Around the dial

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Around the dial

This little guy's got his priorities right: his television set and his cat. It doesn't get much better than that. But if it did, you can bet one of these shows would be on the tube.

On the home front, in my latest apperance on Dan Schneider's Video Interview, Dan and I discuss the history of Westerns on television. On Tommy Kovac's Splat from the Past, Tommy and I talk about Christmas memories on television. And at Eventually Supertrain, Dan and I are all about Garrison's Gorillas (plus more great stuff).

At The Horn Section, Hal returns with another episode of Love That Bob!, "Bob's Economy Wave," with Bob trying to juggle a strict household budget, a photography assignment, and a hot date. Note the operative word: trying. 

I don't know how many of you have snow on the ground right now, but if you'd like to get rid of it, Gill has just the movie for you at RealWeegieMidget: Hollywood Wives, the steamy 1985 miniseries based on the novel by Jackie Collins, with a who's who of big-haired seductive sirens.

The Broadcasting Archives shares the background of how Karl Freund helped develop the three-camera system for filming TV shows, along with a couple of pictures from the I Love Lucy set showing the system at work.

At Comfort TV, David notes something that I've commented on many times: how so many of the issues raised in shows of the 1960s and '70s are still issues today, and (perhaps more important) why television doesn't seem to try to offer answers to those issues anymore.

John takes a break from his series on character actress Ann Wray at Cult TV Blog in order to look at a pair of mysteries: "Death in Ecstasy" from the 1964 anthology series Detective, and Don't Open 'Till Christmas, a 1984 slasher movie that's short on quality but rich in atmosphere.

Jodie has an interesting guest post at Garroway at Large from voiceover artist Ross Bagley, who recalls his encounter with Dave, and the influence he had on Ross's career. A charming story, and it helps emphasize what an interesting, curious man Dave Garroway was.

At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence writes on the 70th anniversary of the movie White Christmas. Now, White Christmas is far from being my favorite Christmas movie; you may remember it was the target of my annual Christmas post last year. Still, I can't imagine a Christmas without watching it!

Did someone say Christmas? Martin Grams has the lowdown on the Yuletide episode of Steve Canyon, the series based on Milton Caniff's comic strip, with a script written by Ray Bradbury. How was it? Read, and find out.

And at The Hits Just Keep On Comin', JB takes a look at Christmas music that doesn't work for him. A bit unusual, I know, but we cover everything here, and there are certainly enough Christmas albums I could add to the list. 

Shadow & Substance reminds us that, with the New Year less than two weeks away, Syfy is doing it's annual Twilight Zone marathon again, and Paul has the complete schedule for December 31, January 1, and January 2. What a great way to start the year. TV  

This week in TV Guide: May 4, 1974

Podunk, the dictionary tells us, is "An imaginary small town, taken as typical of placid dullness and lack of contact with the progress of the world."  Granted, that sounds to me a lot like the World's Worst Town™, except it's noted that this is a "humorous name," whereas my appellation is full of malice. Be that as it may, Neil Hickey, after listening to network executives talk about how the "gruel, treacle and drivel" often seen on television is "what Americans want" ("If they wanted quality, we'd give them quality.") decided to travel to Podunk to find out if this is so.

Podunk, in this case, is a village just outside of East Brookfield, Massachusetts. The name was made famous by George M. Cohan, who spent summers there with his relatives, and loved the area. (See, I told you it was different than the World's Worst.) About 100 people live in Podunk, and Hickey spent a few days moving among them, asking what they thought about television. Now, before we go any further, it should be noted that Podunk has no lack of stations from which to choose; they get six from Boston, two from Providence, and one each from Worcester, Hartford, and Manchester, so this should be a fair test.

John Treadwell, a farmer, isn't shy about what he thinks. "I'm too apt to fall to sleep when I watch the TV," he says. "Daytime TV is ghastly, anyway. Soap operas are for idiots. And the nighttime shows are all the same—police and crime." Overall, he says, "Not only is there no intellectual stimulation on television, but you get fat going to the refrigerator during all those commercials." Mr. and Mrs. Alva Silliman used to watch TV all the time, but don't anymore. "We liked Arthur Godfrey and Ed Sullivan, but they're not on any more," Mrs. Silliman says, and her husband chips in with a critique of reruns. "They must really be hard up for programs if they keep showing the same ones over and over." Mrs. Silliman is particularly concerned about the violence and sex on TV, and its effect on youth. "A lot of that stuff gets to your young folks. It's not good for them." As for the way women dress, "you can see women in low-cut dresses almost losing what they've got."

These are by no means unique opinions in Podunk. Says the Rev. Leslie Edwards, who divides his time between circuit preaching and house painting, "[T]here's no hunger in my heart to sit down and look at the kind of fiction they have on television." Mr. Joe Perry, superintendent of streets and tax collector, is partial to John Wayne movies, but otherwise says of TV, "They can throw it away." Like the others, he's concerned about violence, but more disturbed by increasing sexual content. "You don't have to push in front of them. They're shown a picture before they even learn the words. Maybe it's just the way I was brought up." He's also irritated by the patronizing manner of network newscasters. "Anybody who gives the news to the public should just tell us what's going on and let us make up our own minds. They seem to believe that the public doesn't have enough intelligence to think for themselves." Mr. Fred McCrillis underscores a point that we'll return to later: "I think the quality of TV has gone down, like the quality of movies. And that's too bad because television comes right into your home."

And so it goes on. "Of the several score interviewees," Hickey says, "none was unrestrainedly pleased with the quality of television entertainment." And, it should be noted, Podunkians are "articulate, opinionated and well-informed." They also understand that there's more to life than television. Mrs. Silliman mentions the beauty of the area, especially in the fall; the majestic stand of red spruce and oak trees visible from the Silliman home means "you can look out that window and see all the color you need. We don't need TV." And although I'm inclined to disagree when Mr. McCrillis says that there's "so much more to an evening than television," it's a point well taken.

Podunk, as a recognized geographical area, no longer exists, swallowed up by East Brookfield, but it was real, as were the opinions expressed by the citizens who, according to the suits in the corporate offices, "don't care about quality television," But then, as now, it's so easy for those on the coasts to overlook the rest of America. Isn't it?

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Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever we get the chance, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the series of the era. 

"If we can have 4,003 shows about the police," Cleveland Amory writes, "will we say nay to just one about fireman?" The show in question is not, as you may think, Emergency!, but ABC's Firehouse, starring James Drury, Richard Jaeckel, and Michael Delano. And, says Cleve, Firehouse is better than most of those 4,003 police shows. For one thing, they actually try to develop relationships between the characters, rather than having them play second fiddle to various disasters. "Of course, these relationships aren't particularly interesting, but no matter. The point is, they're there." The characters aren't very well developed either, but the series compensates by giving us five leads.

So much for the good news. "The basic trouble is that Firehouse is so pat that it's not only almost unbelievable, it is unbelievable." You're guaranteed at least one little fire and one big fire in every episode, and you're not guaranteed that either one of them will be interesting. For example, one week we start with a small fire at the shop of a poor seamstress, followed by a big fire that destroyed the studio of a top designer, portrayed by guest star Rudi Gernreich (playing himself). Everything's been destroyed; not to worry, though; he's just glad nobody got hurt. "'How can I ever find a way to express my gratitude?', he reads off the cue card. 'I think there's a way,' one of the firemen tells him. 'There's a seamstress who needs a good job.' Our heart went pit-pat." See what I mean? In another episode, J. Pat O'Malley plays an old man who won't abandon his fire-threatened collection of old movies. The episode's guest star goes in to get him. "It shows kindness," he tells her as the flames threaten them both, "and thoughtfulness." Apparently kindness and thoughtfulness extends to putting someone's life at risk.

I think that almost all kids are fascinated by fire engines and firemen, or at least they were when I was a kid. I was always impressed by the class trip to the fire station, which struck me as an enormously impressive place full of trucks, ladders, hoses, and other equipment. And that, says Amory, is the problem with Firehouse: "it fails utterly to capture the lure of the firehouse." It could use some old-timers, talking about what it was like fighting a fire without today's modern equipment; the show is "so with-it that it's without anything else." Worst of all, for animal-lover Amory: no Dalmatian. Couldn't they at least have that, for Pete's sake?

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Not only do we have NBC's The Midnight Special and ABC's In Concert this week, there's also the syndicated Don Kirshner's Rock Concert. Not only that, we've got two different versions of Kirshner! Let's see who's better, who's best.

Kirshner I: The Allman Brothers Band joins Wet Willie, the Marshall Tucker Band and Martin Mull.

Kirschner II: Guests include Ike and Tina Turner, Redbone, and Michael Stanley.

Midnight Special: Comedian George Carlin is the host. Guests include Buffy St. Marie, Waylon Jennings, Livingston Taylor, the Dramatics, Leo Sayer, and Puzzle.

In Concert: The first of four programs taped at "California Jam" April 6. Acts include Emerson, Lake and Palmer; Deep Purple; Eagles; Seals and Crofts; Rare Earth; Black Oak Arkansas; Earth, Wind and Fire and Black Sabbath.

It's hard to compare this week's shows; three music shows in a studio vs. a concert held before 200,000 fans at Ontario Motor Speedway in California. I'm going to throw Midnight Special and Kirshner II (Saturday, 11:15 p.m., KOVR in Sacramento) out right away, leaving us with Kirshner I (Saturday, 11:00 p.m., KRCR in Redding) and In Concert. Kirshner I has a higher percentage of stars, but In Concert has a larger number. What to do, what to do. Watch 'em both, of course! This week is a Push.

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It's that time of year when the networks start to discuss the new fall season, and I hope you aren't too comfortable with what you've been watching, because you're in for a big change this fall. Richard K. Doan headlines the story "Massive Changes," which is a pretty good way to describe a new season that will include 30 new series. And to make way for those new series? As I often say in the Monday listings, see if you can find your favorites from among the soon-to-be canceled:

CBS: Dirty Sally, Hawkins, Shaft, Here's Lucy, The New Dick Van Dyke Show, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, The CBS Tuesday Night Movie.

NBC: Hec Ramsey, The Magician, Banacek, The Snoop Sisters, Tenafly, Faraday and Company, Chase, The Flip Wilson Show, The Dean Martin Comedy World, The Brian Keith Show, Lotsa Luck, The Girl with Something Extra, Music Country U.S.A., NBC Wednesday Night at the Movies.

ABC: The FBI, Owen Marshall, The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Toma, Doc Elliot, The Cowboys, Chopper One, Firehouse, ABC Suspense Movie.

Some pretty big-name, long-running shows included in that list, aren't there? We'll see some familiar names in the list of replacements, as well. For example, NBC is offering Little House on the Prairie, The Rockford Files, Lucas Tanner, Movin' On (which is still known as In Tandem at this point), Petrocelli, Chico and the Man, and Police Woman ("possibly with Elizabeth Ashley," and how different would the series have been if that had happened?); CBS boasts Rhoda, Planet of the Apes, and Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers; and ABC introduces Harry O, The New Land, Get Christy Love!, Kolchak—The Night Stalker, Paper Moon, The Sonny Comedy Revue, and That's My Mama. Some of them are major hits, some barely more familiar than the shows they replaced, and some (The Love Nest, starring Florida Friebus and Charles Lane) never make it to the schedule.

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The highlight of the week in sports has to be the landmark 100th running of the Kentucky Derby, live from Churchill Downs in Louisville. (2:00 p.m. PT, CBS) The centennial Run for the Roses will feature the largest field in history (23 horses) and a then-record crowd of over 160,000, and when it's all over, the winner is a horse that doesn't really go down in history: Cannonade, who goes on to finish third in both the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes.

We're also seeing the climax of the winter sports playoff schedule in both basketball and hockey. Yes, I know it's only May 4, and nowadays each sport goes on for at least six more weeks, but trust me when I say things were different then. (You should, by now; I've said it often enough.) On Sunday, Milwaukee takes on Boston in Game 4 of the NBA finals (11:30 a.m., CBS), while Philadelphia hosts the New York Rangers in the seventh game of the NHL's Eastern Division finals (1:00 p.m., NBC) The Bucks defeat the Celtics 97-89 to even up their series at two games apiece, while the Flyers defeat the Rangers, 4-3, to advance to the Stanley Cup final against the Boston Bruins.

Our handy programming note informs us that CBS plans to telecast Games 5 and 6 on Tuesday and Friday, if necessary—and they are necessary, especially the magnificent Game 6 in Boston, where the lead changes hands three times in the final 24 seconds of the second overtime before Milwaukee pulls it out, 102-101 to force Game 7 (which Boston wins). The American Basketball Association also makes prime time this week, with the Utah Stars facing the New York Nets in the second game of the finals (7:00 p.m., KTXL on a tape delay). The Nets, behind the incomparable Julius Erving, take a 118-94 victory on the way to a five-game triumph and their first ABA title. Meanwhile, although we're advised that NBC may broadcast a Cup final game in prime time, they don't; we'll have to wait for Game 3 next Sunday. Then as now, hockey winds up playing second fiddle.

And some notable programming this week: Monday at 11:30 a.m. on ABC, it's the premiere of Dick Clark's The $10,000 Pyramid, an enduring game show that continues in various formats, right up to this day; if you want to win some kind of bet, Anne Meara and Soupy Sales are the inaugural celebrity guests. On Monday night, Peter Graves stars as Ross Macdonald's private eye Lew Archer in The Underground Man (9:00 p.m., NBC); the character is probably better-known to the moviegoing public as "Harper," played by Paul Newman in a pair of quality big-screen movies. Opposite that, it's America's Junior Miss Pageant (9:00 p.m., CBS), hosted by Michael Landon. The winner, Karen Morris*, goes on to play Dr. Faith Coleridge Desmond (one of many actresses to do so) on Ryan's Hope; the organization, which still exists, is now known as the Distinguished Young Women organization.

*Fun fact: Karen Morris is married to the son of announcing great Curt Gowdy, who in 1974 is celebrating his 25th anniversary as a sportscaster.

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Judith Crist leads off her column with a a review that's more like a commentary. Here it is; then we'll talk about it.

For a quickie course in what happened to a certain kind of movie, to American morality and to director John Huston over a 30-year period, refresh your memory of Huston's 1941 The Maltese Falcon and then compare it with his 1970 The Kremlin Letter, the one theatrical prime-time premiere of this network-movie week. It's all there in this film based on Noel Behn's thriller: the complete dehumanization of the private agent, the super-coldness of the spy, the replacement of human relations by physical violence and/or sexual activity, the obfuscation of individual responsibility with tired mouthings of amorality, the substitution of banality for logic, and the assumption that if we're presented with enough "names," enough glossy location shooting and enough glimpses of oo-naughty! glamour (all of which may not survive to the small screen), we are going to accept the whole dumb mess as entertainment. Are you?

I don't think she liked it, do you? More than that, though, Crist hits upon something that plagues television—and all entertainment, for that matter. Call it cynicism, nihilism, what have you, but Crist nails it with her repeated emphasis on the lack of humanity. (Of course, one of the other problems is that Crist proceeds from the assumption that qualities such as logic, individual responsibility, and human relations are actually good, and there'd be people today who disagree with that.)

The other night, as we were watching The Eleventh Hour, my wife commented on how the psychological drama is a metaphor for what we're going through now. One of the keys to this series is that, as the doctors look to get at the heart of their patients' problems, they have hope that their treatment will succeed, that, even if the patient isn't cured, he or she will at least be able to enjoy a vastly improved quality of life. This particular episode ("Angie, You Made My Heart Stop") ends uncertainly; as Angie is to begin her therapy, the doctors are confident she'll recover, but there are no guarantees, and we aren't around to see how it all turns out. Differentiate that hope, cautious though it may be, with the darkness that pervades some of the top dramas on TV today—as, in fact, it does with contemporary society in general. We have as many antiheroes as heroes, "realism" takes precedence over all, and we use terms such as "gritty" to describe situations that often reek with the qualities I mentioned above: cynicism, nihilism, brutality and inhumanity. Meanwhile, reality television often puts our least admirable qualities on display for all to see—greed, materialism, selfishness, lust, self-centeredness, and stupidity—and participants, far from being embarrassed or ashamed, glory in the attention (and the financial compensation).

I'm trying not to paint all of today's television with a broad brush; there are plenty of shows that offer more positive outlooks, even inspiring ones. But as the Podunk article shows, there's plenty of concern about the content of television in 1974, of what could be seen as a collapse of traditional values in favor of more explicit portrayals of sex, violence, and drugs, along with news bias. Too often, people who talk about the "new" Golden Age of Television miss one point, something I find essential. The television of today might be just as dramatic, just as powerful, as those of yesteryear. But back then it was permissible to believe in hope. Today, far too often, they don't believe in anything. TV  

Divided we watch

I've tried, but I can't remember the last time I watched Monday Night Football. I'm pretty sure this is not due to early-onset dementia, but instead because it's been so long—at least the early 1990s, I'd guess, although I seem to recall watching the end of one about a decade ago when I had a head cold and couldn't lie down. So obviously I didn't see this past Monday's season opener, but plenty of people did, and they had plenty to say about what they saw.

What they saw, among other things, was a down-and-distance graphic that, according to The Ringer's Danny Heifetz, was an attempt to fix something that wasn't broken. At first glance, you wouldn't think that something as simple as down-and-distance could cause much controversy, unless it was telling you that your team had 3rd down and 49 yards to go. Because that's what it is: a simple graphic that tells you what down it is, and how many yards for a first down. As I said, simple—right?

Not for the graphics department at ESPN, apparently. On Monday night's game, the network inaugurated a new down marker, one that caused football fans, used to having to dealing with massive amounts of graphic information at a glance—not just down and distance, but score, game clock time, play clock time, and first down line—all without losing track of what's happening on the field. And for the first half of Monday night's game, that new down graphic caused massive amounts of reactive confusion, because, with its black lettering against a yellow background, it looked too much like the universal graphic for a penalty.* Fans have been conditioned by years of viewing to see a flash of yellow and immediately think, "Penalty!" And now they were seeing it on every play!

*Except in Canada, where penalty flags are red. They also have a 55-yard line, and spell "center" with an -re, but that's another matter.

To the network's credit, it only took one half of online ridicule to rectify the situation. By the start of the second half, a new graphic had been born:

It's a little thing, really, which makes one wonder why ESPN felt the need to fool around with it at all. As Heifetz says, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And it does speak to a rare instance where a large corporation (or network) responds instantly to a potential faux pas, rather than stubbornly refusing to admit a mistake.

But this isn't really about football, as you might expect by virtue of me writing about it; there's a larger point to be made, and Heifetz makes it at the end of his article, when he mentions, in the course of discussing the "graphics arms race" that technology has made possible, how "Amazon experimented with allowing Prime users to choose between two sets of announcers for Thursday Night Football last year." This isn't anything new for the sports fan; viewers watching the NCAA basketball finals can choose from three different sets of announcers (each team's announcers, plus those of the network), and ESPN+ frequently allows a similar choice of team broadcasts for its weekday baseball games. And during the heyday of Monday Night Football, back when Howard Cosell was one of the announcers, fans (like me) regularly turned down the sound and listened to Jack Buck and Hank Stram on the radio.

And there's nothing wrong with that; I frequently wish I could choose a different set of announcers when I'm watching a good game being spoiled by bad announcers. There is, however, an unintended consequence, to which Heifetz alludes in his conclusion: "Something we take for granted—having the same viewing experience with the millions watching a sports game—may go away. Let’s enjoy the time we can all complain about the same thing while we still can." Yes, it's the end of the shared experience.

Since conveniences like DVRs, streaming video, and social media and habits like binge viewing have pretty much allowed us all to become our own programming directors, there's been a loose consensus that sports and breaking news represent the last best hope for a communal, talk-about-it-around-the-water-cooler-tomorrow viewing experience. Now, we're faced with the possibility that the more enjoyable of those two types may be going away.  And before you accuse me of reading too much into this (and if you haven't, just play along), let me explain why the loss of sports as a truly shared experience would serve as a microcosm of today's social problems.

What happens when Arsenal and Tottenham fans
don't see eye to eye.

Suppose I'm watching a Premier League showdown between Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur, and somehow I'm able to do so while listening to an Arsenal broadcast. Across town, my friend Sooj is doing the same thing, only he's listening to the Tottenham announcers. In the final minute of injury time, with the score tied, Arsenal's Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang goes down in the box after coming in contact with Tottenham's Jan Vertonghen. The referee calls a penalty, which Aubameyang converts to win the match for the Gunners. Naturally, Arsenal's announcers think the call was spot on, and after listening to them analyze the replay, I can see that they're right. Meanwhile, the Spurs announcers think their team was robbed, and after listening to their analysis, Sooj becomes equally convinced that the call was terrible. Have we shared the same experience? Have we, in fact, even seen the same match? Fans of opposing teams have always argued over controversies of one kind or another; it's the nature of sports. They've also frequently been at odds with the announcers, convinced that they're biased in favor of the other team; that's the nature of fandom. But in this case, we're not relying just on our own passions; we're basing our opinions, at least in part, on what we're hearing from the broadcast booth.

Now, let's suppose that instead of soccer, we're watching a political speech. One of us sees it on MSNBC, the other on Fox. After the speech, we're equally convinced of what we heard, even though our opinions may be diametrically opposed to each other. And we wonder, so opposite are our reactions: did we even hear the same speech? In fact, our biases, whatever they might be, are so reinforced, so justified, by the commentary on our chosen media outlet, that for all practical purposes we haven't listened to the same speech. See what I mean? Again, this is nothing new. We've had partisan analysis of the news for as long as newspapers have existed. But in our currently fragmented and inflamed state, when each of us is living on the equivalent of a desert island filtering out whatever we disagree with, the last thing we need is another source of confirmation bias, another opportunity to be divided rather than united.

This is not to put too fine a point on things. I doubt that the effects of tailor-made sports broadcasting are going to be quite that catastrophic. Nonetheless, I've gotten to the point in life where individuality goes only so far; it would be nice, at least once in a while, for all of us to start out on the same page. And when sports becomes less of a shared experience and more of an occasion for social media warfare, when we filter the outcome through a lens that accepts no derivation from the party (or team) line, when we can use the gospel truth as parroted by our favorite commentators to make our point that it has to be this way, then we've well and truly lost one more thing that once brought us together and now drives us apart.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that. It's a loss we can ill-afford in this day and age. TV  

The end of an era—in more ways than one

If it were a secret, it would be the world’s worst-kept. Game of Thrones is back.

If you’ve never heard of Game of Thrones, then one can only conclude that you’ve spent too much time, well, on the throne—the porcelain kind, that is. Now, that’s not the same thing as never having seen it—I’ve never seen a second of it myself, and that’s only partially because I don’t have HBO and haven’t had any incentive to get it. Mostly it’s because the show just doesn’t grab me. Lord of the Rings, with its Christian allegory embedded in the books (less so in the movies), was a horse of a different color; Game of Thrones, on the other hand, strikes me as just too much—too much legend, too much scope, too much time required, too much violence, too much incest, too much everything.

It’s the very universality of Game of Thrones that was the subject of Alyssa Bereznak’s article last week at The Ringer, “How ‘Game of Thrones’ Became the Last Piece of the Monoculture,” which asks the question: does the upcoming end of Game of Thrones also represent the end of the shared cultural experience?

For those who hang out in the virtual water cooler part of the Internet, there’s very little else that’s being talked about. In fact, if this season disappoints somehow, I’ve no doubt that there will be those calling on Robert Mueller to launch an investigation, thereby combining the internet’s too most recent obsessions. (It’s a good thing Meghan Markle was never on the show, otherwise the internet might well and truly break, and it would probably be a good thing.) Talk of the series’ final season is everywhere—The Ringer, for instance, which posts at least a couple of new stories each day, but also just about every other place on the internet. In fact, you’d have to make a conscious effort to avoid it. I’ve read enough about it, in my role as cultural archaeologist, to get the gist of what’s going on; it should help me, in a television sense, to keep up with the stories that will follow.

But what I find interesting about this—and I promise I’ll keep this short, no longer than a novella—is the irony of it all. Thanks to what Bereznak calls “entire online ecosystems,” made possible by “a media environment that thrives on obsessive fandom,” Game of Thrones has become the “de facto water cooler topic of the decade.” Yet, as she points out, it’s this very technology that makes it unlikely any other show—or possibly event, short of war—will ever come along again. The internet that helped birth Game of Thrones has, in a sense, moved beyond it, creating “a hyperactive attention economy that has revolutionized both the content people consume and how they consume it.” Using the data mined from viewership numbers and shaped by algorithms, the result is “shows that are far more fractured and niche.”

I started this off by mentioning how unlikely it would be to run across anyone who wasn’t aware of Game of Thrones—I have no doubt that somewhere in the middle of the rain forests of the Congo, there was a viewing party riveted to last weekend’s events—but it would be good to put things in a bit of perspective. The numbers that the program pulls in are modest when compared, say, to the ratings for The Beverly Hillbillies back in the mid ‘60s, and it isn’t as if we haven’t had this kind of excitement and anticipation over a television series before: look at the “Who Shot J.R.?” era of Dallas, for example.

But those came in a different era, when there were only three broadcast networks and the culture was more homogeneous than it is today. In what might be the understatement of all time, things have changed since then. Without trying to get too depressing, it’s probably safe to say that there is no common, shared culture in America anymore. As perhaps befits a country that’s always treasured the rights of the individual, we’ve become a nation of individuals—we’ve ditched radio in favor of our own downloaded playlists, we increasingly cut the cord and program our own television networks, we fractionalize our politics into smaller, more bitter factions with nothing in common.

It’s been held for some time now that only the Super Bowl continues to bring America together in a shared experience, all of us (metaphorically speaking) engaged in the same activity at the same time. Other things have the capacity to do that; 9/11, for instance. But very few pleasant things fit that description, and the more we fragment, the more we’re instructed by social media as to what is and isn’t permissible to be found pleasant, the fewer things we’ll find to celebrate. A while back, David Hofstede wrote a piece in which he discussed the number of television programs that slip under the radar simply because there are too many of them to keep track of, being made by too many different studios. (There’s that too much meme again.) Can television fit the definition of entertainment if there’s nobody aware of it, nobody watching it?

So the world congregates to celebrate the beginning of the end to a series that technology helped to build into a monocultural event, at a time when technology is doing everything possible to prevent that from ever happening again. That is ironic, isn’t it? And it would have made a great topic for an ABC Movie of the Week back in the day, a cautionary tale of artificial intelligence being used to tear apart the fabric of communal society. It probably would have gotten big ratings back then, too. Thing is, it would never get an audience today.  TV  

Lenny Bruce introduces us to the 1960s

LENNY BRUCE UNDER ARREST—AGAIN

Happy New Year, kids! Today we're kicking off 2019 with this clip of Lenny Bruce appearing on Steve Allen's show, April 5, 1959—one of only six appearances that Bruce ever made on network television.

I know that there was already a counterculture in the 1950s; Bruce himself was one of its leading lights. But he paved the way for this new brand of comedy—edgy, political, topical, willing to take on sacred cows and taboo subjects—to become a dominant force n the cultural earthquake of the 1960s. (His numerous arrests for obscenity also fit right in.) You can almost feel the tension present in 1959; the established mores of the postwar era trying desperately to hold on against the gathering storm coming from a new generation with a new take on life. The pressure would become unbearable before the dam finally burst, creating a permanent change in our way of life.


Did you catch Bruce's remark about sticking to the script? Yes, such was his reputation that he did have to submit his routine in advance. I can only imagine how even straying slightly from that script must have made the network S&P people very nervous.

As is so often the case, much of Bruce's material seems tame today in light of the hyperpoliticized comedy that seems to be the rule in modern entertainment. But right or wrong, everything has to start somewhere, or with someone.  TV  

Around the dial

Well, it's the final spin around the dial for 2018, and this seems to be an appropriate time to look at David's latest at Comfort TV, in which he reflects on "things you can only see on classic TV." For example, pay phones and phone boots. It's certainly evocative for me, since I fit into that demographic that remembers when things like this were real. Another example of how the cultural archaeologist has to consider classic TV when trying to understand the past.

Speaking of evocative, at Garroway at Large Jodie shares with us something that Dave Garroway's daughter Paris shared with her: a card that her father liked to send out. So simple and yet, as Jodie says, so appropriate to this time of the year.

The Broadcast Archives at the University of Maryland shows us a title slide that used to be a staple of local stations everywhere: the late show. I suppose in most ways watching movies on television is better now than it was then, with the movies now generally shown uncut and without commercial interruption. And yet there was just something charming about those times, back when late night TV meant more than infomercials and talk show hosts who barely know how to keep up a conversation.

"Maverick Mondays" have returned to The Horn Section, and this week Hal looks at "The Maverick Line," a tale that stars both James Garner and Jack Kelly, and features a typically fanciful story that includes characters such as Atherton Flaygur, Rumsey Plumb and Shotgun Sparks. Ah, as Mason Adams would say, with names like that it has to be good.

I suspect that at least one of you caught part of the A Christmas Story marathons running on TBS and TNT on Christmas, but how many of you are familiar with director Bob Clark's other Christmas movie? At The Last Drive In, read about Black Christmas, a very different Yuletide story.

Winter is the perfect time for the Rock Hudson-helmed flick Avalanche, described by The Official Razzie Movie Guide as one of the "100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made." Find out what makes it bad—and what makes it enjoyable—by reading Rick's review at Classic Film and TV Café.

At Television Obscurities, it's your turn to share your memories of color TV. I still remember my first encounter with color television, other than that in the homes of friends. It was in my grandparents' apartment, which was fortunately just downstairs from ours, and I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen, even though it gave me a headache the first time I watched a football game on it. (Vikings vs. Bears at Wrigley Field.) Back then it was great that technology could still surprise and please.

Television's New Frontier: the 1960s turns the spotlight on Leave it to Beaver, the series that—contrary to those who scoff at the world of classic TV—"demonstrated a remarkable true-to-life depiction of children's perspective on growing up," It's never been a favorite of mine, but I've never ridiculed anyone who loves it, nor would I.

Finally, because it's Christmas, I thought I'd include this link from Silver Screen to a 1963 film from British Pathé entitled "Christmas is for All." a look at London's Christmas light displays. Did they do this in the big city when you were growing up? They sure did in Minneapolis, back when I was growing up. They still do it in some of the smaller cities and towns around the country. It still pains me that cities like Minneapolis don't do it anymore. Are they afraid of offending people, or is the budget just not there anymore? Either way, I hate things that change when they don't have to, don't you? TV  

This week in TV Guide: November 14, 1964

We had high hopes that "The Man Women Love to Hate" would be someone we recognized, someone notorious, the kind of villain that television can be so good at creating and perpetuating. Imagine our disappointment, then, to find out that the hated man in question is nothing more than a local television personality and newspaper columnist, "Count Marco," although it must be said that, in the great tradition of wrestling heavies, for example, Count Marco comes by his hated status honestly. What more can one say about a man whose rise to prominence has come from referring to women as "slobs, pigs and cattle."

The Count hosts his own half-hour morning show, five days a week, on WGO in San Francisco and KABC in Los Angeles. It's a live show; viewers can call in with questions for Marco and.or his guests. What gets to people (mostly women, given that the show airs at 8:30 a.m.), I'd guess, is the self-assuredness with which Marco handles himself. "If I say it, it must be so," is one of his catchphrases, and he's often heard telling women that they should be shining their husbands' shoes. "For some reason this represents slavery to women," he says when asked about the ire his statement raises. Of course, there have always been chauvinists on television, and they often generate ratings because of their very outrageousness, but it's also a sign of the times when an unidentified woman says, in response to the Count's antics, "Sure he's right, but we hate him for drumming it into us."

We also learn, from the Count, that "fat dames look lousy" in slacks, that women who appear in public with rollers in their hair* "should be arrested and held without bail," and that divorce "is always the fault of the ex-wife." Wince-inducing to our modern ears, and although I'm always cautioning people to read statements not based on today's mores but on those of the time, even then these weren't exactly universal sentiments.

*You youngsters can Google that if you're not sure what that means.

In the midst of Robert De Roos' article, we learn that the Count (real name: Marco Spinelli) is not from Italy, but Pittsburgh; that he is "scared stiff" most of the time, especially when women chase and attack him on the streets, that he was once married but is now a widower, and that one of his latest products is a "fanny paddle" so one can slap women on the fanny. He's also planning a "Pig of the Month" contest, "in which a picture of a woman in slacks, taken from the rear, will be displayed each day. Viewers will then vote for Pig of the Month. She will be awarded a ham. If she identifies herself."

The tone of the article is light, breezy, making it obvious that this is all in good fun even if the author doesn't necessarily approve of the Count's antics (De Roos keeps himself fairly objective). As Carl Nolte put it in that obituary I linked to above, "It was all a put-on, of course. Women occasionally stopped Mr. Spinelli in the street and slapped his face. Impostors turned up at restaurants and bars around town. Time magazine called him "a voice from the sewer." But people talked about Count Marco, and that was the point."

Today, of course, this kind of show could never happen. No station would dare show it, no company would dare sponsor it, nobody would dare admit they watched it. The Count himself would probably have been murdered by someone, or at least accosted in a far more violent manner than being hit by a purse. It's likely for the best. But the world is so much more serious now, isn't it?

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During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premiere variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup..

Sullivan: Sammy Davis Jr. headlines the show, performing numbers from his Broadway musical "Golden Boy." Other guests are comedians Jackie Vernon and Charlie Drake; singer Kaye Stevens; ventriloquist Jay Nemeth; Peter and Gordon, British vocal-instrumental duo; the Hoganas acrobatic trio; Xavier and his Marionettes; Kessler Twins, singer-dancers; and Brizio the Clown.

Palace:  Host Victor Borge welcomes Alice Faye (Mrs. Phil Harris) in one of her infrequent appearances on TV. Also on the bill are pop singer Nancy Wilson, the Swingle Sisters, French vocal group; Japanese comic Pat Morita; the tap-dancing Nicholas Brothers; bicyclist Rih Aruso; and De Mille, a 15-year-old high-wire performer

This is a terrific week on both counts. You know I'm going to give bonus points for Sammy Davis Jr., who would have gotten a fair amount of time doing songs from Golden Boy, one of the grittiest musicals Broadway had ever seen to that time, and a project written especially for Davis. With Jackie Vernon and Kaye Stevens, that makes for a pretty potent show. On the other hand, look at The Palace—Borge, who's always hilarious, plus Alice Faye (who's very funny in the OTR show she co-starred in with Phil Harris), Pat Morita long before Happy Days and The Karate Kid, and Nancy Wilson. The big winner is the viewer, since these shows aren't on at the same time. The verdict: Push.

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.Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever we get the chance, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the series of the era. 

Slattery's People, the subject of Cleveland Amory's admiration this week, is that rarity, a series about a heroic state legislator fighting for the underdog. I remember it as a project similar to a  proposed series called The Power that would have starred Raymond Burr and probably caused Perry Mason to hang it up a year or so earlier. Burr called it the best pilot he'd ever read, but apparently there's only a limited space available for stories about heroic legislators, and so Slattery's People it was.

Amory has nothing but praise for this series—"we have yet to see a bad [episode]," he says—and, if it served no other purpose, it put to an end "Dick" Crenna, whom viewers remembered from Our Miss Brooks and The Real McCoys, and replaced him with "Richard" Crenna, an actor of gravity and skill; it would be this Crenna that would prevail in a career that would last until 2003. In an era when shows like The Defenders and East Side/West Side, we shouldn't be surprised that television would take a chance on a topic like this. Even now, notes Amory, the show is suffering from tepid ratings; "Slattery's people have been too few," quite possibly because of the show's chief virtue, "its uncompromising unconformity." The scripts are first-rate, the performances are excellent, and the issues are real.

Were it not for these old issues of TV Guide, and my predilection for leaving through Brooks' and Marsh's TV directories, I might never have heard of Slattery's People; I don't recall it going into widespread syndication, although you can correct me if you remember it happening. There are a handful of episodes on YouTube (albeit of varying video quality), but I suspect this show just isn't what people would want to see on DVD; after all, look what happened to The Defenders. In addition the way people feel about politics nowadays, I'm not even sure The West Wing could make it. Plus, a political drama will invariably require choosing sides, which means you risk alienating half your audience, since we apparently can't agree on anything anymore. I suppose that's too bad, although one always runs the risk of sending a message when a bit of entertainment is all that's called for. The Beverly Hillbillies turned out to be much more to people's liking, and to CBS's as well, which is probably why the Hillbillies ran for nine seasons and Slattery's People less than two. But isn't it a shame that we didn't, and don't, live in a TV world where there's room for both?

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On Saturday, Notre Dame clashes with Michigan State in the Game of the Week (NBC, 12:15 p.m CT), a precursor to their 1966 Game of the Century. This season, it's #1 Notre Dame driving toward the national championship in legendary coach Ara Parseghian's first season, led by quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner John Huarte. The Fighting Irish defeat the Spartans 34-7, and next week they'll get by Iowa 28-0, but the following week, in the final game of the season against USC in Los Angeles, they give up a 17-0 halftime lead and lose in heartbreaking fashion, 21-17. It's against this backdrop that people will have to judge Parseghian's decision to accept that 10-10 tie with Michigan State in 1966. Later that night (CBS, 7:30 p.m.), it's a rerun of "Once upon a Mattress," the off-Broadway musical that made a star of Carol Burnett, that's a sign of things to come.

Come Sunday, and it's an interesting episode of Profiles in Courage (NBC, 3:00 p.m.), the television adaptation of John F. Kennedy's Pulitzer-Prize winning book. This afternoon, the profile is of Mary McDowell, a Brooklyn Latin teacher who in 1917 refuses to sign a loyalty pledge—as a Quaker, she does not believe in violence of any kind, and believes that "her pupils do not rely on her for instruction in patriotism." Considering the hyperpoliticized nature of education today, where even math questions are infused with ideology—well, as I said, it's interesting. In the evening, ABC's Sunday Night Movie presents Birdman of Alcatraz with Burt Lancaster, the moving—if mostly fictional—account of Robert Stroud, the famous bird-raising prisoner.

On Monday, Andy Williams has an all-musical episode (8:00 p.m., NBC), with Shirley Booth, Johnny Mathis, and Morgana King. Later, on the aforementioned Slattery's People (CBS, 9:00 p.m.), Slattery is recruited by the town fathers of Williamton to help get rid of a scientist (Paul Burke) who insists on accepting research projects instead of manufacturing contracts, thus endangering the continuing operation of his plant—the town's only industry. I'm not quite sure how this connects to the state legislature, but I'm sure we'll find out. And Ben Casey (9:00 p.m., ABC) focuses on Dr. Hoffman (Harry Landers) this week, and how his attitude changes to one of disgust after having worked with a great surgeon.

Tuesday, NBC presents a tour of the Louvre, the great French museum, hosted by the great French actor Charles Boyer (9:00 p.m.). It's the first time American television cameras have ever been let into the museum; of course, one of the stops will be the Mona Lisa. (You can see the entire program here in an excellent recording, if you're interested.) At 10:30 p.m., the same time, WKBT, the LaCrosse, Wisconsin CBS affiliate that fits in a good amount of ABC programming (the area doesn't yet have an ABC affiliate) carries last week's Hollywood Palace, which if anything has even more stars than this week's—Bette Davis and Olivia de Haviland do "The Twilight Shore," a dramatic reading; Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks do one of their 2,000-Year-Old-Man sketches; plus singer Monique Van Vooren and the U.S. Olympic gold medal winners.

This coming Sunday, November 22, will be the first anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and while all the networks have memorial programs planned, CBS gets a head start on Wednesday with "The Burden and the Glory of John F. Kennedy" (6:30 p.m.), a look back at the not-quite three years of the JFK administration. At 7:30 p.m. on Channel 11, it's a rare midweek broadcast of Canadian Football, with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats taking on the Ottawa Rough Riders in the first game of the two-game total-points Eastern Conference final. Ottawa wins Game 1 30-13, but Hamilton will come back to take the second game 26-8, winning the series 39-38. At 8:30 p.m., CBS has The Cara Williams Show, Cara Williams being the subject of this week's cover. From Leslie Raddatz's article we learn that Cara is tough, has a temper, was once married to John Drew Barrymore, and through it all has managed to maintain her feminine qualities, the ones that served her well in her previous series, Pete and Gladys, and that the network hopes will serve her well in this one as well. They've given her a great timeslot, between Dick Van Dyke and Danny Kaye. Despite this, The Cara Williams Show is one season and out.

Robert Goulet stars Thursday night (CBS, 9:00 p.m.) in a variety hour that combines elements of a backstage documentary, showing Goulet doing an interview, rehearsing, taping a spot for Ed Sullivan's show, and visiting a college campus and a nightclub. His guests include Leslie Caron and Terry-Thomas; Wonder how this experimental kind of show played out? Here's a clip:


One of the things I've noticed in going through these old TV Guides is how, for a man who never starred in a weekly series of his own, Bob Hope was on TV a lot. This Friday (NBC, 7:30 p.m.) it's one of his own comedy specials (airing in place of his Chrysler Theatre anthology) with a typical Hope lineup of babes, hunks, and stars: Stella Stevens and Annette Funicello; Richard Chamberlain and Trini Lopez; and Donald O'Connor. At 8:00 p.m. on ABC, Tony Franciosa stars in Valentine's Day, a single-season sitcom co-starring Jack Soo; he's also the subject of an Arnold Hano profile in which he gives credit to his wife Judy for helping him move away from his volatile, hard-to-work-with reputation of the past. The couple would divorce three years later. He'd credit a later wife for helping him to settle down. And his reputation on studio lots would remain just as bad. TV  

This week in TV Guide: October 19, 1963

I wasn't planning on doing this issue when I opened the laptop today, to be honest. I have a list showing what issue is scheduled for each week, of course; it runs through the end of 2018 (with a few weeks in 2019 already spoken for as well), and because I've taken care of it well in advance, the revelation of each week's issue always comes as something of a surprise to me. This morning I consulted the list, ready to open the box and dig out the appropriate issue: October 25, 1986. And it's been a long week and I'm tired, and suddenly the thought of plowing through an issue from the late '80s had no appeal to me, no matter what might have been inside it. (And with Kim Novak on the cover, I'm sure it would have been quite satisfactory.) Quickly I scanned down to the lineup for 2018, wondering if that issue would be any easier to get into - this is the result. Did I choose wisely? I think so, but ultimately you're the judge. It'll make next year that much more interesting, anyway.

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I like that cover portrait of Judy Garland by René Bouché; it manages to cut through the wear and tear that has left her looking at least 20 years older than her actual age of 41, and offers a glimpse of the frightened little girl inside that woman, the one who thrilled us skipping down the Yellow Brick Road and putting on a show with Mickey and meeting us in St. Louis. The sketch doesn't pretend that those ensuing years haven't happened; it's like being caught just right by the rays of the the setting sun on an autumn afternoon that reveal the promise and the hope and the vulnerability of a woman who's lived a train wreck of a life. You've heard how artists can capture details that a photograph can't? This right here is an example.

There's no question about Garland's talent, never has been. The idea of a Judy Garland television series is an irrestible one, particularly for the admirers that refer to her as "a living legend." A special on G.E. Theater last year was a smash, leading to her new Sunday night series, one in which CBS is investing at leats $140,000 a week - for the priviledge of going up against television's number-one show, Bonanza. This for a woman who, as Dwight Whitney writes, is "in an almost constant state of emotional turmoil; that, as a result, her career as a movie superstar had been cut short because the studios deemed her undependable (which she denies); and that she had suffered several breakdowns." In typical Garland fashion, however, she wins over the skeptical affiliates at their annual meeting, poking fun at her own reputation by singing Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen's lyrics, "Call me unreliable,/Call me irresponsible,/Call me unpredictable, toooooo. . ."

We know how the Garland story ends, and it's not a happy one, and though that ending is still six years away at the time of this article, I don't know that anyone back then would have been surprised by it; the chaos surrounding the show mirrors, in a way, the turmoil of Garland's life. The idea of taking the chance on Garland originates with James Aubrey, the mercurial president of CBS. He chooses a production crew headed up by George Schlatter, who will wind up as executive producer of Laugh-In, and employs a talented group of writers. Together the team works effectively with Garland, producing "big, brassy, weekly specials" with big songs, big numbers - shows designed to take advantage of Superstar Judy. "Everyone, including the sponsors, was delighted. Most remarkable of all, Judy had put a saddle on her jumping nervs and seemed relaxed and happy."

And then Aubrey intervenes. After five successful shows, he dismisses Schlatter and the rest of the crew, hiring Norman Jewison as the new producer and telling him that he wanted a show similar to Garry Moore's, "as folksy and old-shoeish as the Cartwrights - or maybe Ed Sullivan - so much so that he was willing to rock the boat to achieve it." Says John Bradford, one of the writers who was dismissed, "Judy is not the girl next door. She is explosive, dynamic, electric, one of the few superstars left. To try to patter her appeal after a Western is absurd." One cynic looks at the confusion wrought by the network and comments, "They are just thankful to get her there to do a show every week. They don't care what else happens"

A look at a rehearsal underlines the change in atmosphere. Judy stands by the piano, on which sits "a brown bottle of Liebfraumilch, the light white wine which is a favorite of hers. Beside the bottle is a tumbler with three ice cubes." She stars singing a song, gets a fit of the giggles. Starts again, giggles. "Jewison looks anxious. Judy tells a funny story. More laughter - nervous laughter - from co-workers."

"One comes away," writes Whitney, "with a deep feeling of sadness. Which si strange bedcause chances are Judy Garland will run true to her old form, score a dramatic last-ditch triumph over adversity - doesn't she always? - and once again be inundated in superlatives and love." How many people loved Judy Garland - or did they just use her? Her series ends after a single season, a failure that's said to be crushing to her. Six years later, not yet 50 years old, she's dead. Just like that, and yet it is a long time coming.

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Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever we get the chance, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the series of the era. 

Arrest and Trial has been considered in many respects the precusor to Law & Order, but with a crucial difference. The first half of the 90 minute series deals with the investigation and arrest, led by detective Ben Gazarra. However, we see the trial from the point of view not of the prosecutor, but of defense attorney Chuck Connors, who's determined to win an acquittal, or at least a fair shake, for his client. "Unfortunately," as Cleveland Amory writes this week, "the series has been more trying than arresting."

One of the challenges in a series set up in the manner of Arrest and Trial is that every week, one of our heroes is bound to be wrong; either the police have arrested the wrong person, or the attorney is defending a guilty person. The way in which the program tries to deal with this inherent contradition, says Amory, is the problem: the bad guys are "by no means all bad." In one typical instance, man charged with vehicular homicide in the death of a motorcycle policeman undergoes heavy psychiatric treatment, after which he is sentenced to 18 months in what we'd refer to today as a tennis prison. Says his girlfriend, in a demonstration of how there are no "bad" people, just people who need help, "he always boasted to me that he never said 'thanks' to any man. Not once in all his life. . . Today he actually said it. That's a good sign, isn't it?" Replies Amory, "Actually, it was an excellent sign, becaue, among other things, it was the last line of the show."

You get the picture. Amory singles out Connors in particular for praise, but his final verdict? "As in so many series this season, the acting is so far above the scripts that it hardly seemed worth it."

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In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam uses the sport (and it is a sport) as a symbol of the significant social changes America has undergone over the past six or so decades; whereas we once bowled together in leagues, we now bowl alone.* I think it says a lot about these times that the most prevalent sport on television this week is bowling; there are three bowling programs just on Sunday. WCCO's venerable Bowlerama airs at 12:15; the program, featuring local bowlers, visits a different location each week, with today's broadcast coming from Maplewood Bowl in St. Paul (which, sadly, closed in 2013). At 4:30 p.m. it's the long-running Championship Bowling on WTCN (don't know what episode it is, but you can see an example of a show from 1963 here), and at 10:30 p.m, following the late local news, WCCO is back with All Star Bowling, live from Minnehaha Lanes in St. Paul.

*I suppose nowadays there's an app you can use to bowl in a league without ever having to, you know, come in actual contact with anyone.

Minnehana Lanes closes in 2008, which is a shame. I know that neighborhood well; used to drive by all the time on the way to church. More of that shopping area is scheduled to be torn down to make way for a redevelopment that includes the new soccer stadium for Minnesota United FC. If you'd told someone back in 1963 that bowling would be a niche sport but that soccer would be big time, that person would probably have looked at you as if you were crazy. Next thing you know, they'll be talking about phones with pictures in them so you can see who you're talking to.

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Robert Drew is considered one of the pioneers - perhaps the father - of the American cinéma vérité (or Direct Cinema) movement. He famously said that his type of documentary would be "a theater without actors; it would be plays without playwrights; it would be reporting without summary and opinion; it would be the ability to look in on people’s lives at crucial times from which you could deduce certain things and see a kind of truth that can only be gotten from personal experience."

Drew's mainstream breakthrough came in 1960 with the documentary Primary, an in-depth look at the Wisconsin primary contest between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, in which he was allowed extraordinary access to the candidates and their campaigns. The success of Primary led to a close working relationship between Drew and Kennedy, as evidenced in Drew's follow-up, the 1961 ABC Close-Up! episode "Adventures on the New Frontier," taking his cameras and microphones into the Oval Office to show us the day-by-day life of Kennedy's White House. Kennedy had been concerned about his ability to conduct business while cameras and microphones hovered over his shoulder, but, as with Primary, he became inured to their presence, to the point that his advisors frequently had to remind him to be careful what he said while they were around.

Drew considered this a warm-up for an even more extensive documentary, one that depicted the the presidential decision-making process as a crisis unfolds. The result, Crisis - Behind a Presidential Commitment. airs on Monday at 6:30 p.m. It's the story of the showdown between Kennedy and George Wallace over the integration of the University of Alabama. Drew's cameras are not only in the White House, where Kennedy discusses the situation with his brother Robert and other advisors, but in Tuscaloosa, where the Alabama governor vows to fulfill his pledge to block any attempt to integrate the university.

Crisis is a masterpiece of the Direct Cinema movement, a dramatic demonstration for anyone who thinks The War Room invented the genre. There is one final collaboration to come between Drew and Kennedy, though the latter's participation is hauntingly tangental. It is the 1964 film Faces of November; its 11 minutes, without dialogue or narrative, cover the three days of JFK's funeral.

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Not exactly a starlet this week, but a fashion layout with actress Susan Strasberg, daughter of the legendary Method teacher Lee Strasberg. (I wonder what her motivation was?) It's a very sleek, elegant look by Anne Klein, with the casual outfit by Jax - both names that you've probably seen in the closing credits, as in "Miss Albright's wardrobe by Jax." A timeless style, don't you think?


SOURCE: HADLEY TV GUIDES

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What else is on this week? Well, Hallmark Hall of Fame has a Sunday afternoon spot (5:00 p.m. CT, NBC), airing a repeat of 1960's "The Tempest" with what's literally an all-star cast: Maurice Evans, Richard Burton, Lee Remick, Roddy McDowall and Tom Poston. Brilliant. Also on Sunday, the debut on WTCN of a program called Tele-Bingo. Here's the write-up: "To become eligible to play, viewers must get a free Tele-Bingo card from a local supermarket. If a viewer scores a bingo, he must take his card to the store, which will then give him a prize and add his card to those of other home winners. From this group, 300 cards are drawn and those persons are invited to join the studio audience to compete for bigger prizes." I remember those shows - not that one specificaly, but shows like it. Interactive TV at its best!

On Monday at 9:00 p.m., ABC's psychiatrist drama Breaking Point airs the episode "The Bull Roarer," directed by Ralph Senensky. The story concerns a construction worker (Lou Antonio) who watches his brother (Ralph Meeker) savagely beat up a man who'd been hassling them. He's so shocked by the violence - the outpouring of testosterone, so to speak - that, as the listing puts it, "he begins to have doubts about his own virility." In fact, as Dr. Thompson (Paul Richards) intuits, the young man worries that his lack of machismo might mean he's gay. Writes Senensky, "I am 99 and 44/100 percent sure that was the first time the word 'homosexual' was uttered in a drama in an American television show."

Johnny Carson is the special guest on Tuesday's episode of The Jack Benny Program (CBS, 8:30 p.m.) - "Jack says that Johnny should become more versatile, so Johnny struts his stuff, performing cards tricks, ventriloquism, a drum solo and a song-and-dance." I'll bet acting with Benny was a thrill for Johnny. On Wednesday's episode of NBC's psychiatric drama, The Eleventh Hour (9:00 p.m.), Robert Wagner plays man who "always got by handsomely on his exceptional looks" - until half of his face is destroyed by a fire. Diahann Carroll, Shirley Knight and Michael Constantine co-star.

Thursday features the aforementioned Susan Strasberg as Dr. Kildare's patient (NBC, 7:30 p.m.), and Andrew Prine as her husband, an ambitious and irresponsible intern. Kraft Suspense Theatre (NBC, 9:00 p.m.) has a terrific cast - Gig Young, Nina Foch, Katherine Crawford and Peter Lorre - in "The End of the World, Baby," which doesn't deal with nuclear war at all but a shady sculptor (Young) who may be trying to bilk an older woman (Foch). And if you're not inclined to change channels, The Tonight Show has a pretty fair show, with Robert Preston, Benny Goodman and Abbe Lane.

Friday, the best night of the week, starts with Bob Hope's latest special (NBC, 7:30 p.m.) - his guests are Andy Griffith, Martha Raye, Jane Russell, Connie Haines, Beryl Davis, and L.A. Dodgers Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Tommy Davis. The night ends with an interesting movie on KMSP's 10:30 p.m. "Masterpiece Theatre" (not to be confused with the future PBS series): Mr. Roberts, with Henry Fonda, James Cagney, Jack Lemmon and William Powell. It's one of the few times I've seen a locally broadcast movie get the full close-up treatment - almost makes me wonder if it had originally been shown on ABC but pre-empted by KMSP for something else.

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On Friday night ABC airs a documentary with the deceptive title The World's Girls. While it might sound like one of Frankie and Annette's beach party movies, it is in fact a penetrating glimpse into the future: the women behind the new feminist movement.

The question on the table is simple: what is the role of the modern woman in today's fast-changing world? Answers come from all over - from actresses and housewives, intellectuals in the colleges and beauties in their salons. The names that jump out, though, are ones that point in one direction. There's Betty Friedan, for example, who earlier in the year published The Feminine Mystique, and Simone de Beauvoir, author of The Second Sex, considered the foundation of feminist theory. French actress Simone Signoret, who rejected the feminist label but fought alongside radical feminist groups for the rights to abortion and birth control.

I don't know how seriously these women and their theories are taken at the time of the broadcast, nor what its overall tone is; after all, Playboy bunnies and expectant brides are among those being interviewed, so viewers are likely to get all kinds of viewpoints. Nonetheless, this strikes me as a chance for a profound look into the future - a brave new world, perhaps? In one month John F. Kennedy will be asassinated, and, so we are told, everything will change going forward. All the accepted truths, the universal values, the traditional definitions upon which the structures of society have been built, will be up for grabs. I cannot imagine a more perfect time for this show (produced and directed by Arthur Holch and narrated by John Secondari) to have aired; I doubt it could have been done in the late '50s, and by the late '60s it would have been old hat. But those who watch it in 1963 are looking through a glass darkly, and then they will see the future face to face. TV