Around the dial

Ary as I might to avoid it, I can't keep from promoting my latest podcast apperances. We'll lead off with Tumbleweeds and Cowboys, where I join Hunter to discuss three episodes of The Twilight Zone that take place in the Old West. This is a terrific podcast, by the way; I can warmly recommend you make it a part of your classic television podcast listening. After that, it's the latest episode of Eventually Supertrain, as Dan and I discuss Garrison's Gorillas; you'll also want to catch segments on Ghosted and one of Dan's all-time favorites, Bronk. (Just kidding, there!) And now, a return to our regular programming.

At Cult TV Blog, John continues his in-depth look at "Arrival," the first episode of The Prisoner, and whether or not the series serves as an allegory for Soviet Russia. I really enjoy this kind of speculative analysis, epecially when dealing with a series as deep and complex as this one.

Speaking of continuations, at Captain Video we're on to the third version of the Space: 1999 pilot, "Moonless Night," as seen in the comics. It's all a part of the 50th anniversary of the premiere of the series. 

A quick but classic entry at the Broadcast Archives, with an ad for Ernie Kovacs's morning drive-time radio program on WABC, done even as Kovacs also was doing a mid-morning show on NBC-TV. Monday through Friday for both of these; mayhem in the a.m. indeed!

'Tis the season for a classic Halloween TV movie, don't you think? David has the answer at Comfort TV, with the 1978 telemovie Are You in the House Alone?, an excellent demonstration of how television didn't need blood and gore to portray horror. 

Did we know that the guys on the A-Team were venture capitalists? Well, why the heck not? Over at The View from the Junkyard, Roger's latest on The A-Team takes us to the episode "The Maltese Cow" because, again, why not?

One of the shows on my "want" list is the 1962 drama The Gallant Men, and at Television's New Frontier: The 1960s, it's a look at episodes from the one and only season of the World War II drama. A big thanks for the shout-out to my interview with Brandon Hollinsworth from a few years back!

This has nothing to do with television other than the connection that we've probably all seen The Moody Blues on the tube, but at A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence pays tribute to the great John Lodge, who died late last week. I was fortunate enough to see the Moodys live twice; they were always one of my favorite groups, and I wouldn't pass up the chance to make mention of him here. TV

If you enjoy the content here and want to support my broader creative work, please consider making a donation at my Ko-fi page. Any amount you contribute helps me continue writing, researching, and sharing these articles and projects. Thank you!

Around the dial

In case you missed it, I appeared in back-to-back episodes of "American TV" with Dan Schneider, both featuring staples of 1960s and '70s Saturday morning television; the first is about Sid and Marty Krofft, the second looks at the work of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Fun to do and, I hope, fun to watch. 

At Bob Crane: Life and Legacy, the authors provide evidence to refute some of the many false claims about Bob's life, particularly his marriage to Patricia Olson (Sigrid Valdis); it's all part of their continuing efforts to tell the true story.

Jack's Hitchcock Project at bare-bones e-zine continues with "The Motive," a third-season story written by Rose Simon Kohn, featuring Skip Homeier, William Redfield, Carl Betz, Carmen Phillips, and an extremely effectve ending.

At Cult TV Blog, John's private detective "season" continues as well, and for once it's a show I've actually watched! It's the gritty series Public Eye, with Alfred Burke outstanding as a Rockford-type P.I. just trying to make a living; this week, it's the excellent episode "The Bankrupt." 

David's countdown of his 50 favorite classic TV characters proceeds at Comfort TV, and this week he turns his attention to Maxwell Smart, played so memorably by Don Adams; could you even imagine anyone else plausibly in this role?

Jordan's in-depth review of The Twilight Zone Magazine returns at The Twilight Zone Vortex, with Volume 3, Number 6, from January/February 1984. Included is an interview with Stephen King, a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, looks at TZ and The Outer Limits, and more!

At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence looks back at the sitcom The Jeffersons on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the show's debut. After an 11-season run on CBS, it's maintained a comfortable home in syndication, and remains one of television's groundbreaking sitcoms.

Travalanche commemorates the birthday of Ernie Kovacs with something I certainly wasn't aware of, not that I'm any kind of Kovacs scholar. It's about the time Ernie and Buster Keaton formed a comedy team, and it's well worth checking out.

Roger's review of The New Avengers continues apace at The View from the Junkyard, with the third episode of the series, "The Midas Touch," which has to do with a contagious disease threatening society, and features another outstanding performance by Joanna Lumley as Purdy. TV  

Around the dial

For the first "Around the Dial" of 2024, we turn to Comfort TV, where David continues to make his way through the television of the 1970, watching an episode from each prime time series. He's up to Wednesday, 1973, where CBS dominates the night with three top-ten shows: Sonny & Cher, Cannon, and Kojak.

At Cult TV Blog, John introduces a new series on The Prisoner, one that seeks to read the show on the assumption that Patrick McGoohan's Number 6 did not resign, but instead is a plant sent to spy on the operations of The Village. It's a provocative theory, one introduced in a book both he and I have read (The Official Prisoner Companion), and I'm looking forward to what he does with it.

Aurora celebrates the 12th anniversary of Once Upon a Screen with some meditations on the number twelve, which, if you want to look at it this way is twice six, which brings us back to The Prisoner! (Nicely done there, don't you think?) Anyway, thanks for twelve good years, and here's hoping we see twelve more!

At Realweegiemedget, Gill brings down the curtain on 2023 with a look at the considerable television work from three of the stars we've lost in the past year: Gayle Hunnicutt, David McCallum and Matthew Perry. This year did seem to take its toll, didn't it?

Terence is also looking back at A Shroud of Thoughts, with a reminder of how eventful a year 2023 was in the entertainment industry. Dare we hope that good trends will increase in 2024, while bad ones will ease up? We'll see.

Rick joins in the retrospective mood at Classic Film & TV Cafe with his top ten posts of 2023. Naturally, he's talking about the posts that got the most views, since if he was referring to quality, he'd need a lot more than ten places!

Meanwhile, Professor Barnhardt closes down his Journal, which has entertained us for more than 20 years. Fortunately, the archives remain available, and good luck with the other things that Bob's looking to work on; I hope they bring you satisfaction!

Roger and Mike are back at The View from the Junkyard, and what they're viewing at the moment is "Death's Door," from the Steed/Peel run of The Avengers. It's an episode that contains a mystery that needs to be solved: see if our dynamic duo is up to the challenge.

Someone I always liked but hadn't thought of lately is the singer Roger Miller, and I remember enjoying his short-lived variety show when it was on in 1966-67. (Why I remember that is beyond me, but such are the mysteries of life.) So thanks to Travalanche for taking a closer look at Miller's singing and acting career, which was more impressive than you might recall.

I've commented several times on my appreciation for Ernie Kovacs and his career; he's one of the great TV pioneers whose work has stood the test of time. Paul shares my enthusiasm at Drunk TV, where he looks at the terrific Ernie Kovacs DVD Collection, which barely scratches the surface of Kovacs' brilliance.

Remember Space: 1999? Of course you do. With Martin Landeau, Barbara Bain, Catherine Schell, and Barry Morse, it was a serious attempt to create a serious science fiction series. It only ran for two seasons, but if you'd like more, try and get E.C. Tubb’s Space: 1999 Rogue Planet, a TV tie-in novel reviewed this week at Cult TV Lounge. TV  

Around the dial

More impressionable young minds enthralled by C-SPAN

I think we'll kick off this Friday the 13th edition with something I've mentioned before—many times, I'm sure—how classic TV fans are accused of living in the past, and the shows themselves are held up to present an unrealistic and unattainable ideal. This week at Comfort TV, David takes a thoughtful look at this and asks the question: are these ideals beneficial or dangerous?

When I lived in the World's Worst Town™, you'll recall, I spent the better (or worst) part of six years with little more television entertainment than NBC, then suffering through a very bad decade. Petrocelli wasn't a bad series by any means, but it never caught on with me. Nonetheless, it's certainly watchable, and at Classic Film & TV Café, Rick reviews Night Moves, the pilot for the series, with Barry Newman reprising his role in the theater movie The Lawyer, and Susan Howard as his loyal wife and secretary. 

At Cult TV Blog, John looks about a series I have seen before: The Prisoner. One of the reasons I celebrate this as one of my favorite series is that it never ceases to make me think, even though I've watched it numerous times. And John comes up with a scenario that's making me think again—as it should you.

An oldie but goodie: at TVParty!, Billy remembers what surely must be one of the most controversial sitcoms ever seen on television anywhere: the British series Heil Honey, I'm Home, a spoof of American '50s sitcoms, which chronicled (or would have, were it not cancelled after one showing) the trials and domestic travails of Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun.

At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence takes a look at the final episode of a long-running series that few people realize was actually a "proper" final episode: "The Case of the Final Fade-Out," the series finale of Perry Mason. And it is, as Terence says, one of the best.

The A.V. Club's Will Harris has a very interesting interview with John Astin, in which the Addams Family icon talks about everything from getting into acting (a great story) to his career role as Gomez, to his relationship with Fellini. What a life!

Forget the political discussions: Fox Entertainment talks with Diane McBain, a mainstay in the Warner Bros. shows of the early 1960s, about her new novel, The Color of Hope, how Aaron Spelling wanted to marry her, what it was like working with Elvis, and more.

Finally, Ben Model, who usually blogs about theater organs and silent film music, takes a good look at Ernie Kovacs, and one of his best sketches: "Albert Gridley," the story of the talk-show guest who can't remember the details of the subject he's being interviewed about. Matt Dennis plays the unfortunate guest. I'd better watch this again the next time I'm being interviewed. TV  

What I've been watching: April—May, 2020

Shows I’ve Watched:	Shows I’ve Bought:
The Ernie Kovacs Show Batman The Green Hornet	N.Y.P.D. Richard Diamond Appointment with Destiny

Imentioned a couple of months ago, the last time we visited this little corner of the blogosphere world, that I'd been watching some episodes of Ernie Kovacs' 1956 summer replacement show. Or, to be more precise (precision being a trademark of the competent writer, and also yours truly), I'd listed it in the category of stuff I'd bought. That's only partially accurate; I haven't been buying much of anything lately, having once again joined the ranks of the unemployed, but since it would be a pretty one-sided look at my tastes in video if I only told you what I was watching (not to mention I'd run out of material sooner rather than later), I've taken to including in the "bought" category things I've discovered on YouTube or some other streaming platform. In this case, that includes several Kovacs episodes from the wonderful YouTube channel Free the Kinescopes! (exclamation point theirs).

I've written about Kovacs before; he's one of my favorites, and the shows at Free the Kinescopes! don't disappoint. I've got the two volumes of Kovacs material from Shout! Factory—exclamation points are apparently a recurring theme this month—and, while it's been a few years since I've seen them, I think most of of what we have here is new material. Not only that, but unlike the shows from Shout!, these appear to be for the most part intact, including the musical and dancing numbers that are often omitted due to the expense of acquiring the rights. The primary benefit of this is the chance for us to hear more of Edie Adams, Kovacs' wife and sidekick, who has a lovely singing voice to go with her comedic talents. It makes her more of a partner in the success of Kovacs' shows, as well as giving us a chance to see some of Ernie's guest stars, such as singer Bill Hayes. If you're a Kovacs fan, I urge you to go and check these out. If not, why aren't you?

t  t  t

Batman was, in many ways, the quintessential television series of the 1960s. Like Kovacs, there was a zaniness about the program, a use of color and graphics and camera angles that hadn't been seen on the tube before, at least not with such exposure. It introduced, or at least made popular, a new genre for television: camp. And while its flame burned out relatively quickly—as is often the case with trendsetters and trailblazers—its influence continued, and continues, to be felt.

I'd been old enough to watch the original run of the show when it started back in 1966, but I remember it more clearly during its afterschool broadcasts later on. I liked it, as far as I can recall, although I didn't go crazy over it as so many people did. I viewed it primarily as a comedy, not taking in the irony or the spoofs it entailed, and was quite confused when the Riddler switched from Frank Gorshin to John Astin and then back again. (There were two Catwomen too; what's up with that?) I also remember the feature length movie that was made with the original cast, including yet a third Catwoman, the one and only onscreen appearance of Lee Meriwether; I watched thaHe int one on a Saturday night in a motel room in the college town near the World's Worst Town™, and it was one of the few moments of relief in an otherwise dismal trip. Despite that, however, there are no symptoms of PTSD involved in watching these episodes, in glorious Blu-ray.

Television in 1966 wasn't all that much different from how it had been in previous years. The highest-rated series for the 1965-66 season included programs like Bonanza, The Lucy Show, Andy Griffith and Gomer Pyle. Series like Bewitched and Hogan's Heroes, although they had unorthdox concepts, were essentially conventional (though very good) sitcoms. Batmani, on the other hand, wasn't anything like the two series it replaced on ABC, Ozzie & Harriet and Shindig (remember, it aired twice a week). It was colorful and creative, it showed that crime could be funny, it brought back the concept of the cliffhanger, and at a time when the industry was honing its dramatic chops on the great social issues of the day (see here for example), it emphasized how television, first and foremost, is entertainment. If anything, you might say it built on the legacy of The Beverly Hillbillies, a show that was often criticized for pandering to the lowest common audience denominator, but was often far more clever than it let on.

Unfortunately, the combination of Batman and the James Bond movies had a negative impact on a lot of TV shows of the time, series like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. that took a sharp turn toward the ridiculous and were never able to find their way back. It also created an expectation for The Green Hornet that couldn't be met—wasn't even attempted, in fact. (More about that momentarily.) I'd suggest, though, that you can draw a somewhat straight line from Batman to The Gong Show and Police Squad!, even though the latter played it totally straight and the former defies description.  Batman made television's theater of the abusurd possible.

There’s something delightful and audacious about the show’s efforts to duplicate comic book adventure in a live-action setting, such as the Joker’s (Cesar Romero) escape from prison via a spring-powered catapult buried under the prison yard. We never actually see it happen, but thanks to a cloud of smoke, a well-timed sound effect, and a shot of the platform balancing on the spring after it's shot the Joker over the prison walls. If you've ever seen a Road Runner cartoon, you know how these things work. And, of course the use of the superimposed POWs and BIFFs and whatnot just make the scenes POP off the screen.

Watching it again after all these years, I'm struck by several things. One is that Frank Gorshin was a hell of an actor; we may remember him best for his manic portrayal of the Riddler (and his terrible riddles), but in the times where he lapses into one of his soliloquies while the members of his gang look on, he displays an intensity suggesting something much deeper, namely the existence of a real person under the mask and ridiculous costume. At times like this Gorshin's Riddler seems to retreat into a private world of his own, unaware there's anyone in the room with him, lost in thoughts of who-knows-what. Maybe he's pondering how he came to be like this; I know the comics probably deal with this, but the series doesn't, and it's the only kind of introspection we're likely to get.

Alan Napier, who plays Alfred, the loyal butler, is really good too. He's the soul of discretion, Jeeves for the superhero set, and in the best tradition of English butlers, it's impossible to imagine him getting rattled by anything. It's clear, to me at least, that Bruce and Dick wouldn't be able to get away with anything around Aunt Harriet without Alfred there to facilitate things. And Neil Hamilton really sells the mock-seriousness of Commissioner Gordon, as he has with so many characters in so many classic TV shows of the time. (By the way, have you ever looked at his office? It takes up half a floor in City Hall. I can only imagine what the Mayor's office must look like, but if it doesn't have a spiral staircase and a hot tub on the upper level, I'd be surprised.) And Burgess Meredith looks like he's just having fun playing the Penguin, another in his resume of quirky characters.

Another thing that's intriguing about watching the show with contemporary eyes is its a sustained attack on the parole system. The police, the prison warden, even Batman himself, are all hilariously portrayed as true believers in the rehabilitative powers of incarceration, even though any time anyone gets out of prison, they go right back to their life of crime. Whether this was intended as a sincere but exaggerated belief (and in the War on Poverty-era social programs of the '60s, it would have been all the rage), or if the writers were lampooning the obvious consequences of naive rehabilitators being taken advantage of by hardened criminals, I'm not sure. Either way, it makes Gotham's officials look even more useless than usual, and when the pendulum swings the other way in the Dark Knight movies, it comes across as the logical reaction.

I haven't mentioned the two leads, Adam West and Burt Ward. I wrote about West here, and I don't think I need to add anything more to that. As for Ward, what do you use to describe a straight man in a show where everything's a straight line? I'm not sure, but the wrong Robin would have been disasterous, and Ward is not wrong.

t  t  t

Van Williams was the junior member of the firm on Bourbon Street Beat; he started out as a law student learning the detective trade and helping answer the phones, but by the end of the show's first (and only) season, he'd come into his own as both a law graduate and a full-fledged detective. When BSB left the air, Williams's character, Kenny Madison, was spun off into another Warner Bros. detective series, Surfside 6. As one of the leads, along with Troy Donahue, Van was now an equal partner in detecting, fighting bad guys, and romancing the gorgeous women always around in these shows. Williams appeared in a third series, The Tycoon, opposite Walter Brennan, before embarking on a role that could have made him a much bigger star: millionaire newspaper publisher Britt Reid, also known as The Green Hornet. Watching him in this series makes me feel as if I've seen him grow up before my eyes, from cub detective to business tycoon and superhero, and I take a great deal of pride in saying that. Williams is a poised, confident businessman, and a cool and collected crimefighter; it's nice to see that he's become a success.

It just wouldn't have been right to review Batman without looking at the series that shared its universe, if not its sensibilities; in fact, I make a point of watching the two of them back-to-back on Friday evenings. The Green Hornet was a product of the Batman phenomenon, and was birthed by William Dozier, who gave us the much-loved Caped Crusader. Unfortunately, and understandably, the Hornet (as he's called by the bad guys) never lives up to Batman's success, for several reasons. One of them is not Al Hirt's fantastic rendition of the show's theme, "Flight of the Bumblebee," given a great arrangement by Sinatra's arranger, Billy May. Another is the dynamic presence of Bruce Lee as Kato, Reid's valet and the Hornet's partner-in-crime. With few exceptions, Lee never really has enough to do in this series, and it's obvious why: he'd have most of the bad guys unconscious in a couple of minutes, leaving us to suffer through the rest of the episode watching Lloyd Gough as Mike, the newspaper's "ace" crime reporter, who keeps trying to prove that the Hornet is the master criminal everyone believes him to be, except for Reid's secretary, Lenore Case. (Wende Wagner) and the D.A. (Walter Brooke). We don't see any of them that much in the series, although Lenore does get put in jeopardy in a couple of episodes, but you have to know going in that any series where Bruce Lee gets number two billing isn't going to afford you much screen time.

There's nothing at all wrong with Williams' performance as Reid. The challenge, other than that the Hornet's completely overshadowed by his supposed sidekick (as would be the case no matter who played Reid) is the decision to play the show straight. Understand, I don't have a problem with that at all; I think The Green Hornet is a lot of fun, and perhaps if it wasn't so closely identified with Batman (there were two crossovers, with each crime-fighting duo making an appearance on the other's show) it would have worked. But while the criminals du jour can be suitably expansive, both Reid and the Hornet are presented as serious, thoughtful, and realistic (given the perimeters of the show's premise). I don't think it was what viewers expected (or were led to expect), with the result that the sting left The Green Hornet after 26 episodes. If this reads like a lukewarm review, you shouldn't take it that way; as I said, I like The Green Hornet a lot. An hour spent with Batman and The Green Hornet is what you need on a Friday evening when you're more interested in entertainment than dealing with the weight of the world, and these days that's praiseworthy indeed. TV  

This week in TV Guide: February 25, 1961

James Hagerty, prior to becoming head of ABC News, was President Eisenhower's press secretary - so it is with this dual authority that he offers, in this week's edition, a "Creed for Television Newsmen." There are six points to this creed:

1. TV news reporting must be "factual, impartial, free and fearless. It cannot permit itself to be dominated or even remotely to be associated with any group or faction of special interest, any political party or any government."

2.  While analyzing and explaining news developments, "it must not confuse news reporting with personal opinion of a commentator who, after all, is expressing only his own thoughts and analysis."

3. Local, regional and national news "must never be neglected or overlooked."

4. News must be reported from "all sections" of the world, regarding a larger staff of trained reporters with expertise in foreign languages.

5. TV news cameras "must have the right to cover news wherever it happens, here at home or overseas."

6. "A good reporter does not seek to fake or exaggerate his story.  He gets the news as it happens, and reports the truth, the whole truth. That is his job."

Politics is part of the cultural history not only of this country but of television, and so I've spent a fair amount of time on it. I've tried, however, to keep my distance when it comes to ideological interjections, although I've got a fair number of opinions (as anyone who knows me can attest). Having said this, I find it interesting that fully three of Hagerty's six points deal with the importance of neutral and objective reporting. Now, without injecting any partisanship, I think we can all agree on the importance of this, and I hope we can also acknowledge that, no matter which side of the political fence you stand on, television news falls woefully short not only in this area but on all of Hagerty's points.

Hagerty served as head of
ABC News from 61-63

Obviously, this isn't a new problem; Hagerty wouldn't have made such an issue of it otherwise. But one of the more unfortunate aspects of the fragmentation of American society over the decades is that the discerning viewer can pretty much watch whichever news program slants towards his or her point of view. Just as music doesn't need to appeal to the masses any longer, and thus shatters into a million different niche networks, there is no incentive for any news program to offer objective, unbiased coverage. Liberal? Watch MSNBC or CNN. Conservative? Fox News. Human interest stories? There's always the networks, who seem to have pretty much given up on hard stuff. And so on.

This isn't the place to debate solutions to the situation, of course, but one further point before we move on: Hagerty's first point, that the news must be kept separate from special interests, is one reason why Reuven Frank, as producer of NBC's Huntley-Brinkley Report, kept it commercial-free in its early years. Frank understood that a news program had to avoid even the hint of a conflict of interest. Considering the amount of influence sponsors exercised over programs in the early days of TV, it's no wonder Frank wanted to keep the news free of such entanglements.  Of course, today the bottom line in TV news is not journalism so much as the network's profit-loss statement. So I guess none of us should be surprised.

📺  📺  📺

So what's on this week? Saturday presents an interesting episode of the debate show The Nation's Future (8:00 p.m., NBC). The question before the panel: "Should Congressional Investigations of Loyalty Be Curbed?" For the affirmative: Rep. James A. Roosevelt (D-Cal); for the negative: Martin B. McKenally, Chairman of the the Americanism Commission of the American Legion. Remember, this is at a time when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC, the precursor to Joe McCarthy's work) still exists.

CBS's Sunday documentary series The Twentieth Century (5:30 p.m. CT) casts a spotlight on French turmoil, and one can't help but see this as a forerunner of the chaos waiting around the corner in the United States. The show promises to tell us about the "turbulent youth of France. LEARN why they condemn conscription, defy [President] de Gaulle, rebel against the Algerian war.  SEE if they are the sinners or the saviors of France." We learn that amidst this tumult, "one dominant theme always recurs—Algeria."

Substitute "Vietnam" for "Algeria" and you've got almost a perfect match, don't you think? Resist conscription, i.e. the draft? Check. Defy the President? Check. Sinners or saviors? Ah, yes, that's the question. Unrest in both France and America would come to a head in 1968; here, it was assassinations and riots, while in France a general strike will threaten to bring the government down altogether, forcing President Charles de Gaulle to make sure he still has the support of the French military, and raising the spectre of French troops marching down the Champs-Élysées.

That's still seven years away for America, though, and even with the civil rights unrest that rears its head in the South, viewers watching this show might well be forgiven for thinking that the French were going mad, the Republic was teetering on the brink, and the children were lunatics running the asylum. Thank God it can't happen here, right?

Monday's The Play of the Week (8:30 p.m., KMSP) is an intriguing one; "Night of the Auk," a play in blank verse written by Arch Oboler (radio's Lights Out), starring William Shatner, Shepperd Strudwick, Warner Anderson, James MacArthur and Alan Mixon as astronauts returning from the first manned flight to the moon. And a couple other things: a sixth man was left on the moon's surface to die, and the Soviet Union threatens nuclear war over egomaniacial Shatner having claimed the moon for the United States. (It's a good thing Captain Kirk was more diplomatic.) The play originated on Broadway, and though it was edited down for television, the production apparently retains the dark, unusual flavor of Oboler's verse. Can you imagine anything this unique on television today?

An American named Hadley plays an important role in Tuesday's Alcoa Presents, which we know better as One Step Beyond (9:00 p.m., ABC). Naturally he's the good guy, hunting through rubble for survivors of a recent earthquake in Asia Minor. I have nothing to add to this, other than that it's inconceivable that someone named Hadley could be anything but the good guy.

On Wednesday, Perry Como (8:00 p.m., NBC) welcomes that hot new comedy team of Mike Nichols and Elaine May, "currently starring on Broadway." At 9:00 p.m. on NBC, Dennis Hopper stars on Naked City in a fine episode about a man born to wealth who insists on trying to make his own way, as owner of the Tango Dance Palace. Unfortunately, the Palace attracts the attention of Detectives Flint and Arcaro (Paul Burke, Harry Bellaver) when one of the girls working there disappears, and Hopper's character claims he's never even seen her.

Life magazine celebrates its 25th anniversary on Thursday night at 8:30 p.m. with a 90-minute star-studded extravaganza on NBC, hosted by Bob Hope, with Fredric March discussing Life's war coverage; Sid Caesar and Peggy Cass on how the average family has changed; Hope and the Mercury 7 astronauts talking about the coming journey into space, and a look at how fashion has evolved in the last quarter-century. Mary Martin also appears in a duet with Hope.

It's truly a moment in time; for more than two decades the famed weekly picture magazine had chronicled our times, portraying life in all its various shapes, sizes and (eventually) colors. And here it is being feted by the very medium that is inexorably taking its place. Exotic images of foreign lands, the pomp and pageantry of coronations, the breathtaking drama of sporting events - all of this had made Life a staple of American households. But now you can see all that on television, except for the color (and that's coming soon enough), and these pictures move! Soon enough Life would be gone.  It folded in 1972, came back as a monthly in 1978, folded again in 2000, tried one further comeback as a Sunday newspaper supplement in 2004, and finally folded for good in 2007. And the medium that took its place, television, now finds itself in the same position in relation to the internet. Am I the only one who finds this moment ironic?

Friday wraps up with a little something for everyone. On the Bell Telephone Hour (8:00 p.m., NBC), "A Galaxy of Music" celebrates song from every arena: folk (Burl Ives), music hall (Gracie Fields and Stanley Holloway), opera (Renata Tebaldi), flamenco (the Robert Iglesias ballet) and Spanish (Los Chavales de Espana). Roger Moore appears as himself (a typical WB self-promotion) on 77 Sunset Strip (8:00 p.m., ABC). And I've always had a soft spot for the one-season detective series Michael Shayne (9:00 p.m., NBC), where this week Shayne (Richard Denning) has to solve a murder committed at a homicide convention. Busman's holiday, hmm?

📺  📺  📺

The TV Teletype tells us that after March 16, you won't be able to take a good luck at Ernie Kovacs' panel show Take a Good Look on ABC; the following week, the network is bringing Ernie back as host of Silents Please, the summer-replacement show he hosted last year. As part of the deal, Kovacs will replace Silents once a month with one of his patented specials, which will run in April, May, June, and September. That will continue into the winter; the January show, taped in December, will be aired ten days after Kovacs' death.

📺  📺  📺

On the cover this week are the stars of CBS's Candid Camera. If the smiles in the picture look somewhat forced, there's a good reason for it.

Candid Camera premiered on radio in 1947, where it was known as Candid Microphone. It made the transition to television the next year where it remained, off and on, until 2004. Candid Camera was an early form of reality television, but rather than the celebrity horror shows of today, I think you could describe it as being more like America's Funniest Home Videos. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the premise was simple: an ordinary person walks into a seemingly normal situation, which rapidly becomes completely abnormal. For example, a gas station attendant* fills the tank of a car, but no matter how long he's at it the tank never fills up. The car is found to have a fake tank in it, but not before the surprised attendant is told, "Smile—you're on Candid Camera!"

*You're probably too young to remember them, either. They used to come out and fill your car with gas while you remained in the car. They'd check your oil too, if you asked. Yes, a long time ago.

The picture on the cover is taken from Camera's 1960-67 run on CBS when it appeared as a stand-alone show, rather than as a feature on another program. The balding man in the background, looking as if he desperately wants to be seen, is Candid Camera creator Allen Funt. He's being blocked by the legendary Arthur Godfrey, who at this time is co-host of the program. The woman to the left is the singer-actress Dorothy Collins, who often appeared as the person who introduces the unsuspecting victim into the extraordinary situation (for example, she drove the car to the gas station in the prank listed above).

Candid Camera was Funt's baby through and through, but Godfrey was a known commodity to CBS and sponsors, and it might well be that the network thought he would be more likely to attract viewers than Funt alone. It was a relationship doomed from the start; Godfrey's ego demanded a large role, and he saw the program as a vehicle for his folksy humor and commentary; and yet at heart the show was nothing more than a collection of videos requiring basic introductions.

Funt, no shrinking violet himself, resisted Godfrey's efforts to put himself at the center of the show. He told a San Francisco interviewer "that Candid Camera would be much better if Godfrey didn't talk too much" and added that "if the Godfrey problem can't be solved, the Candid Camera company has another similar show in the works and ready to put on the air." In one instance, Funt was said to have become so fed up with Godfrey that he stormed off the set during rehearsal, refusing to take part in the show's taping. In the end, Funt won out, and Godfrey disappeared after the first season, replaced by Garry Moore's sidekick Durward Kirby. I doubt that moment never appeared on Candid Camera. TV  

This week in TV Guide: May 16, 1959

No, I'm not going to say anything about the fashion sense displayed on the front cover of this week's edition. It's just too easy, there's no percentage in it. Besides, it violates the number one rule around here, which is: Don't discuss things out of their cultural context. I'm sure 58 years ago people would have seen this through an entirely different lens. It is distracting, though...

◊ ◊ ◊
I'm in the mood for something different this week. Rather than focusing on individual nights or programs, let's just hop through the issue and see what we can find.

Here Isn't Lucy: Dwight Whitney reports that "When Lucy Ball showed up for a benefit in Oklahoma City's 12,000-seat Taft Stadium, she took one look at the sparse crowd (variously estimated at from 800 to 2400) and blew her stack. Somebody goofed, she wailed, by failing to publicize the thing. But that didn't stop Lucy from goofing herself. She refused to go on, thereby garnering some of the worst press a major TV star has yet to achieve, and leaving herself open, with good reason, to the charge that she didn't love her fans half as much as they loved Lucy."

A Song in His Heart: Ernie Kovacs returns to television in an NBC special Friday night (8:00 p.m. ET) called "Kovacs on Music." It's included in the first volume of the Ernie Kovacs Collection put out by Shout a few years ago. (And if you don't have it yet, why not?) The show is every bit as surrealistic as you'd expect from Kovacs, including an extremely abridged version of Swan Lake performed by dancers in gorilla suits, a truly weird bit about a singing commercial with Louis Jourdan as one of the singers and Andre Previn as the conductor, and a very funny skit with Edie Adams as part of an American troupe putting on a televised operetta on Italian television. But Adams, who had a beautiful voice, also sings a lovely number by Heitor Villa-Lobos, and Kovacs displays his serious knowledge of classical music. It's a good thing the show's available, though; the TV Guide listing gets several descriptions wrong, including putting the Nairobi Trio in the operetta skit. Oh well.

There are eight million stories down there.

The Naked Truth: Bob Johnson's review of The Naked City calls the police drama "a disappointing piece of theater for many reasons," chief among them the show's insistence on seeing the host city as the star of the series. "Dragnet learned how to deliver sociology as interpreted by Lt. Joe Friday and nobody else. Unless Naked City abandons its premise of featuring New York City as its star, and settles down to telling every story from [star Horace] McMahon's viewpoint, the show may swallow him up as did its former star, [John] McIntire." Of course, today's television historians view that very trait - the show's use of New York City as a living, breathing character every bit as much as its actors - as one of the main reasons Naked City is considered one of the finest police dramas of its kind. And starting in season two it's Paul Burke, not Horace McMahon, as the human star of the show.

And They're Off! Sports highlight of the week is the Preakness Stakes, second jewel in horse racing's Triple Crown, telecast live from Pimlico in Baltimore. As opposed to the marathon coverage given the races this year on NBC and NBCSN, CBS's telecast is a mere half hour (5:30 p.m. ET), with Fred Capossela calling the race, Bryan Field on color, and Chris Schenkel doing interviews from the winner's circle. Tomy Lee, the Kentucky Derby winner two weeks ago, is passing up the Preakness and the final race, the Belmont Stakes (his British handlers thought the racers were run too close together), leaving Royal Orbit, a "fast-closing fourth" in the Derby, to take the run for the Black-Eyed Susans.

Who Are You Two Again? There's a game show on NBC called Laugh Line (9:00 p.m., Thursday), its primary claim to fame being that it's hosted by Dick Van Dyke. A brief description of the show: "the panelists sit around ad-libbing captions for living cartoons pantomimed by stock-company actors. Then each panel member moves the actors around into new positions to fit his own laugh line." (It sounds like something that was done much, much better by Who's Line is it, Anyway?) The show might well have amounted to more, however, had it stuck to its original plan, which was to have, as two of the regular panelists, the comedy team of Mike Nichols and Elaine May. There's an article telling us a little more about the duo, who hit it big a year or so ago with their appearance on Omnibus, and they're looking forward to plying their trade on television. But by the time the programming section is printed up, the lineup has already changed; with Nichols and May signed for Broadway in the fall, the producers have decided to replace them with Roger Price and Pat Harrington, Jr. (as Guido Panzini) in order to create a permanent cast. Laugh Line isn't picked up for the fall, while in the meantime Mike Nichols and Elaine May, both together and separately, go on to legendary careers.

Allen vs. Sullivan: We even have a rare appearance this week of our Steve Allen vs. Ed Sullivan matchup. Both shows air Sunday nights; Steverino starts things off at 7:30 p.m. on NBC with his guests, comedian George Gobel, singers Diahann Carroll and Vaughn Monroe, the Pensacola Naval Air Training Center Cadet Choir, and the Nicholas Dancers. Ed counters at 8:00 p.m. on CBS with Louis Prima and Keeley Smith; comedians Shelley Berman, Jack Carter and Frank Libuse; singer Al Hibbler; dancer Conrad "Little Buck" Buckner; trick violinist Baron Bulka; and the United States Military Academy Cadet Choir. Both shows have good lineups tonight (aside from the probability that the country has now been left undefended due to the Army and Navy being on television), but in this case I think I'm going to have to give the edge to Sullivan due to Berman's comedy, and the talent of Louis Prima and his then-wife, Keely Smith. In case you haven't ever had the opportunity to see them, here's a clip - could well be from this very show.


So Who Did Discharge Bilko? Since the question's on the cover, we'd better try and provide the answer. The Phil Silvers Show, originally known as You'll Never Get Rich but known colloquially as Bilko after Silvers' character, scheming Master Sergeant Ernie Bilko, has long been regarded as one of the great sitcoms of the Golden Age, and so it may come as something of a surprise to learn that the series ran only for four seasons, and 1959 marks the end of the road. What happened? According to Silvers, who perhaps protests a bit too much, it's because Camel, his main sponsor, is so closely identified with the series, even tailoring the spots to fit the platoon, that secondary sponsors ("You can't do a weekly show like ours these days without two sponsors.") never felt they were getting as good a deal. When his most recent second sponsor, Schick, left the show, CBS wasn't able to find a new one. Of course, he adds, "I don't think CBS tried too hard to sell us. But as I said, I'm not sorry. I'm tired of the role and of the constant grind." Fortunately for the network, Westinghouse just happens to have wanted to move their show, Desilu Playhouse, to the Silvers timeslot all along. So all's well that ends well, I guess.

What Else Is Worth Watching? On Friday night, ABC's Walt Disney Presents (8:00 p.m.) features two delightful cartoons based on British author Kenneth Grahame's wonderful children's stories: "The Wind in the Willows" and "The Reluctant Dragon." Basil Rathbone is among the voices for the cartoons. The long arm of the law has yet to catch up with Charles Van Doren, so he's still one of the hosts on Today each weekday morning on NBC. Alan King, Dorothy Collins, and the Dukes of Dixieland are guests on The Garry Moore Show (CBS, Tuesday, 10:00 p.m.). Claudette Colbert hosts the premiere of Woman!, a series of occasional hour-long afternoon dramas airing on NBC. Tuesday's question: Do They Marry Too Young? A Monday spectacular airing on CBS at 8:00 p.m., "America Pauses for the Merry Month of May," is hosted by Burgess Meredith and takes viewers around the country to celebrate "Maytime," including Larry Blyden in Teaneck, New Jersey; Molly Bee in Mobile, Alabama; Art Carney in Douglaston, New York, and Marion Anderston at Yosemite National Park. Finally, on the aforementioned Desilu Playhouse (still on Mondays at this point, 10:00 p.m, CBS) the aforementioned Lucille Ball plays a dancing teacher who learns she's inherited a boxer from her late uncle. Imagine her surprise when the boxer turns out to be not a dog, but a prizefighter!

Loretta Young Without That Hat! In fairness, since we started with Miss Young, we should end with her as well. Her series, The Loretta Young Show, has just wrapped up season six, and during that time she's played no fewer than 129 different characters, from farm girls to gangster's molls. During her illustrious career, she's won an Oscar (and been nominated another time), two Emmys (plus four additional nominations), and 37 other awards. She's learned a lot during that time, and not just about acting, but business as well. It turns out that her company owns the films she's made for her series, and she's not about to part with them as so many other stars have. Rumor has it she's been offered $4 million for them, to no avail. "[I]f they can make money for somebody else - well, I'd figure they could do the same for me. I'd figure, why not retain ownership? I'm just supposing, remember."

She's also no-nonsense when it comes to making the show: for years she'd been bothered when shooting stopped in order to reset the lights and move the camera in for a close-up. "Get a boom," she'd tell the director, to which the answer was always the same - it's too expensive to rent. Finally, she'd had enough, and told them to buy a boom and rent it out when they weren't using it. "Let somebody pay us rent for it." It's now paid off and bringing in extra dollars. If the show's budget can't afford a particular guest star, she tells them to take the difference out of her own salary. She gets an allowance of $20 a week in cash, and that's good enough for her. Quite a gal, all in all. But maybe we could all chip in a little more to buy her a better hat? TV  

This week in TV Guide: January 27, 1962

On of the all-time favorite TV tropes is the wedding. It can be used to write someone out of a series, to introduce someone into a series, or to bolster fading ratings. It's almost always an event, and sometimes the "very special episode" will even be advertised with fake "invitations" asking you, the dear viewer, to take part in the blessed event.

This week, the latest show to fall back on the wedding is CBS' Father of the Bride, at 8:30pm CT on Friday night, based on the 1950 movie of the same name starring Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett and Elizabeth Taylor. Granted, any series with the word "bride" in the title would lead one to expect a wedding at some point or other, but when the first seventeen episodes are dedicated to setting up the premise, it's a little hard to know where the series hoped to go afterward. Sure, there are all kinds of traditional newlywed storylines to choose from, but even that will take you only so far. Eventually, the series would have had to go far afield from its original scenario. We'll never know for sure, though, because the series only lasted one season, its contract with the network being annulled with the last original episode on June 1, 1962.

At any rate, it's not the series that's the point this week, but its star, Myrna Fahey, who takes on the Elizabeth Taylor role. In this week's issue, we have a seven-page layout of Fahey modeling various fashions and accessories, including a smart pink suit with matching pillbox hat that looks eerily similar to that worn by Jacqueline Kennedy on November 22. Close enough, at least, to startle anyone seeing it after the fact.

Myrna Fahey was very busy on TV in the late '50s and '60s, and made a memorable appearance opposite Vincent Price in Roger Corman's 1960 movie House of Usher, but Father of the Bride was her only major television role. She died of cancer in 1973 at the young age of 40.

***

One of the more enjoyable aspects to trolling through the TV Guide archives is running across mention of a series that's destined to become a classic but for the moment is still in its embryonic state. Thus is the case in this week's issue.

We don't have Cleveland Amory for a critic yet; he won't come on the scene for another year. But in his stead we have an equally illustrious name: Gilbert Seldes, film critic for The New Republic; first Director of Programming for CBS, host of various cultural and educational programs on both radio and television, and head of the Annenberg School for Communications - that's as in Walter Annenberg, President of Triangle Publications, publisher of TV Guide.

This week Seldes takes a look at The Dick Van Dyke Show. The rookie series premiered in October 1961, which gives Seldes three months worth of episodes to check out. And - surprise - he doesn't particularly like it. Well, that might be an exaggeration; he does allow that "it's all in fun and some of it is fun." But his main criticism of the program is that creator Carl Reiner seems to have based this show on the idea that you "take an event that has happened to nearly everybody and that nearly everybody has told to everybody else. Then make it funnier than it ever was. And throw in a surprise ending." Instead, though, he concludes that it's more "like having someone tell you what happened to him and you know the story isn't any better than what happened to you." In other words, the plots are routine and predictable, the situations generally call for some degree of misunderstanding, and a couple of twists are thrown in to ensure a surprise ending that nevertheless means everyone lives happily ever after.


Now, I'll admit that the Van Dyke show has never been one of my favorites; I enjoy the scenes with Rob, Buddy and Sally at the office, but I've never understood the appeal of Mary Tyler Moore. (I'm a heretic? So sue me.) But a couple of things about Seldes' review rub me the wrong way. For one thing, he never mentions the names of any of the actors in the series. You might be able to figure out Dick Van Dyke is in the series because his name is in the title, but it might as well be called The Carl Reiner Show, because almost all of the review is devoted to discussing Reiner's part in the program, and the success (or failure) of his scripts. But the point is you don't see anything about Moore, nor Morey Amsterdam, nor Rose Marie, nor even Richard Deacon. Now, I might be able to understand Seldes' fascination with the writing, given that he's a writer himself, but still. Second, in the review's final paragraph Seldes mentions fleetingly that Rob Petrie's job is as a TV writer, but he completely ignores the dynamic of the characters making up the office staff. As I recall, one of the Van Dyke show's special touches is that it was one of the rare sitcoms to spotlight not only the star's home life, but his work life as well. To shrug off that office, so integral to the success of the sow, as merely his occupation is to do it a gross disservice.

Perhaps the show wasn't literary enough for Seldes. Maybe it didn't hit upon social issues, or have redeeming educational value. Perhaps The Dick Van Dyke Show was just 30 minutes of harmless entertainment that everyone could identify with, acted out by a superior cast. Is there anything wrong with that?

***
As you know, on Mondays we focus on a single day's worth of listings. Sometimes I add local color to the story, especially when I'm reporting on the Minneapolis-St. Paul channels. Rarely, though, do I get a chance to go in-depth on some of the programs on that day. I thought I'd rectify that this week; it won't replace Monday's story (you'll have to tune in to see what day I'm doing), but since Sunday afternoon programming has, arguably, changed more than any other day of the week, let's take a closer look at some of the shows people were watching on January 28.

The reason Sundays are so different, of course, is that the early '60s didn't see wall-to-wall sports or infomercials on during the day - there was time for something else. Much of that programming falls into the category of "public affairs" - hey, I didn't promise it would be exciting, just different. For example, at 4:00pm CT NBC has The Nation's Future, in which two public figures debate one of the leading issues of the day, following by questioning from a studio audience. This week: Democratic Senator Clifton Anderson (New Mexico) and Republican Senator John Tower (Texas) take up the question "Should medical care for the aged be linked to Social Security?" The show runs for an hour. It's up against Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour on CBS and Wide World of Sports on ABC. Later on, NBC has the venerable "press conference of the air" Meet the Press, which wasn't always shown on Sunday mornings. TV Guide doesn't provide any details, but a little Internet research tells us the guest is Representative Chet Holifield (D - California), Chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. What with all the talk about the Test Ban Treaty, it's not surprising that atomic energy gets a lot of play.

Meanwhile, WFAA, the ABC affiliate in DFW, has a program called Meet the Professor, which this week has Arthur Mizener, a professor of English at Cornell. Later on, WFAA features Young America Speaks, with students from Texas and Midwestern Universities debating the question "Should the Federal Government subsidize cultural and artistic programs?" while Wichita Falls' KSWO brings us ABC's Issues and Answers, an interview with Chester Bowles, special representative to the President on Asian, African and Latin American Affairs. And after that, NBC carries "the first of three half-hour programs presenting taped highlights from the Federal Communications Commission's hearing on network television programming." You might wonder if anyone was ever interested enough to watch it, but again, let's put it in context: the Quiz Show Scandals (see more below) had changed the way TV programming was sponsored, and questions about (for example) whether or not the networks relied on ratings to the exclusion of quality were, indeed, very controversial.

Besides public affairs programming, Sunday was known as a graveyard for cultural programs that might not find a large audience in prime-time. At 1:30pm, NBC Opera Theatre reruns 1960's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni, featuring two of the greatest opera singers of the 20th Century, soprano Leontyne Price and bass Cesare Siepi.  The show expands to two hours and thirty minutes for the opera. Meanwhile, at 2:00pm, WFAA's Great Music from Chicago is an hour of classical music from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Also at 2:00pm, Directions '62 has "Singer Among the Nations," a profile of the wonderful tenor Jan Peerce. At 4:30pm, it's one of the most loved quiz shows of the '60s, G-E College Bowl, which pits DePauw University against BYU. Oh, and on Amateur Hour, "Ted Mack's guests include a barbershop chorus, a guitarist and a dancer."

Local movies? At noon it's One Way to Love on WBAP and We Who Are Young on KSYD. At 4:30pm on KTVT, it's Flaxy Martin. Religious programming? Everything from Gospel Lighthouse Church on KTVT to Davey and Goliath on KXII. Oh, and there is some sports: CBS Sports Spectacular spotlights the always-enjoyable Harlem Globetrotters, once again taking on the Washington Generals. Former PGA champion Bob Rosburg competes against Japanese champion Pete Nakamura on Shell's Wonderful World of Golf on NBC. The aforementioned Wide World of Sports has highlights of yesterday's Oregon Invitational Indoor Track Meet. And in the most exciting show of the day, KTVT has Championship Bridge, hosted by the renowned Charles Goren.

See how much we've lost?

***

The sports schedule is a little light this week, with football finished for the year and baseball still three months off.

Not the Green Bay Packers

NBC's Saturday afternoon NBA Game of the Week might confuse you if you aren't up-to-date on the early history of the NBA. The game pits the Syracuse Nationals and Chicago Packers from the Chicago Amphitheatre. Now, the Packers aren't some early version of the Chicago Bulls - the league's first expansion team is actually the predecessor to today's Washington Wizards, having been known during the intervening years as the Chicago Zephyrs, Baltimore Bullets, Capital Bullets and Washington Bullets before settling on their present moniker.* The history of the Syracuse Nationals, by contrast, is much simpler - they moved to Philadelphia at the end of the 1962-63 season and became the 76ers.  (Replace the Warriors, who had moved the previous year to San Francisco. Think Philly would like to have that trade back?)

*The present-day Bulls actually began in 1966.

As for the Amphitheatre, which was demolished in 1999, it's probably best known as the home of that infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention. But that's another kind of sport, for another time.

***

In last week's TV Guide, which was from 1958, we saw that the big-name quiz shows still maintained an active presence on the airwaves. with entrants like Dotto, The $64,000 Question, The $64,000 Challenge and Twenty One among otheres. Later in 1958 the Quiz Show Scandals will become public, taking down most of these shows. In 1959 the sins of the industry were put on public display during Congressional hearings, and this past week the story finally comes to an end when a Manhattan district court judge gave suspended sentences to the guilty parties, the most famous of which being Charles Van Doren.

In another note, we read a brief mention of the death of Ernie Kovacs on January 13 in a traffic accident. It's just one sentence, commenting that the saddest faces on television were those seen at Kovacs' funeral. Now it's true I don't have the issues just after this, so there's no way of telling if a bigger tribute to Kovacs was offered later on, but for one of the greatest pioneers television has ever known, a man described in the sentence as the "beloved comedian," there would have been more about him. Nowadays there would be special editions of People all over the newsstands, but perhaps things were more sedate back then. It is true that Kovacs, in his lifetime, was always something of a cult figure with a niche audience, and it's also true that greatness is seldom recognized in one's lifetime. There's no question, though, that it was a sad day, for Kovacs' family, friends and admirers, and a sad day for television itself. (I wrote about Kovacs' death here.)

And finally, we have a selection of quotes from Jackie Gleason, who earlier this month appeared as a guest on David Susskind's infamous Open End program. Among the gems from The Great One:

On Money: "Well, I think the best way to waste money is to keep it."

On Drinking: "I have some rules about drinking. I never drink when I'm angry. I never drink when I have a problem. I never drink to ward off a cold or to get a good night's sleep. I drink with the honorable intention of getting bagged."

On Fallout Shelters: "I don't go around picking wild mushrooms. I go to a store and buy some food. That store isn't going to be there, Pal."

On TV: "I think it's doing a pretty good job now - with the exception of a program like this." TV  

This week in TV Guide: March 4, 1961

Raymond Burr was on the cover of TV Guide at least a dozen times, between Perry Mason and Ironside, not to mention his turn as Pope John XXIII.  There's very little new to be written about him, and we know that much of what we've already read will turn out not to be true.  There are a couple of things that remain consistent through all these stories, however: that Ray Burr is a very private man, and that he's a mensch to work with.

Richard Gehman's profile of Burr this week alludes to his life as "one long series of heartbreaking tragedies," most of which didn't actually happen, but there's a significant line in this section, in which Gehman remarks that "few of Burr's friends know anything about him."  It's likely that, in retrospect, what they did know of him might not have been so.  Lest you think I'm hammering Burr, I'm not, or at least I don't mean to.  It is, however, impossible to write about him without picking up these small pieces, which appear in so many articles about him, and contrast them with what we've since learned about him.

Raymond Burr is one of my favorite actors, just as Perry Mason remains one of my favorite series.  And the comments from Burr's colleagues on Mason demonstrate why he was so well-liked on the set.  He's a practical joker, for one thing, his favorite victim being Barbara Hale, who plays Mason's devoted secretary Della Street.  He's good to the crew, with "a desire for everybody to be happy, to be wanted and to belong," leading one person to refer to the Mason set as "the happiest company in Hollywood."

He's also loyal, and not afraid to fight for what he believes in.  When William Talman, who plays Mason's nemesis Hamilton Burger, was suspended from the show following a morals charge (later dismissed), Burr was outraged and fought CBS constantly until Talman was reinstated.  And Ray Collins, who plays Lt. Arthur Tragg, remained listed on the opening credits even after his health prevented him from appearing on the show.  This was, of course, also at Burr's "request."

This article is the first of a three-part series on Burr's life; subsequent parts will go into detail on the more dubious assertions about Burr's past.  In later years, articles will elaborate on these events, but they'll also discuss Burr's devotion to visiting American troops in battle areas, and his continuing commitment to his colleagues.  A mensch indeed.

***

Here's an interesting little slice of life, airing live on Sunday afternoon on Channel 11 - the championship game of the State Catholic High School Basketball Tournament.*  Yes, back in the day (and maybe still, in some areas) parochial high schools competed in their own tournaments, separate from that of the public schools.

*Although, given the program's five-hour running time, I have to think Channel 11 was showing more than than one game.

The reasons for this are numerous, and obvious, in 1961: private schools are able to attract students from a larger geographic area than the average high school*, giving them a "recruiting" advantage; Catholic schools are part of a culture that is, in general, less assimilated into the mainstream, etc.  The differences between the Catholic tournament and the "real" tournament, played later in March, are there as well:  the public school tournament is held in Williams Arena, home of the Minnesota Gophers and shrine of basketball in the state, before crowds that would rival those of contemporary NBA teams, with a Saturday night championship game viewed on statewide television; the Catholic tournament is held in the smaller St. Paul Auditorium and finishes on Sunday afternoon.

*Nowadays, in many areas, students are free to enroll wherever they choose, which cuts down on the "recruiting" advantage.   

It's a small but telling example of how distinct the Catholic subculture was in 1961.  I've read stories of dances at Catholic schools where teachers checked students for their baptismal certificates before letting them in, and Protestants who were warned they'd go straight to Hell if they stepped into a Catholic church.  One of the major goals of the Second Vatican Council was to encourage ecumenism between faiths and assimilate Catholics into the greater culture; in other circumstances, this could be the jumping-off point for an entire discussion on the effects of the Vatican II vis-à-vis the current state of Catholic culture and practice (or lack thereof).  I think we'll just let this speak for itself, though.

***

I've mentioned before that I'm a big fan of Ernie Kovacs, and this Wednesday Kovacs, along with his wife Edie Adams and a cast of nutty sidekicks including Hans Conried, Pat Carroll and Peter Hanley, appear on CBS' U.S. Steel Hour in the crime drama spoof "Private Eye, Private Eye."  Given the description of the show (see below), I would have anticipated a very funny hour; however, a contemporary review labels it "pleasant but bland," a show that "tries very hard to be funnier than it is."

SOURCE: HADLEY TV GUIDE COLLECTION

It's true that Kovacs is an acquired taste, one that many people (critics included) often failed to get, but at the same time I can totally understand how the show might have underachieved.  The reviewer comments that the most entertaining part of the show, in his opinion, is Kovacs' "attitude of perpetual boredom," which might well have been an indicator that he knew it wasn't working.  On the other hand, it also could have been his acknowledgement of the absurdity of the situations he was portraying, such as a bit about a sponsor trying to bring some culture to his detective series.  Oh well.

***

The Play of the Week is one of David Susskind's projects, an attempt to recapture the magic of Golden Age television drama.  It isn't a network drama, appearing instead on a syndicated lineup of 100 or so stations nationwide, from 1959 to 1961.  (In the Twin Cities it's on independent Channel 9 on Wednesday at 8:30pm.)  The quality of programming on Play of the Week is significant, and telling in comparison to that seen on TV today; the premiere episode was Euripides' "Medea" (with a translation by the poet Robinson Jeffers), and later productions were of works by authors as varied as Steinbeck, Sartre and Chekhov.

This week's drama, "Legend of Lovers," is by playwright Jean Anouilh, whose play "Becket" will later be adapted into an Oscar-nominated movie starring Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole.  "Legend of Lovers" is an adaptation of the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, in this case updated to France in the 1930s, and stars Robert Loggia and Piper Laurie.  Again, this is something I'd have a hard time imagining making it to television screens today.  Its competition is The Barbara Stanwyck Show on NBC (followed by our favorite Jackpot Bowling Starring Milton Berle), and Peter Gunn on ABC.

SOURCE: HADLEY TV GUIDE COLLECTION

Continuing in the cultural vein, NBC's Omnibus on Sunday afternoon features another famous playwright, Pulitzer and Oscar winner William Saroyan*.  Saroyan is on Omnibus to discuss the trend in theater toward the avant-garde, starting with an analysis of his own play "The Time of Your Life," both in its original version and in the avant-garde style, followed by performances from plays by Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and Edward Albee.  With playwrights like that, I'd assume this show isn't a laugh riot.  Probably not even as funny as "Private Eye, Private Eye."

*Fun fact: William Saroyan's cousin is Ross Bagdasarian, Sr., whose stage name was David Seville.  As in "Alvin and the Chipmunks" David Seville.

And here's something you don't see often: a drama special on a weekday afternoon.  It's "Mother and Daughter," an NBC Special For Women airing at 3:00pm CT on Thursday afternoon.  It tells the story of a mother worried about her 16-year-daughter's growing independence, and the daughter's belief that her parents "wouldn't understand."  It's got a heavy-hitting cast, with Patricia Neal and Arthur Hill as the parents, and Lynn Loring as the daughter.  Just to show that this isn't a typical soap-opera story, NBC newswoman Pauline Frederick appears after the drama, interviewing New York City health commissioner Leona Baumgartner.

***

Wait, we haven't covered the rest of the sports scene yet!  Saturday's sports is pretty modest - no Wide World of Sports, no CBS Sports Spectacular, no PGA golf tournament.  Channel 11, which has shown Missouri Valley Conference basketball all season, has Saint Louis taking on Bradley.  NBC's NBA coverage continues with Syracuse vs. Philadelphia*, and CBS has an hour-long replay of an NFL game between Baltimore and Chicago from last season.  Channel 4 follows that football up with a tape of last night's college hockey between North Dakota and Minnesota, bitter rivals then as now, and finishes up with the Big 10 basketball game of the week between Purdue and Illinois.

*For those of you too young to remember, these are the Philadelphia Warriors, who at the end of the next season will move to San Francisco, leaving in Philadelphia a vacuum that will be filled the following season by the new 76ers, who used to be - the Syracuse Nationals.

One of the things I enjoy about these early 60s games is the modesty of the arenas and stadiums in which the games take place, in the days before the arenas had become palaces.  That Purdue-Illinois game, for example, is played at George Huff Gym on the Illinois campus.  In checking, it turns out that Huff Gym was a formidable place for visiting teams to play in.  The Illini have won 81% of the games they played at Huff, which they'll vacate in two years in favor of Assembly Hall, an arena that's newer, cleaner, bigger, and less charming.  Huff held less than 7,000, which of course is the main reason it had to go, but the atmosphere in these small arenas, packed with students and filled with college spirit, is impossible to replicate.  There are a few of the old buildings still around, but even one of the best, Williams Arena at the University of Minnesota, has been renovated to provide the modern conveniences, and while we should be grateful it's still around, it's still kind of sad to think of those that weren't, and the atmosphere that disappeared with them.

***

Finally, the odd show of the week is on Friday evening at 7pm on KTCA, Channel 2, the educational station. There's no description of it, just the title: United World Federalists.  Is anyone really surprised that a program like this would be on public television? TV