This week in TV Guide: March 19, 1966

WeIn some casting news, the Teletype reports that Stefanie Powers will be replacing Mary Ann Mobley in the upcoming The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.; Mobley played April Dancer in the back-door pilot that aired on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (Mobley's co-star in the pilot, Norman Fell, will also be replaced in the role of Mark Slate with Noel Harrison.) And with that, we're into this week's cover story by Leslie Raddatz, and the beginning of the closest thing we've ever had here to a theme issue. You'll see what I mean as we go through the issue; just look for the bold-face names.

 "Nothing quite like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. has ever happened to television," he says, "not only in program content, which has spawned a host of imitators, but in the fact that U.N.C.L.E. almost didn’t make it at all." The show faltered at the outset, which producer Norman Felton says is because it took viewers a while to catch on to the show's blend of conventional adventure richly invested with humor, and it almost got the axe in January. But now, in its second (and best) season, it's become a phenomenon, garnering fan letters from people around the country "who had nothing much in common except they were U.N.C.L.E. nuts," including one from a CBS producer who told Felton that his four children had become "wild Man from U.N.C.L.E. addicts" who beg me continually, constantly, to get them U.N.C.L.E. cards, THRUSH cards, photos of Robt. Vaughn, the blond kid (Illya?), ete. Do you have kits available for fellow producers who must nightly compete with your superheroes or be branded weaklings in the eyes of their offspring?"

Felton, who sends out between 50 and 60 thousand U.N.C.L.E. cards every month in response to the same number of letters from fans, had a previous reputation for serious, prestige drama, with a portfolio including Studio One, Robert Montgomery Presents, The U.S. Stell Hour, Mr. Novak, and The Eleventh Hour; he says that he's delighted with the success of U.N.C.L.E., but admits "I would rather have one Novak on the air than six U.N.C.L.E.'s." The idea for the show came three years ago, when Felton decided he wanted to do a series that was "just fun," and thus came the concept of a show featuring "a mysterious man who would become involved with ordinary people in adventures with humorous overtones." He held back on the more humorous episodes at first, given that NBC had bought U.N.C.L.E. as a straight adventure series, and there are still viewers who look at it that way, "which is all right with us." 

Of David McCallum, Felton says, "I never had any idea he would become the hit he has. His part in the pilot film was only a few lines, and he was just one of many actors we considered. We picked him because he looked different." But the blond, 32-year-old Scot has, indeed, become the breakout star of the show, a man who embraces the mystery of his character in his personal life as well. "He has little of the actor’s vanity, pretension or self-delusion," and in a recent appearance of the network's Hullabaloo, he was never once referred to by his own name, but that of his character, an idea that came from him. He's uncomfortable with the attention from fan magazines, especially when they call him "cute" ("That’s an American word I hate. A litter of mongrel puppies is cute."), and he refuses any photo layouts including his wife Jill Ireland and their three sons. 

Considering that Robert Vaughn was supposed to be the Man from U.N.C.L.E., he'd seem to have every right to resent having to share the spotlight with McCallum, but such is not the case. "When it was pointed out that many actors would be unhappy in such a situation, Vaughn said, 'Maybe a lot of actors aren’t as secure as I am.' " Unlike McCallum, he's enjoying fame and its fringe benefits; "I'm surprised at the reaction—I never anticipated anything like this," he says, but he was always confident the show would be a hit. "I thought so from the beginning and told everybody so. Of course, I began looking red in the face that first January when they were going to cancel us." During the summer hiatus, he played "Hamlet" gratis at the Pasadena Playhouse, and continues to work at USC on his Ph.D. in the philosophy of communications.

Throughout the article, Raddatz scatters examples of letters the show's fans have written. (Letters—you remember what those were, don't you?) In one of them, a West Coast college student writes, "I feel that your program offers an escape from our problems. The cast has its problems, but they’re mostly of a child’s dream world of spies and counterspies." A student at the Bronx High School of Science wonders if there's anyone working for the show that they can talk to about patenting some of their own gadgets. And a couple traveling in the same plan as Robert Vaughn took a moment to scribble a note on the back of an air sickness bag and have the stewardess hand it to him: "May I invade your privacy to say thanks for being so gracious in giving your autograph the other night. It will be the most exciting thing we are taking back to our 18-year-old daughter." Perhaps that's what television needed, in 1966. Perhaps that's what we need more of today.

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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: Scheduled guests: singers Abbe Lane and Brenda Lee; ventriloquist Senor Wences; singer Jimmy Roselli; comedienne Jean Carroll; dancer Peter Gennaro; the rock ‘n’ rolling Young Rascals; and English comics Des O'Connor and Jack Douglas. (The actual guests included Walter Cronkite, the cast from "Wait A Minim" (South African dancers); The Magid Triplets, tap dancers; and The Olympiades, body builders. Jimmy Roselli did not appear.) 

Palace: Host Robert Goulet, star of Blue Light, introduces singer-dancer Chita Rivera; singer Nancy Sinatra; comic Jan Murray; the Muppets, puppets; comedy pantomimist Cully Richards; and the Nerveless Nocks, Sway-pole acrobats.  

Robert Goulet takes a break from his dramatic, non-singing role in the World War II spy series Blue Light to return to his strong suit, music. I've always liked him, especially his penchant for self-effacing humor (remember Bob Goulet's Cajun Christmas from the movie Scrooged, or his appearances on ESPN commercials as "Mr. G"?) Throw in Jan Murray, Chita Rivera, and the Muppets, and that's good enough to overcome a strong lineup from Ed. Once again, Mr. G delivers the goods, and a win for Palace.

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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. 

By now, regular readers are pretty familiar with the debacle that was The Sammy Davis Jr. Show, which was covered here and here. Cleveland Amory is certainly aware of it; as this review went to press, NBC has already announced the show's cancellation. And while that's understandable, it's also unfortunate, because after a rough start that you'd never wish on your worst network enemy, The Sammy Davis Jr. Show has not only become good, it's started to fulfill its potential to become something approaching the BIGGEST THING EVER.

The problems with the show went beyond those we read about, especially the bizarre conflict that forced Davis to be absent from his own show for the episodes immediately following the premiere (which was, itself, a lame affair with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor). Building an hour-long show around one of the most dynamic performers in the business was, it seemed, a good idea at the time. To hear NBC talk about it, it would be, as Cleve suggested a moment ago, the BIGGEST SHOW EVER. But these kinds of things never pan out, primarly because (1) no one star can be that much bigger than everyone else (as Jerry Lewis, Frank Sinatra, and Judy Garland discovered with their own series; (2) nobody can be interesting enough to dominate a solid hour every single week (see, again, the examples in (1)); and (3) not every star can also produce a show. Add to that a subsequent lineup of guests from Milton Berle, to Frank Sinatra Jr. ("who is a poised and charming young man but no threat even to Sammy, let alone Sinatra Sr, as a singer."), and a group called "The Copasetics" ("about whom you couldn’t tell whether they were meant to be just funny or good. If the former, they weren’t funny enough—if the latter, they were too funny.") In this sense, the show was set up to fail. 

And that, Amory, is unfortunate, because "the plain fact is, though there were many things wrong with this show, there are many more things right with it—and it is getting better every week." He cites a recent dance routine that Davis did to Robert Preston's voiceover of "Trouble," or the "127th Street" number from Golden Boy that he did with Johnny Brown. In those cases, we got to see Sammy as he truly is, "as he should have been from the beginning—Mr. Wonderful." Unfortunate, indeed.

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In Henry Harding's For the Record, the A.C. Nielsen Company now admits that 55 of its sample homes were involved in a plot to increase the ratings of an unnamed show which aired on February 18. The plot involved questionnaries that had been mailed to Nielsen sample homes in "the populous 'east-central area' of the nation. The questionnaire asked for comments on certain commercials that would air on a particular show. "If the commercials were watched, the ratings of that show, of course, would go up." The company is not naming any suspects yet, but believe they're "reasonably well-directed," according to one of their lawyers. They also admit confusion as to how anyone could get ahold of the confidential list of Nielsen homes. It's all, they said, very mysterious.

Of course, you have to know that this wouldn't be good enough for me, and thanks to the internet, I can share with you the rest of the story. The suspect in question was Richard Sparger, a former reporter and former state legislature in Oklahoma, who'd once publicly claimed that he "could make a hit of a show that was a failure." The show in question was CBS's special, An Evening with Carol Channing.* Sparger had mailed the questionnaires, along with $3, to the 58 households, asking questions about the commercials that would appear on the Channing special. If viewers completed and returned the questionnaire, they'd receive another $5. Nielsen filed suit against Sparger for $1,500,000, charging "impairment of confidence in the accuracy of the measurement service and the security of the sample." He was also accused of having used privileged information gathered when he was serving as a congressional investigator of the ratings industry in 1963.

*One of the special's guests: David McCallum.

But the plot thickens. It turns out that Sparger had exchanged at least 40 phone calls with one Charles F. Lowe, who just happens to be the husband, manager, and occasional producer for—wait for it—Carol Channing. This little fact was uncovered by private detectives hired by Nielsen (why didn't we ever see a story like this on Mannix?) who also found out that a teller at Oklahoma City's Liberty National Bank had cashed a $4,000 check from Lowe to Sparger, and that, just before Nielsen filed suit against Sparger, he had called Lowe, saying "something like 'Santa Claus will take care of you' " for "clamming up" with investigators.

It didn't help that Lowe had previously denied having done business with Sparger; he also claimed that it was "ridiculous and incredible to believe that Carol Channing should need any help" in the ratings, and that even if he did have anything to do with such a plot, it was also ridiculous (although apparently not incredible) for him to have made the payoff by check. Sparger and Lowe turned down a plea deal from Nielsen that would have involved the company dropping the charges in return for Sparger admitting his guilt and Lowe paying $100 grand to offset the legal expenses; Sparger countered that Nielsen was harrassing his friends and neighbors, had forced the phone company to give them his private number, and was threatening to including his wife and a friend in the indictment 

In the end, Nielsen dropped the suit against Sparger in September after he conceded having approached Lowe with the idea, and admitted that he'd attempted the activity "for purposes of obtaining financial enrichment," that being including the results in a planned book entitled How to Rig the Ratings for Fun and Profit. (He also revealed that he had gotten the names by finding out the identities of contractors who serviced the meters placed on television sets, then following them as they called on the sample homes.) And people continued to suspect the ratings anyway.

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Here's a small item that would have been guaranteed to make readers feel just a little older: after eight seasons and 275 episodes, Donna Reed is saying goodbye to her eponymous sitcom, and even though she'd vowed she wouldn't cry when things had wrapped up, the moment got the better of her. Her husband, producer Tony Owen; Screen Gems VP Steve Blauner; and cast and crew gathered to pay tribute to Donna and wish she and Tony the best in the future. Her plans? "Oh, rest, travel—fun, fun, fun!" (Although I don't think her plans included a trip to Dallas.)

I include this because The Donna Reed Show, along with Ozzie & Harriet, are among the handful of shows to span two distinct cultural periods, starting in the black-and-white nuclear family era (that some say never really existed), and ending at the dawn of the technicolor times (although her show never made the transition to color) of assassinations, Vietnam, civil rights, sex and drugs, and just about everything else anthetical to what The Donna Reed Show epitomized. Ah, the times, they were a changin', weren't they?

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Basketball is the lead story on Saturday, with Texas Western taking on Kentucky for the 1966 NCAA Championship, live from College Park, Maryland. (7:00 p.m. PT, syndicated; the full game is available here.) It's one of the most significant games ever played in college basketball, as Texas Western becomes the first team ever to win the championship with an all-black starting lineup, defeating top-ranked (and all-white) Kentucky 72-65.* Kentucky's presence in the final makes the moment even more significant; their legendary head coach, Adolph Rupp, was also a staunch segregationist who resisted efforts by the university's president to integrate the team; Kentucky wouldn't dress a black player until 1970. Don Haskins, the coach at Texas Western (today called the University of Texas at El Paso), didn't care what color his players were as long as they could play; his assistant coach said "he'd have played five kids from Mars if they were his best five players." He was immensely proud of his players, and took personal offense at any racial attacks on them; of Rupp, he would say, "I had been listening to all this damn crap out of him, and it's a wonder I didn't say something to him about it. But I didn't." I think it's safe to say that sports has never been the same since.

*It was, in fact, the first time any major American sports championship had ever been contested between a team with an all-black starting lineup and a team that was all-white.  

Zero Mostel, whom we'll see again later in the week, stars in Sunday's Play of the Week presentation of "Waiting for Godot." (8:30 p.m., KVIE). Burgess Meredith and Kurt Kasznar co-star in this production, which originally aired in 1961, and which many consider to be the definitive version of Samuel Beckett's Theatre of the Absurd play. And you know what: you can see it here and decide for yourself. Considering television's spotty history of preserving its own history, I'm always excited to find out that a broadcast like this actually survives. In fact, though, there are several such examples in the shows that follow.

The classic medical series Ben Casey wraps up its five-season run on Monday. (10:00 p.m., ABC) A couple of notes on this episode: first, as you might know, Ben Casey was produced by Bing Crosby Productions, and—perhaps coincidentally—one of the night's guest stars is none other than Kathryn Crosby, playing a patient showing symptoms of brain damage. Second is that of the show taking over in this time slot next week: The Avengers, "a British comedy-adventure series." Also on Monday is the movie The Young Philadelphians (11:30 p.m., KXTV), a mediocre courtroom drama starring Paul Newman and Barbara Rush. I mention this because it also features our future man from U.N.C.L.E., Robert Vaughn, who steals the movie as an alcoholic murder defendant, for which he earns a well-deserved Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Tuesday night features Carol + 2 (8:30 p.m., CBS), one of Carol Burnett's periodic specials prior to her epononymous variety show (which starts in 1967); the "plus 2" are the aforementioned Zero Mostel and one of Carol's champions, Lucille Ball. (See part 1 here; links to the rest.) I don't remember that show, but I do remember the show that followed it later, a CBS News Special called "One of Our H-Bombs Is Missing" (10:00 p.m.), a report on the area in Spain where a B-52 crashed in January, and the U.S. Navy's search for the missing bomb. I wasn't yet six years old when this aired, and I have no particular idea as to why it would have interested me, other than that that I was interested in war stories, and I might have vaguely connected this somehow with the space program. It didn't scare me, I do know that. (The bomb was evenutally recovered in the Mediterranean in April.)

On Wednesday, Julie Andrews stars in a repeat of her special from last November, with special guests Gene Kelly and the New Christy Minstrels, and you can see it here. (9:00 p.m., NBC) After that, you can choose between a Something Special episode with Julie London and her husband, Bobby Troup, the Hi-Lo's, and bandleader Jerry Fielding (10:00 p.m., KXTV in Sacramento); or ABC's excellent documentary series Saga of Western Man presents "Beethoven: Ordeal and Triumph" (10:00 p.m.), written and narrated by John Secondari, with the voice of Beethoven provided by our other man from U.N.C.L.E., David McCallum. And just wait, it keeps geting better!

For Thursday, Burgess Meredith, whom we saw with Zero Mostel on "Waiting for Godot," is back in the conclusion of a Batman adventure that started last night. (7:30 p.m. both nights, ABC) This time, the Penguin insists that he's gone straight, and to prove it, he has his henchmen staging crimes so he can break them up. Will the frequently-gullible citizens of Gotham fall for this obvious scam? Sometimes, it seems as though they just don't deserve the Caped Crusaders. Later, Dean Martin hosts a stellar lineup of guests (10:00 p.m., NBC), including Imogene Coca, Jane Morgan, the Supremes, Jackie Mason, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and the tap dancing Step Brothers. (Here's a clip from Dean and the Supremes.) I think he's giving both Ed and the Palace a run for their money here.

There couldn't be any other choice for Friday than The Man from U.N.C.L.E. itself now, could there? (10:00 p.m., NBC) Tonight, it's "The Round-Table Affair," in which our heroes try to save the Duchy of Ingolstein from Prince Frederick, who's allowing the country to become a home to the Mafia. Valora Noland is the Grand Duchess, whom Solo tries to enlist; Reginald Gardiner is the Prince; and in a wonderful bit of casting, Bruce Gordon is Lucho Nostra, the head criminal.

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Agnes Scott College is a small, all-women's liberal arts college in Decatur, Georgia, and on Sunday afternoon, March 6, 1966, they scored what Slate called "The Greatest Upset in Quiz Show History" when they defeated Princeton University in, literally, the last second to win what was probably the most famous episode ever of G-E College Bowl. Television being what it is, College Bowl was running on a two-week delay on KVIE, the NBC affiliate in Sacramento, where it was shown at at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 20. Regional issues of TV Guide being what they are, you could flip ahead a couple of pages to 5:30 p.m., where the NBC affiliates in San Francisco were showing today's College Bowl match between Parsons College, Fairfield, Iowa, and "the winner of last week’s match between Marietta (Ohio) College and Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Ga."—meaning, of course, that Agnes Scott would be defeating Princeton. So much for suspense, I guess, although I'd like to think that by this time, anyone living in Sacramento who really wanted to watch College Bowl would know by now not to get too many pages ahead.

*Agnes Scott's victory was a big-enough detail that it actually made The New York Times the next day.

But even though it's old news by this time, I wanted to mention this, not only because it's one of the great stories in TV history, but because it also provides a nice little bookend to that Texas Western story above. Agnes Scott, like Texas Western, was a little-known school taking on a prestigeous opponent that considered itself a class above the rest; carrying the analogy a step further, Princeton was, in 1966, still an all-male institution, and one couldn't miss noticing the similarities between the two schools, Princeton and Kentucky, neither one appearing to have yet adapted to the changing times. There had been David vs. Goliath upsets on College Bowl in the past, but none, before or after, seemed to capture the imagination of people quite the way this one did. Reading the Slate story, you'll be charmed, I think by the accounts of the four women competing for Agnes Scott, particularly the remarkable story of Karen Gearreald, Agnes Scott's first blind student, and her recounting of how the winning answer came to her in a millisecond.

There's one other similarity between that College Bowl broadcast and the NCAA Championship: the broadcasts of both still exist, and you can see that College Bowl broadcast here and find out how many answers you can come up with? I wonder how well the current Jeopardy champions would do?

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MST3K alert: Teenage Cave Man (1958). A young cave dweller in a primitive society questions the laws that govern his people. Robert Vaughn, Leslie Bradley, Darrah Marshall. (Saturday, 1:20 a.m., as part of KGO's All-Night Movie) Well, what would you expect after a cover story on The Man from U.N.C.L.E., a Teletype item on The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., The Young Philadelphians, and Beethoven? Sure, Robert Vaughn considers it the worst movie ever made, but that didn't stop him from cashing the check, right? And anyway, it made him the man for MST3K, and who could ask for anything more? TV  

Around the dial

For my money, Friday has always been the best day of the week. I'll grant you that the best 24 consecutive hours are those from midnight Friday to midnight Saturday, but there's a satisfaction in reaching the end of the work week, and surrendering myself to a fine night of TV viewing. But there's another reason for enjoying Fridays, and that's our trip around the classic TV dial, and some most excellent blogs.

Let's start at bare•bones e-zine, where Jack wraps up his review of the William Link and Richard Levinson Hitchcock scripts with the ninth-season "Nothing Ever Happens in Linvale," with Fess Parker, Gary Merrill and Phyllis Thaxter. I think it would have been kind of fun if it had starred Joanna Linville, but I wasn't there for the casting.

I'm no longer at a point where I need to feel any older than I am, but David's latest at Comfort TV has succeeded in reminding me anyway: Marcia Brady is 65. Or at least Maureen McCormick is, and so a happy birthday to someone who, from all accounts, is as nice a person as she appeared to be on TV.

At Cult TV, John worries that he's straying too far from the subject, which happens to be the Doctor Who episode "Fury From the Deep," starring Patrick Troughton, but in actuality it's a very interesting discussion on the topic of reconstructed Doctor Who videos. You might think this is a little too "inside baseball" unless you've collected telesnaps and grey market videos, but I loved it.

You've all heard the jokes about reading Playboy for the stories, but back in the day the magazine, like so many of the era, had an excellent reputation for publishing short fiction from some of the best (or soon-to-be best) writers around. At The Twilight Zone Vortex, Jordan looks at the magazine's contributions by TZ writers, including Ray Bradbury and Charles Beaumont. 

Staying in the genre, Shadow & Substance has a writeup of Rod Serling's Night Gallery story "The House," a nasty little story starring Joanna Pettet and directed by John Astin. Night Gallery was, I thought, always a bit uneven in quality (even without the Sixth Sense episodes thrown in), but this is certainly in the upper percentile.

At Inner Toob, it's a look at the various crossover stars and historical figures from the WB western series Bronco that link the show to other WB series. (You can choose to believe me or not when I say that we were just talking about Bronco at dinner last night, for no particular reason. The clincher that caused me to add this piece is the 1960 Maverick episode "Hadley's Hunters," and trust me: you don't want to run into them.

It seems that every time I head over to A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence is penning another obituaries of a star who has passed, and this week there are three: Pat Hitchcock, Markie Post, and Jane Withers. Godspeed to them all.

Television's New Frontier: The 1960s returns with a trip to 1962 and The Donna Reed Show. The year saw the end of the show's fourth season and the start of the fifth, and as Reed began to tire from the 39-episode grind, the focal point, more and more, became Paul Petersen. That's not all there is to the show, of course, with storylines and guest stars aplenty.

Now, if all this has added to your enjoyment of the best day of the week, I'm pleased to have helped out. But stay tuned for tomorrow; there's even more to come. TV  

This week in TV Guide: August 8, 1959

This week Donna Reed graces the cover of TV Guide. The former Academy Award winner has, over the course of the last few months, helped steer her eponymous ABC sitcom from a "sort of Mother Knows Best" up against some rough competition (The Millionaire on CBS, Milton Berle's Kraft Music Hall on NBC), through the early days of dismal ratings (15.1 on Nielsen, which would qualify it as a smash hit today), to where it is today: an established hit (ratings up to 21.2) in a family-friendly time (Thursdays at 8:00 p.m. ET), all without changing writers, cast or format. How did she do it?

"We just stood firm," she says - the "we" referring to she and her husband/business partner Tony Owen. "The only think I can say is that we were a little late about persuading the sponsor (Campbell's Soup) to let us lose our tempers on the show." What does that mean? Making it more true to life, for one thing - showing her and her TV husband Carl Betz disciplining the children ("They need the security of knowing you mean what you say."). "There is no such thing as a family where arguments don't occur. Keep it goody-goody and you lose the effectiveness."

Her talk about showing how things are - or should be - in real life is interesting, given how by the time The Donna Reed Show came to the end of its eight-season run, it had become ridiculed as the epitome of "the 1950s nuclear family structure and idyllic suburban setting." Is that a fair criticism? Certainly the show's look can seem dated today, although I'd add that the values espoused in the program are still sound, if mostly ignored in today's day and age. Imagine families eating together! Having discussions! Mother staying at home to keep the household running! Expecting good grades and behavior from the kids! (The subject of this week's show, by the way.) As Marlon Brando would say, "The horror, the horror."

Seriously, this makes a point I've mentioned frequently - that while many programs of the '50s and '60s presented an idealized world, it was also a world with which viewers were familiar, and to which they could aspire even if they never succeeded in duplicating it. It's easy to see how, with race riots, the Vietnam War, and campus demonstrations all raging through the land, The Donna Reed Show might seem out of touch in 1966 America. I can't say whether or not it was in any way an accurate reflection of what times were like then - my own home life was hardly what you'd call "normal" - but the larger question remains whether or not it exemplified values which ought to have been admired. Children respecting their parents and teachers, parents remaining faithful to each other and their families, working to give their kids what they need to face the world - I don't really think those are grounds for ridicule, do you? You may think of this as living in the past, but if history teaches us anything at all, it demonstrates that some very good things are unchangeable now and always, and we ought to strive to hold on to them.

Yes, there were far darker problems to worry about in 1966 than those that typically affected the Stone family. But were those problems , and the situations which caused them, actually better? Given where we are today, were sex, drugs and rock 'n roll really an improvement?

No, I didn't think so.

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In sports, CBS has a special treat this week: as a prelude to the Saturday afternoon Game of the Week between the Kansas City Athletics and New York Yankees, viewers who tune in at 11:00 a.m. (CT) will get to see the fabled Yankees' Old Timers Game, the greatest of all such games played in any sport. But then, what else would you expect, with the Yanks bringing out the pennants from championship seasons past, and hosting names such as Joe DiMaggio, Dizzy Dean, Rogers Hornsby, Lefty Gomez, Carl Erskine and the like. This was a highlight any time it was carried as part of the Game of the Week.

Meanwhile, at 11:45 a.m., NBC has its own version of the Game of the Week, when the Detroit Tigers meet the Red Sox at Boston. Now, you may be asking why there were two games, shown at the same time on two different networks. Back then, there was no single contract covering national telecasts of Major League Baseball; both CBS and NBC (through their various sponsors) were free to make arrangements with individual teams - or, more specifically, with individual stadiums. For example, in 1959 CBS had the rights to broadcast games only from Philadelphia, New York, Washington, Baltimore, Chicago (both Cubs and White Sox), Cleveland, and Cincinnati. I agree that this is no way to run a railroad, but that's how it was.

Unlike today, Texas is without Major League Baseball in 1959, but Channel 11 still has plenty of local coverage of the state's minor league teams: Fort Worth plays St. Paul on Wednesday, while Dallas takes on Denver Thursday. Next week, Fort Worth plays Houston in a pair, followed by their game against Omaha.

August seems a bit early for football, but the annual kickoff to the season, the College All-Star Game, is Friday night from Chicago, with the defending NFL champion Baltimore Colts taking on an all-star team featuring the best college seniors from 1958. The Colts will win 29-0 before a crowd of 75,000, so if you had Baltimore plus the points you did pretty well.

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Now here's a picture to treasure: two of the most iconic Western stars ever, in the same shot.

SOURCE: HADLEY TV GUIDES

Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, the quintessential singing cowboys, may not be the flavor of the month in this era of the "adult Western," but neither one of them seems to be too worried about it. Roy, in particular, says "I'm getting tired of these cracks about singing cowboys. I'll challenge the whole bunch in an all-around competition for horsemanship, roping, pistol and shotgun. And I'll challenge any of 'em at the box-office draw, too."

Things aren't really that different today; "They're a little more psychological, maybe. I see some pretty rugged things on TV. Sometimes the hero gets it in the belly - we always stayed away from that. Dress is more realistic . . . [and] there's more killing. But the stories are similar. It's still the cattlemen versus the sodbusters."

Fact is, Roy Rogers hasn't done too poorly - a millionaire with extensive real estate holdings, part owner of 24,000 acres between Phoenix and Tucson, a boat business, a golf course, an auto agency, and those appearance fees that he and his wife Dale Evans get from the state fair circuit. Oh, and there's also the $1.5 million he got from Nestlé for selling them the rights to his show. His specials trounce the opposition in the ratings, and Chevrolet has signed him up for six to run next season. No wonder Dwight Whitney describes him as "probably one of the happiest and least-resentful deposed cowboys (if you can call him deposed) in the world."

Gene Autry "is, if anything, even happier and even richer." His production company currently has five shows on the air, he has a 90-acre ranch which he rents out to Gunsmoke and Wyatt Earp (among others), he co-owns five radio and two TV stations, collects yearly royalties from merchandising, does state fairs and rodeos, etc., etc. Oh, and then there's the baseball team he'll own in a couple of years, the California Angels. Gene Autry may be the only Western star to have his number retired instead of a ten-gallon hat.

He, too, is skeptical that the adult Western is all that different - while "I miss the action. TV Westerns drive me nuts! Too slow!", he also says that the emphasis in today's shows on acting "means you've got to have a good story. And there're not that many stories kicking around these days. I admire a good actor - but the fact he's got boots on doesn't make him a cowboy." He's not interested in challenging today's shows to see who's the quickest gun. "What Roy and I have got is box-office draw - and showmanship." And as for the "singing cowboy" bit, he's quick to remind everyone that a record of his called "Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine" sold six million copies. And then there was a ditty called "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" - you might have heard of it. Sold five million copies.

"If that's funny, then that's the kind o' joke I like," Gene says. Like Roy Rogers, he's laughing all the way to the bank.

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Scattered headlines from the week:

On Sunday afternoon, NBC's Meet the Press welcomes former President Herbert Hoover, who's just about to turn 85. Hoover has since been surpassed as having had the longest retirement after leaving office, but still - when he departed the White House in 1933, it had been less than 30 years since the Wright Brothers made their flight, there had been only one World War, and we pretty much lived in a black-and-white world. Now, this same man is appearing on television, the man who defeated him for president has long since died, and before Hoover himself dies in 1964, he'll have seen man orbit the earth in a spacecraft. It's true that many people were able to claim that distinction - but that doesn't prevent one from being taken aback to think of Hoover on TV.

In Washington, the House Legislative Oversight Subcommittee announces it wants to look at the Grand Jury minutes from the New York investigation into the quiz shows. Says Rep. Oren Harris says, "We now have information leading us to suspect that contestants on some shows were coached."

In New York, the producers of CBS' Person to Person, John Aaron and Jesse Zousmer, announce that Charles Collingwood will take the place of Edward R. Murrow when the later goes on sabbatical from the network.

NBC takes an option on Michael Shayne, an hour-long pilot (or "test film" for a detective series. The pilot's going to be shot this fall; this is one of those pilots that actually does make it to the network schedule, premiering in the fall of 1960 with Richard Denning in the title role, and running for one year. I mentioned Shayne here a few years ago.

Did you know there used to be a Miss America Parade? Neither did I, but it's true - in fact, it still exists. CBS plans to show it on September 8, prior to the September 12 pageant, which it will also cover. Douglas Edwards and 1958 Miss America Marilyn Van Derbur will host.

Many of the shows this week are reruns, but we have the usual assortment of summer anthology series burning off pilots that didn't make the cut. Andy Williams continues his summer replacement series, with guests Diahann Carroll, Buddy Hackett, the Mello-Larks vocal group, and danger Joan Holloway. Merv Griffin, guest-hosting for the vacationing Bill Cullen, announces the winner of the Gift Showcase on NBC's The Price is Right. Tony Bennett, Jaye P. Morgan and the Modernaires appear on NBC's Perry Presents, a replacement series for - guess who? And Ed Sullivan welcomes movie star Jane Russell and her brother Kevin, singers Toni and Jan Arden, actor Keefe Brassille, comedian Shecky Green, dance team Helene and Howard, jugglers the Martin Brothers, guitarist Sabicas, trampolinists the Schaller Brothers, flying trapeze artist Miss Mara, and Sid Kroft's Marionettes.

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Finally, I don't know if this will help people figure out what classic TV fans are made of, but for what it's worth, here is the television guide to the Human Anatomy. I never was all that good at studying the human body - at least, not this way.

TV