how she appears in the credits. Crist calls it "vintage grown-up nonsense," which is a compliment coming from her. And as if it weren't already a big week for ABC, Wednesday night sees a repeat of 1972's The Night Stalker (8:00 p.m.), "that diverting tale of a vampire stalking Las Vegas," starring Darren McGavin, Simon Oakland, and Carol Lynley in the first of two TV-movies leading to the much-loved Kolchak series. 

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And now for the rest of the week, and though I've mentioned this before, I'll say it again: Saturday night used to be a prime night for television, and on a week-to-week basis nothing surpasses the Murderer's Row CBS schedule, with All in the Family at 8:00 p.m., M*A*S*H T 8:30, Mary Tyler Moore at 9:00, The Bob Newhart Show at 9:30, and The Carol Burnett Show at 10:00; Carol's guests tonight are Eydie Gorme and Paul Sand. Add to that The Sons of Katie Elder on ABC and another Western, The Way West, with Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, and Richard Widmark on NBC 9:00 p.m.), and you can see why people used to stay home. Why that changed, I'm not sure.

Sunday features one of the most popular episodes of Columbo, "Publish or Perish"  (8:30 p.m., NBC), in which the consummate Columbo villain, Jack Cassidy, returns as a publisher who hires a hitman to bump off his his leading writer (Mickey Spillaine!), who's preparing to move over to another publishing house. Meanwhile, Watergate is going to play out in a big way in 1974, and on Firing Line (10:00 p.m., PBS), host William F. Buckley Jr. and presidential aide Patrick Buchanan discuss the subpoenaed White House tapes, plus media coverage of the scandal.

Avid readers (as well as fans of Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry) will remember P.G. Wodehouse as the author of the wonderfully witty Jeeves and Wooster stories (35 short stories and 11 novels, written between 1915 and 1974). Despite their being set in a world that is long gone, however, Wodehouse is still alive and writing at age 92, and on Monday night he's the guest of Bob Cromie on Book Beat (10:30 p.m., PBS), where he reflects on the disappearance of humorous writing and recalls some of his contemporaries, including James Thurber and Dorothy Parker.

The Super Bowl isn't the only stare-studded sports event this week; Tuesday night sees the NBA All-Star Game, live from Seattle (9:30 p.m., CBS). The West Coast locale is, in part, responsible for the late hour of the game's start, but it's also true that the low-rated NBA is no substitute for CBS's regular prime-time lineup, and so the start time allows the network to fit in episodes of Maude and Hawaii Five-O. I doubt that most people remember the game (it was won by the West, 134-123), but they will remember the series that premieres that night on ABC as part of the network's second season: a 50's-inspired sitcom called Happy Days (8:00 p.m.). That's followed at 8:30 p.m. by yet another ABC TV-movie, Mrs. Sundance, a sequel to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Elizabeth Montgomery in the title role, with future husband Robert Foxworth as the man trying to track her down. 

We'll turn to late night for Wednesday's highlight, a 90-minute roast of Steve Allen on ABC's Wide World of Entertainment (11:30 p.m.). The occasion is Allen's 25th year on television, and many former co-stars from his various shows are on hand, including Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, Jayne Meadows, Louis Nye, and Tim Conway; George Burns, Buddy Hackett, Rowan & Martin, Jack Carter, and Zsa Zsa Gabor are also on hand. Milton Berle is the roastmaster. I'm happy to report that you can catch it all here.

Thursday sees the debuts of two half-hour dramas on ABC; first, it's Chopper One (8:00 p.m.), with Jim McMullan and Dirk Benedict playing cops in helicopters, and Ted Hartley as their boss. It's a formula good for 13 weeks. That's followed by Firehouse (8:30 p.m.), a modification of that formula, starring James Drury, Richard Jaeckel, and Michael Delano as L.A. firefighters; think Emergency! without the paramedic bit. It's also primed for a 13-week run. Better, I think, to go local with WKBG's airing of the political thriller Seven Days in May (8:00 p.m.), starring Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Frederic March, and Ava Gardner.

If you're looking for an alternative to The Duke on Friday night, you can return to ABC for the premiere of The Six Million Dollar Man as a weekly series (8:30 p.m.); formerly, it had been a rotating part of ABC's Movie of the Week, with three telemovies airing in 1973. And, speaking of roasts as we were a moment ago, the final season of Dean Martin's weekly variety series, now on Friday, is best known for the "Man of the Week" celebrity roast; this week, the honoree is baseball's Leo Durocher, with Maury Wills, Dizzy Dean, Bobby Riggs, Alex Karras, Gene Kelly, Chuck Connors, and Foster Brooks among the roasters (10:00 p.m., NBC). Gladys Knight and the Pips are the musical guests. Next season, the celebrity roasts will expand to a full hour and appear as occasional specials.

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The Woman's Lib movement is in full swing in 1974, and perhaps the most dramatic television example comes on Friday, when Boston's WBZ devotes the entire day—not just prime time, but 16 hours, from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., to a live special, Yes, We Can!, "entirely produced and staffed by women, with only women appearing on air, discussing women’s concerns." As you can see from the ad at the left, there's no topic off limits; it sounds much like the kinds of day-long seminars conducted nowadays, with main speakers, breakout sessions, vendors, demonstrations, and various activities from which attendees can pick and choose. A live variety show hosted by entertainment critic Pat Mitchell, featuring only female entertainers (including Helen Reddy and The Labelles) precedes the special at 10:00 p.m. on Thursday. 

It wasn't that long ago that we were marveling at ABC's Africa documentary that took up an entire prime-time in September, 1967, but that was only four hours, not an entire day. The only thing I can think of that compares to this is a telethon, but when you think of it, that's what this amounts to: a telethon raising not funds, but awareness. 

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Finally, to answer the question posed on the cover: why TV is having a crime wave. The answer, according to Paul Klein, is a simple one: it normally takes two years for a show to go from idea to treatment to script to sale. Two years ago, two of the big hits on television were Columbo and Cannon. Producers and networks took notice. And here we are today, with crime shows all over the place. There's more to it than that, of course, but why make things more complicated than they already are? 

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MST3K alert: The Human Duplicators (1964) Outer-space aliens pose as humans in their plan for conquest. George Nader, Barbara Nichols, George Macready, Richard Arlen, Huge Beaumont, Richard Kiel, Dolores Faith, Tommy Leonetti, Lonnie Satin. Good cast in a so-so sci-fi movie. (Saturday, 11:30 p.m., Channel 5) The description isn't exactly accurate; Richard Kiel plays an alien plotting to create android duplicates to use in the takeover of Earth. But the movie doesn't really matter; what you want to see is the second appearance of "Hugh Beaumont" (Michael J. Nelson), this time griping about how it's always "How's Beaver?" but never "How's Hugh." Worth the price of admission. TV  

This week in TV Guide: August 22, 1959

There's a little something for everyone this week, and there's no better place to begin than at the beginning, so let's go through the week a day at a time!

Saturday night football! The NFL preseason continues with a game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Chicago Cardinals from Austin, Texas (9:00 p.m. CT, ABC). The appeal of this game would have been obvious: Bobby Layne, the star quarterback of the Steelers, was a native of Texas and an all-time great at the University of Texas (which, of course, is in Austin), while John David Crow, star halfback of the Cardinals, had won the Heisman Trophy at Texas A&M. In these days before widespread coverage of pro football, when Texas didn’t have any professional football of its own, I imagine the chance to see two of Texas’ greatest football stars live and in person made for quite an event in Austin.

The Chicago Cardinals were nearing the end of their run as the second team in the Second City. Their history in Chicago dated back to 1920, but those years were spent mostly in futility and by 1959 the team had had only one winning season in the decade. There was no way the Cards could compete any longer with the Bears, and as the Bidwell family (which had owned the team since 1932) looked for options, a number of businessmen sought to buy the team and relocate it. Those attempts failed due to the family’s insistence on maintaining majority ownership of the team, and eventually the NFL allowed them to move the team to St. Louis.

Among those businessmen seeking (separately) to buy the Cardinals were Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams. When those efforts failed, they joined forces with others to form the American Football League, Hunt owning the Dallas Texans (which eventually moved to Kansas City) and Adams the Houston Oilers. I can’t help but wonder if the scheduling of this game was perhaps a trial run to test out the Texas market. In any event, by the next year the Lone Star State would have three professional teams: the Texans, the Oilers and the Dallas Cowboys. Of the three, only the Cowboys remain where they started.

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On Sunday afternoon at 4:30, Arkansas Senator J. William Fullbright* (listed in TV Guide as “James W.”, which is technically correct but not the way he was usually referred to) is the guest on CBS’s Face the Nation. I’ve frequently mentioned how sports was not always wall-to-wall on the weekends, and stations generally filled the time with public affairs and documentary programming. At various times this Sunday we have Open Hearings (hosted by ABC’s John Secondari), College News Conference, Victory at Sea, Conquest (a science program on CBS narrated by Eric Sevareid), NBC’s Meet the Press (with this week’s guest, Erwin D. Canham, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and editor of the Christian Science Monitor), The Twentieth Century (CBS), and Chet Huntley Reporting (NBC). Religious programming, such as This Is the Life, This Is the Answer and The Gospel in Art fill out the schedule, along with Quiz a Catholic, which I guess would be both religion and public affairs.

*Fun fact: Fulbright’s sister Roberta is the maternal grandmother of Fox pundit Tucker Carlson.

There is some sports on Sunday; both NBC and CBS have afternoon baseball (Red Sox vs. Indians on CBS, Orioles vs. Tigers on NBC), but the games are blacked out in the Twin Cities, as the Triple-A Minneapolis Millers are hosting the Kentucky Colonels. WCCO fills the time with more auto racing from Shakopee’s Raceway Park, a place that I visited several times during my youth (with the souvenier checkered flag to prove it.

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The American Legion is having its national convention in Minneapolis, and on Monday at 9:30 a.m., both Channels 4 and 9 offer coverage of the Legion’s parade, which is expected to last eight-to-ten hours, with 7500 marchers, floats and bands, and delegations from nine foreign countries. Channel 4, the CBS affiliate, breaks away from the coverage from time to time for local news, soaps, and game shows; Channel 9, the independent station, actually begins its broadcast day 2½ hours earlier than usual, and only breaks for an afternoon movie. Can you imagine a local station doing this now? A few years ago, when we were living in Minneapolis, the Legion returned to the city for its convention, and I can testify that the parade is very long and very colorful, though I don’t think it attracted the crowd it did in 1959.

One thing I really like about the listing for this is the reference to representatives from “the 49 states.” That’s right, we’re in that one-year period when Alaska’s achieved statehood, but not yet Hawaii. That we’re able to capture a reference like this in writing, from such a relatively short timeframe, is just a very cool cultural reference.

At 9:00 p.m., CBS’ Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse presents the story of famed gangster Al Capone in part one of the two-part “The Untouchables,” with Neville Brand as Capone and Robert Stack as Eliot Ness, the G-Man who helped bring Capone down. The show was a hit when it was originally broadcast in January, and in October it premieres as a weekly series on ABC, where it remains for four successful (and extremely violent) seasons.*

*Fun fact: Desi Arnez, whose Desilu studio produced The Untouchables, went to high school with Al Capone’s son.

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Tuesday features a David Brinkley report entitled “Back to School” (7:00 p.m., NBC), which takes advantage of the upcoming start of the school year to examine the problems faced by America’s public schools. Not surprisingly, they’re some of the same problems that exist today, particularly financial ones: crowded classrooms in New York, no money for school construction in New Orleans, no funds for facility maintenance in Los Angeles, and desegregation problems throughout the South. But if you look closely, you’ll notice something strange. Many of those challenges facing American school systems in 1959 are the result of overcrowding. New Orleans, Los Angeles, Oklahoma City, New York—all face a need for more school buildings to house additional students. The school I attended for grades K-6, built early in the 20th century, had temporary classrooms built to accommodate the growing student population. And that’s not happening today. The baby boom is over, and in many places the increase in student enrollment comes from immigration, from people moving to a community from another state or country. Some school systems may be looking at expansion, but in how many situations is this anything other than a zero-sum game, with enrollment increases in one area coming at the expense of another?

So many things have changed since 1959, but the decrease in population growth is one of the most significant, and I think one of the saddest, of all. Maybe Bishop Sheen’s program (7:30 p.m., KMSP) has some insight into what plagues us today. The topic: "Cure for Selfishness. To do great deeds we must supplant self with the Divine Will." But Bishop Sheen won't have much of a chance to say anything about it, not if the world of tonight's David Niven Show episode "The Last Room" comes to pass. (9:00 p.m., NBC) "In a totalitarian country where religious worship is a crime, a brutal inquisitor attempts to force prisoners to name the leaders of a group of citizens who are secretly attending church services." But that can't really happen here, not today. Can it?

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Wednesday: One of the more unique programs on television is Court of Last Resort (7:00 p.m., ABC), based on Erle Stanley Gardner’s organization, devoted to investigating cases in which reasonable doubt about the original verdict exists. Gardner, the creator of Perry Mason, started the actual Court of Last Resort in 1948 as a column in the popular magazine Argosy, and the program’s 26 episodes are based on actual cases investigated by the Court. The show ran for a single season in 1957-58 on NBC, and the broadcast in this week’s TV Guide is part of the series’ rebroadcast on ABC in 1958-59. Actors played the principles, but the real members of the Court appeared at the end of each episode.

Gardner believed that, because of "the exceptional nature of American liberty," no actual court could ever truly be a court of last resort; instead, that verdict could come only from "the people themselves." As opposed to today's organizations, which often work to free the unjustly convicted through DNA and other scientific findings, Gardner's cases were driven by polygraph tests, and augmented by findings from the Court's staff of investigators; the results would then be published in Argosy in hopes of creating a groundswell of public opinion. "Public opinion must be molded," he was once quoted as saying, "but it must be an enlightened public opinion based on facts, otherwise we would be charged, and justly charged, with the tactics of the rabble rousers."

One of the cases investigated by the real-life Court was that of the accused murderer Dr. Sam Sheppard in the late 1950s, with Gardner believing in Sheppard’s innocence even though nothing came of the Court’s investigation. Had The Fugitive existed in the same universe with Court of Last Resort, I suspect they would have investigated Dr. Kimble’s case as well. And isn’t that a meta conversation: a TV show about a fictional character from another TV show being aided by a fictional version of a real organization started by the creator of a different fictional character in an unrelated TV show. Makes your head spin, doesn’t it?

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Thursday: Now here’s the type of local programming you don’t see anymore: at 7:30 on WCCO, Operation Southdale presents a fashion show in the Garden Court of the famed Southdale Center in Edina, Minnesota – the nation's first enclosed shopping center, and a mall in which I've spent many, many hours over the decades. “For the men’s benefit,” an auto show is being held in the parking lot. And a musical group called the Jimarlen Trio provides background color for the show. For this, WCCO pre-empts a rerun of Yancy Derringer.

Later, Playhouse 90 (8:30 p.m., CBS) presents a curious drama, based on the true story of the first hydrogen bomb test. In “Nightmare at Ground Zero,” starring Barry Sullivan, the scientists behind the development of the bomb discover that they’ve made a few miscalculations, and that the bomb is really many times more destructive than they’d anticipated. Whoops!

On the face of it, this sounds like all the makings of one of those 50s sci-fi movies that wound up on MST3K. You know how it goes – the bomb goes off, much more powerful than they’d thought, with the result that people or insects or vegetation (or all three) are turned into mutants 50 feet tall. And it was written by Rod Serling. But it’s also directed by Franklin Schaffner, who would eventually win an Oscar for Patton, and the true story of the blast, which went off at 15 megatons rather than the expected five and vaporized three coral islands, in the process raining the fallout over a 7,000 square foot area , is remarkable.

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A big matchup for NBC’s Friday night fight on Gillette Cavalcade of Sports (9:00 p.m.), as Gene Fullmer faces Carmen Basillo for the world middleweight championship from the Cow Palace in San Francisco. I’ve written before about how boxing used to be a major sport on television, and Friday’s bout is one of two broadcast in prime-time this week (the other being ABC’s Wednesday Night Fights). But there’s one thing that never changes in boxing, and that’s politics. The reason Fullmer and Basillo are meeting for the title is because the National Boxing Association (which would have been the bigger “NBA” at the time), had stripped Sugar Ray Robinson of the title, leaving the top two contenders, each of whom had both won and lost title fights to Robinson in the past, to settle the score.


Fullmer wins on a 14th round TKO.

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On the cover this week is the cast of I've Got a Secret, the long-running panel show on CBS. Inside, we read about some of the wackier secrets that have involved members of the panel through the years. There was, for instance, the time that Paul Newman appeared on the show. His secret was that, a few weeks before, he had appeared at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, disguised as a hot dog vendor, and sold an unsuspecting Henry Morgan a hot dog. It was hilarious stuff; Morgan might not have recognized Newman, but some in the crowd did, and by the time Newman reached Morgan's row he had already sold $25 worth of hot dogs. Well, acting is an uncertain occupation.

Among the more mundane and intriguing secrets which people both ordinary and famous bring to I've Got a Secret, it has become increasingly popular to involve the panel in the stunts. Host Garry Moore once wrestled an alligator (and did pretty well at that), while Ernest Borgnine, taking lessons from Newman, dressed up as a taxi driver and drove panelist Jayne Meadows to the show. By consensus, the butt of most of these "secrets" is Morgan, the acclaimed satirist and humorist who manages the almost impossible feat of simultaneously being witty, urbane, and charming, all the while remaining vaguely unlikable. In addition to his encounter with Newman, he's also wrestled a female judo expert and spent an entire day entertaining three women, ages 10, 20 and 30, whose identical secrets were, "I want a date with Henry Morgan." Ah, but then, the name of the show is I've Got a Secret, not I've Got a Neurosis.

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She's not exactly a starlet, but this week's profile is Diana Lynn, who's personal trademark is that of a "shrinking tigress." You know, the "brave but frightened girl, torn by conflicting emotions." Says a director of her characters, "Diana either can't scream above a whisper or is murmuring 'I love you' at the top of her lungs." She's a hard worker who's spent 20 years in the business; "I had no training. All I had was a kind of desperate, honest quality" that's taken her from a Hollywood career in movies to New York where she's done live TV on the major dramatic series, hit Broadway with Maurice Evans, and recorded an album of piano music—her dad's a piano teacher in Los Angeles, and she was considered a prodigy.

The last couple of years she's concentrated on her family and community work, with most of her appearances coming on Playhouse 90 (she's starred in it five times). She enjoys her work, wants to keep working, but appreciates the good life she has as a wife and mother. Remarkably, when this article comes out she has only a dozen years to live; while getting ready to do the movie Play It as It Lays, she suffers a stroke and dies in December, 1971.

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Finally, on Monday night there’s this ad from Channel 4 for a “Girl Reporter.” A few weeks ago I referenced Barbara Walters’ role as the Today show’s “Today Girl,” so the term wasn’t terribly unusual; still, it’s another of those things that reminds the reader that they’re in a different place and time. Naturally, the Girl Reporter’s job is to cover the unveiling of CBS’ daytime television schedule.

I wonder who the winner was, and if she ever went into the media business? TV  

Philip Marlowe on the small screen

POWERS BOOTHE AS PHILIP MARLOWE, CIRCA 1983

Often, when I find myself looking for a little less heavy reading, I find myself catching up with one of my old friends on the bookshelf: Raymond Chandler.

Chandler's Philip Marlowe is, to my mind, the prototype of the private detective as we have come to see him, a knight both noble and tragic. And Chandler himself was not merely a great writer of detective fiction, he was a great writer, period. I've said in the past that I'd put Chandler up favorably against Fitzgerald any day; I found The Long Goodbye a far superior book to The Great Gatsby, among other literary classics I'm supposed to be impressed with.

Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer is another favorite of mine (as you can see, I tend not to go for genteel detective stories), but Hammer is a far rougher, more violent man than Marlowe. The writing is similar; Spillane is nowhere near the wordsmith Chandler is, but he can tell a cracking story. And perhaps that's why Mike Hammer has come through better on television than Philip Marlowe. So much of the appeal of Marlowe stories lies in Chandler's way with words, from his dingy description of Los Angeles to the utter futility that Marlowe sometimes experiences, and those are moments that simply can't be captured on screen. In fact, the most famous passage from Chandler's classic The Big Sleep, the concluding line that explains the title of the book (and is the only time the title is used in the manuscript) never appears in the most classic version of that story, the Bogart/Bacall movie.*

*It does, however, make an appearance in voiceover in Robert Mitchum's 1978 version. Mitchum makes for a compelling, older and tired Marlowe, but stick to his first of two Marlowe turns, 1975's Farewell, My Lovely.

Marlowe's made it as a regular on the small screen twice. The first time was a 1959-1960 series on ABC, starring Philip Carey. I liked what I've seen of it, although, as the always-reliable Wikipedia points out, the show wasn't very true to the character.  Check it out for yourself and see what you think.


The more successful version aired on HBO from 1983 to 1986, starring Powers Boothe in the title role. Booth did well; he certainly carried more weightines than Carey, although he very much lacks the charm of Bogart in The Big Sleep, or especially Dick Powell in Murder, My Sweet (the renamed Farewell, My Lovely).* It's difficult to picture Boothe playing chess or reading the classics, as Marlowe was known to do under the spell of Chandler's typewriter; actually, he might have been better cast as Mike Hammer. Still it's a significant upgrade in both style and substance from the previous effort.

*Powell would play Marlowe again on television a decade after Murder My Sweet, on the dramatic anthology series Climax! in 1954. Nobody seems to have a copy of it, though. Pity; his Marlowe is one of the very best.


I've written before of my disappointment that the private detective, once a staple of television, has pretty much disappeared from the airwaves. One of the reasons, I suspect, is that procedurals have become so completely reliant on technology, the type that goes far beyond wiretapping in its intrusiveness. Sure, private detectives can (and do) engage in this kind of work as well, and can be very effective doing it, but you have to admit it doesn't quite have the romance of the fog-shrouded, rain-slick streets, the lonely truthseeker with the brim of his fedora worn low and the collar of his trenchcoat pulled high to keep the chill away. After all, he's a knight, not a technician, remember? And as for the detective's traditional antagonism with the police force (every private eye had a frenemy in the department), just make him a rebel within the force itself; all the procedurals are full of quirkbots like that.* Heaven forbid he should show too much individualism, though. We don't seem to like that much.

*They don't come much quirkier than Elliot Gould's big-screen portrayal in The Long Goodbye, a reimagination that calls for much more space in a blog devoted to movies. Like this one.

Another reason might be that detective fiction seems to work best in a period atmosphere. One of the challenges with Stacy Keach's Mike Hammer series was that it tried to tell the story within a contemporary time period (a flaw inherent in James Garner's otherwise perceptive Marlowe, an adaptation of Chandler's The Little Sister), which merely solidified Hammer as a desperate anachronism, a character that was resolutely not of this time. To the extent that it worked, it was due to Keach's ability to see the anachronism, but the detective as we know him—the Marlowe prototype—seems to thrive more in the noir grime of the last century's first half.

At any rate, from Philip Marlowe to Jim Rockford, from Richard Diamond to Peter Gunn, from Darren McGavin's Hammer to Stacy Keach's, the private detective has been a welcome presence on television. In light of HBO's recent successes with both period and crime dramas, it might be a good idea for them to revisit Marlowe, or some of the other great literary detectives of the past. At any rate, let's hope there's a comeback one of these days, and that it's a little grittier than, say, Moonlighting or Remington Steele, hmm? TV  

The glamour of evil

I don’t know how I managed to remain unaware of this phenomenon for so long, but according to this story at The Ringer, a substantial number of female television viewers apparently think Ted Bundy is hot.

Just to be clear here, we're not talking about one of the Bundys from Married ... With Children. No, this is the Ted Bundy who confessed to killing 30 women (the final number could be higher) between 1974 and 1978, the Ted Bundy who was called "the very definition of heartless evil" by one of his own attorneys. Yeah, that Ted Bundy.

In truth, there's nothing new about this. There's a long history of glamorizing criminals, dating back to Robin Hood. Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Bonnie & Clyde, John Dillinger, Al Capone. Television's done its part, never hesitating to cast brooding antiheroes in dark roles. Clu Gullager played Billy the Kid in The Tall Man, Christopher Jones was Jesse in The Legend of Jesse James, and in Star Trek our heroes became the Clantons, et al taking on the Earps and Doc Holliday.* Of course, I'm guilty of this myself; how many times have I said that the writers of The Untouchables always gave Bruce Gordon's Frank Nitti the best lines? I love the way Gordon plays Nitti—he always steals the show out from under Robert Stack—but at the same time I don't think I'm mistaking Gordon for the real Frank Nitti, who was a pretty nasty customer, and not nearly as interesting as the fictional version.

*And those are just the real criminals; don't forget Tony Soprano and Walter White. 

I bring this up because of Bundy's reemergence in the cultural limelight, through the current Netflix series Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes and the upcoming movie Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, with Zac Efron as Bundy. Now, it's one thing if all these squealing females were conflating Efron with Bundy—that I could comprehend (although he doesn't do a thing for me), but look at the Twitter comments: he was hot, Ted Bundy was hot. Past tense. They know who they're talking about.

Much of Bundy’s appeal, the argument goes, is his ability to blend in with the rest of us; his so-called “hotness” derives from the fact that he looks exceptionally average. And that is where the unavoidable truth regarding the horror of his crimes come in. If you ask this debased pocket of the internet, Bundy’s acts do not negate his appeal—they enhance it.

Amelia Wedemeyer, the author of the Ringer article, makes the point that "his so-called 'hotness' derives from the fact that he looks exceptionally average. And that is where the unavoidable truth regarding the horror of his crimes come in. If you ask this debased pocket of the internet, Bundy’s acts do not negate his appeal—they enhance it." As one of her interviews put it, people love the forbidden. “Also, they understand Ted Bundy as an abstract fictional character, much like the lead of any other Netflix drama.”

This is where it all becomes problematic. Again, television has a long history of absconding with the truth of actual events and replacing them with the TV version; The Untouchables used to drive J. Edgar Hoover crazy, the way writers would credit Eliot Ness and his men with arrests that had actually been made by FBI agents. So this isn't anything new. That doesn't mean it's good, though. "Ted Bundy" may be an abstract fictional killer, but Serial Killer Ted Bundy was the real thing, and all of his victims, lest we forget, were female. Even Netflix purports to be concerned that viewers continue to bring up his hotness.

To the extent that this is cultural illiteracy, I'm not surprised; I recall reading something about a student who didn't know who President Eisenhower was; when he was told that, among other things, he was president of the United States in the '50s, he understood. We didn't get through World War II, he said. So maybe there are some people out there who really don't know who Ted Bundy was, and I'd like to think that these projects will educate people on a sordid part of history.

On the other hand, there's also a long record of people—mostly women, but not exclusively—who fall in love with imprisoned murderers, even when they know they're guilty. Bundy himself had a relationship with a female member of his last legal team. In that case, maybe the truth doesn't matter. And so we're left right back where we started.

In the end, what are you going to do? This kind of glamorizing predates television, and it'll probably keep going after our next means of mass entertainment appears. People are people, after all; who can predict what's going to push someone's buttons? I'd like to think, though, that it's not the kind of thing you'd boast about, especially on social media. Try explaining it in twenty years, when you're running for governor or something. These things never go away, you know. TV  

Around the dial

As is usually the case, we have a great assortment of pieces on classic television this week; some dealing with specific shows, others looking at the cultural implications thereof. They're all worth looking at, so let's get started.

A pair of interesting pieces from Terry Teachout, both of which hearken back to a time which both he and I are well-familiar. First, the deceptively-titled "In Praise of Drabness" looks back at the original Dragnet, why it was so revolutionary back then, and why it still holds up today. In "Putting Regional Theater on Television," he laments the absence of drama on television, and wonders if regional theaters could band together and tape various productions for TV, gaining more exposure for the legitimate theater. A very good idea, and it reminds me once again that this is what public broadcasting was supposed to do, before it sold out to the bottom line of ratings and became just another network.

Another Twilight Zone best-of list, this one from Phantom Empires, who's chosen some of the more thoughtful, meditative episodes as well as over-the-top classics. I always enjoy reading lists like these (compiled by people who know what they're writing about, as opposed to some of those lists), comparing them to choices I might make myself. And there is something about TZ that keeps people coming back to it all the time, isn't there?

The Land of Whatever offers something new: a pilot for a 1962 drama called Emergency Hospital. You might recognize it more by the name it eventually adopted, and under which it continues to this day: General Hospital. Looks a bit different from the finished product, or so I've been told.

Television's New Frontier: the 1960s takes an in-depth look at a series I've seen a few times, but just hasn't impressed me: Henry Fonda's western The Deputy, co-starring Allen Case (who was the title character and actually appeared more in the series than Fonda). The article makes the case that I probably should pay more attention to this series than I have, but I don't know if that's going to be enough to sway me. Maybe it would be different if I watched it from the beginning. Anyone else out there have an opinion?

A week or two ago, on one of the compilation videos posted at FredFlix, we saw a glimpse of a very young Annette Funicello, which reminded me of the great warmth and affection that people had for her right up to the time of her death, and how even today people feel a fondness toward her that quite surpasses most stars of that era. At Comfort TV, David reflects on his own affection for her, and why she seemed to strike that chord in so many people.

My lasting memory of Powers Boothe came during the 1980 Emmy Awards. The Screen Actors Guild was on strike at the time, and Boothe, the only actor to cross the picket lines, was one of the only winners to actually claim his award. When his name was announced, for his portrayal of the cult leader Jim Jones in Guyana Tragedy, everyone simply took it for granted that this would be yet another no-show, and it took a moment to register that this towering figure climbing the steps to the stage was, in fact, Boothe in person. It may not sound like much now, but it was actually quite a dramatic moment. Powers Boothe died this week at the age of 68; you can read about his career at Those Were the Days.

As befits a website called Television Obscurities, this week a look at Bill Dana's variety-talk show The Las Vegas Show, the one and only program ever aired on the ill-fated United Network, which lasted all of one month.

I don't want to overload you, so that should keep you until tomorrow. Stay tuned! TV  

Around the dial

This week offers a surprising number of links coming from non-classic TV sites, which is always good in the sense that you can't have too many people writing about it, even if they don't always show the kind of understanding of the genre we're used to seeing through our own blogs. And speaking of which, don't worry - you'll still find links to the best from our favorite sites. Let's get started!

Stephen Battaglio, author of the fine biography of David Susskind, has a nice piece in the Los Angeles Times about the DVD release of The Defenders, and helps place the series in its perper historical context. When the chapter is written explaining how TV's vast potential seemed to fade away, one hopes we'll find out how CBS, the Tiffany Network, was turned into the network of “broads, bosoms and fun” by James Aubery. Strike that; I'm not sure I want to know.

I've made reference in the past to the "big game voice" of the great sportscasters (mostly when writing their obituaries, alas), but the AV Club gives us some food for thought by discussing what makes a sports announcer great. A very good list; sometimes there's just that intangible - the timbre of a voice, the sense of the dramatic - that puts an announcer in that class. Many of the Premier League announcers, who are British, have it; as Jon Champion once said, "I was taught very early on that the picture is so powerful, you can’t hope to compete with it." On a related note, at The Ringer Bryan Curtis takes a closer look at one of those big-time voices, the retiring Verne Lundquist.

Also at The Ringer, it's an excerpt from the new book TV (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time, by Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz, which purports to give us the top ten American TV shows ever. I'm always leery of books like this, because they seem overly-slanted toward contemporary shows, which often contain the type of "innovative" storytelling that I don't think is always necessary to tell a good story. I do take some hope in the comments of the authors that they want to be able to shed some light on series that readers might not be familiar with, but I suspect that their top ten and mine aren't going to look much alike.

One of my favorite political thrillers is the novel Seven Days in May, which was made into a movie starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, directed by TV veteran John Frankenheimer, and with a screenplay by Rod Serling (often taking dialog verbatim from the book). Author John Kenneth Muir reflects on the movie, which according to me is something of a compromise; Serling jettisoned some of the book's soap opera elements, which was good, but also wrote a more traditional ending, featuring a showdown between Lancaster and Douglas, that loses some of the book's subtle observation on power and self-doubt. I also think that it's a bit of a stretch to suggest, as Muir does, that the story parallel's today's political scene as closely as he thinks.

At Comfort TV, David has a very, very good essay on "looking back vs. looking forward'; in other words, not just what classic television we watch but how we watch it. In particular, the "forward-looking" viewer "is content with the agendas that dictate how television shows are now put together. They’re pleased when CBS is chastised for scheduling too many shows about white men on this fall’s roster – and even happier when the network quickly goes into self-flagellation mode, desperately apologizing and vowing to do better. [...] Are the shows good or not? No mention of that." I can't do it justice in a paragraph - go read it. I'll wait.

If it's Friday, then that means Ken Levine is answering questions, and right off the bat the first one is especially apropos, given my participation in the recent panel discussion on sitcoms and a companion piece I'll have up this coming Wednesday: does the addition of streaming video channels increase the odds of getting better sitcoms?

The Hitchcock Project is back at bare-bones e-zine, with another look at a seventh season episode, this time the crime drama "The Big Score." Likewise, Lincoln X-ray Ida reviews the fourth season Adam-12 episode Truant, and British TV Detectives gives us the lowdown on the amateur-detective series Grantchester, and Cult TV Blog looks across the pond at the legendary Sesame Street, which seemed to the author to be coming from a foreign country - literally.

Finally, Classic TV Sports recalls the 1974 college football season, when ABC experimented with the idea of using active head coaches as guest analysts on its games. I must confess that, although I would have watched as much football as anyone at the time (given the limitations coming from living in the World's Worst Town™), I have no memory of this experiment. Did it work? What do you think?

Hope this worked for you, though. Come back tomorrow, we'll talk about an old TV Guide and a new televisions season. TV  

Around the dial

bare-bones e-zine continues "The Hitchcock Project," which is particularly enjoyable for me insofar as it is currently reviewing a series of episodes I've seen in the last few months. This week, it's the droll 1958 story "Fatal Figures," with the wonderful John McGiver in the lead role. Once you've read about it, you'll want to see it.

Speaking of Hitch, Christmas TV History takes us back to the 1955 Christmas episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "Santa Claus and the 10th Avenue Kid," with a terrific performance from the great Barry Fitzgerald, although it is sad to think that he embarked on a life of crime after apparently giving up the priesthood. (As the man says, "That's a joke, son.")

The Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland has a pictorial tribute to actor Ben Alexander on the occasion of his 105th birthday. He's best known as Officer Frank Smith, the quirky partner to Jack Webb's Joe Friday on the original Dragnet, but he had other acting gigs as well, and even hosted a game show. As good as it may have been, I'll always resent Felony Squad because, by appearing in it as a regular, it prevented Alexander from reuniting with Webb on the late '60s rebirth of Dragnet.

Carol Ford has an excerpt from Bob Crane's 1960 appearance on Del Moore's radio show at Vote For Bob Crane. One of the many good aspects of Carol's biography of Crane is that it reminds us of the impact he had in radio prior to starring in Hogan's Heroes, and this serves to give us an example of that radio talent at work, even as a guest.

Envisioning a parody of a parody is kind of like getting lost in an Escher drawing, but Cult TV Blog is able to pull it off with this look at these very funny (and very dirty) parodies of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. I wonder why nobody's thought to make a Man From S.T.U.D. movie series yet? It sounds as if it would have been right up Showtime's alley, back in the day. Now watch as someone tells me it's already been done...

British TV Detectives introduces us to another of the iconic characters that have populated shows like Masterpiece Mystery over the years, with this review of A Touch of Frost. I confess that this is one I've never checked out, though I'm certainly familiar with it. Perhaps I should give it a chance - that is, whenever I get the time.

I tend to like television episodes penned by the late Stephen J. Cannell, although I'll always remember him best for his over-the-top performances as Jackson Burley in Diagnosis: Murder.* Lincoln X-ray Ida takes us to one of those episodes, the lightly humorous Season 3 episode  "Post Time."

*I seldom ever watched that series, but always made time for it when Cannell was on.

At The Horn Section, Hal takes a look at the ultimate hip-cop series Get Christie Love! (and you have to love the exclamation point, don't you?) with the baddest lady cop of them all, Teresa Graves, in the episode "Highway to Murder."  Friends, if you find yourself on that road, take my advice and get off of it as soon as possible. Does guest star Clu Gulager play a psychotic? What do you think?

Finally, a reminder that if you liked the Movin' On interviews yesterday, head on over to their Facebook page as well as the link to their website, which you can find on the sidebar. TV  

This week in TV Guide: May 5, 1979

There's nothing particularly outstanding to focus on in this week's issue (which comes to us from the Phoenix metropolitan area), so we'll just do a little of this and a little of that.  Think of it as a night with friends where, instead of having a formal dinner with a main course, you decide to nosh on appetizers and finger food.  After all, as long as you have desert, it's all good, right?

***

We're just about to the end of the variety show era; in fact, there are only two on this week, both on Sunday night.  First is ABC's Osmond Family Show features Cathy Rigby and Johnny Dark, with a spotlight on "talented kids," including Adam Rich and Andrea McArdle.  Later that night, it's an episode of CBS' Mary Tyler Moore Hour, a kind of quasi variety hour-sitcom, with Nancy Walker as this week's guest.

If you're in the mood for such, I'm recommending two specials that should cover the bases.  First up is The Johnny Cash Spring Special on CBS Wednesday night, as Johnny and his wife June Carter Cash welcome the Carter Family, Waylon Jennings, George Jones, Earl Scruggs, Hank Williams Jr., and The Tennessee Three, among others.

On Friday night, NBC offers what is probably the best hour of the week, a two-hour retrospective on The Dean Martin Show, with highlights from the show's nine-season run.  It's hosted by Jimmy Stewart, Gene Kelly, Don Rickles, Orson Welles and Bob Newhart, and the clipfest includes appearances by Frank Sinatra, Red Skelton, Jack Benny, Johnny Carson, Gina Lollobrigida, Phil Silvers, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Victor Borge, Ella Fitzgerald, Gordon MacRae, Louis Armstrong and Lena Horne.  That's just a few of the names, but I think it's enough to give you a pretty good idea of what a great show Dean's series was, as well as how good this special must be.

***

I've mentioned before that Judith Crist's movie reviews are often more entertaining than the movies themselves, and this week is no exception.  She has good words for the blockbuster movie of the week, 1977's Rollercoaster, calling it "good unqueasy fun."  It doesn't hurt that the screenplay was by Levinson and Link, who created Columbo, among others.

Such is not the case for Irwin Allen's two-part disaster flick Hanging by a Thread, which she describes as "about three hours of endlessly attenuated movie in two two-hour slots."  Her conclusion: "The total and unspecial effect is of excruciating boredom."

She also has harsh words for Anatomy of a Seduction, the story of a 40-year old divorcee (Susan Flannery, "though it could be Lee Remick or Elizabeth Montgomery") having an affair with the 20-year old friend of her son (Jameson Parker).  Crist calls the movie "another in the series of recent dramatic defamations of mature women through lip service to the 'new' morality," and offers a comment that might well serve today as the epitaph of the feminist movement, noting that the moral of the story is that women have the "ability to be as irresponsible and lecherous as the next guy."

Her best comment, however, is on the 1975 Western Take a Hard Ride, starring former football players Jim Brown and Fred Williamson, and spaghetti Western icon Lee Van Cleef.  Says Crist, the movie "is written as if for a fifth-grade remedial reader and performed to match."  In her non-recommendation, she warns us that "You've been there before."  Presumably, we won't want to go back.

***

One movie that Crist does spare is CBS' The Wild Wild West Revisited, a 10-year reunion of Robert Conrad and Ross Martin reprising their roles as James West and Artemus Gordon from the classic '60s Western/fantasy series.

I always thought The Wild Wild West was a fun show, though I was far more impressed with Martin, the master of disguise, than Conrad, the show's "star."  However, the real gem of the series was Michael Dunn, the Oscar-nominated actor who stole the show in his recurring role as Dr. Miguelito Loveless, the megalomaniacal dwarf-villain bent on world domination.  Unfortunately, by the time of the movie, Dunn has died, and in his place we have Paul Williams as his son, determined to seek revenge on agents West and Gordon.  Without Dunn, the movie can't possibly match up to the series, but as Crist says, it's "good to look at and very much for those who liked the series."

***

Care for a little sports?

As was the case last week, this week's sports highlight is the 105th running of the Kentucky Derby.  Since that TV Guide last week, coverage of the race has morphed from CBS to ABC, and now Jim McKay is host of the show instead of Jack Whittaker.  The favorite going into the race is Spectacular Bid, and the Bid does in fact come through with a big win.  He goes one to win the Preakness as well, but his attempt to become the third successive Triple Crown winner will fall short when he finishes third to Coastal in the Belmont Stakes.

The NBA is in the midst of the playoffs, and CBS has double-header coverage on Sunday afternoon, as well as a game on Friday night - and therein lies another story, that of the status (or lack thereof) of the NBA on national television.  The Friday night game, between teams to be determined, will be shown at 10:30 MT on tape delay.  That's right, no live coverage - wouldn't want to preempt CBS' triumvirate of The Incredible Hulk, The Dukes of Hazzard and Dallas.  That would be hard to believe a few years later, when the NBA's moved to NBC and stars such as Magic Johnson and Larry Bird have made professional basketball the "it" sport on TV.  Nowadays, if you're talking about prime-time sports on TV you won't see it much on the networks, but that's because most sports have made the transition to cable, with the result that - if you have the right package - you can now see every single game of the NBA playoffs live on one channel or another.  What a difference.

***

This week's starlet report is on JoAnna Cameron, who has a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for having appeared in 105 TV commercials.  Advertisers, according to Ellen Torgerson's article, "have spent more than $100 million using JoAnna as the beauteous centerpiece of their commercials for cosmetics, shampoo, wine, beer, panty hose and breath freshener, among other things."

Yes, looking at the picture, I can understand that; she certainly has a face that can sell a product.  She's branched out into directing as well, and hopes someday to direct a feature film, in which she'd also star.

She has appeared in movies, albeit in small roles.  She was in How to Commit Marriage with Bob Hope, and did a TV movie called It Couldn't Happen to a Nicer Guy, as well as appearing in an episode of Columbo that same year, and as of this writing she's doing spots for the US Navy that run on ships.  She adds that she's turned down prime-time series that weren't "quite right," but her major claim to fame, to this day, remains her gig as Isis in the Saturday morning kids' program of the same name.  "It was only a minute part of my career," she says in the article, noting that "We shot it in two and a half months," but there's nothing in her CV that tops it.  According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, her career continued until 1980, at which time she transitioned to the home health care industry and then marketing for several hotels.  Not a hint of that upcoming change in this article.

***

Do any of you remember Scared Straight?  In the late '70s, it was quite the thing, winning the 1978 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.  Narrated by Peter Falk, the film gives a group of juvenile delinquents a look at their possible future by putting them in a three-hour conversation with convicts at Rahway State Prison in New Jersey.  The convicts attempt to scare the kids straight by stripping away the glamour and mystique of crime, and it's a brutal movie.

Scared Straight is airing on Thursday night at 9pm on KTAR, the NBC affiliate in Phoenix, with a viewer discretion advisory in the print ad, warning that "explicit and crude street language and graphic descriptions" will be present.   The aforementioned always-reliable Wikipedia notes that it was the first time words such as "fuck" and "shit" were broadcast on non-cable television.

I've always associated Scared Straight with the "tough love" method of crimefighting. I've wondered how effective it actually was.  I've no doubt that the students involved in the movie may well have been moved to change their behavior, but I think adults often think that these kinds of programs have a bigger impact than they do.  A 2013 study concluded that "programs like ‘Scared Straight’ are likely to have a harmful effect and increase delinquency relative to doing nothing at all to the same youths. Given these results, we cannot recommend this program as a crime prevention strategy. Agencies that permit such programs, however, must rigorously evaluate them not only to ensure that they are doing what they purport to do (prevent crime) – but at the very least they do not cause more harm than good to the very citizens they pledge to protect."

That sounds about right to me, unfortunately.  So Thursday's airing of Scared Straight is very much a product of late '70s thinking.  Very earnest, but perhaps not very effective.

***

This week's TV Teletype gives us a hint of things to come, with a note that producer Dan Curtis is starting work on ABC's adaptation of Herman Wouk's The Winds of War.  Curtis promises the miniseries will run for at least 12 hours, and will be an epic "played against the backdrop of the beginning of World War II."  No names are mentioned, but the finished product (running nearly 15 hours) was indeed an epic, starring Robert Mitchum, Ali McGraw, Polly Bergin, John Houseman, Topol, Ralph Bellamy, Peter Graves and many others, and spawning an even more massive sequel, War and Remembrance (also based on Wouk's book) that runs in 1988.

In TV Update, we learn that ABC has axed six series, including some with familiar names: Battlestar Galactica, Welcome Back, Kotter, What's Happening!!, Delta House, Makin' It and Starsky & Hutch.  Replacing these series are hoped-for hits The Associates, 240-Robert, Hart in San Francisco [which wound up with the title Nobody's Perfect], The Lazarus Syndrome, and a couple of series that did pay off as hits, Benson and Hart to Hart.  Well, I suppose a 33% success ration is nothing to complain about.

And this week's editorial notes that it's a fallacy that Americans watch TV for more than six hours a day."  In fact, the household television is on for more than six hours a day, but members of the household aren't all watching it at the same time.  Toddlers watch Captain Kangaroo, moms are glued to Phil Donahue, teens coming home from school hit the soaps and game shows, and then most of the family watches the news and prime-time programming.  (This also includes periods of time when the set is on and nobody's watching.)  The actual amount of television an individual watches per day: about two and a half hours.  Now that everyone has their own viewing device, and including the internet and video games, I wonder how many hours a day the average person spends in front of a glowing rectangle? TV