Critic, explain thyself

I had originally intended to include this in the TV Guide writeup for this coming Saturday, but as I got deeper into it, I realized that it would make an already-long piece even longer; at the same time, I didn't want to cut it short, because I think it raises the types of questions many people have asked over the years. Ultimately, it was so interesting that I felt it deserved space of its own.

It begins with a letter to TV Guide from Mrs. Iveta Moore, a housewife living in Piedmont, Kansas, who has some questions about how professional critics go about reviewing television shows. She describes herself as "a perfect example of the favorite target of all TV critics’ scorn: a square, a citizen of the Corn Belt, a part of the moronic masses!" She is also a voracious reader—illustrated, I think, by the questions she asks—who, having read many reviews over the years, would like to know about the standards they use when writing their reviews. "I think I understand what they write," she says, "but if they are really saying what they believe, I don’t understand why they believe as they do." She poses the following questions in hopes that they will help her, and other viewers, to better understand where these critics are coming from:

1. What makes fantasy? What is the difference between Peter Pan, accepted by critics as a classic, and My Mother, the Car, panned as silly and ridiculous?
2. What is escapism? Why is it used so often for TV entertainment and not, for example, Shakespearean plays? "Didn't the critics of his day think his plays were for the ignorant masses?"
3. Why not escapism? It helps her keep stable and cheerful. Why does this so often have negative connotations?
4. What makes a soap opera? Many of them are as true to life as Shakespeare's Portia winning a law case without training, while posing as a man. "Yet one is considered melodramatic trash, and the other culture. Why?"
5. What is good music? If the purpose of music is to enjoy and entertain, "Why, then, isn't it good or bad according to how it affects the listener?"
6. What is artistic freedom? Writers often think citizens of the Corn Belt are "narrowminded," yet "most of us accept Peyton Place as showing things that really do happen, over and over, in any size city or town, while the critics ery 'smut.' Why?"
7. What is realism? Writers think of it as tragic and brutal, but "doesn't it take even more talent to include the light, happy things of life in good drama?"

"Her questions seemed not only valid but also quite possibly representative of the thinking of many viewers," the editors responded, "and we felt they deserved an answer." Thus, they reached out to novelist, social commentator, and frequent TV Guide contributor Marya Mannes, to reply to Mrs. Moore.

"Dear Mrs. Moore," Mannes replies. "You deserve to be answered, not only because your questions go to the heart of television’s functions but because you belong to the great majority of viewers who, by turning on their sets for hours each day, have far more power over the nature of TV than we—the tiny minority of TV critics—have ever had." So. "for better or worse," she proceeds to tackle those questions, one by one.

What makes fantasy? "Fantasy is made by imagination. We imagine things we know are not real, but which we would like to believe. And the test of successful fantasy is whether for even fleeting moments we do believe it." Peter Pan, for example, embodies two great human desires: to fly by oneself, and to never grow old. So captivating is James M. Barrie's story, it matters not whether Peter is played "by not-so-young women or by boys." On the other hand, when it comes to a program such as My Mother the Car, "The idea behind it is not so much fantasy as a gag, or gimmick—good for some laughs, maybe, but hardly likely to stir the imagination." After you introduce the idea, which may well be funny, what else have you got? "Another formula comedy to pass the time. But—fantasy?"

Mayra Mannes

What is escapism? Just that. "To get away from the real world of worries, of tensions or problems, of daily boredom or suffering. Some escape through drink or gambling or pills, some look at television entertainment." Everyone needs a break once in a while. "But is there any reason why this break has to be silly or cheap or poorly written stuff, with a phony laugh track tacked on?" Danny Kaye is a kind of escapism, but done with "taste and wit and charm along with the fun." The reason someone like Shakespeare isn't considered escapist is because his plays "are so much more than that: They are mirrors of enduring human passions," combining the most beautiful language in all literature with plots that gave "both the mass and the minority what they looked for."

What makes a soap opera? "I have seen quite a lot of them, because I admire the acting and find them truly 'escapist.'" They seem true to a certain type of life, to "stereotypes of American middle-class suburbia and therefore not true of the millions of Americans who are neither middle-class nor white, nor of the many American wives who are too busy working to worry about all the things soap-opera housewives moan about." The difference between Portia being "culture" and soaps being "trash," it amounts to quality, "the difference between the imagination of a great writer and the slick formulas of Hollywood writing teams." If there was ever a woman in soaps who talked like Portia, "I'd spend my day at the set."

What is good music? There are good musicians and bad musicians in every genre of music; the difference depends on things such as voice quality, the songs they use, and their orchestrations. "In any case, it’s no more true that something is good because it’s popular than that something is unpopular because it’s no good." Nobody's going to stop you from listening to whoever and whatever you like; "The only point here is that your enjoyment doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s good."

What is artistic freedom? Just that, the freedom of a writer "to determine without interference what he writes about and how he writes it." It's not just cultural mores that affect such freedom; it's "a television system that depends on getting the greatest possible audience to buy the products advertised." Sponsors can't afford to offend consumers, which means avoiding anything controversial or unpopular, "and many of the most important human problems are both." Peyton Place, on the other hand, is just "a nighttime soap opera full of people in trouble."

What is realism? More than just costumes and settings. "Realism is the reflection of life as it is lived— really lived." It can be tragic, violent, tender, corrupt, or funny; "A light comedy is just as valuable as a dark tragedy, provided it is the product of talent and keen observation." If today's writers seem more attracted to the "seamy side," it's because "we live in an age of change and violence which no artist can ignore, but which, unfortunately, too many mediocre writers use to exploit the public appetite for shock and sensationalism, particularly in the areas of crime and sex." 

Taken as a whole, Mannes boils Mrs. Moore's questions to the central question: "What is Good—or Bad? And who are you, the critics, to tell us which is which?" It's a very hard thing to define, she says, but one major component is experience. "I think it can be fairly said that a critic on a responsible newspaper or magazine has, in the pursuit of his profession, read more books, seen more plays, heard more music, looked at more art than the average television viewer." Critics base their judgments on these years of experience and the thought given to them. A critic may or may not be right, "but he has earned his right to judge." 

If a critic seems harsh in his assessments, "it is because he thinks the medium can do much better and the viewers deserve much better." Why must entertainament be silly and cheap? Why do you need guns for excitement? Why must all popular music be directed to the young? In conclusion, if you like what you see, feel free to ignore the critics. "However, it is a sign of your intelligence that you choose not to, and that you have asked questions which, although these answers may not satisfy you, need asking. Thank you, Mrs. Moore."

I've come to develop an appreciation for Mayra Mannes over the years; I've devoted a chapter of my upcoming book to the television adaptation of her novel They, and even when I don't agree with her, I admire her keen mind and thought. But there's not really much to disagree with here. Her ultimate defense of the role of the critic is not, as some might think, a form of elitism; instead, I think she's talking about the vest amount of experience professional critics have accumulated over the years, and the consideration they've given to that experience over time. I've seen too many examples myself of online "critics" who blithely propose to discuss television history while at the same time demonstrating that they lack any depth of knowledge of the topic whatsoever. And I think she does an admirable job of defining the often-undefinable term "quality," rather than the relativistic notion that if it sounds good, it is good.

I don't think you'd see this kind of intelligent conversation about television (or most artistic endeavors, for that matter) in the average publication today, let alone in TV Guide. All in all, I find that what Marya Mannes said in answer to Mrs. Iveta Moore, sixty years ago, still holds true today. It's just too bad that much of her criticism of television back in 1966, unfortunately, holds true today as well. TV  

This week in TV Guide: May 21, 1977

The Quiz Show Scandal, you may recall, had to do with public deception. Television viewers were tricked into thinking that a contest between two people, a battle of knowledge, was legitimate—on the level. It was not. As far as we know, however, no viewers were damaged by the deception; there's no record of anyone losing thousands of dollars betting on the outcome of the latest Van Doren-Stempel showdown. And since the American television viewers of the 1950s weren't a bunch of snowflakes, they emerged from the scandal more cynical, less willing to believe it what they saw on the tube, but otherwise more or less intact. You wouldn't have known that from the reaction, though: the Congressional investigation, the indictments, the shaming. Oh, the humanity. It was one of the great scandals of the time, a Turning Point in American culture—you know, the proverbial "we'll never see things in quite the same way again."

Anyway, we're now flashing ahead about 20 years, to something I saw at the time, and completely forgot about, until now. It was the odd era of the Heavyweight Championship of Tennis, and it's the subject of not one, but two pieces in this week's issue.

The Heavyweight Championship of Tennis series goes back to the Wild West days of the sport, which at the time lacked a true season-ending measurement of determining the year’s number one. Owing to the nature of the various tours in existence back then, it was quite possible that the world’s best players might not ever face each other outside of the four Grand Slam tournaments*, which resulted in this made-for-TV extravaganza, something more like boxing than tennis (coincidentally, at a time when both sports were much higher in the public’s consciousness than they are today), with gunslingers facing off against each other outside the boundaries of regular tournaments.

*Even with the vagaries of tournament tennis, having the top players meet in the Majors was no sure thing; Wimbledon suffered through a men’s boycott in 1973, and the French Open banned the participation of “contract” players who had signed with the new World Team Tennis league. There's no percentage in going into the politics around all this.

The answer to this was the Heavyweight Championship, a series of "winner-take-all" matches for tennis supremacy, aired by CBS, pitting the reigning champion and consensus #1 player in the world, the odious Jimmy Connors, against a variety of challengers—or contenders, if we're continuing with the boxing analogy. Over a two-year period, Connors takes on (and wins) matches against Rod Laver, John Newcombe, Manuel Orantes, and Ille Nastase, held in such exotic places as the sports pavilion at Caesars Palace. (Yet another boxing hotspot!) There’s only one problem with this, and surprisingly enough it doesn’t come from any of the tennis authorities itself, but from the Federal Government.

That problem: the matches were not winner-take-all, and CBS knew that was the case. Oops.

Connors (L), Nastase (R): both boors

Unlike the quiz shows, the matches weren’t actually rigged. Nonetheless, as Richard K. Doan points out in the Doan Report, the advertising for them was clearly deceptive; Connors’ match against Nastase on March 5, for example, was allegedly for a winner-take-all pot of $250,000, when in reality Connors was guaranteed $500,000, win or lose, and Nastase would get $150,000. According to series promoter Bill Riordan, "The reason the public was told that there was no more than $250,000 at stake was that CBS told me it would be immoral if it was any higher." I know, that's kind of quaint in an era when a golfer can make $10 million for winning a major championship, but this is forty years ago we're talking about.

It all comes to a head at the start of the Connors-Nastase match, when announcer Pat Summerall cited the $250,000 winner-take-all stakes. CBS Sports VP Barry Frank, hearing the claim (it's nice to know he watches his network's presentations), ordered Summerall not to repeat it, but never called for a retraction or correction. A network spokesman claims that the network could not announce the true split because "they did not know how Riordan had doled out the prize money"—implying, of course, that they knew all along there would be a division between the players.

In November, the House Communications Subcommittee holds that CBS did indeed engage in deceptive practices, saying that the network deliberately intended to mislead the public, and calling their conduct "inexcusable." The Federal Communications Commission, adding insult to injury, intends to investigate whether CBS has violated the Communications Act. And if this isn't bad enough, in January 1978, the International Tennis Federation accuses CBS of deceptive practices in billing an upcoming four-man event between the winners of the Grand Slam tournaments as the "Grand Slam of Tennis," charging that the title will "mislead the American public and do harm to the credibility of the sport," and that CBS's actions, if unchecked, will "cheapen the title 'Grand Slam' and destroy one of the game's great traditions." Not only that, they continue to run commercials listing U.S. Open champ Guillermo Villas as one of the participants, despite him having pulled out due to injury several days previous. Does this network not learn?

This week's As We See It is devoted to the tennis fraud as well. The Editors note that tennis seems susceptible to this kind of thing, often paying appearance fees to players for competing in tournaments, regardless of how they perform. The problem, according to the editorial, is that television money has popularized sports to an extent that borders on corruption. The money leads to problems, "not the least of which are under-the-table deals to hoodwink the suckers (viewers) into thinking there's a real prize at stake, as in the case of the Connors-Nastase payoff." (Shades of the quiz shows...)

The Editors are about as unimpressed with Connors and Nastase as I was, back then. "Connors and Nastase, whose God-given talents could help them set an example of clean living and exemplary conduct for the youth of our time, are a couple of vulgar characters who all too frequently are an embarrassment to the game. To have their arrogance and disdain for the public compounded by a conscienceless promoter and a shameless network sports department is a truly disgusting development." Yet another testament to the power of television.

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It must be truth or dare week at TV Guide. Next up, there’s an interesting exchange of opinions in this week’s Letters section, responding to an article by Frank Walton from the April 23 edition, in which Walton criticizes the accuracy of NBC’s Baa Baa Black Sheep (aka Black Sheep Squadron), a series based on the real-life World War II exploits of Gregory "Pappy" Boyington and his famed squadron called the "Black Sheep." (They wanted to be known as "Boyington's Bastards," but the military put the kibosh on that.) Walton, the squadron’s Air Combat Intelligence Officer, sharply disputed the image of the pilots (several of whom he quoted in his article) as “a collection of misfits and screwballs,” and casts a dark eye at what the self-aggrandizement of both Boyington and the actor who plays him, Robert Conrad.

Pappy Boyington with Robert Conrad

The first letter comes from none other than Pappy Boyington himself, who accuses Walton of engaging in “more fiction and downright falsehoods than does the dramatization he is criticizing,” and says that Walton “is not a pilot and hasn’t the slightest knowledge of how a combat pilot thinks.” He’s joined in this criticism by the show’s creator, Stephen J. Cannell, who says that Walton “is anxious about the fiction in the series because he is obviously a man with no knowledge about television or storytelling or 8 o’clock violence on TV which would make the kind of documentary story he wants unacceptable to network censors.” And a neutral observer, A.T. LaRoche (Navy retired), asks why Walton sees fit to criticize the show, since “Hogan’s Heroes, McHale’s Navy, etc. are also made for entertainment of the TV-viewing public and are not factual.” That last letter prompts a tart response from the Editor (probably Merrill Panitt), who replies that it does matter, “Because ‘Hogan’ and ‘McHale’ never lived. Gregory “Pappy” Boyington did—and does.”

Now, Cannell (who, you might notice, doesn’t dispute the central tenet of Walton’s article) is probably right in pointing out that any television series designed to entertain is bound to have “a high degree of fiction” in it. But let's take a closer look at what Walton actually wrote in that article. Whereas the series portrays the Black Sheep as "a group of green, inexperienced 18- and 19-year-old kids," in fact the youngest member of the squad was 21—there were no teenagers. Nor were they lacking in experience; nearly a third had completed at least one tour in the South Pacific, and between them they had 16 Japanese kills to their credit—and that's before they joined the Black Sheep.

Boyington portrays the squad in interviews as men who "had nothing to lose, those Black Sheep. They knew if they distinguished themselves, they might get off with easier sentences." Conrad, in a talk show interview promoting the series, added that "All these guys had failed in everything they'd ever done. None of them could make it on their own." In fact, writes Walton, "not a single member of the squadron" was facing, or had ever faced, any kind of disciplinary action. Nor did they engage in the kinds of brawls frequently portrayed in the series.

Eight of the Black Sheep remained in the Marines after the war, all retiring as colonels. As for those who returned to civilian life, seven become owners or presidents of businesses; two are elected mayors of their cities; three are lawyers; seven are directors, executive directors or managers of companies and firms. At a reunion in Hawaii with nearly two dozen members of the squadron, Boyington left with no doubt as to how the men felt about how they were portrayed in the series. Even though he serves as technical adviser to the series, he admitted that he couldn't explain how or why they had been played as misfits and screwballs.

The series only runs for a year and a half, hardly long enough for this to become one of the big controversies in television history. There is, to my ears, something about Walton’s article that rings true, just as the protestations , Boyington and Cannell ring false. Of course we all know that compromises are made when a true story is brought to the small screen; nevertheless, as Walton points out, the "real facts" of the squadron's accomplishments would have made a story of high adventure. Having settled on a narrative, though, Cannell chose to play it through to the end, regardless of how inconvenient the truth might be.

Boyington, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his accomplishments, led a very colorful and controversial life both during and after the war, going through multiple marriages and divorces, enduring financial difficulties, and battling both alcoholism and lung cancer—cancer arrested by the squad's former flight surgeon, one of the "misfits." Frank Walton goes on to write a well-received book, Once They Were Eagles: The Men of the Black Sheep Squadron, which he says is the true story of the men from the Black Sheep Squadron, and their own heroic accomplishments. It is published in 1986, two years before Pappy Boyington dies.

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On weeks when we can, we'll match up two of the biggest rock shows of the '70s, NBC's The Midnight Special and the syndicated Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, and see who's better, who's best.

Kirshner: Al Stewart, Chubby Checker, the Bay City Rollers, Queen, Blondie, the Babys, comic Rick Podell and the Mime Company.

Special: In performance: guest host Neil Sedaka, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Helen Reddy, the Captain & Tennille, Thelma Houston, and Kim Carnes.

Plenty of hits to choose from between these two shows, no doubt about it. I grant Neil Sedaka's talent as a songwriter, but I don't like Judy Collins, I don't like Joan Baez, I don't like Helen Reddy, and I don't like the Captain and Tennille. (Personal opinions only; YMMV) That seems to make the choice pretty simple, doesn't it? But I will add that I like Al Stewart, Chubby Checker is a throwback to the old days, and Queen is, well, Queen. That alone is good enough to make Kirschner this week's winner.

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Good grief, I've spent a lot of space already on not very much. Let's take a quick look at the rest of the week while we have time.

On Saturday, Kentucky Derby winner Seattle Slew tries to make it two in a row (and succeeds) in the Preakness Stakes (2:00 p.m. PT, CBS). The Slew will go on to become horse racing's tenth Triple Crown winner. On Sunday at 8:00 p.m. PT, CBS presents the first of consecutive nights of big movies, the kind that networks don't run anymore (not that they show any theatrical movies anymore) with a single-night showing of Ben-Hur, the winner of 11 Oscars including Best Picture; its running time of three-and-a-half hours is accomplished by shaving 40 minutes off. They wouldn't cut out the chariot race, would they? (Now that's a real winner-take-all match!)  The following night, CBS comes back with Hello, Dolly!, starring Barbra Streisand and Walter Matthau. (8:00 p.m., Monday) On Tuesday, gossip columnist and occasional What's My Line? panelist Aileen Mehle, better known as Suzy Knickerbocker (or just plain Suzy), hosts an hour-long profile of two giants of their professions: Frank Sinatra and Muhammad Ali. (10:00 p.m., NBC) Earlier in the evening, Henry Winkler makes a crossover appearance as The Fonz on Laverne & Shirley (8:30 p.m., ABC)

David Frost's one-on-one interviews with Richard Nixon come to a conclusion Wednesday (9:30 p.m., syndicated) as the former president reflects on his final days in office, and other events of his presidency. (The Doan Report notes that Frost has agreed to an additional episode consisting of material not previously used, sometime in the fall.) On Thursday, Anthony Hopkins gives a brilliant performance as Bruno Hauptmann in a repeat of the three-hour TV-movie, The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case (8:00 p.m., NBC) Opposite it at 9:30 p.m., an ABC News Special presents Barbara Walters interviewing Cuban leader Fidel Castro. And speaking of Lindbergh, on Friday, Eric Sevareid interviews Charles Lindbergh's widow Anne Morrow Lindbergh, a noted writer and poet in her own right. (8:00 p.m., PBS) The Apollo 8 astronauts, the night before their historic flight to the moon, met with Lindbergh, the Lone Eagle. Said Lindbergh, "In the first second of your flight tomorrow, you'll burn 10 times more fuel than I did all the way to Paris." His death, only three years ago, is recent history indeed, and the end of the era of aviation pioneers. TV