This week in TV Guide: June 26, 1965

Back when I first started my TV Guide collection, it wasn't to provide sociological analysis of '60s television and how it reflected American culture and vice versa.  Northing that deep or pretentious.  It was simply because I liked paging through them, finding shows I remembered, shows I was sorry I didn't remember, and shows that I thought never should have made it to the air.  It was a miniature time capsule for me, a chance to relive some days and experience others for the first time, and it remains a simple pleasure to do so.

Since we're in the midst of the summer rerun season and there isn't a lot of depth in these issues, I thought I'd go back to those former days and just see what jumps off the page of this issue.  Maybe there's some good stuff in here, maybe not.  Let's see.

***

Here's something you wouldn't see on network TV nowadays.  At 8:45 am CT on ABC, it's the Irish Sweeps Derby horse race, live via Early Bird satellite from Dublin, with Jim McKay and Irish sports announcer Michael O'Hehir providing the call.  It wasn't that unusual for ABC, in particular, to provide Saturday morning sports coverage from overseas, as they did during Ford Motor's campaign to win the 24 Hours of LeMans.  The Early Bird, which was quite famous at the time, had only been up since April and live television coverage from Europe and Asia was a novelty at the time, leading me to suspect ABC covered the Derby not just because it was a big race, but simply because they could.  Lending credence to this theory is a mention in "For the Record" that Comsat is set to start collecting fees for the use of the Early Bird, ending the free run that had existed prior to then.

Here are highlights of the race, by the way, which was won by Meadow Court, partly owned by Bing Crosby.  I'm surprised a tape of the race wasn't found in his basement.

***

No Sullivan vs. The Palace this week, as Palace is preempted by the Coaches All-America college football game, live from Buffalo, New York.  This was one of the more unusual post-season all-star games, coming as it did more than five months after the end of the college football season.  For a football fan like me it was a real treat, a much-needed antidote to the endless stream of baseball throughout the summer*, and a signal that football season was just around the corner.  It was sort of a companion to July's College All-Star game, which pitted the NFL champions against an all-star team of seniors.  And besides, Chris Schenkel and Bud Wilkinson usually announced it, which meant it had to be a big game, right?

*This was long before I'd come to appreciate the subtleties and nuances of baseball, which in turn was long before the drug scandals and increasingly slow pace of the game drove me away again.

It's no surprise that all-star games like these don't exist anymore.  For one thing, the NFL would never permit their expensive new rookies to endanger themselves playing in meaningless college exhibition games when they could be playing in meaningless pro exhibition games.  And the whole all-star experience has waned across all leagues, given that the proliferation of televised sports has made household names out of almost everyone - it used to be, for example, that people who lived in American League cities only got to see National League players at the All Star Game, or on the occasional Game of the Week telecast.

Games like this may not be missed, but they're still missed, if you know what I mean.

***

I mentioned the single-season series The Rogues a couple of weeks ago.  It's on KCMT, Channel 7, at 10:30 Sunday night, rather than it's normal 9:00 Sunday timeslot.  Channel 7, an NBC affiliate that also carried various ABC shows, broadcast the previous day's Lawrence Welk at 9:00 instead.  Some people thought the failure of The Rogues, a clever and humorous show that starred Gig Young, David Niven and Charles Boyer, was because the show was too sophisticated for viewers.  In Channel 7's case, I can believe it.

Anyway, this week's episode is entitled "The Boston Money Party," and features Young's character (the three stars rotated turns as leads) "posing as the owner of a New England textile plant, to trap Paul Mannix, the 'wolf' of Wall Street."  An unscrupulous one, no doubt, as the rogues seldom scammed someone who didn't deserve it.  An attraction of this episode: it was written by William Link and Richard Levenson, the creators of Columbo and countless other clever shows.  Since I've talked about this show twice now, it's only fair I give you a glimpse of it to demonstrate why it's worth your while.  So here's the very episode we're talking about, "The Boston Money Party."


By the way, you'll (hopefully) remember that last week I brought up the practice in TV Guide of often crediting the writer of a particular episode, and you can see that in spades Sunday night.  Besides the mention of Levenson and Link, we also find out that this week's episode of Bonanza, "The Flapjack Contest," was written by Frank Cleaver, and that host Rod Serling penned this week's Twilight Zone, "The Bard."  Later in the week, we'll see that The Alfred Hitchcock Hour's "The Return of Verge Likens" (which was actually on MeTV a few weeks ago) was written by James Bridges, and the Kraft Suspense Theatre presentation of "Connery's Hands" was written by William Wood.  I still think it's a nice idea.

***

My mother watched soap operas when I was a kid, as I suspect did many mothers of many sons and daughters.  I'm fairly well-acquainted with many of them, but here's one that doesn't ring a bell - it's ABC's A Time For Us, a spin-off of the soap Flame in the Wind (which I hadn't heard of either), which has its debut this Monday.  It was only on for two years, if you count the two shows as one (as does the always-reliable Wikipedia), so I guess I'm not all that surprised.

Still, it's interesting - soap operas engendered such a passionate following among their loyal viewers, it's always interesting to run across the ones that didn't really catch on.  Still, if you're curious, here's an extended clip from an episode, sponsored by Dristan nasal mist, and Sleep-Eze, for a good night's sleep.


Speaking of soaps, here's the listing for Thursday's episode of General Hospital: "Steve hires a new staff member."  How could they stand the suspense?

***

Wait just a minute, you say!  You just said there wasn't any Sullivan vs. The Palace this week!  Well, that's what you get for believing everything I write.

Actually, we're cheating a little here, since the Hollywood Palace episode we've got is last week's, as it appears on WKBT, Channel 8 in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, a CBS affiliate who also dabbles in that wacky cross-affiliate programming.  They air Palace on Tuesday night at 10:30, right after your late edition of the local news, but we don't care, do we?

Sullivan:  TVG doesn't call this a rerun, but it doesn't say it's live either.  At any rate, Ed's guests this week are Tony Bennett; puppet Topo Gigio; rock 'n' rollers Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas; comic Jackie Vernon; the singing Kim Sisters; magician Johnny Hart; the two Carmenas, acrobats*; and Africa's Djolimba song and drum ensemble.

*My wife, upon hearing this lineup, suggested that the two Carmenas would be followed by the two Buranas.  If you don't get it, look it up.

Palace:  Host David Janssen introduces vocalists Edie Adams and Vic Damone; comedians Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks; Les Surfs, a singing group from Madagascar; the Harlem Globetrotters; Tim Conway; the knife-throwing Zeros*; and the Princess Tajana trapeze act.

*Let's hope that refers to the number of errant throws they make.

I'd say that one Edie Adams and one Vic Damone equal one Tony Bennett, and Jackie Vernon and Tim Conway probably offset themselves, as to the the acrobats and the knife throwers.  But the reason the Palace wins this week is the supporting cast: Reiner and Brooks, who may not do their "2000 Year Old Man" routine but do have a very funny bit on filing income taxes, the 'Trotters, who were very funny in those days, and Janssen, who's probably not that at ease in a hosting role, especially when his team of "Hollywood Dribblers" take on the Globetrotters.  But why speculate on it?  Here, watch the show for yourself:

***

Fred Astaire had essentially retired from Hollywood a few years ago, limiting his appearances to rare (and critically acclaimed) variety specials, but he and his current partner Barrie Chase are back this week in a comedy on NBC's Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre called "Think Pretty."  "Record company owners Fred Addams* [played by you-know-who] wants to win over female talent manager Tony Franklin - he's trying to sign one of her clients to a recording contract."  Fred and Barrie do a few dances, and Fred sings the title song.

*I wonder - since this was up directly against ABC's The Addams Family, did they perhaps spell Fred's character's last name that way on purpose?

And yes, here's a clip of one of their dances.  You knew that was coming, didn't you?


***
Saturday night at 8pm, CBS carries Secret Agent, which in England (and on DVD) is known by its original name Danger Man*.  I've written in the past about this show, the precursor to Patrick McGoohan's magnificent The Prisoner, which had a pretty successful run of its own.  I wouldn't have noticed this series back in 1965 - particularly this week, I would have been watching the football game - but you can bet I notice it now.

*Admit it though, Johnny Rivers singing Secret Agent is way cooler than the theme that was used under the title Danger Man.

This week's episode, "Whatever Happened to George Foster?", doesn't play into the Prisoner theme in the way that some other episodes do, but it's a strong one in its own right.  And speaking of familiar faces in unfamiliar roles, isn't that Bernard Lee playing the heavy?  You know, "M" - as in the James Bond movies? Glad he finally turned away from his life of crime.

***

Hawaii Five-0 isn't on yet, but we still have a double-dose of Jack Lord this week.  First, on a Dr. Kildare rerun (written by Harold Gast), Lord plays a doctor who fears rheumatoid arthritis may end his surgical career, just as it once ended his professional football career.  I'll bet we get Jack in full-on bitter mode here.  Question for any of you doctors out there, though: if his character had rheumatoid arthritis as a young man, bad enough that it stopped him from playing football, how was he ever able to become a surgeon in the first place?  I'm no doctor, I'm just wondering.

Later that week, Jack's back in an episode of his very good modern-day cowboy series Stoney Burke, which runs as a syndicated rerun at 10:15pm on Duluth's KDAL.  In this episode, a rodeo colleague of Stoney's is killed while riding a Brahma bull.  How does Stoney figure into it?  Let's find out:

***

And that note on The Doctors and the Nurses  Well, in a TV Guide article earlier in June, the humorist Art Buchwald wrote about how the show could have survived being on opposite ABC's new hit series The Fugitive.  His suggestion, as you can see here, was that a man would be brought to the Doctors/Nurses emergency room, "and as one of the doctors took the sheet off him, the audience would discover he had one arm.  Just before he dies on the operating table he would gasp, "I am the one-armed man the Fugitive is looking for.  Richard Kimble is innocent and I killed his wife."

As it turns out, a very funny letter to the editor from Arthur Joel Katz, former producer of The Doctors and the Nurses, suggests (likely tongue-in-cheek)  that he proposed just such an idea.  "A one-armed man comes into the hospital, confesses to Zina [Bethune, one of the nurses] that he killed David Janssen's wife, and dies.  The policy broadcast the news, but Janssen suspects a trap and doesn't believe it.  Thereafter, Zina sets out in search of David, but at every town she gets off the back of the bus just as David gets on the front.  The only trouble with this story is that I couldn't sell it to the writers.  Thus The Fugitive continues his adventures in oblivion, while we just fade into it."

The Doctors and the Nurses was originally just called The Nurses when it debuted in 1962, before doctors were brought into the mix to increase the dramatic possibilities, and the show's name was changed accordingly. Here's a look at the original version:

***

Well, how did we do this week?  I confess that when I started out, I had no intention of providing videos of almost every show I mentioned, but it just turned out this way.  Twenty years ago, or even ten, something like this - offering such a substantial amount of programming from a single TV Guide that was nearly fifty years old - would have been unthinkable.  And I suspect this only scratches the surface; how many other episodes that didn't catch my eye - like Wednesday's episode of CBS' Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, "Lucy Makes Room For Danny" - reside somewhere on YouTube or another streaming service?


As I say, this is just a wonder.  Who could possibly have imagined it was possible?  Certainly, when I picked up this issue to work on, I had no idea.  We'll have to try it again sometime, don't you think? TV  

This week in TV Guide: November 17, 1962

As is the case this year, Thanksgiving 1962 fell on November 22, which would take on an entirely new and darker significance a scant 12 months later.  But this is all in the future; right now, there's plenty of Thanksgiving cheer in this issue, and I'm not talking turkey.

***

The thing about Jack Lord, star of ABC's modern-day western series Stoney Burke, is that he wants to be "big, big, big" - like his idol and friend, Gary Cooper.  And "fast, fast, fast" - because he's been in the business for awhile and it's about time.

A fellow actor told TV Guide's Alan Gill that Lord "could be good if he wanted to portray a real person instead of a great big star" and added that "Jack ought to chuck this Renaissance-man thing. He's been an athlete, a seafarer, a steel worker, a photographer, a TV writer, an actor. If he'd concentrate on one thing -- and heaven knows he's throwing everything into Stoney -- and if he did it with complete honesty, he'd be great. Real bronc riders are mangy, rough, sincere people, not stars."  And in 1962 that was the perception of Jack Lord, that he's self-conscious, intense, more concerned with being a star than allowing the role to make a star out of him, a man who tries so hard to make sure that things are just right, rather than - you know, just doing it.

Stoney Burke was not the series that made Jack Lord that big star.  That would come later in the 60s, with Hawaii Five-O.  Perhaps Steve McGarrett was not the most fleshed-out character; perhaps he was one-dimensional, an icon rather than a real person.  But McGarrett meant business; you didn't mess around with him and live to tell about it.  I don't know about you, but I rather like my police heroes that way.  And that new show on CBS, the imposter with the same title and a character with the same name - well, my friend, that's not Hawaii Five-O, and the cop's no Jack Lord. 

***

Holiday programming actually started earlier in the week, on Saturday, when Lawrence Welk and his Champagne Music Makers (8:00 Central, ABC) celebrated with an evening of Thanksgiving music, including "Thank the Lord for This Thanksgiving Day," "Bless This House," and "By the Waters of Minnetonka." (Bet you didn't know there were so many Thanksgiving songs, did you?)

On Red Skelton's Tuesday night show, "Red plays a Pilgrim hunting for Thanksgiving dinner."  We took a look at Perry Como last week; this week, his Kraft Music Hall presents a "Happy Thanksgiving Show" on Wednesday ("Thanksgiving Eve"* according to TV Guide) with special guest Thomas Mitchell.  the theme for the program - a fitting one - was "There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays."

*Eve, complete with a capital E, putting Thanksgiving Eve on a par with Christmas Eve.

Then we come to Thanksgiving Day itself. And what would it be without parades and football? Well, there was plenty of it, starting at 9 am. NBC, as is the case to this day, carried the Macy's parade. Only two hours back then as opposed to three hours today - I wonder if they cut out the fluff and the awful lip-synched production numbers? Guess not; the broadcast started off with a half-hour, three-ring circus in front of the store. Donald Duck was the new balloon that year, and Bud Palmer and Chris Schenkel, the well-known sportscasters, were the announcers. I find that interesting, considering that traditionally the hosts of the Today show anchored the parade coverage.

CBS's coverage also started at 9 and ran for two hours. Captain Kangaroo was in New York, hosting the overall coverage of three traditional parades: New York, Philadelphia and Detroit. But here's the interesting thing: all three parades were treated as news events, and anchored by newsmen. Douglas Edwards covered New York, Robert Trout and Gene Crane in Philadelphia, and Dallas Townsend and Bob Murphy were in Detroit. These were all well-known newsmen of the time, although you might not remember them today. Again, I wonder if they were forced to read the excruciatingly bad copy that that parade announcers do today? I doubt it.  Here's some footage from that year's Detroit parade (H/T Kevin Butler at TVParty) - it's striking to see how different downtown Detroit looked then, with a stronger economy, larger population - it just looks alive.


When I was a kid, I loved watching these parades, particularly CBS;s coverage - after all, more parades. They were all sponsored by department stores: in addition to Macy's, Gimbel's sponsored the Philadelphia parade, and Hudson's underwrote Detroit. It was good business for the stores, and good publicity. (For many years CBS would also cover the Santa Claus parade in Canada, where Eaton's department store was the sponsor.*)

*When CBS replaced the Eaton's parade with the Hawaiian Floral Parade, hosted by - you guessed it - Jack Lord.

Of course, most of these stores are gone now, as the shopping centers of large cities moved out of downtown and into the suburbs. The parades are still around, with new sponsors (IKEA is the title sponsor in Philly), and the Detroit parade is syndicated nationally, while others are shown locally. CBS and NBC both dedicate their entire parade broadcasts to New York, and we've shifted our attention to Chicago, where WGN provides national coverage of the McDonald's Thanksgiving Day parade, which was moved to Thanksgiving from an early December date a few years ago.

But I digress. There's more to Thanksgiving television than parades, right? There's football! CBS went directly from their parade coverage to the NFL game of the day, the traditional Turkey Day matchup between Detroit and Green Bay. In one of the most storied Turkey Day games ever played, the Lions sacked Packers QB Bart Starr 11 times (including once for a safety) and totally dominated Green Bay en route to a 26-14 drubbing that wasn't nearly as close as the final score would indicate. (Appropos of the day, one sportswriter said it looked as if Roger Brown and Alex Karras, the Lions' two defensive stars, were ready to take Starr by the legs and make a wish.) It was said that Lombardi was so furious about that loss that he ended the annual Thanksgiving game against the Lions; the teams would play to a lackluster 13-13 tie in 1963 (three days after JFK's funeral) and would not play again on Thanksgiving until 1984.

As soon as the Detroit-Green Bay tilt was over, the network switched to Austin, Texas for coverage of the traditional Texas-Texas A&M matchup. These two teams played for many years on Thanksgiving Day, and have sporatically continued the tradition in recent years; now that the Aggies have moved to the SEC, the teams won't be playing at all, at least for a few years. If you were in the mood for a little AFL football, you could catch the New York Titans (now the Jets) playing the Broncos in Denver at 2 pm on ABC.

There was some other holiday fare, however. Pat Boone had a variety special at 4:30* on NBC, with guest stars Patti Page, Elaine Dunn, and Peter, Paul & Mary (perhaps Pat wasn't as square as we thought he was). Also on NBC, at 6:30, was The Bell Telephone Hour Thanksgiving show, starring John Raitt (father of Bonnie), Martha Wright and Mahalia Jackson, and featuring an appearance by poet and Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg. Now, for our younger readers those names might not mean much, but trust me - this was some big-name talent appearing on this show.  And finally, Mr. Ed gets into the act as Ed decides he wants Wilbur and Carol to stay at home with him for Thanksgiving dinner.

*It doesn't seem likely that a network show would come on at that hour today, does it?  Not with the news saturation that local stations have.

And that was it for Thanksgiving, 1962.

***

November 22 is the earliest Thanksgiving can fall in the year. In 1963 Thanksgiving was on November 28, the latest it can fall. It was six days after JFK was assassinated, three days after he was buried, one day after LBJ addressed a joint session of Congress. Parades were still held and people came, although nobody seemed that excited about it. It's for the children, the organizers said, in explanation for why the parades went on. Everyone agreed that the diversion was probably a good thing. The special programming was over; football games were played, entertainment specials were broadcast, life went on.

November 22, 1962. Nobody could possibly have anticipated what things would be like 365 days later. But that was all in the future, and people lived with what they had, which was Thanksgiving Day: parades, food and football, and they were thankful for it.  TV