This week in TV Guide: August 16, 1969

Anew era in television begins this week, as Merv Griffin enters the late-night talk show fray with his debut on CBS. (Guests for that first show: Joe Namath, Woody Allen, Leslie Uggams.) Merv's hardly a stranger to the game, having helmed a daytime show on NBC as well as his syndicated chatfest for Group W, but as Neil Hickey writes, things are a little different now.

This is the first time ever that all three networks are programming simultaneous late-night talk shows, with Joey Bishop representing ABC's entry in the "Insomnialand Sweepstakes." And we're not talking about peanuts in this battle-to-the-death contest; Johnny Carson's Tonight Show earned about $15 million for NBC last year. For years, CBS's affiliates had survived on the network's inventory of old feature films, but with prices going up and inventory shrinking, change was in the air; when around 80 percent of CBS affiliates said they'd clear the show in the late-night timeslot, the game—or, in this case, the show—was on. As for the host...

According to Hickey, it was a call from the William Morris Agency to CBS's new late-night boss Mike Dunn that set things in motion. Among the Agency's many clients was one Merv Griffin, currently negotiating a new contract with Westinghouse, and the renewal was far from a done deal. The Agency asked if CBS would be interested in Griffin should he become available. Dunn replied that, yes, he'd be interested. When the Group W negotiations reached an impasse about three weeks later, Griffin's handlers called Dunn back. A couple of meetings later, the deal was set: two years, with an option for six more, and CBS had itself a ready-made show to take on Johnny and Joey.

Merv's not under any illusions about the magnitude of the challenge, but he's also excited. "The biggest drawback to the show which I've been doing for the last four years was its built-in lack of topicality, caused by the fact that it was aired, in some cases, as much as five weeks after we made it." When Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, he says, "we had to just sit there as though it hadn't happened." He wants his staff to "read the front page as well as the theater page," but doesn't want propagandizing. "The fewer personal causes I exploit on the air the better the show we'll have." It's the guests he's interested in, and their areas of expertise. "These shows should reflect the whole contemporary scene: comedy, ideas, music." He's not going to let himself worry about the competition, either. "If I let myself pay too much attention to the competition, I risk falling into a tererible trap. I can't let them affect how I do my own show."

There's a very interesting comment made near the end of the article by a CBS executive. "Nobody knows how long Carson is going to work," he says. "He shows signs of wanting to do something else. When he does quit, NBC—which has enjoyed this lush oasis for so long—will suddenly be in the same position we were. Griffin will get a large chunk of Carson's audience and some of Bishop's." The truth, as Hickey concludes, is that nobody knows. And ain't that the truth. Carson, of course, is not near quitting; he'll continue another 23 years, to 1992. By that time Bishop is long gone—he won't even make it out of 1969. Merv is absent the scene as well; as Griffin's comments suggest, he wanted a topical show with topical, and often controversial, guests, and soon chafes under the restrictions CBS attempts to put on his show. He secretly negotiates a deal with Metromedia to return to syndication as soon as CBS cancels his show, which happens in 1972. That edition of The Merv Griffin Show continues until 1986, when Merv finally hangs it up. Maybe he doesn't beat Carson, but he certainly leaves the scene unbowed.

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Speaking of the late-night wars, 1960s style, if you're into this kind of thing then this is your week! Not only do we have Johnny, Joey, and Merv slugging it out in the post-local news period, we also have Dick Cavett! Yes, in the timeframe between Cavett's morning show and his anointing as Joey Bishop's successor, during the summer of 1969, Cavett hosts a three-nights-a-week show for ABC. As such, on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday of this week, you have all four of my generation's late-night titans appearing on the same evening, three of them at the same time. It's really quite extraordinary when you think about it. And if you lived in the right market, you could also have seen Steve Allen's syndicated show. If only someone could have found a place for Jack Paar—wouldn't that have been a time!

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We spend a lot of time here looking at woman's fashions, so it's only fair that this week we get a glimpse at Hollywood's "wild" new look for men.

It grooves, doesn't it? Our models are, from left to right, Stan Freberg, Robert Wagner and Robert Culp, three men with reputations as being among the most stylish dresers in entertainment. Dick Hobson gathered the three of them, plus Sammy Davis Jr., to see how they feel about the new styles. Wagner admits to the truth of his publicist's statement that he has "the most impressive wardrobe on the tube"; Culp concurs, saying that Wagner "always looks elegant," but says Davis is "the only cat I'd call a style leader." Not surprisingly, Freberg bosts of the most flamboyant outfits, living up to his daughter's description of him as "a groovy daddy." The formula: "An Edwardian suit with a dragoon collar. Or my Cardin suit with a sculptured back—a real mindblower. I have a Bill Blass blazer with his initials monogramed all over the lining, which is a little ostentatious of him, don't you think, considering it's my coat." He does have his limits, though: "The bell-bottom is a little too faddish for me."

As for other favorite outfits: Davis is proud of "Two mink coats and a mink cape and three pairs of doeskin boot-pants." The boots and pants are all one piece? "Yeah, you put them on just like a regular pair of pants. The gas is to casually put your leg up and people say, 'You mean they're all one?" Wagner boasts of starting the Cassini Nehru look; when Culp suggested that Tony Randall actually ntroduced the Nehru to America on the Carson show, Davis interjects, "No, I brought it from Paris and it wasn't called the Nehru; it was called Mao jacket. Because of politics, you wouldn't use the word Mao so I said it was a Nehru." Davis adds that "I came back from London three years ago wearing beads, and people said, 'Beads?' Within six months everybody was wearing beads." Freberg says that at first he felt a little self-conscious; "A year and a half ago I went on the Tonight show wearing what I thought was a wild Eric Ross jacket until Tony Curtis came on with Edwardian lapels, a whole row of military medals and high knee boots. Everybody applauded."

Yes, boys and girls, this is what the state of men's fashion looked like at the end of the Sixties. But there are some more traditional styles that the men admire: Wagner likes Cary Grant ("He never had to bother with an expensive wardrobe because he wears clothes so well that the suit that looked well on him in 1939 still looks well on him."), Culp admires Johnny Carson (he "has a fabulous influence, though nobody has ever accused John of being adventurous."), Davis loves Fred Astaire ("Tails on Astaire look as comfortable as tennis shoes, Levi's and a T-shirt."), and they all agree that while Sinatra has loosened up from his investment banker look, Davis tells of how he once kidded the Chairman that "You're dressing like you're known all over the world," to which Sinatra replied, "Well?"

I love clothes myself; I never went for ascots and Nehru jackets, although I'll admit to a couple of leisure jackets in the day, but I've always been most comfortable in a nice three-piece suit or double-breasted jacket with dress boots, and I only wear a white shirt to weddings and funerals. My one regret is that I've never had the opportunity to wear a tuxedo; they say a tux looks good on every man, and at this stage in my life I'll probably never get the chance to find out. But a classic wardrobe is still timeless—I'll let you decide if the outfits above fill the bill.

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As far as TV goes, summertime is reruntime, but that doesn't mean we can't still have a blockbuster. That's the case on Sunday, when NBC repeats Elvis Presley's historic comeback concert (8:00 p.m. CT), first shown the previous December. It was the King's first television appearance in eight years, and it's proven to not only be one of the definitive moments in Presley's career, but a riviting hour of television. In the rerun vein, Saturday night's Jackie Gleason Show (6:30 p.m., CBS) shows how far the Honeymooners have come from their half-hour roots; in this hour-long musical-comedy episode, "The Honeymooners visit sunny Spain, where Ralph rushes to the rescue of a lovely senorita—and finds himself entangled in a blackmail plot." It's part of the story arc in which the Kramdens and Nortons have won a trip around the world; the elements are there, in that it would be typical for Ralph to get in over his head with some complicated scheme. But it seems a long way from that New York tenament, doesn't it?

On Saturday and Sunday (4:00 p.m.), ABC presents third- and final-round coverage of the golf season's final major, the PGA Championship, from National Cash Register Country Club in Dayton, Ohio. (Yep, you read that right.) The tournament "offers a mouth-watering $175,000" in total prize money (2019's total purse: $11 million). and Ray Floyd holds on, despite a final round 74, to defeat Gary Player. Proving that political controversy is no stranger to sports, civil rights and antiwar protestors disrupt the third round, throwing a cup of water in Player's face and trying to grab Jack Nicklaus's ball off the green. "The tournament continued in a sinister cloak-and-dagger atmosphere," according to the Associated Press. "Small groups of long-haired characters in hippie attire were seen congregating at various places. Police milled through the crowd." Player double-bogeyed the hole where the water was thrown at him; he lost by one shot. Rounding out the weekend sports scene, WTCN is the flagship for Minnesota Twins baseball, as the Twinkies take on the Washington Senators (noon both days) from Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington, which just last year was known as D.C. Stadium.

Liberace is back on network TV with his own summer replacement show (Tuesday, 7:30 p.m., CBS) and his guests are Eve Arden, Mary Hopkin, Matt Monro, and ventriloquist Ray Alan with his dummy Lord Charles. That's on opposite It Takes a Thief (7:30 p.m., ABC), in which we get to see Robert Wagner and his fabulous wardrobe accompanied by a cast of unlikely guest stars: Joey Heatherton, Paul Lukas and Barry Williams. And at 8:00 p.m., "A black district attorney and a white cop are men at odds" in the TV-movie Deadlock, which winds up as "The Protectors" segment of The Bold Ones. We also get part two of a CBS News Special on the generation gap (9:00 p.m.); last week's first segment was called "Fathers and Sons," this week's follow-up is "Mothers and Daughters." The producers express the hope that viewers will watch the troubled families and take consolation in knowing they're not alone; executive producer Ernest Leiser says, "The only way to bridge the gap is with mutual compassion."  Thursday's episode of Ironside (7:30 p.m., NBC) strikes me as a prescient one. "Ironside is caught in a racist crossfire when he's ordered to prove the innocence of a Negro militant accused of a riot murder. White extremists want to set an example; black extremists claim it's a frame." I wouldn't want to be the Chief in this one.

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This week's starlet is 22-year old French pop singer Mireille Mathieu, the girl who none other than Maurice Chevalier calls "A little queen [who] has come out of the peoplpe, to be workshiped by those who like French songs." Having made it big first in France and then the rest of Europe, she's now in the process of making it in the United States, doing the circuit with Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin and Danny Kaye. Her agent, Johnny Stark, places her in high company, along with such French icons as Chevalier and Edith Pief, but to do so she will need to become both a singer (which she is) and an artist (an area in which she continues to evolve). And she has to be accepted in the U.S. as she is elsewhere.

Back in the day, it was possible to charm an audience by singing in a foreign language; after all, Piaf herself did it with "La Vie en Rose." But, Mathieu tells Robert Musel, she is determined to master the English language. "I cannot sing in English with the emotion I feel in French because the words do not mean as much to me. This makes me dissatisfied because I want the Americans to hear me at my best." She plans to remain in England after the end of her television series with John Davidson (Fridays, 7:00 p.m., ABC) "until I learn English really well." "When I talk with John on the show, I have to read the English from cards phonetically."

Music styles change; in the years since, the type of song Mireille Mathieu sings has waned in popularity. She never really became big with English-language songs, and never reached the heights of Chevalier or Piaf, but she's remained popular in France, Germany, and Russia, among other countries. And the 75 albums she's recorded, most recently in 2015, are 75 more than I've managed.

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The original logo for PBS, using the colors
of its predecessor, NET

What's in a name? We're not sure, but The Doan Report tells us that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, about to begin its first full season of broadcasting, is haggling over just what the new network is going to be called. The preferred name—Public Broadcasting System—is thought by some to sound too corporate, too "centralized," which is just what they don't want to employ, since much of the network's content will be provided by local stations for local stations. ("Besides," says one official, "it may sound too much like CBS." Would that they could get CBS's ratings, though.) Then there's the Public Broadcasting Network, but "the word 'network' is thought to be anathema these days to many congressmen." As we all know, they never did come up with a good alternative, and PBS it is, to this day. And still without CBS's ratings.

NBC, meanwhile, has announced plans for 100, count 'em, 100 specials for the 1969-70 season. There are so many, in fact, that Doan acknowledges the risk that the frequent preemptions may run the risk of antagonizing fans of NBC's hits, such as Laugh-In and Bonanza. I'm not getting too worked up about the specials, though; we're talking about things such as Christmas specials from Bob Hope, Dean Martin and Bing Crosby (plus a repeat of The Little Drummer Boy), standards like the Miss America Pageant, and an all-star circus with Tony Curtis, who can do a few acrobatic stunts himself. In other words, fun, maybe, but not too many "special" specials. Your mileage may vary, though, depending on how much you like the stars.

And the Teletype reports that "A specially set up network will carry Jerry Lewis's annual Muscular Dystrophy Labor Day telethon for 22 hours on Aug. 31. Last year, Lewis, who has been national chairman of the charitable organization for 18 years, raised $1,400,000 on the telethon." The all-time record, set in 2008, is $65,031,393.

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Last but not least, for all you youngsters out there, one of the catchphrases of the post-Apollo 11 era was, "We can put a man on the moon, but we can't," followed by your favorite description of some worthy but insurmountable task, e.g. "We can put a man on the moon, but we can't figure out how to feed the hungry." Subconsciously, it was not so much a complaint about things that needed to be done (although it was certainly that), as it was a reminder of how monumental the moon landing was, and how unthinkable it had been for so long. I don't know what its equivalent would be today, since continuous technological achievement is more or less taken for granted, but you get the point. So did Susan Biles of Waterbury, Connecticut, who, in this week's Letters section, reminds us of something else we take for granted nowadays. "I can watch the fantastic live transmission of the moon walk," she writes, "but I cannot receive a local channel 24 miles away. Ah, the inconsistencies of life!" Indeed, Ms. Biles, and were it so that this could be our biggest complaint today. TV

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This week in TV Guide: August 2, 1969

Until its reappearance as a guest-star vehicle for Rick Dalton in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, it was mostly only oldtimers like us who remembered Lancer, the western which ran on CBS for two seasons from 1969 to 1971. As is the case with so many Westerns, Lancer thrives on drama involving intertwined family trees; Bonanza's Ben Cartwright sired three sons with three different mothers, The Big Valley had an outsider who turned out to be the illegitimate son of the deceased Tom Barkley, The High Chapparal featured a second wife 30 years younger than John Cannon. (These family patriarchs sure did get around, didn't they?)

In the case of Lancer, our patriarch is one Murdoch Lancer, dealing with the tensions brought on by the relationship between his two estranged sons, each the product of a different marriage, who are now brought together to help the old man protect his ranch, also known as Lancer, from land pirates. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time, and in fact even though the series only ran two seasons, it was well-regarded by many western fans, and boasted good scripts and fine guest stars. It also had the advantage of this week's cover star, Andrew Duggan, in the title role.

With his two "sons," James Stacy (left)
and Wayne Maunder.

Dugan is one of those actors who invariably makes any show better than it would be otherwise, and even comes through bad shows with his dignity intact. And "dignified" is a good way to describe the subject of Leslie Raddatz's article: standing 6-feet-5 and 205 pounds, with his prematurely gray hair (he's only 45, but "I have always looked old," he tells Raddatz), and smooth voice (product of several years on the stage), he knows how to command a stage. Not that he lords it over people; those who work with him describe him as "unpretentious," "a fine human being," and "a real man." Of his work in Lancer, he acknowledges that "It barely gets through the second layer of you," but he doesn't complain; as a professional actor who's never wanted to be anything else, "I do the next thing to come along."

Lancer is the second show in which Duggan has starred, following the Warners detective series Bourbon Street Beat, and although I've always enjoyed his work, it was his portrayal of detective Cal Calhoun in BSB that made me a fan. He was adept at playing both heroes and villains (and sometimes you were unsure until the final scene), though his turns on the dark side were often complex and three-dimensional, and usuallty featured his own brand of charm. You're likely to recognize him from his many movies (70, including the unlikely pairing of The Incredible Mr. Limpet, with Don Knotts, and Seven Days in May, with Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster) and guest-starring appearances on television (more than 140). When he died of cancer in 1988, only 64, it was a loss. No matter what he was in, it was always worth a watch.

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The humorist S.J. Perelman was a frequent visitor to the pages of TV Guide in the day. I'm not sure how many of you remember Perelman, who died in 1979, and how many more of you know him only as a name. As has been the case with so many humorists of the time (Thurber, Parker, Levenson, Menken, Buchwald), Perelman's style of writing, which featured most prominently in The New Yorker, has fallen out of favor over the years* (as, indeed, has The New Yorker), and reading him today can be a struggle, even for those of us who consider ourselves reasonably well-read, although I'm perfectly willing to take the blame for it.

*Arguably, P.G. Wodehouse is the one humorist from that era who has remained reasonably popular, probably because of his beloved creations Jeeves and Wooster. I'd be willing to include Damon Runyon in that category, thanks to Guys and Dolls and his eccentric, "Runyonesque" characters.

Anyway, Perleman is writing this week about nudity on television, and if you think I was going to pass up that story, you're crazy. The origin of the story comes from a recent BBC documentary dealing with nudism. The whole thing bothers Perleman, not because the site of naked men and women offend him; after all, as he points out, "every schoolboy polled [in Britain] knew more about sex than his family obstetrician." No, what bothers our author is how the BBC wasted this nakedness on a documentary, eschewing "the juicy potential of skin as entertainment."

As an alternative, Perleman proposes a story based on the recent case of Miss Pamela Brewer, 18, who was found guilty of violating University of Florida rules for posing nude "on a bear rug" for a men's magazine. In Perleman's hands, Miss Brewer becomes Crystal Gondorf, a "demure but zottick freshman, with a brain rivaling Spinoza's encased in the body of a Lollobrigida." Having undeniably verified that the picture is, in fact, of Miss Gondorf, university president Butterfoss has no alternative but to expel her. Crystal claims her innocence, comparing her situation to that of Josef K. in Kafka's The Trial. Eventually, it turns out the picture was doctored, the culprit being one Babs Cheesewright, a classmate jealous of Crystal's (pre-nude) popularity.

Perleman has some other ideas as well, his story running for another two pages. It's humorous (as opposed to funny), but I couldn't help but think, and again I may be the one to blame here, that the story was a bit like the skits we see in classic variety shows, running just a little too long for its own good. I appreciate long-form writing as much as anyone, but I kept wondering how I was going to summarize this story without taking up the entirety of today's column. As you can see, I finally gave up. This isn't meant to serve as a recommendation against reading Perleman's pieces, unless your job is to condense them. It just seems as if nudity on television should be, well, a bit more exciting, don't you think?

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You'll forgive me for taking a moment to catch my breath after all that. 

(Pause) 

Well now, for something else that's out of this world, The Doan Report takes a look at how last month's flight of Apollo 11 went over with TV viewers. It was, to coin a phrase, a smash. A worldwide audience estimated at 700 million watched the epic journey of Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins from the launch pad in Florida to the ghostly images live from the moon and the triumphant splashdown; just about the only parts of the world to miss the adventure were China, India, and most of Africa. But it was seen in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and even Moscow TV ran taped coverage of the moon walk three times in one day. Summing it all up was actress Gina Lollobrigida (she of the Perleman story above), who said, "Nothing in show business will ever top what I saw on television today." 

As for the coverage itself, the clear winner was CBS; Walter Cronkite and Wally Schirra garnered about 45 percent of the total audience, and Doan had high praise for the commentary of the former astronaut, who reassured viewers with clearly-understood explanations of what was going on during tense moments. 

And in a little more space news, on Saturday, the unmaned Mariner 7 is scheduled to pass by the southern region of Mars, five days after the flyby of its twin, Mariner 6, beaming black-and-white pictures of the Martian surface back to earth. The networks may preempt regular programming for coverage, including the possibility that the planet could support life.

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It's about time we get to what's on TV this week, don't you think? 

Spread across the weekend is coverage of President Nixon's visit to Romania and London, and back then it really was a big deal for an American president to visit a country behind the Iron Curtain; as a result, NBC plans live coverage of Nixon's arrival in Bucharest Saturday at 6:00 a.m. ET, while CBS has a prime-time special scheduled at 7:30 p.m., preempting Jackie Gleason's show—for one night, he wasn't the Great One after all. I'd assume there was more coverage than what was scheduled, though.

Here's something that caught my eye: an episode of All Star Theater entitled "The Tryst." (1:30 p.m., WIBF) Is the story any good? I don't know, but the cast is, with William Lundigan, Edward Arnold, and two very young future stars: Anne Francis and Vera Miles. The night rounds out with NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies (9:00 p.m.), showing a rerun of the pilot for this fall's new series Then Came Bronson, starring Michael Parks. a kind of Route 66 on two wheels. Unlike Tod, Buz and Linc, Bronson's adventures only cycled for one season.

It's too bad we don't have Sullivan vs. the Palace this Sunday, but while The Hollywood Palace takes the summer off, Ed's back in reruns with a strong lineup: Johnny Mathis, singing a medley of songs by Henry Mancini (with Mancini conducting the orchestra); Diana Ross and the Supremes; dancer and chorergrapher Peter Gennaro; singer Shani Wallis; comedy from Burns and Schreiber and Rodner Dangerfield; and the balancing Rolan Brothers. (8:00 p.m., CBS) That's followed by a very good lineup on Hee Haw (9:00 p.m,. CBS), featuring Loretta Lynn and Waylon Jennings, along with Roy Clark and Buck Owens and the Buckaroos. For all of the ridicule Hee Haw takes for its cornpone humor, just about every big name country star appeared on that show over the years.

Monday's highlight is a rerun of the 1966 historical epic Khartoum (8:30 p.m., NBC), the story of the 1884–1885 Siege of Khartoum, in the Sudan. Judith Crist hails this "intelligent epic," especially Robert Ardeny's screenplay, and a star-studded cast led by the two antagonists: Charlton Heston's "very good portrait of the enigmatic General 'Chinese' Gordon," leader of the British forces defending the city of Khartoum, and Laurence Olivier's "simply superb portrait" of the Mahdi, leader of the Arab tribesmen besieging the city. It is, says Crist, "the rare spectacular that engrosses the mind as well as the eye." If you're in the late-night mood, check out the guest hosts on the chat shows: Flip Wilson on The Tonight Show (11:30 p.m., NBC) and Pat Butrram (!) on The Joey Bishop Show (11:30 p.m., ABC); Pat's guests, by the way, include Gene Autry and Xavier Cugat and Charo. That might be the show of the week.

If you haven't figured it out yet, this week's shows are heavy on the rerun side, but that doesn't mean they aren't worth watching; after all, it's when people used to catch up on the shows they'd missed in this pre-VCR era. For example, one of Tuesday's choices is "All Our Yesterdays," the much-loved episode of Star Trek that sends our heroes back in time: Kirk has to defend himself against charges of witchcraft, while Spock and McCoy are stranded in a prehistoric ice age with the woman who captures Spock's pre-Vulcan heart, Mariette Hartley.* Of course, if you're going to give this a watch, you'll have to pass up this week's episode of Lancer, with guest star Johnnie Whitaker. (7:30 p.m., CBS)

*Typo alert: in the TV Guide, she's listed as "Mariette Hart."

Mariette Hartley—this time with her name spelled correctly—is back on NBC Wednesday night, this time as a naive Missouri girl who hires David Ross to find her missing brother (Rick Jason) in Darren McGavin's cynical P.I. series The Outsider (10:00 p.m., NBC). One of these days, I'm going to have to dip into the grey market and get some episodes of that. Fortunately, I won't have to do that with "And When the Sky Was Opened," an excellent first-season episode of The Twilight Zone, starring Rod Taylor, Jim Hutton and Charles Aidman as the first three astronauts into space, who find upon returning to Earth that not all is as it seems. After all, I have the complete series. (6:30 p.m., WPHL)

Have you had the feeling, especially in the last few years, that you're just a piece on a chessboard, being moved at will by someone else? Find out what happens when this is literally the case, on a rerun of "Checkmate" on The Prisoner (Thursday, 8:00 p.m., CBS). As usual, the plot involves one of the favorite topics in The Village: conformity. As usual, Number 6 meets the challenge with his own favorite topic: escape. Otherwise, check out one of those movies I mentioned that features our cover star, Andrew Duggan. Yes, it's The Incredible Mr. Limpet (9:00 p.m., CBS), which Judith Crist describes as "a movie about a schnook who becomes a dolphin." I'm not sure who Duggan plays, but Don Knotts is the schnook. 

Friday boasts an interesting lineup of guest stars, beginning on The Wild Wild West (7:30 p.m., CBS), with opera star Patrice Munsel as—what else; a tempestuous opera star—who's run afoul of the sinister Order of Lucia. That's followed at 8:30 p.m. by The Name of the Game (NBC), a Robert Stack episode featuring Ricardo Montalban as a ghetto priest taking on the syndicate, led by—not Bruce Gordon, alas, but Edward Andrews. On NET Playhouse (8:30 p.m., NET), David Hemmings, who's since become famous in Antonioni's Blow-Up, stars in "Auto Stop," the story of a "callow youth" hitchhiking across continental Europe in hopes of becoming a man. The Saint (10:00 p.m, NBC) features one of Roger Moore's future co-stars, Lois "Moneypenny" Maxwell, as Simon Templar becomes involved in revenge, blackmail, and murder. Sounds as dangerous as anything Bond will come up against. 

A precaution, though: President Nixon is scheduled for an address to the Nation tonight, at which he'll reveal his new welfare initiative, the Family Assistance Plan. Typical of the time, the speech will be followed by analysis from network correspondents. Regular programming will be preempted, rescheduled, or delayed.

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An interesting Letter to the Editor this week, from Bill Cifton of Shelton, Washington, writing about a recent article on whether or not there's too much violence on television. (A recent poll indicated viewers felt excessive violence on TV was detrimental to society.) It's a little long, but I'm going to repeat it because I think it resonates with many of us out here:

My boss tells me what time to come to work, take my coffee break, eat lunch, get my paycheck, take my vacation and go home at night. Then my wife tells me to cut the grass, trim the hedge, take out the garbage, eat my dinner, not drink too much, and lastly what time to get up. The bank tells me when to make my house payment, car payment, TV payment and bring more money because my account is overdrawn. The only escape I have is watching TV—especially a nice violent show—because now somebody else is getting theirs. If I don't get any healthy violence to watch, I'm going to get even: I'm going to call the bank to come get the TV set. Then I'll send Nielsen his 50c and form back and tell him I just listen to radio.

I'd like to shake Mr Clifton's hand.

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Finally in this issue from Philadelphia, dueling news legends:

In this corner, one-half of the news lineup on WCAU, narrator par excellence of NFL Films, John "The Voice of God" Facenda!

And in this corner, present newsman of WLS and future star of NBC News, Tom "The Tomorrow Man" Snyder!

Who have ya got?

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OK, I lied. Here's the final thought. It comes from former U.S. senator Henry Clay, as quoted in a letter from Ira H. Schoen of Yonkers, N.Y., writing about that poll on TV violence. Said Clay, "Statistics are no substitute for judgment." Make of that what you will. TV

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This week in TV Guide: June 6, 1970

In this week's cover story, Digby Diehl has a candid and frequently poignant profile of Robert Young, one of America's favorite fathers who knew best, and now kindly and wise Marcus Welby, M.D. 

"I don't see anything wrong with the myth of the American father," Young says of his own role as Jim Anderson. "That is, as long as you realize that the American mother is really making most of the decisions." Young had fought long and hard to keep his character from being a typical television dad buffoon, but now he thinks things have evolved beyond that. "All those pat answers I used to give, going back to the old 'FKB' on radio, ar just too ridiculous now. The family unit is too related to the outside world and life is too complicated to get away with those old solutions. I doubt very much that father knows best any longer." 

Despite the outward similarities between Anderson and Welby, Young sees a real relevance in his role as the doctor who knows best. He spoke to many doctors in preparation for the role, and has embraced the holistic idea of medicine. "Today you have a headache and you take two aspirins; but you never treat the source of the headache. That's where the really skillful general practitioner can use his intimate knowledge of his patients better than the specialist." He's bullish on the potentials inherent in psychiatry; "I'm very excited that I have such tremendous equipment in the brain to learn and experience so many new things. You could say I'm a nut on mind-expansion." When Diehl mentions that he's starting to sound like a hippy, Young doesn't disagree; "I find that there are similarites in their concern with fuller use of the mind. I think that their motivation is right and their method—I mean drugs—is wrong."

He also sees drug usage as a symptom of something he has intimate experience with. "I think I understand a lot about these kids today because I took a lot of a chemical—alcohol—into my system over the years. I was addicted, but now I don't need it any more, so I don't drink." He's candid, with "a total lack of self-pity" about his long battle with alcoholism. "I've been terribly frightened all of my life. I think I was born frightened. I just reached the point where I was in such a constant state of terror. I couldn't face people. I couldn't face the day without a few martinis." Everyone in the theater, he says, is that way. "They're all terrified, frightened, insecure people who have found this remarkable outlet of playing all these characters who are not themselves." He credits his wife with stabilizing his life: "She  married a frightened boy, not a mature man, and without her I might have ended up a destitute drunk on Fifth Street."

His new series, which, based on the ratings, seems set for a long and successful run, has given him a new energy. He'd been in a state of semiretirement for seven years, following the end of a one season series called Window on Main Street, and was living a relaxing, content life in a retirement community in Rancho Santa Fe. But "you can only shovel up the rose garden so many times," he laughs. "Then either you get bored or the roses die." He'd rejected several movie and television projects, but when executive producer David Victor pitched Welby to him, he was sold. "I liked the character; thought it was right for me. And, after all, I've spent 40 years preparing for this kind of work. To me it isn't even really work—aside from golf, I don't have any other hobbies."

Friends say that Young looks younger, rejuvenated, and he agrees; "I feel younger, stronger, better in every way than I've ever felt in my life." In what Diehl calls "an amazing and moving thing," Young says, "I've changed so recently that I feel like I can still go back to the terror in my mind and touch it. It's like visiting an old haunted house. It's as if I live now in the beautiful house on the hill, and I only wander back to the old one occasionally out of curiosity. . . there really is no point in thinking about that, because you've got to live in the here and now. If you concentrate on guilt about the past, all you end up with is fear about the future."

Like Diehl, I found the entire article tremendously moving. Perhaps it's because I can identify with so much of what he says about fear and how it can cripple you, or because of the praise he gives his wife, which mirrors how I feel about my own. It is a remarkably candid and insightful Robert Young that we encounter here. I've always liked him, and after this I find myself admiring him as well.

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Here's a sign of how times have changed: Thursday's Today Show (7:00 a.m. CT, NBC), as baseball writer Leonard Koppett discusses one of the most controversial aspects of the game: the reserve clause.

The reserve clause was a standard part of the player contract, and its very simplicity belied its contentiousness. It stated that once a player's contract with his team expired, the team continued to retain the rights to that player. Although he could not play for them unless he was under an active contract, the team could still trade him, send him to the minor leagues, sell him to another team, or release him. Only in the last case, if he was released, would he be free to sign with the team of his choice. In all other aspects his ability to earn a livelihood was entirely at the whim of the team holding his contract.

The clause was always controversial; for owners, it was the principal means by which salaries were held under control and teams held together. For players, it meant being locked into service with a club until and unless they decided otherwise. If the player did change clubs, he had little if any say in where he would wind up unless he'd been given his unconditional release. If that were to happen, he would become what was known as a "free agent," and it didn't happen very often. The reserve clause was often the target of reformers; when the Branch Rickey and the Continental League made noises about challenging the two existing major leagues, the abolition of the reserve clause was a fundamental part of their plan.

Koppett's appearance on Today is likely tied to the ongoing court case of Flood v. Kuhn. Following the 1969 season, Curt Flood, a star center fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals, was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies, one of the worst teams in baseball. Flood refused to report to the Phillies, and sat out the entire 1970 season. In addition, he brought suit against Major League Baseball and its Commissioner, Bowie Kuhn, challenging the constitutionality of the clause. The case, supported by the newly empowered Major League Baseball Players Association and its dynamic leader Martin Miller, went to trial in May 1970, and it continued through June and the time of this issue. Flood lost at the trial level, and the case eventually made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court, where the reserve clause was upheld in 1972 by a 5-3 vote, with an incomprehensible opinion authored by Justice Harry Blackmun, based on baseball's exemption from federal antitrust laws.*

*Blackmun also authored the equally incomprehensible opinion in Roe v. Wade, for what it's worth.

It would not be until 1975 that the reserve clause was essentially abolished, when an arbitrator ruled that any player who played without a contract for one season became a free agent. The players and owners would later agree to the terms of free agency in a future collective bargaining agreement.

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This week's letters section is dominated by responses to an article in the May 16 issue written by Vice President Spiro Agnew*.  The article, entitled "Another Challenge to the Television Industry," continues Agnew's attack on the objectivity of television news, which he describes as "manufactured news: revolutionary theater brought into millions of living rooms by the networks." "How much disorder, how many of these illegal demonstrations which pockmark the country would ever take place if the ever-present television camera were not there?"  Agnew holds out hope that the networks will eventually understand their implicit obligations to the welfare of American society, that "most of the leaders of this great industry are willing to accept the responsibility of citizenship along with its benefits.

*It's the cover story, with the cover illustration painted by Norman Rockwell, no less.

Surveys throughout the period show a constant level of support for Agnew's media attacks, as in this letter from S. Richmond of Manitowoc, Wisconsin: "It's about time people realize that violence and depressing news is contagious and spreads (especially in young minds).  It's about time the networks stop trying for the largest audiences and start thinking about improving the outlook of our great country before it's too late!"  Rheba Wellborn of Decatur, Georgia agrees, saying "I hope television will do something soon to help reverse the situation of deterioration and corruption that has evolved within our Nation as a result of ill-directed program planning."  On the other hand, B.J. Butler of Los Angeles, while acknowledging that "TV has room for improvement just as Mr. Agnew has room for improvement," adds that TV shouldn't get all the blame.  "TV is not God, TV is not Congress, TV is not a substitute parent or teacher.  TV can only reflect human nature.  It has yet to make it."*

*An argument similar to some of mine, in which I've cautioned that television is neither good nor bad, but morally neutral.  However, I diverge from Butler, who writes that TV "has yet to make" human nature.  True, but it has an immense power to shape it.

William H. Race of Palo Alto, California (home of Stanford University) takes issue with Agnew's accusation that television encourages demonstrations: "How then does he account for the past two decades of demonstrations in Latin America and Europe, where TV played little or no role?  With that reasoning, one might as well blame television for the war it is covering in every news broadcast." Michael Woodhouse of Ewa Beach, Hawaii agrees, writing that Agnew ignores "the real cause for demonstrations: an immoral war or a polluted environment."  Sally Ann Yater of Easton, Maryland counters that her family is living proof of Agnew's argument. "I wholeheartedly agree with the Vice President", she says, and adds that "my family goes for days, sometimes weeks, without finding anything worth-while on TV."

The letters section is usually a representative sampling of the correspondence TV Guide receives, which indicates how divided the country is on the issue and, by extension, illustrates the social turmoil enveloping the nation.  Not unlike what we're going through today, perhaps, although the letter writers were a lot more civil about it back then.

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Enough with all this!  Let's find something a little less controversial: the Emmy Awards, maybe.  It continues our theme of the '60s transitioning to the '70s, albeit not quite as contentiously.

As we know, the Emmys used to be presented at the conclusion of the first-run television season, rather than prior to the beginning of the new season.  Therefore, we're not surprised to find the 1969-70 awards scheduled for Sunday, June 7 on ABC.  For the last time, the show is bi-coastal, with awards presented both in Hollywood (hosted by Bill Cosby) and New York (Dick Cavett), and it's a most intriguing lineup of nominations.  Once again, the categories are Drama, Comedy and Variety series, joined by Best New Series, Best Single Dramatic Program and Best Single Music/Variety Program (the later two comprised of special programs and regular episodes of a series).

Here are the nominees in various categories; I'll give you the winners at the end.

Best New Series:

The Bill Cosby Show (NBC)

The Forsyte Saga (NET)

Marcus Welby, M.D. (ABC)

Room 222 (ABC)

Sesame Street (NET)

Best Drama Series:

The Forsyte Saga (NET)

Ironside (NBC)

Marcus Welby, M.D. (ABC)

The Mod Squad (ABC)

The Name of the Game (NBC)

NET Playhouse (NET)

Best Comedy Series:

The Bill Cosby Show (NBC)

The Courtship of Eddie's Father (ABC)

Love, American Style (ABC)

My World and Welcome to It (NBC)

Room 222 (ABC)

Best Dramatic Actor:

Raymond Burr, Ironside (NBC)

Mike Connors, Mannix (CBS)

Robert Wagner, It Takes a Thief (ABC)

Robert Young, Marcus Welby, M.D. (ABC)

Best Dramatic Actress:

Joan Blondell, Here Come the Brides (ABC)

Susan Hampshire, The Forsyte Saga (NET)

Peggy Lipton, The Mod Squad (ABC)

Best Comedy Actor:

Bill Cosby, The Bill Cosby Show (NBC)

Lloyd Haynes, Room 222 (ABC)

William Windom, My World and Welcome to It (NBC)

Best Comedy Actress:

Hope Lange, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (NBC)

Elizabeth Montgomery, Bewitched (ABC)

Marlo Thomas, That Girl (ABC)

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I've always remembered something my 10th grade social studies teacher said.  It was before class, on a day when us students were talking about what we wanted to do with our lives - what colleges we hoped to be attending, what jobs we wanted to have.  "You know," he said, "a few years ago you wouldn't have been having this conversation.  You'd have been wondering when you'd be drafted, and whether or not you'd wind up in Vietnam."

He was right; the military draft had ended less than four years before, and although we'd wind up having to sign up for selective service before we were out of college, by 1976 the idea of being drafted to fight in a foreign war was the furthest thing from our own plans. But in June 1970 the draft was a very real thing and, as the listing for the ABC News Special "The Draft: Who Serves?" (Saturday, 8:30 p.m.) notes, men of draft age have four choices: "consent to induction, hope for deferments, refuse to report (and risk imprisonment) or leave the country."

The military draft was one of the stormiest parts of the antiwar movement, and I think the main reason protests over the Gulf Wars have never reached a critical level is that there is no draft to spread the threat around, to make the prospects of fighting more immediate for every young man and woman of a particular age.  That's what having an all-volunteer army has done for us, and as early as 1970 the prospects of such an army were under discussion in this special, as well as various inequities already existing in the draft, and the possibilities of increased future deferments.  Roger Peterson, the veteran ABC correspondent who was a native of the Twin Cities and started his television career at KSTP, is the primary reporter for a special that, as much as anything, shows us how much American culture has changed in the intervening 45 years.

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It doesn't seem as if we've discussed much actual TV this week, does it?  In addition to the heavy issues we're looking at, it's because we've entered rerun season; almost every series has started showing repeats, while the summer replacement series haven't yet made their debut.  Nonetheless, there are still some things to look at with our quick hits.

There are some summer specials: NET presents a "relevant" version of Hamlet, videotaped in Nashville, that attempts to capture both the Elizabethan flavor and the difficulty of taking action in a world that is full of corruption (Friday, 9:00 p.m.) while CBS presents a repeat showing of the latest "Peanuts" special, You're in Love, Charlie Brown (Wednesday, 7:30 p.m., brought to you by the people in your town who bottle Coca-Cola), and ABC gives us the latest in their series of specials on The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau (Monday, 6:30 p.m.).

Of course, we rely on the sitcoms to deal with the issues of the day: The Brady Bunch (Friday, 7:00 p.m., ABC) debates what to do with 94 books of trading stamps, The Governor and J.J. (Tuesday, 8:30 p.m., CBS) investigates dirty books, That Girl (Thursday, 7:00 p.m., ABC) wants to get to the bottom of Don's Las Vegas marriage, and Tom tries to master the art of finger sandwiches on The Courtship of Eddie's Father (Wednesday, 7:00 p.m., ABC). Not to be outdone, dramas get their moment in the sun: Ed gets blamed for a fatal beating on Ironside (Thursday, 7:30 p.m., NBC), Welby deals with a young leukemia patient on Marcus Welby, M.D. (Tuesday, 9:00 p.m., ABC), Vietnamese war victims are treated by Gannon on Medical Center (Wednesday, 8:00 p.m., CBS), and the primetime soap Harold Robbins' The Survivors (Thursday, 9:00 p.m., ABC) returns for summer reruns, giving us all a chance to see if it's as big a bomb as it was in first-run.

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And now the answers to our Emmy quiz. If you're reading this on a laptop or tablet, just turn it upside down. If it's a desktop, turn yourself upside down.

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MST3K alert: The Leech Woman (1959). A woman discovers that she is to be the guinea pig for her husband's weird experiments. Coleen Gray, Grant Williams, Gloria Talbot, Phillip Terry, John Van Dreelan, Kim Hamilton (Friday, 4:00 p.m., WLAC). A really distasteful and sordid little story, and I suppose the only really good thing about it is that all the bad guys get it in the end. I don't think this one is in circulation at the present, and for that you might consider yourself grateful. TV

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