Good morning from Towson, Maryland, where I'm coming to you live today from the Mid Atlantic Nostalgia Convention, our annual pilgrimage where we can talk about old TV and movies without sounding hopelessly out of touch with the rest of the world. Although considering the state of the world today, being out of touch isn't such a bad thing. After all, around here, when people talk about late night television, it's usually either Johnny Carson or a test pattern. And speaking as I was the other day about "old," it's not such a bad thing. Anyway, let's get to it.
At Comfort TV, David gives me the chance to link to someone else promoting me, with his very kind review of Darkness in Primetime. And by the way, have you purchased your copy yet? You do want to be part of the cool crowd, don't you?
John is back in documentary mode at Cult TV Blog with this look at the infamous "Nine O'Clock Service" experiment in the Church of England; it's a double-header post, because John also tells us about an admirable book that serves as a perfect compliment to the documentary. It makes for disgusting reading; afterward, I felt as if I had to take another shower.
I'm breaking from Roger's A-Team reviews at A View from the Junkyard for his look at "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes," an all-time Simpsons classic featuring Patrick McGoohan's final television performance as the redoubtable Number 6. I'll tell you no more about it; read it for yourself.
At Classic Film and TV Corner, Maddie celebrates an anniversary of a show that both she and I count as a favorite: The Wild Wild West, which premiered 60 years ago. Besides Robert Conrad and Ross Martin, the show was blessed with terrific guest stars, especially Michael Dunn; it also had going for it something increasingly rare on television: an original idea.
In my TV Guide pieces, I've occasionally mentioned Startime, one of the shows from the end of the Golden Age that truly lived up to its name as a home for star-studded spectaculars; at Drunk TV, Paul looks at the 1959 broadcast of "The Jazz Singer," starring Jerry Lewis in a then-rare dramatic role. It's an opportunity to look at a color broadcast from the late 1950s, and worth checking out.
Garry Berman is back with ten great sitcom episodesthat seldom get talked about, and it's particularly interesting considering how many of these episodes are from series that we're quite familiar with. Being a completist at heart, it's always nice to go into those deep cuts and see what you come up with.
What's that, you say? Assorted trivia from TV Guide? Well, I'm not going to pass this up, thanks to Martin Grams. I will always say that TV Guide is one of the best time capsules you can find. And speaking of MANC as we were, I'd be remiss if I didn't remind you of the presentation I gave here a few years ago on the very subject of TV Guide as a time capsule! TV
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We all know how the minefield that is television is littered with the bodies of various flops, bombs, disasters, and other fiascos. Their tombstones are inscribed with various synonyms for failure: Turn-On.The Tammy Grimes Show.Flesh and Blood. Now it's time to add to that dubious pantheon one of the most infamous of them all: The Jerry Lewis Show. And it falls to Richard Gehman to write the obituary, even though the body, while moribund, is still breathing.
The Jerry Lewis Show was the result of a bidding war among all three networks, and came on the heels of some very well-received specials over the years, as well as a successful stint as guest host on The Tonight Show in that interim period between the departure of Jack Paar and the arrival of Johnny Carson. As befits the stature of one of the biggest stars in the business, The Jerry Lewis Show was big: two hours long, telecast live each Saturday, from the newly-renamed and refurbished Jerry Lewis Theater (at a cost of $1,000,000). ABC was spending, chairman Leonard Goldenson said, "more money than we own" on the show. And people were excited; "Everybody's rooting for Lewis," said Jack Elliott, music director for the Edie Adams show. "Everybody wants him to make it."
But now, only seven weeks into its run, the show is in Big Trouble, with a captial T that, if it doesn't rhyme with R, can best be summarized with the word ratings. It has fallen into third place for the night, trailing both NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies and CBS's venerable Western duo of Have Gun, Will Travel and Gunsmoke. The critics are using harsh words to describe the show's star: "egocentric" and "boor." ABC's president, Tom Moore, will only say that "We are committed to The Jerry Lewis Show for 40 weeks." The whispering in the industry is that "Jerry Lewis, LIVE from Hollywood, soon would be DEAD from Hollywood." And the question that everyone's asking: what happened?
According to Gehman, the problems are varied, but insiders point to one overriding conern: nobody really knew what Lewis wanted out of the show, what his vision was. It was as if he was completely detached from the project: unavailable for consultation with the network on guest stars, working on the script for his next movie instead of damage control on the show, opening for a week in Las Vegas in November. The problem, says Gehman, isn't confusion as much as it is a "complete lack of communication."
Opening night didn't help. Lewis was nervous—"terribly nervous"—and things were only made worse when the huge screen above the stage stopped working, which meant most of the people in the theater couldn't see him. Cameramen lost communications with the control room. The red lights on the cameras went off, meaning nobody on stage knew which one to face. Commercials came and went without warning, or at the wrong time. Lewis, "a fearfully nervous persormer [whose] apparent ego masks a frightened and inescure little boy," hates surprises, and opening night was filled with them. He looked awkward, and the audience didn't understand some of his comments. Things went downhill from there. (You can see the opening to that show here.)
Gehman had been given unusual access to Lewis; the next year, he would write a biography of Lewis, That Kid, that, some said, caused Lewis to regret having given him that access. When it came to the show, however, Gehman found it difficult to get him to talk about things. He was more interested in talking metaphysically about God ("I think He sits up there in a big chair going har-har-har at all of us. I think He looks like Kriss Kringle. And I think He's makin' all of us do all this as a kind of audition.") and shrugs off press criticism ("The minute the critics are for me, I know I'm in trouble.").
Which leaves it up to Gehman to analyze the failure, the first one that Lewis has had since a brief radio venture with Dean Martin that was almost immediately followed up by a successful turn into television. Lewis, Gehman says, is "a man whose deepest basic motivion—he once said to me—is fear." It may be, Gehman thinks, that "hurt and fear" have kept him detached. It may be that we was so cocky he didn't take into account how difficult two hours of live television each week could be, that he just had to "show up." It could be that, like his friend Frank Sinatra with his own ill-fated ABC series a few years ago, he had contempt for the television audience. All anyone knows is that when his press agent, Jack Keller, asked if there was anything he could do for Jerry, Lewis replied "Yeah—get me off this show."
It is, Gehman says in conclusion, as if Jerry Lewis was still auditioning, that, as he put it, God was going har-har-har while Lewis ran around frantically "and mainly running away."
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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era.
I tried watching a couple of episodes of East Side/West Side a few years ago. Well, actually, I did watch a couple of episodes; I tried to like it, but I don't know that East Side/West Side is the kind of show that one actually likes, but the lack of a likeable character, combined with an excessive preachiness, meant I turned it off before it could turn me on. The fact that I tried it out, though, meant I fulfilled the obligation set out by Cleveland Amory in this week's review.
To be fair, Cleve had a few nits to pick as well, chief among them that East Side/West Side can be a little, well, humorless. The show is "a pretty depressing concept for evening 'entertainment' to begin with," perhaps "a bit seamier, it seems to us, than it has to be." A show like this doesn't have to have humor, but "more of a light touch would, if nothing else, help to illumine the dark spots." In crafting the role of welfare worker Neil Brock, played by George C. Scott, the producers "have failed to create a character with whom we can identify", and that goes as well for his two colleagues, played by Elizabeth Wilson and Cicely Tyson. There's also the fact that much of the dialog falls into the "unreal" department, which isn't the best thing for a series that promotes its realism.
All that said, Amory praises East Side/West Side as "undoubtedly the boldest, bravest and most original new series now on your screen this new season." CBS deserves credit for actually putting it on the air. And "you owe it to your conscience not only to see it but also to see that it stays on." At least I met Cleve halfway.
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This week is a kind of limbo for Christmas programming—the quiet before the storm, as it were. We're in the time before the barage of animated Christmas specials that come early in the month (Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol premiered in 1962), and the variety shows and weekly sitcoms that air special Christmas episodes are just beginning to run theirs. (More of them will be on next week.)
With that said, two of the best-known and best-loved sitcom Christmas episodes air this week. On Tuesday, The Jack Benny Program (9:30 p.m., CBS) presents the famous 1960 episode "Jack Goes Christmas Shopping," featuring a performance by Mel Blanc that will crack you up, as it does Jack. On Wednesday, it's "The Alan Brady Show Presents," on The Dick Van Dyke Show (9:30 p.m., CBS), with Dick, Laura, Buddy, Sally, Mel, and Ritchie performing their hearts out. No Christmas viewing schedule is complete without either of these. And Saturday's Lawrence Welk Show (8:30 p.m., ABC) celebrates a holiday show with the Osmond Brothers.
Sunday's always a good time for holiday programs, and this Sunday is no exception, starting with CBS's religious program Look Up and Live (10:30 a.m.), which focuses on "Three Views of Christmas," including songs and spirituals appropriate to Advent. We continue at WNAC in Boston, with the second half of the noon double feature, Remember the Night, with Barbara Stanwick as a shoplifter remanded to the custody of the prosecuting attorney (Fred MacMurray) over the Christmas holiday. (Only in the movies, right?) That finishes in time for you to switch over to the Hallmark Hall of Fame's Christmas presentation, "A Cry of Angels" (4:00 p.m., NBC), the story of Handel and how he came to write "Messiah." Walter Slezak plays the troubled composer, who faces mounting debt, dwindling audience interest, and crippled pain in his hands, as well as the emnity of the Prince of Wales (Hurt Hatfield); Maureen O'Hara costars as Susanna Cibber, the singer who assisted in the efforts to get "Messiah" published. Lassie (7:00 p.m., CBS) presents the first of a two-part Christmas story, in which Timmy and Lassie bring home an elderly toy mender for Christmas. And over on ABC, The Ernie Ford Show (Monday-Friday, noon), Ernie sings at least one Christmas hymn each day.
Locally, WMUR in Manchester airs a charming little program Monday through Friday at 7:00 p.m. called Santa Claus, with the studio transformed into Santa's Workshop at the North Pole, and Santa (kids' show host "Uncle" Gus Bernier" reading letters from kids. You can see a clip from that here. On Thursday, WBZ offers a Boston Christmastime tradition, the play Black Nativity (7:30 p.m.), by American poet Langston Hughes, set to traditional Chrismas carols sung in gospel style; Hughes himself provides the narration. At 8:00 p.m. the same night, WGBH has Dylan Thomas's prose poem A Child's Christmas in Wales, recited by Thomas, against the backdrop of photographs of Thomas's homeland. If you have to choose, I'd choose Black Nativity simply on the grounds that WGBH will probably repeat A Child's Christmas sometime in the next couple of weeks.
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There's plenty more to look forward to this week. Saturday is the final day of the regular season in college football, with Alabama taking on Miami at the Orange Bowl (1:30 p.m. ET, NBC). If you're like me, you might have wondered that the regular season extended so deep into December, until you see the notation "Postponed from last week." The accordian effect of November 22 really does have a long reach, doesn't it?
On Sunday afternoon, NBC Children's Theatre (3:00 p.m.) presents a kind of alternative to CBS's Young People's Concerts, as conductor Igor Buketoff and the NBC Orchestra demonstrate the range and variety of sounds made by a symphony orchestra. And who wouldn't want to see the conclusion of Pollyanna on Disney's Wonderful World of Color (7:30 p.m., NBC), with the delightful ◀ Hayley Mills, Jane Wyman, and Karl Malden.
If you wake up early enough on Monday, you'll catch an interesting lineup on Today (7:00 a.m., NBC), with the focus on "second-generation actors" James Mitchum and Peter Fonda. One of them becomes a big star, one of them doesn't (but he's still more successful than I'd ever be). And if you can stay awake long enough, Sing Along with Mitch (10:00 p.m., NBC) has a tribute to World War II and the London Blitz, with Leslie Uggams, Bob McGrath, Deirdre Damon and Sandy Stewart joining in.
Wednesday, CBS Reports (7:30 p.m.)features members of President Johnson's cabinet sharing their views on various issues facing the new president, less than one month into his administration. It must still have taken some getting used to seeing the phrase "President Johnson" in print. And on The Danny Kaye Show (10:00 p.m., CBS), the aforementioned Dick Van Dyke is Danny's special guest; among the skits, Dick plays a best man trying to talk Danny out of leaving his bride standing at the altar.
On Thursday, Lauren Bacall makes a rare television appearance in Dr. Kildare (8:30 p.m., NBC) as a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist faced with a serious illness. And on Kraft Suspense Theatre (10:00 p.m., NBC), Mickey Rooney stars in "The Hunt" as a sadistic sheriff who plays a variation of "The Most Dangerous Game" with his prisoners—first he lets them escape, then he tracks them down and kills them. The unfortunate prisoners are James Caan and Bruce Dern.
Friday gives us a case of what might be called "Dueling Serlings," starting with The Chrysler Theatre presentation of "It's Mental Work" (8:30 p.m., NBC), Rod Serling's adaptation of John O'Hara's short story, starring Lee J. Cobb, Harry Guardino, Gena Rowlands, and Archie Moore. After that, you can flip over to CBS for Serling's Twilight Zone story "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" (9:30 p.m.), starring Ed Wynn. When that's over, you've got a choice: The Jack Paar Program (10:00 p.m., NBC), with Jack's guest, BIshop Fulton J. Sheen; or the Fight of the Week (10:00 p.m., ABC), with welterweight champion Emile Griffith moving up a class to fight Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. Remember Carter's long and ultimately successful fight for justice back in the day? This was when he was simply known as a boxer.
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On the cover this week is a program that looks as if it should be one of Bing Crosby's star-studded Christmas specials, but in fact The Bing Crosby Show for Lever Brothers, starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bob Hope, Rosemary Clooney, Kathryn Crosby, and Peter Gennaro, isn't scheduled until February 15 of next year.* But these shows have to be shot sometime, and this one has just wrapped production.
*Bing had done Christmas variety specials on ABC in 1961 and 1962; in 1963, he narrated a program called The Promise, made by Father Patrick Peyton's Family Theatre Productions, which told of the events leading up to the birth of Christ.
Deano welcomes Rosie to the set.
One of the challenges in putting together an all-star show like this is getting everyone together at the same time, and as fate would have it, Hope is in and out before Sinatra and Martin have even arrived; Bob is suffering from an eye ailment, and left early for treatment. There's only a brief discussion as to whether or not to replace him with another star, and it's decided that they'll tape his segement at a later date and splice it in. Crosby explains to the audience that Hope picked up a slight cold, "and you know at his age, old Skinose has to take care of himself."
The special represents "Kathy" Crosby's first television appearance with Bing (as well as her first singing appearance on television), and Crosby's pride in his young wife is evident, kissing her as she sits on his lap. Anyone who's ever watched Bing in action knows how smooth, how practiced and at ease, he always appears ("utterly nervless"), and even his wife is moved to comment on it; at one point, while he was out of earshot, she commented to Rosemary Clooney that "I had no idea he was such a pro. If I had known, I'd have married him sooner."
Incidentelly, when Kathy Crosby was still Kathryn Grant, she appeared in a 1957 science fiction movie called The Night the World Exploded, and that's airing this Friday overnight at 1:00 a.m. on WBZ.
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MST3K alert: Lost Continent(1951) A rescue mission discovers a "Lost Continent." Cesar Romero, Hillary Brooke. (Sunday, 9:00 a.m., WGN) This brief description hardly does the movie justice, and editing it down to fit a one-hour Sunday morning timeslot doesn't help things. But without the interstitial MST3K features, you don't have a movie anyway: Crypto-dad Hugh Beaumont as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, rock climbing, and Cesar Romero—really, who could ask for anything more? TV
Well, we're back this week after last week's special report from—where was I again? Oh yeah, the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention. (By the way, I'll have a final entry on that next Wednesday.) As is always the case when this feature takes a week off, we've got a full batch of links, so let's get right to it!
We'll start off with my latest appearance on the Dan Schneider Video Interview. This week, we look at the history of special event news coverage, from the death of Stalin to the Gulf War. There's a lot more to this than you might think, and I'd be interested to see what you all think. You can see the entire episode here.
John takes another break from his excellent series at Cult TV Blog on The X-Files and the American Dream for a look at The Avengers, and the early episode "Box of Tricks," a rare Steed-Venus Smith story. I like it not only because he mentions yours truly (thanks, John!) but because he goes deeper into an episode which has received valid criticism but still entertains.
The latest entry in the Hitchcock Project is Allan Gordon's "The Man Who Found the Money," from Hitchcock season six. Jack takes a deep look at this very nasty episode, starring Arthur Hill and Rod Cameron, at bare-bones e-zine.
Much of the appeal to classic television lies in its uncanny ability to revive happy memories of the past, and David demonstrates this at Comfort TV with his fond review of the superb PBS children's show The Electric Company, featuring Bill Cosby, Rita Moreno, Morgan Freeman, and Irene Cara. It's proof that educational television doesn't have to be boring at the same time.
Cult TV Lounge pulls up a blast from the past—an episode of the 1950-51 Dick Tracy TV series, included as a bonus in the box set of Dick Tracy serials. It's an excellent look at the challenges involved in doing a half-hour drama series, and how the writers have to really know what they're doing.
Collider has an interesting article on how the excellent neo-noir movie Experiment in Terror may have influenced David Lynch, especially in the making of Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet. Now, the article doesn't actually quote Lynch as acknowledging this, though I wouldn't doubt it; still, I'm in a kind of prove-it mindset. Nevertheless, it seems hard to refute!
Not long ago, I posted a review of the 1970s miniseries Captains and the Kings, looking primarily at the striking coincidences between the story's Armagh family and the real-life Kennedys, and author Taylor Caldwell's political message. If you're interested in the ins and outs of the series itself, Paul has an excellent extended look at Drunk TV.
At Travalanche, it's a nostalgic look back at the Labor Day tradition that was the Jerry Lewis Telethon, an annual tradition for so many of us around here. Labor Day just isn't the same anymore, sad to say, but that doesn't make it unique.
A View from the Junkyard takes a look at what must be one of the most famous non-cartoonish animated shows, Star Trek: The Animated Series. It really was quite something at the time: a cancelled primetime show making a comback as a Saturday-morning show, feauring the voices of the original cast members; as Mike says, it's essentially season four of the series.
At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence dips way back into the memory files for NBC Follies, the network's 1973 attempt to revive the variety show genre. The fact that NBC Follies is, as Terence says, "largely forgotten except by television historians and fans of Sammy Davis Jr. and Mickey Rooney," tells you what you need to know about its success. Of course, since he's describing me, I had to link to it. TV
This week begins with the return of Love That Bob to The Horn Section, and this time Bob's not the wolf preying on a lovely—he's actually trying to protect the lovely from another wolf: his friend Paul Fonda (Lyle Talbot). How does it work when the shoe's on the other foot, so to speak? Read what Hal has to say.
Something unusual at Cult TV Blog; John looks at the never-aired pilot for Blackadder, Rowan Atkinson's wonderfully funny alt take on British history. The entire Blackadder series is one of my favorites, and its quite interesting to document the differences between the series as aired and this pilot; as John says, it's hard to disagree with the changes made between the pilot and the series.
At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence pays tribute to the career of producer and director Bert I. Gordon, who died last week, aged 100. Dedicated MST3K fans will recognize many of his movies, which tormented and delighted the show's fans: King Dinosaur, Beginning of the End, The Amazing Colossal Man, War of the Colossal Beast, Earth vs. the Spider, Tormented, Village of the Giants. Colossal!
Here's something you're not going to see in any store anytime soon, unless it deals in antiques: a television tube tester, courtesy of the Broadcasting Archives. I'm grateful, of course, for the new technology in TV, but there was something warm about those old sets, especially in the store, that I still remember. Wouldn't the tech who operated the tube tester have had a great line for What's My Line?
Episode 144 of Eventually Supertrain is up, and while we haven't gotten to Supertrain yet, Dan does have discussions of Lucan, Gemini Man, and something new, so be sure and check it out when you've got some time.
At Travelanche, a subject that, as he says, is sure to divide his audience: Jerry Lewis on television. I've always enjoyed him as a performer and humanitarian (I'm agnostic on his personal life), but there's no questioning that the man made a major impact on television history.
And if all this talk about classic television has got you in the mood for watching some, a reminder that one of the best places on the whole internet for viewing is Uncle Earl's Classic Television. This is one of my go-to sites, especially for shows that lack a proper DVD release. If you want to see for yourself what I keep talking about, go over there and visit the library. TV
As you might expect, a number of pieces this week are devoted to the memory of Jerry Lewis, who died Sunday. As I said on Facebook, his death was more than just the end of an era - he was the last of an era. Back in the day, when I had a little more time than I do this week, I would have written extensively about him, because he was certainly a visible presence in my life. As a kid I was a big fan of his; loved the slapstick, the yelling about, movies like The Disorderly Orderly. As I grew older I also grew to admire him greatly for his humanitarian work with Muscular Dystrophy, and came to appreciate his technical innovations as a director. I though his recognition by the Academy with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award was long overdue. In a way, he outlived the culture that most appreciated him and his brand of humor, but that can be said of many of us, who feel ourselves to be strangers in our own land nowadays. You can argue over whether or not the French were right that he was a great comedian (I think they're more right than wrong), but I don't think you can argue that he was a great man.
Captain Video is back with the two-part comic book adventures of Jerry as he meets the new Wonder Woman! The comic book adventures of Jerry and Dean Martin ran from 1952 to 1957, and then with Jerry alone until 1971! Here's Part 1, followed by Part 2.
Finally, at A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence Towles Canote offers a very well-written obituary on Jerry, concluding with words that resound with me. "For decades it has been a bit of a running joke that Jerry Lewis was wildly popular in France, but the truth is he was wildly popular across the world. He was responsible for making many people laugh and his films are still very popular to this day. Only a very few comedic actors ever had the kind of success that Jerry Lewis had. I seriously doubt we will see too many reach the heights that he did in the future."
In honor of Monday's total solar eclipse, Faded Signals offered excerpts of KGW's coverage of the 1979 eclipse as seen in Portland, Oregon, as well as a link to how that eclipse was covered. I remember that one well, as well as the previous one, which I think was either in the early '70s or late '60s and may not have been a total one. One of the benefits of being old is that you can say, "When you've seen one eclipse, you've seen them all."
The Horn Section leads us on another merry chase through Crazy Like a Fox with the episode "Motor Homicide,"the series' take on the familiar "I tell you, I did see a dead body!" story that every series gets around to sooner or later. The success or failure of such an episode depends, of course, on the writing and acting, and in this case while the script often fails to deliver, the performances do their best to carry the load.
Cult TV Blog returns with a look back at his personal rehabilitation of Tales of the Unexpected, which was "terribly sophisticated and really attention-grabbing" for a child, but "incredibly dreary" if you try to watch the entire series as an adult. Instead, if you have the option, opt for the "best episodes" set, and you will find yourself with a series that, more often than not, has the power to "terrify and horrify.
Keeping in that horror trend, I've enjoyed listening to Lights Out on the Sirius OTR station when we've taken a road trip; programs like that make for very effective radio. If done right, they can also make for enthralling television, and Television Obscurities tells about the first attempt to bring Lights Out to TV - not the 1949-52 series that some of you may be familiar with, but four live specials done in the summer and fall of 1946 on WNBT.
At Comfort TV, David looks at two episodes of two popular sitcoms and provides us all with words to live by when someone starts to notice that our words look familiar - perhaps a little too familiar. "It's not a rip-off - it's an homage."
On the cover this week is the lovely Inger Stevens, star of the ABC series The Farmer's Daughter. The show ran for three seasons, from 1963 through 1966, and was based on the 1947 movie of the same name that starred Loretta Young (who won a Best Actress Oscar) and Joseph Cotten. Stevens played the Young role, that of a young Swedish woman who became the housekeeper to a widowed Congressman (played by William Windom in the TV series, Cotten in the movie).* (You can tell how things have changed since this series, by the way; it's so old that here a Congressman is the good guy.)
*Two months after this cover appeared, a commercial voiceover for The Farmer's Daughter, narrated by Windom, appeared following the November 22 lunchtime airing of Father Knows Best. It would be the last commercial anyone would see on ABC for the next four days.
There are other hints that the times have changed, however. In the article, Stevens, then 28, is asked by the interviewer Robert De Roos if she wanted to get married. “Yah, very much,” she said.” [Yes, she did talk that way!] “I love men. But I think it would be unfair to get married when I’m tied up with the series. I’ve no time for a husband.”
What’s ironic about this comment is that at the very time she issued it, she was married – to actor Ike Jones, who happened to be black – and had been since 1961 (their marriage remained secret until her death). It reminds us again of a different time, when marriage was often seen as a liability for an attractive young actress whom the moguls hoped would have the right kind of sex appeal to the audience. Add to that the extraordinarily explosive connotations of interracial marriage in the early 1960s, and, as Paul Harvey would say, now you know the rest of the story.
Knowing how that story ends, one searches the interview for some hint, some clue as to what was to come. She’s interested in working with children, she says. She doubts acting is all there is to life: “I like acting and I’m not knocking the theater. It’s just that I don’t know whether acting is the way I ought to spend my life.” As for the rest of that life, which at this point has less than seven years to run: “I’m working so hard I feel I’m wasting time. … When I lie down at the end of the road, I’ll want to have left something behind – even if it is just having helped one other person. I would like to utilize myself to the best possible advantage.”
Inger Stevens died in 1970, of a drug overdose that might have been intentional. One wonders what went through her mind in those last moments of life – did she feel she’d left anything behind at all?
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No "Sullivan vs. The Palace" this week, for one very good reason - it's week two of The Jerry Lewis Show, ABC's massive (two hours!), expensive ($8 million for 40 episodes!) and ultimately disastrous (13 weeks and gone!) variety show. I may have written about this in the past; if not, you can read more of the gory details here. This week, Jerry's guests are "Liberace on the piano, Ruby Keeler on her toes, Kay Stevens on her vocal chords, and Dr. Julius Sumner Miller on - of all things - physics!" That part about physics doesn't surprise me; Lewis was a pretty smart guy himself, curious about a lot of things.
Here's part one of a show with guest Cassius Clay, who's preparing to fight heavyweight champion Sonny Liston.
I will say a word more about something relating to Jerry, though. A couple of times I've noted various celebrity-studded benefit programs that usually appeared each year around Christmastime as a benefit for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and were, I suppose, a precursor to the Labor Day telethons. This Saturday morning we have something similar: a live special at 10:00am on Channel 11, hosted by kids' show host Dave Lee, which "honors area children who put on street carnivals and donated the proceeds to the Muscular Dystrophy Association."
Does that ring a bell with any of you out there? Growing up, I can remember how you could send away to Channel 11 for a kit that would give you everything you needed to put on a show - flyers, tickets, posters, ways for your friends to help out, the roles different people could play, the whole thing. I sent away for one, once, because it sounded like fun. I never put on a carnival, though, primarily because I didn't have any friends. Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but doing it right and doing it well required a lot of work, and then (as now) I tend to shrink away from anything that sounds too much like that.
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Speaking of Saturdays, the nets are starting to roll out their new Saturday morning cartoon lineups. Debuting on CBS are Tennessee Tuxedo (at 8:30am CT) and Quick Draw McGraw at 9:00. Over at NBC, Shari Lewis, who once replaced Howdy Doody, is going off the airwaves, as is King Leonardo. The latter is being replaced by Fireball XL-5, one of those Supermarionation shows from Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Those shows really were dreadful, weren't they?* Their main appeal today is nostalgic, I think, at at that it's hard for me to sit through an entire episode. I remember they got the MST3K treatment once, and that seems about right.
*And the names. I mean, Colonel Steve Zodiac? Doctor Venus? Professor Matthew Matic? Give me a break.
Apparently I loved this show when I was a kid, though. My mother used to insist that I'd sent away for a Fireball XL-5 spaceship, which even at the time I couldn't remember. Today my memory has improved only to the extent that I vaguely recall it. It would have looked something like this:
Nope, still not coming back for me.
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Here's ground I know we've covered before: the start of the Fall Classic, and another reminder of how much sports on TV have changed. Game 1 of the series, between the Dodgers and the Yankees. Nothing particularly new there, except for the starting time: noon (11:00 Central time) on Wednesday, October 2. In an age where nighttime Series games played in the shadow of Halloween* and seldom finish before midnight, the thought of a game starting at noon (regular afternoon programming scheduled to resume at 2:30 p.m.) on a crisp autumn day is almost unthinkable. Is there anyone out there who can even remember such a time, except us?
*Next season, a potential Game 7 in the World Series would be held on November 5. Excuse me while I throw up. There. I'm better now.
Those who were able to catch the game (and many, many people did), they were rewarded with a magnificent performance by Sandy Koufax, who struck out a then-World Series record 15 Yankees en route to a 5-2 victory for the Dodgers (the first of a four-game sweep, the first time the Yankees had ever been swept in four games in the Series). Reports had it that, in the ninth inning with the game out of reach for the Yanks, even the fans at Yankee Stadium were cheering for Koufax to get the record. No reason not to have seen the game on TV, even if you were at work - just take a long lunch hour, as the game only ran 2:09. Here are some highlights.
Other sports for the week: college football Saturday, as CBS' Game of the Week features Oklahoma vs. USC at the Coliseum in Los Angeles. USC is the nation's top team coming into the contest, but Oklahoma emerges with the victory, 17-12. The Sooners would finish the year 8-2, while the Trojans would wind up 7-3. Neither team would go to a bowl, back in the day when there were only a handful out there, often reserved for conference champions.
On Sunday the Minnesota Vikings are at home, which means no televised NFL game in the Twin Cities due to the league's restrictive blackout rules of the time. Back then, if your team was at home, you got nothing on television, not even games between two other teams - the league's way of preserving the live gate. That didn't apply to the rival AFL, of course, which meant that the new league would, for half the season, be the only show in town (or on television, at least) in cities such as New York, Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles. Exposure being vital to the league's survival, this was one of the main reasons the AFL was able to establish a foothold, leading up to their big-money contract with NBC in 1965. Eventually the NFL would figure this out, limiting the blackout to the home team's game alone, which meant that even if the Vikings were at home, you'd at least be able to see the Bears and Eagles, or some such contest. Oh, the AFL game? It was the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Diego Chargers, one of the great early rivalries of the AFL. The Chargers, who would win the AFL title that year, beat the Chiefs 24-10.
***
Ads from the networks touting their new fall lineups are all over the place this week. Here's an example of ABC's technique: full-page ads promoting the network's entire schedule for the night:
ALL: HADLEY TV GUIDE COLLECTION
NBC's ads are fairly unremarkable, heavy on pictures and text:
It's CBS's ads that I find most interesting. They're simple; sparse, even - so much so that you might not pay any attention to them unless you happen to recognize that the caricatures are drawn by the famed cartoonist Al Hirschfeld. The drawings had been commissioned by T. Lou Dorfsman, vice president and creative director of advertising and design at CBS, who did so much to establish the network's visual look over the years. The ads are stunningly original, quite a coup, I think. Everyone's a critic, though, as is illustrated in the following from the always-reliable Wikipedia:
One of the programs was Candid Camera, and Hirschfeld's caricature of the show's host Allen Funt outraged Funt so much he threatened to leave the network if the magazine were issued. Hirschfeld prepared a slightly different likeness, perhaps more flattering, but he and the network pointed out to Funt that the artwork prepared for newspapers and some other print media had been long in preparation and it was too late to withdraw it. Funt relented but insisted that what could be changed would have to be.
Of course, after all that, we have to show the Candid Camera one, don't we? Frankly, I'm not sure what Funt's problem is - looks like a perfect likeness to me.
***
In 1954, Sammy Davis Jr. lost an eye in an automobile accident. Nine years later, he's starring in an episode of Ben Casey on ABC Wednesday night as "a baseball player who adjusts to the loss of an eye, but can't take the venomous anti-white hatred of his Negro doctor [Greg Morris]." In real life, Davis was often the target of similarly venomous anti-black sentiment, but I'd imagine that an episode like this would have been tough for Davis with the black community. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s peaceful civil rights campaign is in full swing by this time, but there was always a radical element advocating violence and accusing King of not being aggressive enough. Davis' turn in this drama might have played well in the white community, but - and far be it from me to make this statement as fact - I wouldn't be a bit surprised if others, who already thought Davis did too much to play to white audiences, might have been muttering "Uncle Tom" under their breaths. All of it - anti-white, anti-black, anti-everyone - gets tiresome after awhile.
***
Finally, just to demonstrate that you really never do know what you’re going to run across, there’s this program listing on NBC at 9:30am on Monday – a new game show, hosted by Merv Griffin, called Word for Word. The premise: a “word game, played like anagrams. The contestant who accumulates the most words in a best two-out-of-three series is then pitted against the electronic Word-Ometer.” Merv created as well as hosted this short-lived game show, and one can almost imagine him thinking, “hmm, that anagram game didn’t go over so well. But I still like the word idea – hey (snaps fingers), I've got it: what about a game based on hangman?” The rest, of course, is history . . . TV
I first saw this commercial on Channel 11, WTCN, in the late summer of 1971. I'd heard of telethons before, from my mother and grandmother, and knew vaguely that it was some kind of marathon TV program that went on for hours and hours, but I had the idea that it was something from the past, like dance marathons. So I was intrigued by this, in a big way. I was also a big Jerry Lewis fan - no, I'm not French, but I was a normal kid* who'd grown up waiting in line at the Riverview and Nile Theaters to see movies like The Disorderly Orderly and The Nutty Professor. And it was scheduled for Labor Day Weekend, when I'd be enjoying my first day off after having started school the week before. Oh, this was a winner, all right. I was hooked (and would remain so for decades), and the show hadn't even started yet.
*Or as normal as you could ever call me.
These were the days when there was still a sense that late-night was for adults, and there was no such thing (at least in Minneapolis) as all-night television. The thought of watching TV at 3am, while the rest of the neighborhood was sound asleep, was enormously exciting. I planned to take a nap Sunday afternoon to give me every advantage possible in staying up for the entire 20 hours, but as I recall I was too excited (and too well-rested) to sleep that afternoon, so I'd have to try and go for it for about 38 hours by the time I would be ready for bed Monday evening.
No, I wasn't able to make it all the way through that first telethon - I started fading around 5:00 Monday morning, when I found that I wasn't able to remember how to pronounce the Minnesota town "Mankato." Next thing I knew it was about three hours later. I was crushed in the way that only an 11-year-old with no conception of "next year" could be, but at the same time I'd had a blast. It was the first time I'd ever heard of muscular dystrophy, and I immediately decided it was a charity worth supporting - I even made a $3 pledge on the phone. My schoolmates and I talked about the show the next day at school, comparing how many hours we'd managed to watch, and spent the next 11 months counting down the days until Labor Day (along with Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's), vowing that the next time would be different.
And I made it that next year, but not without a battle. The battle wasn't with sleep, however, but with TV. To be sure, Channel 11 would be showing the telethon again, but we wouldn't have Channel 11 - we'd moved to hell on earth, a town with only one television station - and they weren't showing the telethon. The solution (and I don't know how my mother ever put up with my childish eccentrities for so long) was to rent a room at a nearby motel, one that had access to the Minneapolis TV stations. In that room, complete with room service, we spent Sunday and Monday, and I watched my telethon.
We did that for a couple more years, and then I began to appreciate the absurdity of the situation. I didn't see the telethon until 1978, when we'd moved back to the cities as I began college, and the fun was back on. The show was different by then; variety shows were pretty much dead by then and Jerry had moved the show from New York to Vegas to be closer to the casinos that offered the kind of entertainment that featured on the show. There were still stars, singers and dancers and Sammy and Frank (and even Dean one year) and the rest, but as that kind of entertainment went out of style, the show became more and more populated by, what seemed to me, talent that probably played the lounge rather than the main room. By the time I stopped watching the show full-time, there just wasn't much to see. Even then, I tried to watch an hour or so, but it was mostly for old times' sake.
And then last year it ended, when MDA dumped Jerry. That whole debate is for another day, but the lack of transparency on the part of the charity's management troubles me; if they aren't forthcoming on the details of this, are we sure that they can be trusted in the rest of their dealings? So for the last couple of years I haven't given to MDA, and until I'm satisfied things are still on the up-and-up I probably won't.
I still have those childhood memories, though, of both the good years and the not-so-good, and so for me Labor Day will always means something special. And I'll always thank Jerry for that. TV
