This week in TV Guide: March 19, 1960

As you'll learn at the end of this week's piece, one of the most popular series on television is the legal drama Perry Mason*, and this week, we're going to take a look at some of the inside keys to the show's success.

* Interestingly, Perry Mason was always categorized in TV Guide as a "Mystery" rather than drama, as is usually the case with legal procedurals. I think that's fair; Mason's really as much a detective as he is an attorney. It's probably best classified as a hybrid detective/legal series.

One of the secrets to the success of Mason, according to this unbylined article, is its strong supporting cast, each of whom brings something special to his or her role. Take Bill Talman, for example, who plays Perry's nemesis Hamilton Burger. According to Talman, Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner didn't think much of the D.A. "Erle detested Berger," Talman says, "and drew him as the prototype of the loud, blustering sorehead, like the one who used to plague him as a young lawyer." Talman has worked to flesh out the character, to reduce the temptation by viewers to see him as a heavy. "Otherwise, it would be no credit to Perry to set him down every week."

Ray Collins, the honest (if quick to judge) detective lieutenant Arthur Tragg, is an old pro, one who "can sense other actors' needs and throw the scene their way." For instance, if a young actor, perhaps one playing his first big role, is struggling with his lines, Collins will start fumbling his to take the pressure off—if, that is, Talman or Raymond Burr don't beat him to it.* But, as Collins adds, "we are professionals. Therefore, no matter how fond we are of one another, we all try to protect ourselves. If Willie Talman can get better lighting than I can, well, I assure you I'll try to change that." Barbara Hale, Perry's loyal secretary Della Street, says "It's like the competition in a family."

*I wonder about this. Collins was, by all accounts, a generous colleague, but it's been said that as his health began to fail (he died in 1965), he began to have more trouble memorizing and delivering his lines. It could be that Talman and Burr, almost certainly the sources of this anecdote, were in fact using it to cover for Collins. It's the kind of thing mensches would do.

William Hopper, son of the famed columnist Hedda, has learned his share of tricks of the trade, thanks both to his mother and veteran actors. He, too, has become a pro over the years; "If all you know is tricks, you're dead."

It's a tight cast, even if they do compete for better lighting and close-ups. Says Talman, who has shared a dressing room with Hopper for three years, "Can you think of rooming with a guy for three years and never having a quarrel or argument? I can't. But that has happened with Bill and me." Collins adds that "There's something else—call it a great affection, like a legit show on the road. When it closes you may never see each other again. Sometimes we think of that. And so we still speak to each other." "And laugh at each other's jokes," Talman adds.

At the center of it all is Raymond Burr, and Collins accurately sums up the man and his impact on the cast. "Take Raymond, a man doing 39 hour-long shows a year, appearing in almost every scene, knowing his lines letter-perfect, and who still devotes himself to making it better for other people." He and Talman are inveterate practical jokers, both on each other and on other members of the cast; Hale, who's a favorite target for Burr, once found everything in her dressing room—sink, flower pots, everything—filled with green gelatin.

Judging by the lack of jealousy among the cast, that must be the only thing that's green.

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Starting in 1954, Steve Allen helmed his own NBC variety show which, at the beginning, aired opposite that of Ed Sullivan. It didn't run as long as Ed's, of course, but then Allen said his goal was never to conquer Ed, but to coexist with him, which he did for four seasons. Let's see who gets the best of the contest this week.

Sullivan: Ed presents circus stars from all over the world. In London: Popov, famed Soviet clown; the Boxing Russian Bears. In New York: Emmett Kelly, celebrated American clown; the De Donge Chimps; Linon, high-wire clown; and the Three Murkies.

Allen: Steve's guests are actress Ann Blyth, Nick "The Rebel" Adams, comedian Jan Murray and the Nikolais dancers.

No contest here; unless you're a big fan of circuses, the only name you may recognize from Ed's lineup is Emmett Kelly, although I'll admit to having a soft spot for boxing bears. On the other hand, Steve has an actual lineup of stars, and while it may not be the strongest hand, it's the best one this week. The verdict: Allen takes the week.

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"For the Record" reviews one of the bigger television stories in recent history: the return of Jack Paar, after his celebrated walkout, on the March 7 Tonight Show. His sidekick, Hugh Downs, counted down the seconds, and then, "Here's Jack!" and out stepped"the lachrymose comedian with the porcupine-quill wit," to complete what the column calls "the most emotional, if not dramatic, re-entry in TV history." Paar's average nightly audience more than doubled, with a multi-city Arbitron rating of 25.5 tuned in to see him, "obviously laboring under great stress" as he resumed the late-night chores. Eyes of a Generation has an excellent recap of one of television's most controversial episodes, including a clip of his triumphant return.

That's not all the Hugh Downs news for this week; according to the TV Teletype, Downs will be appearing in a straight dramatic role in an upcoming episode of Riverboat, starring Darrin McGavin and Burt Reynolds. (If any further evidence is needed, that's him over there, to the left of McGavin.) And, speaking of Perry Mason as we were in the lede, CBS has confirmed that the show has been renewed for a fourth season. 

There's also a note that Reginald Rose has completed work on what Bob Stahl says may be "the most controversial TV play of the season," "The Sacco-Vanzetti Story," planned as a two-part Sunday Showcase presentation in May on NBC. Rose says that his "intensive research" shows that the anarchists, who were executed after being convicted of robbery and murder in South Braintree, Massachusetts, were framed due to their political beliefs. Martin Balsam and Steven Hill are scheduled to portray Sacco and Vanzetti; Sidney Lumet will direct. In the end, the production, which actually airs in June, wins critical acclaim from most critics (with New York Daily News columnist Ben Gross calling it "a blasting indictment of Massachusetts justice," and criticism from Boston Globe legal editor Joseph Harvey, who accused it of being unfair and unbalanced, albeit "absorbing" drama. It goes on to garner four Emmy nominations.

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To coin a phrase, we've got some really big stars in specials and regular fare alike, and that dominates our look at the week.

On Saturday Jack Benny gets a full hour special (9:00 p.m. CT) in addition to his regular weekly series, and he fills it up with Phil Silvers and Polly Bergen. Among the highlights, Jack interviews a "typical" TV Western viewer, gives his opinion on television commercials, and wonders about the runner taking the Olympic torch from Squaw Valley to Rome for the Summer Games.

Sunday brings us the return of Dr. Frank Baxter, whom we've enjoyed here before, in another Bell Telephone Science Special, "The Alphabet Conspiracy." (5:00 p.m., NBC) Dr. Baxter plays Dr. Linguistics, who's out to "prevent three plotters who are determined to do away with the alphabet and thus destroy all languages." Who knew they'd go on to invent emojis instead? Hans Conried plays The Mad Hatter, who for all I know may or may not be one of the plotters. If you missed this when it was first on 14 months ago, you may opt for this week's roundtable discussion on Small World (5:00, CBS), featuring Pablo Casals, Isaac Stern and Ernest Ansermet discussing the musician's political and social responsibilities. CBS follows that up at 5:30 with The Twentieth Century, as Walter Cronkite profiles "Patton and the Third Army."

Sunday evening brings a pair of specials; first, Our American Heritage (7:00 p.m., NBC) tells the story of "Autocrat and Son," also known as Oliver Wendell Holms Sr. and Jr. Sr. is played by Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Jr. by Christopher Plummer, and the whole thing was written by Ernest Kinoy, who wrote great teleplays into the 1990s, everything from The Defenders to the TV-movies Victory at Entebbe and Skokie. Then, at 8:30 p.m. on CBS, the General Mills Special Tonight series presents "The Valley of Decision" with Lloyd Bridges and Nancy Wickwire.

Compared to Sunday's lineup, Monday is pretty tame, but it does have its benefits, with Arlene Francis as Jack Paar's Tonight guest-host for the week (NBC, 10:30 p.m.), while Jack's in England taping next week's shows. (Speaking of Jack, as we were earlier.) Was Arlene the first woman to host Tonight? I think so, but don't hold me to it; I'm not sure at this point in history who else in might have been.

Tuesday starts off with Playhouse 90's chilling adaptation of Robert Shaw's novel "The Hiding Place" (7:00 p.m., CBS) starring James Mason as a Nazi holding two British flyers (Richard Basehart, Trevor Howard) prisoner in his cellar. They've spent years chained up in there, with Mason as their only contact to the outside world. What he doesn't tell them is that the war has been over for seven years. If that's too dark for you, you can check out a rare television appearance by Rex Harrison in Startime's "Dear Arthur" (7:30 p.m., NBC), co-starring Sarah Marshall and Hermoine Badderly, with Gore Vidal adapting the play by P.G. Wodehouse.

I like the sound of Perry Como's show on Wednesday (8:00 p.m., NBC), with Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé, and Don Adams. (Might be the best variety show of the week, for that matter.) You can also check out Richard Boone, taking time out from Have Gun—Will Travel to star in "The Charlie and the Kid" on The U.S. Steel Hour (9:00 p.m., CBS), with Geraldine Brooks.

The big event on Thursday is a local one, the start of the Minnesota State High School Basketball Tournament. (For boys, of course; it is 1960, after all.) I think most people think of hockey when they think sports in Minnesota, but in the years before professional sports came to town, the basketball tournament was very, very big stuff. The tournament ran for three days, with eight teams battling for the title, ending on Saturday night when nearly 20,000 would pack Williams Arena, home of the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers, to watch the final. If they're lucky, it would be a David-vs-Goliath story, with an unsung small school out of nowhere taking on the big city schools.

In 1960 that's exactly what happened, as Minnesota staged its very own version of Hoosiers, starring the team from tiny Edgerton, Minnesota (population 961). Edgerton, led by coach Rich Olson (so young that security guards demanded to see his identification before letting him into Williams Arena), had finished the regular season undefeated, then knocked off several large schools before making it into the tournament, where the standing-room only crowds adopted the tiny school as its own, cheering them on as they upset top-ranked Richfield in the semifinals before defeating Austin in the final. Edgerton was the smallest school ever to win the state championship, and to this day the tournament remains one of the most storied moments in Minnesota sports history.

On Friday, Robert Ryan and Ann Todd star in a live adaptation of Hemingway's story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (7:30 p.m., CBS), which must have been quite an accomplishment considering our hero leads a life of adventure all over the world. At least they have the right man at the helm, with John Frankenheimer directing. Pretty good supporting cast as well, with Janice Rule, Jean Hagen, Mary Astor and James Gregory.

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There's often a healthy dose of irony contained in TV Guide headlines from this era, and this week's example is the header on the cover, "How Bob Cummings Stays So Young." The short answer, contained in the story, is "advanced thinking on the subject of diet." The longer, and more interesting, answer is only partially found in the article; the rest of it can be tracked down in various articles about Cummings's problems later in life.

Cummings is a big believer in supplements, mostly in tablets and pills. "They're just vitamin, mineral and amino acid pills, but they're organic in origin, not synthetic," he tells the unidentified interview. It's not unusual for him to "gulp down as many as two dozen of these," and he downs "anywhere from 30 to 300 a day." When asked how to get on a supplemental diet, he says simply, "See your doctor and do what he says"

Well, Cummings's doctor was Max Jacobson, the infamous "Dr. Feelgood," who was doctor to many Hollywood celebrities, and once treated President Kennedy with a mixture of steroids and amphetamines. According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, "While Jacobson insisted that his injections contained only "vitamins, sheep sperm, and monkey gonads", they actually contained a substantial dose of methamphetamine." Cummings eventually became an addict, and after Jacobson was stripped of his medical license, Cummings was forced to find his own connections for the drugs. He wound up broke, living in various homes for indigent actors.

Now, I hasten to add that I don't know whether or not Cummings was seeing Jacobson at the time of this article; his quotes only refer to "pills," and Jacobson apparently trafficked in injections. However, Cummings was thought to have become addicted to meth by the mid-1950s, an addiction that continued to the end of his life. It's a sad footnote to a talented and very likable actor.

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And the winner is: Finally, the TV Guide Awards are presented live and in color on Friday night (7:30 p.m., NBC); before the Emmys attained their current level of credibility, the TV Guide Awards, along with other awards shows from magazines such as Look, were considered industry standard presentations. The categories are, obviously, much broader than one would see from the Emmys, but no less important, given that readers of TV Guide voted for the winners.

Robert Young, Nanette Fabray, and Fred MacMurray not only host, they perform in some pre-recorded skits, while the awards themselves are presented in both New York and Hollywood, depending on where the winner is. The show's producer is Bud Yorkin, and it's directed by Norman Lear.

Anyway, may I have the envelope please?

Favorite Series of One Hour or Longer: Perry Mason

Favorite Half-Hour Series: Father Knows Best

Best Single Musical or Variety Program: Another Evening with Fred Astaire

Most Popular Male Personality: Raymond Burr (Perry Mason)

Most Popular Female Personality: Loretta Young (The Loretta Young Show)

Best News or Information Program: The Huntley-Brinkley Report

Best Single Dramatic Program: "The Turn of the Screw" (Startime)

TV

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Around the dial

At Comfort TV, David's journey through 1970s prime-time TV brings him (and us) to Friday nights, 1976. For a schoolkid, Friday nights were the best nights of the week, and in a night with movies on two of the three networks, NBC offers three shows you're sure to remember.

Jodie returns at Garroway at Large with a Today Show feature on the Whirlpool Space Kitchen that comes very late in Garroway's run on the show. It's an archival treasure not just for what it tells us about Dave after so many years on the show, but a delightfully optimistic take on what the future could do for us.

At Cult TV Blog, John looks at the 1973-74 Walter Mittyesque sitcom Billy Liar, based on the movie of the same name, and the episode "Billy and the Scales of Justice." Is ths show as much fun to watch as it must have been to make? Well, that's up for debate; see what John thinks.

Garry Berman hearkens back to a time when a talk show host had a run-in with his network and left the air, albeit temporarily. We all know who that was, right? Jack Paar. Take a look back at one of the most memorable, and infamous, moments in TV history.

At Mavis Movie Madness, Paul uses the 70th anniversary of James Dean's death to look back at the 1981 East of Eden miniseries, featuring an all-star cast led by the star-making performance of Jane Seymour. How did it measure up to its storied film predecessor? You might be surprised.

A pair from Terence at A Shroud of Thoughts: the 40th birthday of The Golden Girls, a show of which I have never seen a single episode, although I readily concede its small place in television history; and a tribute to the legendary Robert Redford, who appeared in many a drama in TV's early days.

To be honest, I wasn't sure TV Guide still did a Fall Preview issue; it's been so long since I watched network TV that I wasn't even sure there was still a Fall season. But Robert bailed us out at Television Obscurities with his thoughts on this year's edition.

At The View from the Junkyard, Roger's tour of The A-Team comes to "Water, Water Everywhere," and some perspective comments on our four heroes are really misfits who've come together to form a Team. And how great that is when it happens.

Finally, in this week's round of self-promotion, you'll want to check out my terrific interview with Tommy Kovac on his "Splat from the Past" podcast, which touches on details that I haven't had a chance to discuss on other programs. And my latest "Two Minute Author" video is also up, in which I discuss the tantalizing British telemovie The Year of the Sex Olympics. Enjoy! TV

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This week in TV Guide: December 2, 1967

We're long past the point when television claimed to be an impartial bystander in the stories it covers. After all, just look at last month's presidential election. Or, perhaps less controversially, there's the story from a couple of weeks ago of the ESPN analyst who inserted himself into the story when his lighthearted but derogatory remarks about the Northwestern football team so enraged the players and coaches that they used the insults as motivation in their upset victory over Wisconsin. I'm sure the Badgers really appreciated his support. 

But we're into controversy around here, and in 1967 there's nothing more controversial than the Vietnam War. And so Martin Maloney's cover story asks the question: does TV confuse Americans about Vietnam?

Maloney calls it "TVietnam, the big war in the little box, the war brought to me by courtesy of pain-relievers, deodorants and low-cal beverages." Not, he hastens to add, is he suggesting that television coverage has been anything other than honest and conscientious. But it is inevitable that the immediacy of television's war coverage, its ability to bring "terror, shock and death" right into the living rooms of Americans, "may force them to become participants in the agony of the times." No longer is war "presented" to us through distant radio and newspaper reports while we wait for future historians to tell us what it all meant; we now find ourselves processing the war simultaneously, "as a kind of daily puzzle which we must ourselves piece out and understand." 

The very nature of television news demands movement and urgency. Dramatic developments—or, shall we say, developments that have been deemed to be dramatic—are given the biggest piece of the limited news pie; a crisis calls for, and gets, covered over and over and over. "As a fairly consistent viewer of TV news programs," Maloney writes, "I sometimes get the nightmarish feeling that I have been trapped in a 6 o'clock treadmill: There is nothing new about the news." Television also reduces the size of battle and "detaches the viewer from it." It becomes so incomprehensible to those at home that it is "almost inaccessible to the human intellect." With the U.S. involved in a proxy war between North and South, it becomes nearly impossible to tell who is who, who the Viet Cong are, where the South Vietnamese army has gone. The struggle over territory lacks the clear definition of the march to Berlin; "if the war has actually progressed from North to South, or South to North, or in any discoverable direction, you would never know it from TV."

The end result of TVietnam seems to be "to reduce the whole war to simple numbers, and to report it rather like a series of baseball games in an endless hot summer. Old Walter, or Chet, or Harry, or somebody, comes on and says: 'This was an average fighting week in Vietnam. Opposition casualties: 2473. South Vietnamese: 417. Americans: 201.' But the numbers don't mean anything." In such circumstances, viewers have no choice but to invent the answers for themselves. Maloney compares it to a haunted doll house in which the characters act out their human dramas every night. "But the war inside the box is never acted out in full; this drama continues night after night, world without end." 

It is no wonder, Maloney conludes, that the Americans, having absorbed such coverage, "protest, complain, demonstrate, cry out. They are suffering the ultimate human discomfort: they need desperately to make sense out of one of the crucial events of the time, an event which eats at them—at their secure existence, at their children, at their sense of what is decent and proper, at the whole fabric of their lives. And the sense is not given them. It simply is not there." Sounds a lot like today, doesn't it?

"Meanwhile, the news broadcasters, caught between necessity and habit, will continue to produce their box scores. Meanwhile, the discomfort will become more and more painful. The end is not in sight."

Again: sounds a lot like today, doesn't it? 

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

Sullivan: Ed's scheduled guests are Ray Charles; comic Bill Dana; Met soprano Marie Collier; the singing-dancing Grand Music Hall of Israel; singer Frankie Fanelli; the Muppets puppets; the Mecners, balancing act; and All-American football players.

Palace: Host Jimmy Durante presents Ethel Merman; the singing Lennon Sisters; the rocking Grass Roots; singer-actor Noel Harrison; the comedy team of Larry Bishop (Joey's son) and Rob Reiner (Carl's son); comedian Milt Kamen; and the acrobatic Berosinis.

Perhaps one of the reasons for the decline and fall of the variety show is that there simply isn't much of an appetite anymore for acts like acrobats or balancers, though I maintain spinning plates are still the best cheap entertainment around. The Lennon Sisters' appearance with Jimmy Durante on Palace prefigures their 1969-70 variety series, an effort that tried to attract young and old but succeeded with neither. If we cancel out the Grand Music Hall and the Grass Roots, and likewise Bishop and Reiner with Frankie Fanelli and Marie Collier, we're left with Ray Charles, Bill Dana, football players and the Muppets vs. Durante, the Lennons, Noel ("Windmills of Your Mind") Harrison and Milt Kamen. In my mind, that makes this week a Push.

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

Television, says Cleveland Amory, bears "a heavy responsibility" for the "almost steady decline of decency and erosion of values" in this country. And what he sees is network television programming as it "shifts from beat-'em-up Westerns and shoot-'em up detective stories to situation comedies, which are funny only in their utter self-satisfaction with the neo-idiotic way of life they represent." Sounds a lot li— wait, we've already done that bit, haven't we?

Anyway, this brings us to Ivan Tors, who, according to Amory, has made "the greatest single-handed effort" to counter this trend, through programs such as Flipper, Daktari and Cowboy in Africa. In doing so, he has "not only fulfilled a crying need in television, he has also shown up the kind of school system which regards science and science fairs as if they were the Second Coming and yet regards anything to do with nature or nature studies as on a par with pagan industry." And this leads to Tors' latest effort, CBS's Gentle Ben. 

Being the animal lover he is, you'd think that Cleve would have gentle words for Gentle Ben, and indeed he allows that it's almost "uncharitable," after all he's said, to critize it. In fact, it's not the animal participants in Tors' series that provide their shortcomings, but the human elements. Even if one were to concede that they're produced for children, "there is no excuse for the prevalence of scripts that would bore a baby," not to mention dialog that's often "too cute for words." But what Gentle Ben has going for it that the others lack is star Dennis Weaver. Weaver is much better than he was when we last saw him in Kentucky Jones; here, he's convincing regardless of what he does, and when he's piloting that airboat, he's "positively dashing." Weaver is so good that he elevates his co-stars, Beth Brickell (who has too little to do) and Clint Howard (who, without Weaver, would be "too cute for even our words.") And while Ben is no Rin Tin Tin, you can't blame him for doing his best work in the opening credits; all he needs is "either better plots or better direction—or, preferably, both."

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It's the first week in December, which means it's time to sell some Christmas merchandise, right? I have to admit, though, that I'm disappointed with Kodak's "very merry special" starring Tennessee Ernie Ford (Sunday, 8:00 p.m. CT, CBS). There's nothing wrong with the cast: Andy Griffith, Diana Ross and the Supremes, the Young Americans, and Danny Thomas. But as far as I can tell, there's no festive content to the show; "Danny does a turn as a flamenco dancer," Ernie sings "Yesterday" and "Funny How Time Slips Away," the Supremes do a medley of traditional songs, and the Young Americans contribue a medley from Doctor Doolittle. It's all do-little for me. Much better is Friday's showing of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (6:30 p.m., NBC), which seems over the years to have become the unofficial start to Yuletide programming. I'd expect we'll see more of this sort next week.

Even without the Christmas spirit, though, specials are a great way for advertisers to get the attention of viewers whose minds have started to turn to thoughts of Xmas shopping. Hallmark's Christmas offering is an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan (Monday, 8:00 p.m., NBC), with an all-star cast including Genevieve Bujold (in the title role), Roddy McDowall, Maurice Evans, James Daly, Theodore Bikel and Raymond Massey. Two nights later, CBS shows the musical-fantasy Aladdin, as presented by New York City's Prince Street Players, Limited. And for those who didn't get enough of James Daly in Saint Joan, don't worry, because in a couple of years he'll be on Medical Center. But in the meantime, he stars with Hope Lange, Patricia Barry, Eli Wallach, David Wayne and Rosemary Harris in the brittle marital drama Dear Friends on CBS Playhouse (Wednesday, 8:00 p.m.) And in case that isn't enough for you, he also stars in a repeat of Ibsen's subersive play An Enemy of the People on NET Playhouse (Friday, 9:00 p.m., NET). I don't think he's in anything on ABC, but appearing on three of the four networks in the same week is still pretty good, don't you think?

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I kid you not, Jack Paar is back. For his fourth NBC special since leaving his weekly prime-time program, Jack looks at what TV Guide calls "The world's longest-running comedy": the human comedy. And, insists Paar, it proves that "truth is not strainger than fiction—it is far funnier." (Wednesday, 8:00 p.m.) In a very funny article, Jack answers questions on just what he's been doing since leaving weekly television, in an insisive interview conducted by the only man who could possibly be up to the task: Jack Paar.

He's happy to be out of the weekly grind; "I do not miss it nor most of the people in it. There are not enough hours in the day to do all the things I want to do"; some of those things include traveling with his wife, painting, reading, and working on his cars. He recently turned down $75,000 a week to play in Vegas because, he points out, "everyone knows that there's nothing I can do." When Paar asks whether or not he thinks the public misses him, Paar replies in the negative. "I was never an entertainer for the masses, nor did I ever wish to be. It's a Gomer Pyle world. It's a credit to the industry that even occasionally the networks try something better." And as for the medium of television, he thinks its influence has, for the most part, been good. "I feel our children are far brighter and better informed than we were." He's never even seen a bad program, "because I refuse to watch it. God gave me a mind and a wrist that turns things off." 

Mindful of Paar's reputation for controversy, Paar asks him what was the most unfair thing that's ever happened to him; Paar cites the incident at the Berlin Wall in 1961. "[I]t was a nightmare at the time. I was denounced in Congress; editorials in the country's best newspapers were written against me." He was cleared by both the Army and the FCC of any wrongdoing; "This story appeared in only one paper in New York, on the back pages." His infamous water-closet joke, which triggered his famous walkout from The Tonight Show, doesn't rank; besides, "it was mild compared to what is heard on the air today." And speaking of controversy, when asked if he had any regrets, he said if he had to do it over again, he'd be more gentle. "If I hit anyone below the belt, it was because they wore their belt as a halo." 

I've written many times about my admiration for Paar; the one part of this interview with which I disagree is his contention that he is not missed. What with his literate conversation and wit, and considering what we see nowadays, he's very much missed indeed.

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Anything else of note? Well, last year's National Drivers Test is rerun on CBS (Tuesday, 9:00 p.m.), and based on what I see on the roads, we could do with a new version of it this year. One of Alfred Hitchcock's lesser-known movies, Under Capricorn, is the CBS Thursday Night Movie (8:00 p.m.). Contrary to most of Hitch's thrillers, this is a drama about a society woman's descent into alcoholism due to her husband's false conviction for murdering her brother. Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten play the unhappily married couple; the script is by actor Hume Cronyn. I confess this is one of Hitchcock's movies that I was not aware of. 

According to the Teletype, Harry Belafonte will be subbing for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show next year; I wrote about that landmark week here. The networks have put in full-season orders for five of the season's new shows: Batman, Judd for the Defense, Ironside, Mannix and The Mothers-in-Law. Burl Ives plays a small-town defense attorney in The Adversaries, a TV movie for next season co-starring Guy Stockwell and James Farentino. The Teletype reports it could become Roy Huggins' latest series, and it does, in a way: just swap out Guy Stockwell for Joseph Campanella, relabel it from The Sound of Anger (its title when finally broadcast) to The Lawyers, make it one of the three rotating components of The Bold Ones, and you're all set.

Robert Hooks and Judy Ann Elder
in NET's "Day of Absence"

In the Letters section, Carolyn Sawyer of Norton, Massachusetts, wonders why CBS allowed the pro-Vietnam song "An Open Letter to My Son" to be performed on The Ed Sullivan Show while they excised Pete Seeger's anti-war "Big Muddy" from The Smothers Brothers Show. There's TVietnam rearing its ugly head again. (By the way, I think you can explain that decision in three words: L.-B.-J.) Another Bay Stater, Ann Hahn of Easthampton, praises NET's PBL for not pulling its punches with its recent play “Day of Absence,”* performed by black actors in white-face. "Even my husband and I, presumably 'enlightened Northern liberals,' found [it] to be strong stuff. But we'd have been more upset to hear that such a play had been canceled for fear it might offend." Hear, hear.

Finally, on the sports front, ABC has an attractive doubleheader on Saturday, starting with the 68th Army-Navy game, from John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia. (12:30 p.m.) That's followed at 4:00 by Wide World of Sports, with a heavyweight elimination bout between Jimmy Ellis and Oscar Bonavena, part of the tournament to fill the vacancy after Muhammad Ali was stripped of the title for refusing military induction. We started this week in Vietnam; I suppose it's appropriate we end there as well. TV  

This week in TV Guide: October 7, 1961

It's true that John Kennedy was the first TV president, but Dwight Eisenhower was the president of television's Golden Age; and unlike JFK, Ike didn't need television to introduce him to the public. This week, as we approach the one-year anniversary of his successor being chosen, the former president sits down to spend some significant time with CBS' Walter Cronkite on Thursday night at 10:00 p.m. ET.

Tonight's show, the first of three, focuses on Eisenhower's views on the Presidency: what constitutional powers the president has and how he can use them, the qualities of leadership required in the men who would presume to hold the office, and his own adjustment from being Supreme NATO Commander and President of Columbia University to President of the United States.

The CBS crew that arrived at Eisenhower's farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, found the four days spent with the former president a special occasion. "It was like a nice, warm visit with your grandfather," according to Cronkite, who would one day inspire the same feelings from his viewers. Executive Producer Fred Friendly, who had instructed the crew "against bothering Mr. Eisenhower* for autographs for 'telling him how you fought alongside him during the war'," said that Eisenhower "was wonderful. He wrote me several letters after we completed the job and returned to New York. He also wrote generous letters to Mr. [William] Paley [head of CBS] about Walter, about the crew and me." Cronkite abstained from what he called "Mike Wallace" questions, and Eisenhower was frank in many of his answers. It's perhaps not surprising then that when Ike returned to Normandy for a television special on the 20th anniversary of D-Day, it was on CBS—with Cronkite.

*Throughtout the article, the former president is referred to as "Mr. Eisenhower." A bit of decorum that we don't often see anymore. 

All in all, it sounds like a very interesting show, with a man who is obviously still revered by the American people. I wonder how it did in the ratings, up against Sing Along With Mitch and The Untouchables?

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At 1:45 p.m. Saturday afternoon on NBC, it's Game Three of the World Series, which really was a classic back in those days when only one team from each league made it to the postseason. (They had fans in the stands as well.) This year, the Fall Classic pits the heavily favored New York Yankees, led by new home run king Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford and the rest, against the surprise National League champion Cincinnati Reds, led by Frank Robinson and Joey Jay.* The teams unexpectedly split the opening two games in New York, which means the Reds can capture the title by winning their three games at home. Alas for the Redlegs, it's the Yankees who sweep the three games, and the Series, which concludes on Monday afternoon. Here's a brief clip from the original broadcast of that Game Three.

*Fun fact: In the long history of organized baseball, Joey Jay was the first Little League player to make it to the major leagues.

Following the Series, ABC's college football game of the week takes us to Los Angeles, where #1 ranked Iowa takes on USC. In a spectacular game, the Hawkeyes edge the Trojans 35-34; it is, alas, the last hurrah for Iowa, which finishes the season a disappointing 5-4. USC's season ends dismally as well, at 4-5-1. Neither team will be seen in the New Year's games.

Saturday night, it's the 1953 movie Titanic on NBC's new Saturday Night at the Movies (9:00 p.m.), starring Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Wagner*. This was the first movie I'd ever seen about the Titanic (though I saw it several years later on local TV), and though I was initially frightened by the upcoming collision between the ship and the iceberg, I was nonetheless hooked for life on the great tragedy.

*Fun fact: In the movie, Stanwyck plays an unhappy wife who's left Webb, taking her two children with her. Wagner plays a college student who romances Stanwyck's eldest daughter during the trip. In reality, Wagner and Stanwyck (whe was 23 years his elder) were in the midst of a torrid four-year affair.

If the sinking of the Titanic doesn't float your boat, you might be more interested in ABC's Fight of the Week, featuring journeyman heavyweight Alex Miteff taking on the unranked but up-and-coming fighter Cassius Clay. We're told that Clay "didn't look too impressive in his last bout" and "is up against a strong, aggressive puncher tonight." Clay, of course, comes out on top; a little less than two-and-a-half years later, he would be heavyweight champion. If you're curious, here's how it looks, brought to you by El Producto:

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The World Series continues on Sunday, as does professional football. The defending NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles are at home this week, which according to the archaic NFL blackout rules, means there's no televised NFL football in Philadelphia, home of this week's issue. On the other hand, the AFL has no such restrictions, and it's the ABC (and later NBC) telecasts of AFL games into blacked-out NFL markets that helps the new league gain a foothold in the nation. This week, the Buffalo Bills take on the defending AFL champion Houston Oilers in Houston; the Bills take an upset victory, 22-12.

Sunday also brings us a little Cold War news, in the person of Ed Sullivan, who's taken his show to West Berlin to entertain 6000 Allied military personnel and their families. (8:00 p.m., CBS) Tonight, Ed gives us a highlights show, featuring Louis Armstrong, Sid Caesar, Shari Lewis, Maureen O'Hara, Rowan and Martin, opera star Roberta Peters (Ed's favorite guest), and more.

Later still on Sunday (10:00 p.m.), CBS presents Candid Camera, and there's an accompanying article in the national section that tells about the show's own Cold War moment: how creator Allen Funt successfully smuggled 90,000 feet of film (and two cameramen) in and out of the Soviet Union. Funt tells writer Martin Cohen how he had feared bureaucratic red tape would prevent him from ever getting there legally, so he and his crew simply went there on their own, registering as tourists, and spending over a week doing some of their most famous bits before unsuspecting Russian citizens, all with hidden cameras that would likely get them arrested if they were ever discovered. Fortunately for them they weren't, and Funt emerges with, he says, enough footage for an hour's program, which will be seen sometime in the future.

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Some leftovers for the rest of the week, but as is often the case, leftovers can be pretty good.

John Daly, the longtime anchor of ABC's evening news (as well as its news director), has left the network, which leaves him free to concentrate on What's My Line?, as well as make guest appearances on other shows. This Monday, he's hosting NBC's Westinghouse Presents variety special "The Sound of the Sixties" (10:00 p.m.), starring Art Carney, Vic Damone, Gogi Grant, Pat Harrington, Mahalia Jackson, Andre Previn and Tony Randall. Too bad they couldn't get any stars.

On Tuesday, Lee Marvin and Arthur Kennedy star in the initial presentation of ABC's new anthology series Alcoa Premiere (10:00 p.m.), with Fred Astaire as host and occasional star. He's not on tonight's program, "People Need People," starring Arthur Kennedy as a psychiatrist who's given ten days to prove the value of his new treatment for mentally ill former soldiers—what we'd call PTSD. Lee Marvin plays the afflicted vet, and I wonder how quaint, or how insightful, the discussion of treatment would look to us today, given what we now know about the syndrome.

Now, you might be wondering, after seeing the ad above for The New Bob Newhart Show (Wednesday 10:00 p.m., NBC), what the old one was like. It's kind of hard to say, because the evidence points to this being his first series. Perhaps they mean it's a new series, as opposed to whatever old ones it replaced; this is, after all, its debut episode. One thing's for sure: history will show that more people were interested in Bob Newhart's really new series—The Bob Newhart Show that featured him as a psychologist in Chicago, with Suzanne Pleshette as his wife.

In any event, the buttons on the ad refer to Newhart's celebrated comedy album The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, which won the Grammy as Album of the Year in 1961 (before that award was specified for musical performances). The album features most of Newhart's greatest bits, including the imaginary telephone conversations, and NBC must have felt this made him a natural for a variety show. As it turns out, it was not the variety format that suited him best (he also featured in The Entertainers, a failed variety show with rotating hosts, one of whom was Carol Burnett), but the sitcom. Admittedly, that might not have been so obvious back in 1961, but as we've seen since, Newhart was one of the first of many stand-up comedians to have a successful sitcom shaped around his act, or shtick. In Newhart's case, it happened successfully not once, but twice.  Not bad at all.

Also on Wednesday, a couple of things: a great animation block, with The Alvin Show on CBS at 7:30 p.m., and Top Cat on ABC at 8:30 p.m. Loved them both. And then, on Armstrong Circle Theatre (10:00 p.m., CBS), host Ron Cochran—soon to move to ABC as anchor of its nightly news, thanks to Daly's resignation—presents "Legend of Murder: The Untold Story of Lizzie Borden." The legend of Lizzie Borden has always been a storied part of American history; I wonder if it's ever taught in school nowadays.

On Friday, it's one of the very best episodes of The Twilight Zone, featuring Jack Klugman and Jonathan Winters in "A Game of Pool." (10:00 p.m., CBS) It's an example of Klugman's one-note intensity used to its best effect, in a powerful performance as a man trying to prove that there's one thing he can do better than anyone else: play pool. He's countered by an equally good Winters, in a rare dramatic role as Fats, the long-dead legendary pool great, come back to force Klugman to prove that his game is more than just talk—that he has the guts to be the best.

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"For the Record" was TV Guide's precursor to The Doan Report—have I mentioned that before? I've done so many of these I can't remember anymore, and it couldn't have anything to do with old age. Anyway, Henry Harding reports that The Bell Telephone Hour barely made it through its season opener September 29 on NBC. Harry Belafonte, who'd been heavily advertised as host of the live broadcast, instead wound up in the hospital with a respiratory ailment. No worries; the show improvised by substituting a Belafonte performance from a couple of years back. That was easy, though, compared to the problems with the show's other star, Rosemary Clooney. The telephone people, who spend a lot of money every year to sponsor the program, wanted Clooney to cut a couple of her love songs; they thought they were inappropriate for a woman about to divorce José Ferrer (for the first time). Rosie promptly took a hike, and I can't really say I blame her. The producers recruited some substitute talent: opera stars Anna Moffo and Richard Tucker, plus Dorothy Collins and Eddie Condon. Well, you know what they say—the show must go on. Meanwhile, one of television's most popular programs may be in trouble; thanks to the aforementioned Saturday Night at the Movies, NBC was able to mop up on CBS's top-rated Gunsmoke, along with Have Gun—Will Travel and the last half-hour of The Defenders. Is this the end of the trail for Matt Dillon and the good people of Dodge City? Eventually, fourteen seasons from now. 

COURTESY: STARS AND STRIPES     

And then there's the story behind that photo of Jack Paar at left. It was taken during Paar's recent trip to West Berlin, at a checkpoint between East and West. Paar, in the process of filming three shows, talked the Army into appeairng with him; he appeared with, according to Stars and Stripes, "two colonels, one lieutenant colonel, a major, a captain, two lieutenants and about 50 enlisted men, some in bulletproof vests." Well, when word got back to the VIPs in Washington, you'd think Paar had provided aid and comfort to the enemy instead of talking with American troops. "Sen. Mike Mansfield, D-Mont., majority leader, asserted that what is happening in Berlin is a world tragedy and 'not a TV spectacular,' with military personnel used as background for a comedian. Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey, D-Minn., assistant majority leader, said this 'is intolerable and should not be done.' He said Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev can use 'this kind of incident' for propaganda around the world 'and beat us over the head with it.' Sen. Leverett Saltonstall, R-Mass., said the use of armed troops for such an occasion might lead to 'a shooting scene.' A number of the officers were disciplined for cooperating with Paar. 

The story doesn't end there, though, as we see in this week's Letters to the Editor. Jacqueline Ferguson, of Clinton, Kentucky, is not impressed with the opinions of those men in Washington, nor with the editors of TV Guide who viewed the whole thing as a publicity stunt. (For television? Imagine that.) TV Guide's editorial, Ms. Ferguson writes, "did not mention the tears of joy that must have been shed by the families of the few armed forces men we saw. They could not have understood the situation in any other way than to see the streets, the buildings as they were. mr. Paar did not have any intention of having a news broadcast, but all the same he brought us the news." She reminds us that "[t]here were jokes at Valley Forge [and] Abraham Lincoln's humor was not dampened by the Civil War," and that it is "typical of us to ralize completely the seriousness of a situation and still be able to find the humor in it." I have to wonder how many letters like this the Secretary of the Army received, because Harding now reports that—low and behold—the Army has reversed its decision. "A military investigation, which included a viewing of the controversial Paar film, concluded with a decision to cancel the disciplinary action 'in order to right an injustice.'" Maybe you can fight City Hall, at least some of the time.

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Finally, I'll leave you with some more ads. Here's one for Broderick Crawford's new series King of Diamonds, in which he's looking very much like Chief Dan Matthews in Highway Patrol.

Before Mike Connors was a star in Mannix, he played an undercover agent in the tense drama Tightrope! His character was so undercover, he didn't even have a regular name. Speaking of which, I'm surprised to see him referred to here as "Mike"—although that's how we know him today, back then he was usually billed as "Michael." Better than Touch, anyway.

This "Special Offer to Roger Maris Fans" reminds us that Maris had just completed one of the greatest season any baseball player ever had, breaking Babe Ruth's famed single-season home run record.*

*With the help of an *, of course. Perhaps he did need some extra games, but he didn't need PEDs.

And Richard Burton isn't on television this week, at least not in his own program—but just because you can't watch the "star of stage, screen and TV" doesn't mean you can't drink the wine he does. And it's imported from Denmark!

But is it as exciting as Liz? TV  

This week in TV Guide: January 20, 1973

On Saturday, after having been reelected by one of the biggest landslides in American political history, Richard M. Nixon and Spiro T. Agnew will be sworn in for second terms as President and Vice President of the United States. Less than 19 months later, they both will have resigned due to scandals that predated the election. That's the context for this week's issue.

All three networks are providing coverage of the Inaugural and parade; while NBC and CBS are also having late-night wrap-ups of the balls. On ABC it's Howard K. Smith and Harry Reasoner, while Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid are in the CBS booth, and John Chancellor and David Brinkley are on NBC. (Richard K. Doan points out that it's the first time for Reasoner and Chancellor anchoring inaugural coverage; I suppose this is what happens when you're covering a story that only happens every four years.) Because the inaugural falls on a Saturday, NBC's also planning an hour of prime-time highlights for those who were out and about during the day, The networks estimate it'll cost about $3 million to cover the day's events, about the same as they spent in 1969. For that investment, they're figuring on a viewing audience of over 30 million. Four years later, we'll be replaying the same scene, but by then the characters will have changed dramatically—something that nobody watching the events today could possibly have imagined. History has a way of playing tricks on us, doesn't it?

Speaking of history, there are two occasions when we're invariably reminded of something that makes America stand out from other countries throughout history. It happens when a president dies in office, and again when a new president takes the oath of office on January 20, and you can take it to the bank that at least one broadcaster somewhere will take a moment to reflect on the greatness and wonder of a nation where such a peaceful transition of power routinely takes place: without challenge or revolution. Not to be a Debbie Downer, but I wonder—I just wonder—just how much longer we'll be saying that.

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

If you're searching for something good to watch on TV tonight, your search isn't going to end with Search, says Cleveland Amory. In fact, this series was originally supposed to be called Probe, until the producers found out someone else already had the rights to that title. The search for a new title wound up being self-fulfilling; "So much for what's good about this show." Ouch! "What's bad about it is that it is just one more of those revolving-trio things in which, in alternating weeks, three different zeroes—we mean heroes—strong-arm and brainstorm their way through muscle-bound plots."

The three zeroes—er, heroes—are played by Hugh O'Brian, Tony Franciosa, and Doug McClure, with Burgess Meredith as the constant who provides our boys with the tools they need to complete their mission, thanks to ear implants through which they receive information from home base, which is still, for some reason, still called Probe. Through a mass of screens, scanners and computers, Meredith and his team are able to tip off the agents when someone is lying, when an adrenalin surge indicates possible violence ahead, or when their own body heat may be tipping off where they are.

This gimmick might work, Cleve notes, "if the plots did. But they don't." True, O'Brien often rises above the material, but that's because "he's often in a helicopter." The dialogue is painfully painful; in one episode, guest-star Barbara Feldon discovers that the initials of McClure's character's name, C.R. Grover, stand for "Christopher Robin," she replies, "I think it's winsome. I wish I had a cuddly name." Bad plots and bad dialogue usually make for a bad combination, and in the case of Probe, that is, Search, the mixture fuels a run of 23 episodes. For creator Leslie Stevens, who'd previously made The Outer Limits, it's an obvious case of better luck last time.

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And now, some news of interest from this week's TV Teletype:

In April, Raymond Burr is Pope John XXIII in ABC's special A Man Called John; I covered that back here. Mia Farrow's landed one of the most sought-after roles in Hollywood: she'll be playing Daisy Buchanan in the big-screen version of The Great Gatsby, starring Robert Redford. Meanwhile, Lee Marvin takes on Eugene O'Neill in The Iceman Cometh, with Fredric March, Robert Ryan and Jeff Bridges. Glenn Corbett is doing The Stranger, an NBC pilot about an astronaut stranded on a strange planet; unfortunately for Glenn, it doesn't go anywhere from there.*

*Although it provides plenty of fodder for MST3K.

As long as we're talking about pilots, Lee Majors took some time off from Owen Marshall to film an ABC movie that, although it's not billed as such, proves so popular that, unlike The Stranger, it does become a series. It's called Cyborg here, but by the time it makes it to TV, it's called The Six Million Dollar Man. ABC's busy; in the works as well is an ABC Theatre docudrama about the U.S.S. Pueblo which, although it isn't mentioned here, will star Hal Holbrook as Captain Lloyd Bucher. Holbrook wins two Emmys for the role (one as Best Dramatic Actor, the other as Actor of the Year), and the movie wins five overall. And then there's the two-part movie QBVII, starring Ben Gazzara (and also some actor named Anthony Hopkins), which you'll see this spring. As I commented after seeing it, its VI hours of my life I'll never get back.

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You might have read about the brawl that broke out earlier this week in a college basketball game between Kansas State and Kansas. In an amazing coincidence, we have an article this week about the epidemic of brawls in—college basketball. In "The Big Brawl Era," Al Stump looks at increasing violence in the college game: not just involving players, but fans as well. At a game last January at the University of Minnesota, a fight between Ohio State and Minnesota players featured fans coming on the court to attack Ohio State players.* At Kansas, officials were held prisoner in their dressing room by more than 100 people until they were rescued by the police. A game in Berkeley between Cal and USC was forfeited to the Trojans after Cal fans littered the court with eggs, apple cores, beer cans, and shoes. Maryland coach Lefty Driesell was knocked flat by rioters at North Carolina. Perry Wallace of Vanderbilt, the first black player in the SEC, had a knife thrown at him at Alabama.

*I remember that game well, being 12 years old and living in Minneapolis at the time; the Gophers got a bad rap on that one. One of the Minnesota players involved in the fight, who escaped punishment, went on to play another sport: Dave Winfield.

I suppose it's natural that the fans have become rougher, considering the amount of violence that aniti-war students are exercising on campus, but USC coach Bob Boyd thinks television deserves its share of blame for what's going on. "Commentators exaggerate the wild side. They deliberately build up feuds, fouling and fighting. They emphasize close-in shots of irate coaches and overexcited fans and junk flying. The cumulative effect is to increase hard feelings and cause a beef next time the same clubs play. I'm no censor . . . but why does TV have to show fist fights in their entirety?"

Counters Dan Shedrick, head of Coliseum Sports, which produces college basketball telecasts, "Boyd and our other critics are acting like censors. We pay colleges $20,000 and more for rights fees to one contest. Nothing in the contract states that we shouldn't cover a free-for-all. The reality of sport is involved here, and our policy is to let it all hang out, raw-journalism style, in any gym where we buy the package." Alan Lubell, an executive at Coliseum competitor TVS, agrees. "We have an obligation to report, even if they burn the barn down. We didn't create this scene. There may be news management in other telecast sports, but not with us."

In a cautionary film made for television, John Wooden, coach of champion UCLA, looks out at a game being played in an empty arena. "It could come to this," he says to the camera. "This is what could happen if we don't stop the violence in the game." It still could.

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ABC's latest late-night strategy is Wide World of Entertainment, four rotating elements* that each air for one week, and the big news is the return of Jack Paar. The network's hope, according to The Doan Report, is that Paar's old magic can help topple the reigning King, Johnny Carson. Jack Paar Tonite's debut week produces mixed results: Paar was tops in New York, while Carson dominated Los Angeles. The networks were at a loss to explain, but it seems obvious to me that Paar's sophisticated touch appeals to the East Coast, while Carson's more laid-back, Hollywood-based shows are more the Left Coast's style.

*In addition to Paar and Cavett, the other two elements are Wide World Mystery, and Wide World Comedy. One of the mystery elements is the British series Thriller, not to be confused with the Boris Karloff-hosted show of the early '60s. It explains why, during this era, we see Boris Karlof Presents Thriller in the listings, to differentiate between the two. That solves one of life's questions for me.]=

This week, however, belongs to Dick Cavett, who returns with a terrific guest list: Monday's 60-minute show (shortened due to part two of the network's movie, How the West Was Won) has Paul Newman and John Huston, while Tuesday features Barry Goldwater, Germaine Greer, and former Lt. Col. Anthony Herbert, in the headlines for accusing his superiors of abusing Vietnam POWs. The next three nights are devoted to Dick's famed single-guest shows: Wednesday with Sir Laurence Olivier, Thursday with Orson Welles, and Friday with Ray Charles. Those shows were fascinating for two reasons: first, the intimacy of a 90 minute conversation with a single guest; and second, how that intimacy is increased by airing the interviews in a late night setting. That's something Jack Paar understood as well. Paar, by the way, reappears on Saturday night (10:00 p.m. ET, ABC) with a prime-time interview of "Three Remarkable Women": Ethel Kennedy (widow of Bobby), Jane Goodall (and her husband, Hugo Van Lawick), and Broadway star Mary Martin.

Speaking of returns, Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore return Sunday in a repeat at of their 1969 variety special, Dick Van Dyke and the Other Woman (9:30 p.m., CBS), while NBC counters with Return to Peyton Place (10:00 p.m.), a prime-time edition of the daytime series. I guess you can go home again. And for the rest of the week:

Mike Connors, star of Mannix, has a nice turn on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour (Wednesday, 8:00 p.m., CBS). He gets to return to his acting roots as a heavy by laying a ganster boss, a Gestapo officer, and an evil adviser to a queen.

NET Opera Theater, seen at various times and on various stations throughout the week, presents the Japanese opera "The Death Goddess," the story of "an unhappy undertaker who is granted the power to save the dying. His new-found power makes him rich, but he broods over the evil deeds of those he saves." It's written for TV; I wonder how much play it got afterward?

On Friday (9:00 p.m., ABC), composer Burt Bacharach hosts an hour of music staged on the set of the upcoming musical Lost Horizon (music by, ironically, Burt Bacharach!), with The 5th Dimension (or, as the ad for the show says, "The Fifth Dimension"), Richard Harris, Bobby Van, and Chris Evert. Not quite SCTV territory, but if you'd thrown in Andrea Martin as Mother Teresa, you'd have been there.

We don't often get to see a movie featured on MST3K in its natural habitat, but Friday night's late movie on CBS is Moon Zero Two (11:30 p.m.), starring James Olson and Catherine Von Schell, and Judith Crist's review gives us ample evidence as to how the movie wound up on the Satellite of Love: "Anyone 6 or under suffering from insomnia or parental ultrapermissiveness might enjoy Friday's Moon Zero Two, made in England in 1969 with the claim that it was the 'first space Western.' The year is 2021 and Hopalong Cassidy would cringe at the dumb goings-on."

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Saturday night is a powerhouse for CBS, and Bob Newhart's right at the center of it. Through the pages of TV Guide, we've seen Newhart's TV career evolve over the years; there was his eponymously-named variety show in 1961, and he was one of the rotating hosts of the comedy-variety series The Entertainers in 1964, before CBS finally figured out what to do with the buttoned-down star. Now, his sitcom is a hit, and according to Dwight Whitney, he's stopped worrying about having to go back to accounting or selling shoes. Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but not much; he used to worry about hecklers during his nightclub days, he worried at first that a sitcom wasn't the right way to go ("I kept saying no. Kind of reflex, I guess. Then one day I asked myself why."), worried that success would be fleeting and he'd have to fall back on other ways to make a buck ("How do you tell your children you were a game-show host?"). Now, as a remarkably well-adjusted comedian, he takes his success with the same low-key grace as always. It's good to see a good guy succeed. And after all, how bad can life be when your TV-wife is Suzanne Pleshette? Bob definitely married up in that case, didn't he?

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Finally, this week's starlet is trying to emerge from an identity crisis. He bears the unlikely name of Cheryl Jean Stoppelmoor, and during her early professional days she adopted the name Cherie Moore, back when she toured the area around her hometown of Huron, South Dakota, singing with bands. (As Cherie Moore, she also does a turn singing the voice of Melody on Josie and the Pussycats; you can look it up.) Now she's in Hollywood, doing commercials and regularly appearing in guest spots on various TV shows, and she's back to Cheryl Jean Stoppelmoor. "Once people know my name, they don't forget it. After all, they don't say 'Engelbert Who?' Cherie Moore sounds phony, like the old Hollywood."

Cheryl's definitely from the new Hollywood, and she's got the ambition to succeed. She'd love to play one of the big rooms in Las Vegas; "It's kind of an ego thing to be up there in front of people, to make them feel through you." She says that "Whatever I do, I want to do it best," but she's also realistic; "If it doesn't work out or stars messing up my head, I'll get out. I don't want to be 30 years old and want to kill myself." Not to worry, Cheryl Jean; there's no threat of that. Although she's vowed that she "intends to remain" Cheryl Stoppelmoor, she'll marry producer David Ladd (son of Alan Ladd) later in the year, and take his last name. And it's as Cheryl Ladd that she'll star in Charlie's Angels, and remain a star for nearly 50 years, to this very day. It's one of those starlet stories that you dream about running across. And now you can say you read about her when. TV