What I've been watching: January, 2026

Shows I’ve Watched:
Leonard Bernstein Doctor Atomic The Bell Telephone Hour The Iceman Cometh

Most of the time, my choices in this space focus on television series, and for good reason: this is called "It's About TV," after all, not "It's About Everything Else." (If you want to read that, go to my new author Substance, "In Other Words," which just started yesterday.) It occurs to me, however, that this is a somewhat self-limiting proposition, in that you can watch many different things on television—assuming you don't use your laptop or phone, just about everything you stream comes through your television set. And if you expand the definition of "TV" to include that, it opens up a whole new horizon of things to write about. This comes in especially handy when you've been watching the same series of shows for the past few months.

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Having spent an entire paragraph explaining this, it therefore makes perfect sense to start my review of the last month's viewing with an actual television series—two of them, in fact. The first might more properly be considered an occasional series of specials: Leonard Bernstein's series of music lectures that were first presented on (or in place of) Omnibus, the public affairs variety show that aired on all three networks, at one time or another, during the 1950s and 1960s. These aren't the Young People's Concerts that many of you might be familiar with; these are programs done for a general audience, not limited to children. And it shows; while Bernstein, to his eternal credit, never dumbed down his programming for young people, the shows he presented on Omnibus attain a much higher level. So high, in fact, that I have trouble keeping up with some of his concepts.

I have no trouble watching, though, because even if you don't understand everything Bernstein is talking about, you get the gist of it, and when it starts to make sense—when the pieces begin falling into place—it actually gives you a bit of a rush, sort of like answering a question correctly on the old College Bowl series. On one recent program we watched, Leonard Bernstein on Rhythm, which was originally broadcast on March 13, 1960, Bernstein opens the program with films of a beating heart. He then goes to show how rhythms are built upon this natural part of the body: not just the simple beat-beat-beat rhythm, but the in-and-out of breathing, for example—in and out, one and two. He then elaborates on how classical music has been built on these rhythms: four beats, one-two, one-two; followed by a matching set that maintains the same rhythm even though the notes may be varied. These couplets of four-note sections now make up eight beats. This is then multiplied to create various passages that may repeat themselves in various ways throughout the piece. In fact, almost all music written prior to the 20th Century was composed in this manner, either in sets of two or sets of three, but always based on the number two. It is, he says, just like a mathematical equation. I hasten to add that I may not have all this right; I was struggling a bit to keep up. But you get the idea. 

Bernstein then goes on to demonstrate, both at the keyboard and while conducting the New York Philharmonic, how this changed in the 20th Century, using examples that range from Stravinsky to Copland to Gershwin. The patterns become more unpredictable, less symmetric, which helps give them the excitement and movement that can make Stravinsky, for instance, so enthralling to hear. By the end, even though I didn't understand everything, I understood enough. What made it most enthralling, though, was Bernstein's obvious love for his subject and the passion and excitement he was able to transmit to the viewing audience. Anyone with even a vague interest in music will find it impossible to resist. Richard Nixon once wrote that what separates leaders from thinkers is that leaders express their ideas in such a way to inspire, if not compel, others to follow them. If you can't articulate your ideas in such a way, then you're not a leader; you're a thinker. Bernstein comes across the same way; no matter how music was presented to you in school by your music appreciation teacher, it probably didn't captivate you the way Bernstein does. The man's enthusiasm is infectious. I've remarked before that Bernstein left a mixed legacy: his private life was often suspect, and his political ideology was idiotic at best. But when it comes to teaching, to injecting a love of music in those listening to him, to even just talking about music, he has no equal. Of all that he contributed during his lifetime, nothing can even come close to this, and we should all be grateful. It's one of the reasons why, despite all his flaws, I can't help but love Bernstein when I see him in these shows.

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Another kind of music appreciation comes to us from The Bell Telephone Hour, the long-running series that was broadcast on NBC from 1959 to 1968. If you remember this, it might well be from the live Christmas specials presented each year, often on or near Christmas Day itself. But there's so much more to it than that, and thankfully, there are some episodes out there, thanks to YouTube, that you can watch and enjoy.

Earlier this week, we saw Robert Young host an hour on the American musical, and while Young might seem at first an odd choice for this—I've never thought of him as having a particular relationship to music—he does a very good job. As I mentioned, for most of its run, Telephone Hour was shown live, which means that in an episode like this, done before a live studio audience, with many separate segments, you need someone who can project the right amount of gravitas, combined with a personable personality and the knack of getting things right. Young certainly fills the bill there, whether he's introducing ballet stars Patricia McBride and Edward Vilella doing the Slaughter on Tenth Avenue dance sequence, the Brothers Four performing a song from Porgy and Bess, or Andre Previn and his trio doing the overture from West Side Story, the show is in good hands. Throw in songs from stars of the time such as Lainie Kazan, Earl Wrightson and Lois Hunt, and a monologue by Young to commemorate Thanksgiving Day (which was less than a week away), and you've got the kind of entertainment that makes people of our age ask why there isn't anything like that anymore.

So Telephone Hour was closely identified with both classical and popular music. In its last season or two, however, its emphasis shifted to filmed documentaries exploring various music topies, whether the history of jazz (Jazz, the Intimate Art, which includes profiles of and performances by Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck and Charles Lloyd and is ten times better than anything Ken Burns could put on, at one-tenth the length, or South Carolina's Spoletto Festival. One of the many lingering gripes I have with my childhood is that The Bell Telephone Hour was frequently preempted in the Twin Cities by other programming; I suppose it was thought too highbrow for some of us yocals. Thankfully, with the internet, I'm at last having my revenge.

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What's this, you say? More music? In a word, yes. Most of the Metropolitan Opera presentations done in HD for movie theaters were later repeated on PBS's Great Performances at the Met, so this counts as television. And recently we went back to look at one performance that we did see in the theater, many years ago: Doctor Atomic, the stunning opera by John Adams that tells the story of the testing of the atomic bomb. Now, you might not think that the bomb is a natural subject for an opera, and you'd be right; how many productions can you remember where a mock-up of "the gadget" (as the bomb was frequently referred to during its development) is the centerpiece of the set, always present even when you can't see it? 

As is typical of most modern opera, Doctor Atomic is mostly sung-through, meaning that instead of traditional arias, duets, choral pieces and the like, the dialogue (taken from the notes, memos, diaries, and letters of those people who actually worked on the Manhattan Project) is set to music and sung without repetitions. In the wrong hands, this can make for an extremely boring few hours. Adams pulls it off though, in the same way that he did with another unlikely subject for an opera, Nixon in China. This is due in no small part to the performance of Gerald Finley as J. Robert Oppenheimer, Sasha Cooke as Kitty Oppenheimer, Richard Paul Fink as Edward Teller, and Eric Owens as General Leslie Groves, the head of the project. The first act features a scene with Oppenheimer and his wife Kitty, which is unspeakably intimate without either of them taking off their clothes or even kissing; it's all carried by the choreography and the words, and it is breathtaking. Having seen the movie Oppenheimer a couple of years ago, it gives us a slightly different view of their relationship, but it is fascinating nonetheless.

The moment is exceeded by the concluding aria of Act One—the opera's only aria—"Batter My Heart," set to the text of John Donne's "Holy Sonnet XIV." Finley is spellbinding, and the music, especially at the act's conclusion, is dynamic, driving, propulsive—and laced with dark overtones that hint at what the scientists are well aware of: after the development of the Bomb, the world will never be the same again. The YouTube description calls it "thrilling," and that sums it up pretty well. Opera in general, and this opera in particular, might not be your cup of tea; it doesn't have to be. But it packs a wallop nonetheless.

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I've been saving the longest for last. When The Iceman Cometh has been presented on television, it's usually been over two parts: sensible, given that Eugene O'Neill's play runs for nearly four hours, without commercial interruption. However, having watched it a couple of weeks ago, I can vouch that this is the only way to watch it. (Thankfully, it comes with an intermission for bathroom breaks.)

The television version, which aired on Play of the Week in 1960 and starred Jason Robards in the lead as Hickey (and Robert Redford as Parritt), is very good. That, however, is not the version we watched; instead, we opted for the 1973 film adaptation, which was directed by John Frankenheimer, and features a dynamite cast that includes Lee Marvin as Hickey, Fredric March as Harry Hope, Robert Ryan as Larry Slade, Tom Pedi as Rocky Pioggi, Bradford Dillman as Willie Oban, Sorrell Booke as Hugo Kalmar, and Jeff Bridges as Don Parritt. It's a faithful adaptation of the play, trimmed for time but otherwise intact, and it is a brutal experience; the flophouse at which the action takes place resembles nothing so much as hell on earth; Hickey, the travelling salesman whose regular appearances everyone anticipates, arrives this time not as the life of the party, but as a harbinger of doom, an avenging angel, a man preaching a unique type of repentance that involves giving one's self up to the freedom of nihilism.  Make sure you've got some antidepressants available while you're watching it.

Frankenheimer, of course, cut his teeth on live television, and his direction here is steady. And while the performances are uniformly good, a couple of them really stand out, those of Marvin and Robert Ryan. This was Ryan's final screen performance, and he conjures up every bit of world-weariness as a former political anarchist who no longer believes in the cause, and is now simply waiting for death to overtake him. In any other play, his role as a kind of Greek chorus would be what everyone talks about afterward, because he's twice as good as anyone else (including March, as good an actor as has ever graced the stage). However (and you knew there had to be one of those in here somewhere, didn't you?), when Marvin takes the stage, it's as if nobody else exists. Truly. He underplays the role with his patented menace; the quieter he is, the calmer and more collected, the more dangerous he becomes. When he's on camera, he's twice as good as Ryan, and in this play, that's really saying something. It's a performance that legitimizes Marvin's Oscar win (for the comedy Cat Ballou), and certainly could have scored another nomination here. I have a few qualms about O'Neill's play; I would have preferred a slightly different twist at the end, which I won't bore you with here, but who am I to compare myself to O'Neill? Anyway, like Doctor Atomic, this is not for everyone. But if it is for you, you'll thank me for introducing it to you. TV

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This week in TV Guide: January 24, 1959

Based on the composition of this week's cover, which features a picture of Red Skelton with one of his clown paintings, accompanied by the caption "What Good Are Television Critics?" one might assume that it's Red himself asking the question. Well, he's not—we'll get to that story later. In fact, Dwight Whitney's cover story asks a much different question: "What Makes a Clown?" And the answer can be a disconcerting one. 

The story plays off the death last year of Skelton's nine-year-old son Richard from leukemia, and posits that tragedy helps define a clown, in the same sense that Janus has both a laughing and crying face. Whitney looks to past stars who've blended comedy and tragedy in their work, stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Ramu, Emmett Kelly, and others. In looking at Skelton's recurring characters, such as Freddie the Freeloader, Whitney often finds that same mix; as Freddie is about to sink his teeth into a shiny red apple given him by a sympathetic restaurant owner, a policeman raps him across the knuckles with his nightstick. Defeat plucked from the jaws of victory, leaving Freddie, in Whitney's words, "bereft of everything except the look of inexorable sadness that seemed to embody all the frustrations of humankind." 

It's not a theory to which Skelton subscribes. "Malarky!" Red replies (or something like that; I'm betting that he didn't use quite that tame a word). "My comedy has nothing to do with tragedy. I couldn't tell you why people laugh at me." Whitney wonders, though, for Skelton is more than familiar with the school of hard knocks, and that has helped to make him "one of television's most enduring comics." Skelton's father died before Red's birth left the family penniless and forcing the youngster to sell newspapers and work as a street singer at the age of eight. When he was ten, Skelton left home to join a traveling medicine show, and from there moved to burlesque and vaudeville, eventually arriving on Broadway. He started on radio in 1937, graduating to host his own show the next year; by 1940, he'd become a movie star, and moved to television in 1951, where he would remain until 1971. 

So people do, indeed, laugh at him. His work has never been favored by highbrows or critics, but even when his bits were corny or even bombed, there was always a "brilliant flash of humor when it was least expected," an ability to reach out and stir the emotion in others. "I guess I've just been lucky," Skelton says. "I like people. I know they come to see me for fun. So I give them as much of it as I possibly can." He has, by any definition, been a success. In addition to his television show, he does countless personal appearances; he lives on an estate in Bel Air with his wife and daughter and a staggering number of pets; and in his spare time, he paints clown pictures (such as that one on the cover), and estimates he's done at least 500 over the years. 

But Whitney's story keeps coming back to tragedy, albeit sensitively. And despite Skelton's denials, there is a moment when he lets the mask slip. "I don't mind talking about it," he says of his son's death. "Everybody's had tragedy. Tragedy is embarrassment—because your house burned down and you were powerless to do anything about it." He continued working even in the wake of Richard's death. "People ask, 'How could you keep on telling jokes?' Sure, I told jokes. And if the little guy were here I'd tell the same jokes." And he's not the only one to have suffered. "How about the parents during the war who sweated out that telegram from the War Department?"  And then, after a pause, he adds, "Except my kid had no gun to defend himself with." There was only one time it got to him, when a little boy in a red sweater came to visit. "Gauguin [his pet macaw] set up an awful fuss. We couldn't figure it. Then it hit me. Richard used to wear a red sweater. I cried."

Red Skelton had a reputation for being difficult to work with, a suggestion that all is not rosy behind the crowd-pleasing clown's face, but for this article, at least, Skelton is all-too human.

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One of Ed Sullivan's first great on-air challenges came from Steve Allen, who left Tonight to take over an NBC variety show which, at the beginning, aired opposite Ed. 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 three seasons. Let's see who gets the best of the contest this week.

Sullivan: Ed's guests are actress-singer Eartha Kitt, star of the movie Anna Lucasta, actor Charlton Heston, comedians Wayne and Shuster, songstress Georgia Gibbs, English ventriloquist Arthur Worsley and French dancer Noelle Adam. (It looks as if this was, indeed, the lineup for the week.)

Allen: Steve's guests are actor Lee Marvin, star of TV's M-Squad, musical-comedy star Dolores Gray, comedian Johnny Carson and actor-singer James Darren. 

I like both shows: Ed loved Wayne and Shuster; they appeared on his show more times (67) than any other act. Throw in Charlton Heston and Eartha Kitt, and most weeks this would be a winning lineup. On the other hand, Steverino has Lee Marvin, Johnny Carson, and James Darren. That's a tough call, but on the basis of getting a chance to see Carson before he truly became Carson, I'm giving a slight nod to Allen this week.

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And now that article on critics. "What good are television critics?" The answer, it seems all depends on who you ask. Oliver Treyz, president of ABC, says that critics "certainly affect our over-all thinking," while C. Terence Clyne, vice president of the McCann-Erickson ad agency, counters that critics' importance are "limited to the board of directors of the sponsor and his ad agency."*

*Remember that, in the 1950s, sponsors were still prime movers and shakers when it came to setting the schedule, and even a relatively successful series could be doomed if a sponsor were to withdraw.

Critics themselves are divided on the subject. According to Jack Gould, the well-known—and, dare I say it, influential—critic for The New York Times, "our influence is vastly overrated. We generate interest more than influence." His counterpart at The New York Herald Tribune, the equally well-known (and influential) John Crosby, says that he and other critics receive plenty of mail from their readers, telling them that "we persuade or dissuade them from watching a certain show." A recent poll shows that 54 percent of viewers have, at one time or another, made their viewing choices based on a review.

One thing that everyone agrees on, though, is that critics perform a vital function. David Susskind feels it is the critic who holds producers' feet to the fire, forcing them to offer better quality programming. "Without the critic, I believe we would have more mediocrity than we now have."

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Well, it's a Leonard Bernstein double bill this weekend! Lenny leads off with one of his Young People's Concerts on Saturday (noon ET, CBS), in the episode "What Is Classical Music?" The ad promises "an exciting opportunity" to learn the answer to that question. He follows this up on Sunday, leading his New York Philharmonic in a program called "Jazz in Classical Music," which shows " how composers have consciously or unconsciously employed jazz elements" in their classical pieces.

And the ad was right: these shows are exciting. Bernstein, whatever his faults and flaws—and he had many, both professionally and personally—was a wonderful teacher, able to infuse his programs with an enthusiasm that couldn't help but be infectious, allowing him to communicate his knowledge to both children and adults in a way that was both entertaining and accessible. I wasn't yet alive when his Young People's broadcasts started, but he did them throughout the 1960s, and when I was old enough, I watched them; even though I might not always have understood everything, I know he had a lot to do with creating my love of classical music. 

Could anyone today do what Bernstein did back then? If there's anyone out there who could, I suspect it would be Gustavo Dudamel, the dynamic conductor who assumes the leadership of the New York Philharmonic this September. He's not the musicologist that Bernstein was, nor is he as sophisticated a speaker as Lenny, but he might be the only one who could talk PBS into broadcasting that kind of show. Since most schools, for many reasons, no longer have music appreciation, it may be the last best hope for transmitting to future generations a love of classical music.

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What else is on this week? There's a nice play on words on Saturday evening, as Steve McQueen stars in Wanted—Dead or Alive (8:30 p.m., CBS), followed by the Western Black Saddle (9:00 p.m., NBC), starring Peter Breck, and this week featuring a character named "McQueen."  Nice, hmm? And all day, WHDH in Boston presents the second annual March of Dimes Auction, starting at 2:00 p.m. and running until 4:30, then returning intermittently throughout the night until the station signs off.  All the goods are donated by local merchants, and the phones are being handled by "models and Channel 5 staffers." The show is described as a fundraiser "for the benefit of polio victims," of which there are still many. It's true, however, that with the advent of the Salk and Sabin vaccines, polio is not the horrifying plague that it has been for so many generations. And this ad perhaps indicates that knowledge, as the organization begins to transition from polio research to that of other illnesses, finally settling on birth defects. It's a reminder, as if we didn't need one this week, that science indeed plays a major role in the culture of the late 1950s.

Sunday is filled with star turns from beginning to end. In addition to Bernstein, Sullivan, and Allen, Ernie Kovacs is Jack Benny's guest on The Jack Benny Program (7:30 p.m., CBS), including an absurd skit about the prison of 1970.  is Bette Davis makes a rare television series appearance on Alfred Hitchcock Presents (9:30 p.m., CBS), in the story "Out There—Darkness," a nasty little piece about a haughty woman getting on the wrong side of an elevator operator. 

Following the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957, there were growing fears that the Soviet success was based on a "science gap" between the United States and the Soviets, and that the gap was getting wider. The nation responded with a renewed emphasis on teaching science, and evidence of that can be seen on TV screens everywhere. Continental Classroom (Monday through Friday, 6:30 a.m., NBC), has an entire week of science classes, including Monday's "Electromagnetic Waves," and on Monday night  our favorite scientist, Dr. Linguistics (aka Dr. Frank Baxter) is back with another installment in the Bell Laboratories Science Series, "The Alphabet Conspiracy." (7:30 p.m., NBC),

Trust me: don't take that trip!

Tuesday, it's the second episode of Alcoa Presents, which most of us know better as One Step Beyond, and "The Night of April 14" (10:00 p.m., ABC), an episode centering on various premonitions of the Titanic disaster, including the main story of a woman who dreams that she drowns in the ocean. Her nightmare seems fanciful, as she lives many miles from the ocean, but then she finds that for her honeymoon, her fiancé has booked them passage on the liner's maiden voyage.

On Wednesday, the DuPont Show of the Month (9:30 p.m., CBS) presents "a play no man should miss!" so I'd better spend a moment on it. It's Sir James Barrie's drama "What Every Woman Knows," starring Siobhan McKenna, James Donald, and Cyril Cusick, in the story of a poor but ambitious young man who's offered a proposition by three wealthy brothers: they will finance his education if, at the end of five years, he marries their sister Maggie. Oh, and just what is it that every woman knows? It is that she is "the invisible power responsible for the successes of the men in her life."

It's not My Three Sons on Thursday, but "his four sons," the man in question being Bing Crosby, and his four sons Gary, Lindsay, Dennis, and Philip, and all four of them appear tonight on The Pat Boone Chevy Show (9:00 p.m., ABC). Later, Playhouse 90 (9:30 p.m., CBS) presents Reginald Rose's play "A Quiet Game of Cards," telling the story of five wealthy and powerful men who decide that their weekly poker game has become too dull, and the only way to liven it up is to play for "the highest stakes possible." 

Friday, Disneyland presents what one would have to think is a highly fictionalized biography of composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky (8:00 p.m., ABC), starring The Incredible Shrinking Man's Grant Williams as the tortured composer, and Hogan's Heroes's Leon Askin as Tchaikovsky's mentor, composer Anton Rubinstein. On Person to Person (10:30 p.m., CBS), Ed Murrow's guests are sports columnist Red Smith and actress Dagmar, appearing with her husband, comedian Danny Dayton.

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MST3K alert: Project Moonbase (1953) An American Space Force rocket makes a flight to the moon. Dona Martell, Hayden Rorke. (Wednesday, 11:05 p.m., WMUR in Manchester) All you need to know about this week's movie is that it features a female astronaut named Col. Briteis, pronounced bright-eyes, and that she had been selected to make the first orbital flight around Earth because she would weigh less than a man. Kevin Murphy sums it up for everyone at MST3K when he says, "The best thing I can say about it is that it was very very short." TV

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Thus spake Bernstein

It's no exaggeration to say that Leonard Bernstein was, at least in part, responsible for my love of classical music. His Young People's Concerts, which aired on CBS from 1958 to 1972, were mostly before my conscious time, but I remember seeing enough of them in the last few years to be really interested. My first live trip to a classical music concert was a similar Young People's Concert done by what was then called the Minneapolis Symphony (which has since then taken on the far more pedestrian moniker Minnesota Orchestra). Anyway, when you're being taught something by someone with a real passion for it, at least some of that passion is bound to rub off.

I have mixed feelings for Bernstein; starting with Tom Wolfe's infamous Radical Chic, which described in brutal, unrelenting detail the utter pomposity of the wealthy Bernsteins, in their Park Avenue apartment, hosting an awareness fundraiser for the Black Panthers. It's almost impossible to understand how anyone could take Bernstein seriously after that excoriating portrait, and then you combine it with Bernstein's increasingly flamboyant, almost campy lifestyle in his later years (I particularly remember his capes and other outrageous clothes), emoting on the podium, drinking heavily and often behaving crassly in public—well, the man was at times virtually a parody of himself. And again, one wonders, how can anyone take Lenny seriously?

Then you watch one of those concerts—almost all of them are on YouTube—you listen to how the man teaches, how he explains music to grade school children—not really children, but, as he called them, young people. I'm no musicologist, but I do know a fair bit about music, and yet watching some of these programs I find myself scrambling to keep up with this thought process. It's deep, profound, often engaging with ideas and topics such as philosophy in a quest to explain the relationship between music and life. Bernstein never talks down to his audience (either the young people in the concert hall, or those watching on television), he never condescends or patronizes, he always interjects enough topical language and music to let them know that he understands where it's at, and he presents all this as someone who finds the subject matter quite exciting, and wants his audience to share in that thrill. And, from the expressions on their faces, some of them do. Granted, they've been prepped for it by their music teacher in school (remember when they had music appreciation classes?), but there's really nothing that prepares anyone, young or old, from Lenny at full wattage.

Watch this program in which he explains Richard Strauss's famous piece, Thus Spake Zarathustra, better known as the theme to 2001. By the time it's over, you'll know more about Nietzsche's philosophy than you ever thought possible, as well as an absolutely stunning demonstration of how Strauss's music depicts the themes in Nietzsche's work. Bernstein expects his audience to be able to follow this, expects that grade school students can comprehend complex themes and ideas, and to relate them to the meaning of life. I found this as thrilling as Bernstein must have.


For all that Bernstein accomplished, the conducting and the compositions and the writing, I think his lasting influence will be as a teacher. Not a teacher of other musicians, although he mentored a good many of them. No, it's as a teacher who tried to enrich the lives of his students just a little bit, to make them look at life in a different way, perhaps introduce them to something they hadn't considered before. I recall a TV Guide in which Judith Crist wrote about how one of the functions of a critic was to teach readers to demand more, to put a value on the time that they spend watching a movie and then expect that movie to be worth that time? To stimulate a response? That's what Bernstein does in these programs, and in other cases, and there's nobody better at it them him. You know how I've written about how a program like Alistair Cooke's America taught me more than my high school civics class? Never mind music appreciation; I can guarantee this program should have been shown in my college philosophy class.

So can we reconcile the two Bernsteins, the teacher and the tramp, the passionate musician and the inviter of ridicule? Should we even try? This is, I think, one of those cases where I'm going to have to agree to disagree with myself, for as hard as it may be to take Lenny seriously, when Leonard Bernstein talks about music, people listen. Am I a nerd for calling this kind of show "thrilling"? Perhaps, but it's so worth the ride. TV  

This week in TV Guide: December 30, 1961

The new movie, Maestro, directed by and starring Bradley Cooper, tells the story—OK, a story—of Leonard Bernstein, the famed conductor and composer, one of the giants of the classical/pop culture crossover of the 20th Century. This week's feature article, by Edith Efron, also tells a story of Leonard Bernstein—specifically, the Young People's Concerts that began on CBS in 1958 and ran for 13 seasons and, I think, represent his most important and lasting contribution to classical music.

Efron joins Bernstein following his first telecast of the 1961-62 season, a study of impressionism that, lucidly and literately, explains the musical style to an audience of children who listen, transfixed, to Bernstein's talk—lecture would be far too stuffy a word to describe how he communicates the complexities of musical theory, in such a way that both children and adults can understand such concepts as how bitonality aids in creating the dreamy image that is impressionism. The whole of the interview takes place in Bernstein's cramped dressing room, where we're exposed to the full-on magnitude of the maestro's blinding rock-star celebrity. 

It's a chaotic scene, with Efron (the "girl reporter") crammed into a crouching position under the sink while Bernstein tries to shave without cutting himself. She's hard-pressed to get her questions in between interruptions: elegantly-dressed ladies praising Bernstein's performance; children asking for autographs; photographers asking him to pose standing up, sitting down, pretending to be conducting ("I can't fake conducting," Bernstein snaps at one); aides and press agents, all looking for a piece of the maestro. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I have to wonder if it could possibly capture the kinetic energy of the scene.

In between it all, though, we do get some interesting perspectives on Bernstein's thoughts about music. Asked why children should be introduced to music, he replies, almost disbelievingly, "The purpose is pleasure. Pleasure—nothing else. Music makes life more enjoyable, more exalted, more berable." If it's true that many children consider listening to classical music a duty, it's "[b]ecause so many adults consider it as a duty." It becomes a challenge if the parent doesn't like classical music; "Children are sensitive to parents' likes and dislikes. On the other hand, music is there. A child can discover it independently." And there should be no limit to the kind of music that a child is exposed to; "Very few things are beyond a child's comprehension. Any good music will do. The only thing to watch out for is not to strain a child's attention span." 

We learn some other things about Bernstein's philosophy. While scrambling around for his shirt (it turns out he already has it on), he proffers the idea that there is no such thing as bad taste in music. "There is only good art and bad art," he says, extending the analogy, "good Beethoven and dull Beethoven, good rock 'n' roll and bad rock 'n' roll." The last catches Efron off-guard—the master of classical music praising rock music? "Elvis Presley," he goes on. "There's one, 'I'm All Shook Up'." I like it. Presley's performance is fantastic." 

Through all this, I think we get an insight into why Bernstein was such a good teacher. Because he gives children credit for being able to comprehend ideas and concepts, he doesn't talk down to them—instead, he breaks ideas down into more digestible bits and pieces, using references that are relevant to them. He doesn't tell them to be interested in classical music; instead, he demonstrates what makes it interesting, trusting that they'll accompany him on the journey. He conveys the passion, the love he has for music, confident that they'll catch the bug as he once did. 

I was a faithful viewer of the Young People's Concerts for the few years that I was of an age to understand them. I was fortunate to be introduced to classical music in school, by the Young People's Concerts that the Minneapolis Symphony staged. I had a mother who appreciated classical music, and was willing to invest in it on my behalf. Even though I've never played an instrument, it has, in Bernstein's words, provided pleasure.

It's true that public schools don't make that investment any more. Television doesn't either; it hasn't invested in anything particularly artistic in decades. The audience for the long-haired stuff is getting older all the time, and nobody quite seems to know how to attract younger audiences. That's an issue for another day. But if Maestro the movie does well, one can hope that, no matter how fleeting, classical music can be cool again. If that happens, then the maestro will have succeeded once again.

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New Year's Day, in 1962 as well as 2024, is Monday, and that means one thing: football. Well, actually it means more than that, but we'll get to the rest later. But, as Melvin Durslag writes, football fans are "up to their eyeballs" in bowl games, and the colleges are loving every minute of it. 

There are twelve bowl games scheduled for the end of the season (as contrasted to the 42 being played this year), and none of them are named after corporate advertisers. But, as any fan can tell you, there are only four that really matter, and all of them are being played on January 1: the Rose, Sugar, Cotton, and Orange Bowls. They are the games "in whose stadia loot is collected in the largest quantities and whose fame is enhanced each New Year's Day with national television before enormous audiences."

Despite the revenue and exposure generated by the games, there are critics in the educational realm who feel the games are unnecessary, creating an overemphasis on athletics. That the regular season usually ends in late November, with the national champion already chosen before the bowls are played, only strengthen the argument. It's one reason, in fact, why, Ohio State's faculty council declined the invitation to the 1962 Rose Bowl despite the Buckeyes winning the Big 10 championship, which would ordinarily have resulted in a trip to Pasadena. They hoped their decision would "vastly improv[e] the university's reputation as an academic institution fit for service in a Cold War political economy."* At any rate, as Durslag points out, money being thrown around by TV has boosted the overall budgets of the participating schools and their conferences to such an extent that any sentiment to the contrary is becoming a moot point.  

*I went into the behind-the-scenes drama of the 1962 bowl selection process in this 2012 article, which you can read here.

Which brings us to the big day itself, starting at 12:45 p.m. ET with ABC's coverage of the Orange Bowl, pitting #4 LSU against #7 Colorado, reported by Curt Gowdy, Paul Christman, and Jim Simpson. (LSU 25, Colorado 7) At 1:45 p.m., NBC kicks off the first of its New Year's Day doubleheader, with undefeated national champion Alabama taking on #9 Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl; Lindsey Nelson and Art Gleason are behind the mic. (Alabama 10, Arkansas 3) If that's not enough for you, CBS joins the fray at 2:15 p.m. with the Cotton Bowl, as Tom Harmon and Johnny Lujack covering the action between #5 Mississippi and #3 Texas. (Texas 12, Mississippi 7) Finally, it's the Granddaddy of them all, the Rose Bowl, beginning at 4:45 p.m. on NBC, with Mel Allen and Braven Dyer calling the game between #6 Minnesota, becoming the first Big 10 team to make consecutive appearances in the Rose Bowl, and unranked UCLA. (Minnesota 21, UCLA 3) 

These games were, practically speaking, exhibition games, originally meant to boost tourism in the host cities. They did not count in the standings, the national champion already having been selected; and they served as a reward for excellence, with players often expressing preferences based on the cities they'd like to travel to. (New Orleans was always a popular destination.) Perhaps it wasn't the best way to choose the best team, and Heaven knows there was plenty of corruption in college sports even then, but it seems like it was much simpler, maybe even more fun than it is today. I feel for those who never got a chance to experience it, even just as a fan.

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There's more to New Year's than football, though, hard as it may be to believe. I myself used to scoff, back in the day, at the idea that there could be anything more important than the bowl games. Not being a partier, my idea of a good time on New Year's Eve was sitting down with one of the lesser bowl games and then watching the ball drop in New York. The parties that we did go to were sedate ones with family or friends, always in someone's home. Lately, it's been New Year's Eve marathons with The Three Stooges, Thin Man or Matt Helm movies, and so on. If we make it to midnight, it's been a good day.

So I have to ask, is New Year's Eve still a thing? Do people go out, or did the virus finally kill all that off? It was a thing back in 1961; as kind of a pre-show, Gordon and Sheila MacRae host Highways of Melody (10:00 p.m., NBC), a musical hour sponsored by Cities Service (Citgo), which explains the "Highway" motif. Their guests include George Chakiris, Buddy Ebsen, Kathryn Grayson, Jack Jones, Rita Moreno, Jane Morgan, the Cities Service Singers and Dancers, and Paul Lavalle and the Band of America.

At 11:15 p.m. on NBC, the serious shows begin. Bandleader Xavier Cugat and his then-wife, singer Abby Lane, host a New Year's Eve party from the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. (NBC). Just before midnight, the cameras switch to Times Square, where Ben Grauer covers the ball drop. Mr. New Year's Eve himself, Guy Lombardo, does the honors on CBS (11:15 p.m.), with newsman Robert Trout in Times Square.

That brings us to New Year's Day itself and the parades, and you'll notice the plural. It actually starts on Saturday night, with live coverage of the King Orange Jamboree Parade in Miami, with Jim McKay and George Fenneman describing the spectacular (7:30 p.m., ABC). This parade ceased after the national television contract ended (a misfortune that also befell the Cotton Bowl Parade), but it made the game itself feel more special, more than just a simple football game.

This being a Philadelphia edition, it's appropriate that Monday morning begins on multiple channels with the Mummers Parade (9:30 a.m., WFIL and WCAU in Philadelphia, plus stations in Lebanon, Harrisburg, and York), a marathon that runs nearly five hours, either non-stop or sandwiched between bowl games, depending on the station. At 11:30 a.m. on NBC, it's the Granddaddy of all parades, the Tournament of Roses, live and in color (except for the first 15 minutes). Former Tournament president John Davidson narrates the opening portion of the telecast, reviewing the history of the parade and what to expect today. He's then joined by Betty White and NBC newsman Roy Neal (a curious choice) for commentary. Among the stars appearing in the parade are actors John McIntire, Scott Miller, Frank McGrath, and Terry Wilson from Wagon Train; John Russell and Peter Brown from Lawman; and Grand Marshal Albert Rosellini, governor of Washington, who was probably chosen based on Seattle hosting the 1962 World's Fair.

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That seems like a pretty big start to the year, but there's more. Not content to turn the spotlight over completely to the college game, the NFL Championship is Sunday, with the New York Giants taking on the Green Bay Packers in the first championship game ever played in Green Bay (1:45 p.m., NBC). Lindsey Nelson, who heads to New Orleans after the game to cover Monday's Sugar Bowl, and Chris Schenkel are on the play-by-play. The Packers, who lost in heartbreaking fashion to the Philadelphia Eagles in last year's title tilt, rout the Giants 37-0, the start of a reign of terror over the rest of the league that will result in five championships over seven years (including three in a row), plus the first two Super Bowls. They remain the last team to win three consecutive league championships. It's the oldest NFL Championship game for which the original TV broadcast exists; you can see the game in its entirety here.

Also on Sunday is a curious program that attracted my attention for an even more curious reason. It's called Let Freedom Ring (3:00 p.m., CBS), featuring Richard Boone, Laraine Day, Howard Keel, and Dan O'Herlihy, and starring the group now known as the the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. It's an hour of patriotic music, interspersed with dramatic readings and performances by the four stars; Boone recites the Gettysburg Address, for example, and Day reads Lincoln's famous Letter to Mrs. Bixby; neither of these choices was coincidental, given that 1961 was the 100th anniversary of Lincoln's presidency. It is, in its way, a perfect example of a Sunday afternoon program, one that would have been at home on Omnibus. It's a bit static, very serious, and ultimately sounds a hopeful note for the nation as the new year approaches.

As for the curious reason why this stood out for me: the program was rebroadcast by CBS on Saturday morning, November 23, 1963, as part of the network's coverage of the aftermath of JFK's assassination. You might think this an odd choice, and if it were to be seen purely as an entertainment show, you'd be right. But the very nature of it being static, serious, and hopeful is why it was shown: it was a reminder to a shell-shocked nation about the greatness of America, reflected in part through the words of its first martyred president. Of the several memorial concerts broadcast over that weekend, I think this was the only one not specifically done for the occasion. But then, maybe this kind of thing only interests me. 

With the bowl games taking up Monday, there are several weekday programs making their debuts on Tuesday, including Your First Impression, a new game show hosted by Bill Leydon (noon, NBC). It's a variation on the mystery guest segment of What's My Line?, with a panel of celebrities trying to guess the identity of the guest based on clues given to them by Leydon; Dennis James is a regular panelist and fills in for Leydon on occasion. The show has a healthy run, lasting until June, 1964. Also premiering this day is Floyd Kalber's five-minute afternoon newscast (2:25 p.m., NBC), a staple for many years. By the way Kalber's nickname was "The Big Tuna"; has any newsman ever had a better one? Jane Wyman returns as host and occasional star of her eponymous dramatic anthology series (2:00 p.m., ABC), and NBC debuts the serial Our Five Daughters (3:30 p.m.), "the story of Helen and Jim Lee and their daughters." It had better be a short story; the series is gone nine months later, barely time for one of the daughters to have a baby.

There's a pictorial feature this week on how makeup artists prepare Sebastian Cabot's beard for the detective series Checkmate (among other tidbits, the reddish-brown hair is sprayed with glit paint, since it shows up as jet black on B&W), and his beard needs to be in good form in Wednesday's episode (8:30 p.m., CBS), as Jack Benny makes his TV dramatic debut playing a comedian who discovers someone has planted a bomb in his suitcase. Also on Wednesday, Bonanza stars Lorne Greene and Dan Blocker guest on Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall (9:00 p.m., NBC).

The end of the year is a great time for year-end reviews: poet John Ciardi hosts Accent on 1961 (Thursday, 9:00 p.m.), a special edition of his weekly CBS series, and his words accompany a picture montage of the major events of the past year. And what a year it was—Alan Shepard's space shot, Roger Maris's 61st home run, Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall, the Freedom Riders in the South, the JFK inauguration, and more. The flip side of a year-end review is a preview of the coming year, and that's what NBC has in store with Projection '62 (Friday, 9:30 p.m.), with Frank McGee hosting hosting the network's domestic and foreign correspondents in a look back at the year past, and predictions on what might be ahead. And it tells you something about how large news staffs used to be, with McGee talking to correspondents covering Berlin, Moscow, Tokyo, Africa, South America, India and the Middle East, London, Paris, Southeast Asia, Cuba and the Caribbean, and the White House. Not for nothing was NBC the leading news source on television.

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On the cover this week is Cynthia Pepper, star of the new ABC sitcom Margie, set in the flapper era of 1926. Actually, Jim Henaghan's story is as much about her stage father Jack, a failed vaudevillian who reared Cynthia for the very purpose of stardom. Despite being called "one of [20th Century Fox's] most valuable properties," her career is of limited duration; Margie is her only starring role in a series, and she might be just as well-known for playing Midge in Elvis Presley's Kissin' Cousins. I wonder what Leonard Bernstein thought of the music in that? Still, as I always note in situations like this, her movie career lasted a lot longer than mine. 

There's also an interesting behind-the-scenes look at one of the most high-pressure quiz shows on television, and the exhaustive preparation required by the participants prior to appearing on it. No, it's not Jeopardy; that doesn't even premiere until 1964, and anyway, as far as intellectual wattage is concerned, it doesn't even begin to compare to the show in question, G-E College Bowl. I always considered it a moment of great pride to be able to correctly answer one question on that show; I'm not sure that the hardest question on today's Jeopardy would even make it to a practice round of College Bowl. At the time of this article, Allen Ludden is the host of College Bowl, but as his other show, Password, adds a nighttime edition to its weekly daytime version, he cedes the role to Robert Earle, the host whom I remember. I was always sorry about the show leaving the air; t the time, with violent dissent running wild on college campuses, General Electric decided it was bad optics to be associated with such radicals. It was revived for a couple of seasons in 2020 with Peyton Manning as host, but I'm sorry—after Ludden and Earle (and Art Fleming, who hosted an earlier revival), it's hard to take a show like College Bowl seriously with Peyton Manning as host. 

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And so we come to the end of another year of "This week in TV Guide," and for the first time in many, many years, we've had 52 new issues, with no repeats from previous years, something I'm very pleased about. Unlike many collectors, I don't own a full set of TV Guides covering multiple decades; in fact, I don't even have a complete set of issues from any single year. I've been fortunate enough to piece together this year thanks to a combination of issues I own, those loaned to me by others, those from the Internet Archive, and some from other online sources. Although I've got a couple of dozen lined up so far for next year, with more to come, I don't know if we'll ever see an entire year of new issues again. 

Nevertheless, it's been satisfying to pull it off, and I've got you to thank for helping me do it. I've done around 500 through the years, and if you have an issue you'd like to see me cover, feel free to email me about it. And when we come back on Monday for the listings, they'll be from a new year, 1962, and we'll be in a new year, 2024. Until then, have a safe and happy New Year. TV  

Around the dial

The name Robin Miller won’t mean anything to most of you, but within the motor sports world Miller was a giant, the premier chronicler of Indycar for decades. More than that, he could be said to be the conscience of the sport. Miller was a fixture not only in print but on television, particularly on “Wind Tunnel,” the late, lamented motorsports show on the late, lamented Speed Channel. (So how’s that working for you Fox, replacing Speed with FS2?) He knew everyone who was anyone in the sport, and he defended the sport with a passion against threats both material and existential. On Wednesday Robin Miller died after a lengthy battle against multiple myeloma and leukemia, at the too-young age of 71. Not only will open-wheel racing be poorer for his absence, so will the experience of the sport for its fans. Racer has the complete details. R.I.P.

At The Ringer, Alison Herman’s review of the Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso raises a point that I think is germane to this website in general: is there such a thing as “just” a TV show? I’ve made it clear, I think, that television shows should not be faulted for aspiring to “mere” entertainment, while at the same time demonstrating that it is not only legitimate but essential to look at the content of particular shows, and the industry in general, as an indicator of something more illuminating, more significant. In fact, one could say that Herman’s article proves my point: I don’t care one whit about Ted Lasso, but reading the article introduces ideas that enhance the way one thinks about television. Which is one reason why I read articles about shows in which I have no interest.

When I was growing up, there was no sports stadium cooler than the Houston Astrodome; you'll just have to take my word for it that playing football and baseball indoors on plastic grass was beyond amazing. When the Louisiana Superdome came along in the 1970s, it couldn't take the place of the original, but it was still cool, and a lot bigger. And that's just a prelude to Gil's review of the 1978 TV-movie Superdome, starring David Janssen, Van Johnson, Tom Sellick, Donna Mills, Ken Howard, Edie Adams, all at Realweegiemidget. 

I've never pretended to be the most talented writer in the family, and to prove that point, I'll direct you to my wife Judie's blog Nearer My God, where she touches on the extraordinary legacy of conductor Leonard Bernstein, including his groundbreaking television work on Omnibus, The Young People's Concerts, and the Norton Lectures. I've always enjoyed and admired how Bernstein never talked down to his audience, even children, and made classical music accessible to anyone.

The Hitchcock Project begins a new chapter, with the first episode written by Joel Murcott: "Number Twenty-Two," from the show's second season, with Rip Torn and Russell Collins. Jack has the lowdown on it at bare•bones e-zine.

At Cult TV Blog, John takes a look at O.T.T. ("Over The Top"), aver the Top, "a late-night adult version of the anarchic ATV children's show Tiswas," and I'm not quite sure how to describe either show, so you'll have to rely on John for the lowdown. I'll admit, though, that in the pantheon of English football chants, "Your mom is your dad's sister" was new to me.

The following has nothing to do with classic television, but I don't see how you can possibly pass up Mae West singing The Doors' classic "Light My Fire," do you? Read (and watch) all about it at Silver Scenes.

I'll admit that from time to time I can be a little critical of TV shows that I'm watching. ("A little?" she says), but even I'm not as bad as Star Trek fans, who, as David points out at Comfort TV, never, but never, seem to be satisfied. If I ever get like that, please shoot me.

At The Twilight Zone Vortex, Jordan goes in-depth on one of the greatest and most loved of all TZ episodes, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," with William Shatner at his most unforgettable Shatner-ness. I'll wager that even if you're not a Zone fan, you've seen this episode. TV  

Thus Spake Bernstein

It's no exaggeration to say that Leonard Bernstein was, at least in part, responsible for my love of classical music. His Young People's Concerts, which aired on CBS from 1958 to 1972, were mostly before my conscious time, but I remember seeing enough of them in the last few years to be really interested. My first live trip to a classical music concert was a similar Young People's Concert done by what was then called the Minneapolis Symphony (which has since then taken on the far more pedestrian moniker Minnesota Orchestra). Anyway, when you're being taught something by someone with a real passion for it, at least some of that passion is bound to rub off.

I have mixed feelings for Bernstein; starting with Tom Wolfe's infamous Radical Chic, which described in brutal, relentless detail the utter pomposity of the wealthy Bernsteins, in their Park Avenue apartment, hosting an awareness fundraiser for the Black Panthers. It's almost impossible to understand how anyone could take Bernstein seriously after that excoriating portrait, and then you combine it with Bernstein's increasingly flamboyant, almost campy lifestyle in his later years (I particularly remember his capes and other outrageous clothes), emoting on the podium, drinking heavily and often behaving crassly in public—well, the man was at times virtually a parody of himself. And again, one wonders, how can anyone take Lenny seriously?

Then you watch one of those concerts—TCM had five of them on a few weeks ago, in honor of Bernstein's 100th birthday, and almost all of them are on YouTube—, you listen to how the man teaches, how he explains music to grade school children—not really children, but, as he called them, young people. I'm no musicologist, but I do know a fair bit about music, and yet watching some of these programs I find myself scrambling to keep up with this thought process. It's deep, profound, often engaging with ideas and topics such as philosophy in a quest to explain the relationship between music and life. Bernstein never talks down to his audience (either the young people in the concert hall, or those watching on television), he never condescends or patronizes, he always interjects enough topical language and music to let them know that he understands where it's at, and he presents all this as someone who finds the subject matter quite exciting, and wants his audience to share in that thrill. And, from the expressions on their faces, some of them do. Granted, they've been prepped for it by their music teacher in school (remember when they had music appreciation classes?), but there's really nothing that prepares anyone, young or old, from Lenny at full wattage.

Watch this program in which he explains Richard Strauss's famous piece, Thus Spake Zarathustra, better known as the theme to 2001. By the time it's over, you'll know more about Nietzsche's philosophy than you ever thought possible, as well as an absolutely stunning demonstration of how Strauss's music depicts the themes in Nietzsche's work. Bernstein expects his audience to be able to follow this, expects that grade school students can comprehend complex themes and ideas, and to relate them to the meaning of life. I found this as thrilling as Bernstein must have.


For all that Bernstein accomplished, the conducting and the compositions and the writing, I think his lasting influence will be as a teacher. Not a teacher of other musicians, although he mentored a good many of them. No, it's as a teacher who tried to enrich the lives of his students just a little bit, to make them look at life in a different way, perhaps introduce them to something they hadn't considered before. Remember how on Saturday Judith Crist wrote about how one of the functions of a critic was to teach readers to demand more, to put a value on the time that they spend watching a movie and then expect that movie to be worth that time? To stimulate a response? That's what Bernstein does in these programs, and in other cases, and there's nobody better at it them him. You know how I've written about how a program like Alistair Cooke's America taught me more than my high school civics class? Never mind music appreciation; I can guarantee this program should have been shown in my college philosophy class.

So can we reconcile the two Bernsteins, the teacher and the tramp, the passionate musician and the inviter of ridicule? Should we even try? This is, I think, one of those cases where I'm going to have to agree to disagree with myself, for as hard as it may be to take Lenny seriously, when Leonard Bernstein talks about music, people listen. Am I a nerd for calling this kind of show "thrilling"? Perhaps, but it's so worth the ride. TV