Additions to the Top Ten: Breaking Point

EDUARD FRANZ (LEFT) AND PAUL RICHARDS: THE DOCTORS OF BREAKING POINT

I've written a couple of times these last few months about Breaking Point, the Ben Casey spinoff that ran in the 1963-64 season on ABC. As was the case with so many series from that era, I first became acquainted with it through TV Guide, where I would see it in the listings each week, reading the description of an episode that sounded intriguing or provocative.

Like Casey, the show followed the tried-and-true formula: Paul Richards plays Dr. McKinley Thompson, the young chief resident in psychiatry; Eduard Franz, as psychiatric clinic director Dr. Edward Raymer, is the older mentor. Although each story tends to focus on one doctor*, both men appear in most episodes. And, as is the case in so many dramas of the era, plots revolve around the guest stars more than the doctors themselves.

*The emphasis, as was the case in most medical dramas, was on the younger of the two men; Franz, noting this and pointing out to the producers that his contract stipulated co-star status, calmly mentioned he'd be asking to be released from his contract unless the imbalance was corrected. Fortunately, it was.

In one particularly fine episode, "And If Thy Hand Offend Thee," James Daly (Medical Center) portrays Mitchell Farnum, a veteran of the Pacific theater in World War II, who appears to be dealing with what today we'd call PTSD, spending nights in an Asian bar, raving about his experiences with the Japanese. Just when it looks as if a fight might break out, though, he finds his right hand cramping and breaking out in a rash. Since his regular doctor can't find anything physically wrong, he sends Farnum to see Dr. Thompson.

Slowly, through Thompson's questions, Farnum's story begins to unfold in unexpected directions. First, we find that Farnum has had this problem with his hand for several years. We are told that Farnum has been separated from his wife for over a decade, and then discover that his wife is Japanese, that he met her during the occupation, that she lived in Hiroshima but was not caught in the blast. We learn that they spent several happy years in Japan, but that the problems began once they relocated to the United States. We see a flashback in which Farnum's unit has a hatred of Japanese drillled into them - that they lack emotions, that they will kill without scruples, that they are not even human. Fine, we think - this confirms our initial theory that Farnum has a bitter hatred of the Japanese based on what he saw in the Pacific.

James Daly (left) with Paul Richards

But then the story begins to shift, as Farnum tells Thompson that he was involved in testing of the atomic bomb. that he played the key role in testing the trigger mechanism. As he describes the horror that unfolded at Hiroshima (in a stunning, documentary-like look at the damage), Dr. Thompson begins to understand the situation. Farnum's hatred of the Japanese is merely a defense mechanism to mask his true problem - an intense hatred of himself, fueled by guilt over his role in the bombing. Having unlocked the key to understanding the situation, Thompson stresses, does not mean Farnum's illness will go away magically. It will take work, it will take desire on Farnum's part to get better, but Thompson will be there to help him get there.

And in truth, one of the best parts about Breaking Point is that it usually avoids the easy answer. It is clear that Farnum and his wife still love each other after all these years, but Farnum tells her it will take time for him to accept all this. When he checks out of the hospital, to continue his therapy as an outpatient, he tells Dr. Thompson that he's not ready to return to his wife yet. He wants to, but it isn't going to happen overnight. The episode ends, on a note of hope, but with no certainty that Farnum and his wife will live happily ever after.

This is far from an unusual episode of Breaking Point, however. Another standout, "My Hands Are Clean," involves Telly Savalas as Vincenzo Gracchi, a loan shark who may be experiencing the Stigmata, bleeding that mimics Christ's wounds on the Cross. His priest, played by Henry Silva, refuses to believe that this is a miracle - Gracchi is an unrepentant loan shark, after all* - and convinces Cracchi to see his old friend Dr. Thompson, who through patient but persistent questioning determines that Gracchi's problems have something to do with his father. Sounds Freudian, right? Gracchi says his father was the best man he's ever known, and that he'd wanted Gracchi to become a priest, but the young Gracchi was too consumed with succeeding, with rising above his station in life, the area where Gracchi feels his father was a failure.

*In doing so, the priest's comments echo those of G.K. Chesterton, who said that it was only because he believed in the existence of miracles that he could discount those that were not real.

What does this have to do with the Stigmata? Thompson confesses his frustration to Dr. Raymer, who shrewdly reminds the younger doctor that there was more than one man on the hill at Calvary. And with that, Thompson gets to the bottom of Gracchi's problem - his guilt is about the kind of lifestyle he has chosen, the way he has unscrupulously taken advantage of so many people, and in doing so he is identifying not with Christ, but with the Good Thief. It's more of a happy ending than most episodes, with Gracchi vowing to give up loan sharking and become an honest businessman, but both he and the viewers know that he'll need continued therapy to get over what has plagued him for so long.

In many respects, "My Hands Are Clean" illustrates why Breaking Point is so good. We see the patient struggling (and initially rejecting) the idea of psychiatric help. The doctors ask questions, probe, but are never intrusive. They stress the reasons the patient needs help, but don't force the issue. Eventually, we see the patients hit bottom, and in desperation return to the hospital - where Drs. McKinley or Raymer are there, waiting for them. They are never dismissive of the problems faced by their patients, nor do they scoff at things like religious belief, which they give great respect.

Most of all, a couple of things I mentioned earlier: first, that there are no easy answers. In an episode featuring Bradford Dillman as a doctor blinded in an accident, the episode ends with Dillman finally adjusting to a future without sight, and returning home with his new guide dog - only to find his wife, unable to provide him with the support he needs, has left him. Dillman starts the process of learning how to function as a sightless doctor, but we have no idea whether or not he and his wife will reconcile. A similar situation occurs in an episode I wrote about earlier, with Dr. Raymer treating Gena Rowlands, a woman with a drinking problem. At the conclusion of the episode her husband, fed up with her repeated promises to stop drinking, has left her. She's determined, with Dr. Raymer's help, to overcome her problems and win her husband back - and on that hopeful note, but with no guarantee that the couple will get back together, the episode ends. Some people might complain that the story isn't tied up in a nice bow, as would be the case with so many other shows of the era - I simply call it real life.

In writing about that episode, I also mention the other thing that I like so much about Breaking Point - there is no personal drama concerning the doctors. Are they married, do they have girlfriends, are their lives like those on, say, Gray's Anatomy? As Dr. Raymer says, "Does it matter?" Breaking Point is a medical drama, not a soap opera, with the story concentrating on the lives of the patients, people at the very breaking point. See that picture above of Daly with Paul Richards? It's a key point in the episode, played with Richards' back to the camera, and that's symbolic of how the show lets those lives take center stage. It never becomes melodramatic, and only rarely does it even try to pull strings or manipulate viewers. The cast is first-rate, the writing is quality, the episodes demonstrate the intense drama of the human condition, and remind us that this drama doesn't need to be tarted up to be compelling. Breaking Point is compelling, consistently, and it's unfortunate that the show lasted only the one season, competing with East Side/West Side on CBS and Sing Along With Mitch on NBC.

Breaking Point reminds us that television has always been capable of delivering quality drama, and that the human mind is perhaps the most fertile ground for such drama. My question is simple: where is this kind of drama today?

This week in TV Guide: March 11, 1972

Believe it or not, there actually was a time when James Brolin was known as something other than Mr. Barbra Streisand. In the early 1970s, he was Dr. Steven Kiley, the young assistant to Robert Young's Dr. Marcus Welby, and as we look in on the young actor, we find a 31-year old who already feels as if he's at something of a crossroads in his career.

It's not that he isn't grateful; the TV series provides steady work and an income "better than that of a G.P." and Young has given him some valuable assistance with his acting, "a field in which Brolin had considerable room for improvement." But is he content to remain the junior partner, or is there the allure of something bigger out there? "I would like to do feature pictures," he admits to author Melvin Durslag, and if that fails "I would like to develop and sell features."

Welby is in its third season, and Durslag poses an interesting question to Brolin: why are medical series so popular? He's often wondered the same thing, Brolin says, and has concluded that the appeal of medical drama is much the same as that of horror movies. "Grownups, like children, like to be frightened. Kids go for monsters and horror creatures. Adults go for cancer and brain tumors. You would guess that people would want to turn away from life's ugliness, but a human is funny. He is the only animal that likes to scare himself." Welby's producer, David Victor, thinks it's because medical dramas deal with "the most basic format. All of us are aware of our mortality." He also feels the cause-and-effect inherent in medicine works to the genre's advantage: "A doctor in a medical story can bring a matter to a logical conclusion" by prescribing medicine or operating on someone, which in turn makes something happen. It's an ideal format for a weekly television series.

Whatever the reason, it's a successful enough format for Welby; the show runs for seven seasons, becoming the first ABC series to ever rank #1. James Brolin never does hit the big time as a star in feature films, but with a resume that includes the successful TV series Hotel and a number of high-profile guest spots on other series (as well as a role in the current Life in Pieces), he's had a TV career that's been pretty successful. Hopefully, that - along with being Mr. Barbra Streisand - has been satisfying enough.

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It's been a while since we've had the chance to find out what Cleveland Amory has to say about the state of television, but have no fear: Cleve is here. This week's focus is on NBC's Saturday morning live-action Take a Giant Step. It's a "bold and original idea," featuring three nonprofessional kids hosting a show geared at 7-14 year-olds. Bold and original ideas, Amory says, "are hard to come by, and when you get one, it deserves at least the credit of being recognized as such."

It is, therefore, a "capital" idea. "But the execution, alas, is capital punishment." The various kids appearing on the show are often terrible, mumbling and rambling and "you know-ing" until you can't stand it anymore, and because they generally don't get to choose what they're going to talk about on the show, they're put in a position that doesn't really allow them to be themselves - which, when you're making a point of hiring nonprofessionals, kind of defeats the purpose. "In between the pauses, the repetitions, the platitudes and the nothings, your chances of hearing anything either (a) bright, (b) funny, (c) pithy or even (d) different seem to be far less than if you were to spend the hour listening to any group of kids anywhere." Many of the film features on the show are "incredibly poor and incredibly pointless," even given the ages of the kids involved in them. "It is bad enough when you have to watch such a film.. It is too much when you also have to hear an explanation attempted by a monosyllabic grunter."

Don't turn them into professional actors, Amory says, but at the same time work with them, help them to do a better job, teach them about discipline. Freedom to do your own thing without the accompanying coaching will invariably result in a show like this. As one neighborhood youngster puts it to Amory, the kids talked "so 'obviously' about things, and yet 'they don't look like they'd be talking about things that way.'" Or as Amory himself puts it, quoting the younger of the two kids whose opinions he'd solicited, "When will this be over?"

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A quick look at the rest of the week:

Before there was March Madness™, there was still an NCAA basketball tournament, although it looked a lot different than it does today. For one thing, there are only 25 teams in the 1972 tournament, and each team is limited to one representative. There are few conference tournaments - the ACC being the main exception - and the champions from the top conferences - the Big 10, Big 8 and Pac 10, for example - were seeded directly into the second weekend's Round of 16. Because of this, we're left this Saturday with the absurd situation of having the tournament's first round take place before everyone's done with the regular season. Case in point: on NBC, Marquette takes on the MAC champion (yet to be determined at press time) and Long Beach State meets BYU in the first round, while Michigan plays Iowa in the final Big 10 game of the season and Oklahoma plays Missouri in the Big 8 finale. How times have changed. Besides, it's a moot point anyway - UCLA wins the championship for the sixth consecutive season, and eighth in the last nine seasons.

SOURCE: HADLEY TV GUIDE COLLECTION 

Both Tonight Show stars, Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon, appear in specials this week on NBC. Ed's Sunday show comes from Cypress Gardens in Florida, with Bob Newhart, waterskiing champion Liz Allen, daredevil speedboard drives The Stingers, and the Burgundy Street Singers. Johnny's Monday special is a variety revue with stars recreating some of their past glories from film and vaudeville, and features Bette Davis, Ethel Waters, Eddie Foy, Jr. and others. It's preceded by Bob Hope's special spoofing the Oscar-nominated films, co-starring Elke Sommer, Dyan Cannon, Connie Stevens and Eva Gabor. In other words, a typical Hope lineup.

Nowadays we take it for granted that we can see the biggest box office movie hits just months after they open in the theaters, but it wasn't always the case. As an example, this week we have the network premieres of two major movies not months but years after they played in theaters. The first, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim from 1965, is shown in two parts on ABC Sunday and Monday. An all-star cast, including Peter O'Toole, Eli Wallach and James Mason, produce what Judith Crist calls "an eye-filling frequently rousing Saturday-afternoon-serial kind of romantic adventure - and a super-deluxe one at that."

Meanwhile, West Side Story, winner of 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture of 1961, debuts on NBC Tuesday and Wednesday. Crist calls the movie a landmark in movie musicals, "both in its social context and in its cinematic techniques," and has particular praise for the Oscar-winning performances of Rita Moreno and George Chakiris, the dazzling choreography by Jerome Robbins (who shared the Best Director Oscar with Robert Wise), and the powerhouse music by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim.That name sounds familiar: James MacArthur, who we looked at on Monday in the TV Sidekick Blogathon, appears in Sunday's Wonderful World of Disney on NBC. It's the conclusion of "Banner in the Sky," and Danno - that is, James - plays a young mountain climber trying to conquer the peak that killed his father. I'll bet you one thing - MacArthur probably enjoyed shooting in Hawaii a lot more than in the Alps, where this movie was filmed.

The Grammys are on ABC Tuesday night, with Andy Williams in his second of seven consecutive years as host. It's being broadcast not from Staples Center in Los Angeles, as it is today, but from the Felt Forum theater at Madison Square Garden in New York, and it's the last time any network other than CBS carries it. As our mission here is to illustrate popular culture through TV Guide, let us take a moment to share some of the nominees for Grammys, in order to remind you of what the music scene was like in 1972. For our edification, the winners are indicated by (W)

Record of the Year
"It's Too Late," Carole King (W)
"Joy to the World," Three Dog Night
"My Sweet Lord," George Harrison
"Theme from Shaft," Isaac Hayes
"You've Got a Friend," James Taylor

New Artist
Chase
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Hamilton, Joe, Frank & Reynolds
Carly Simon (W)
Bill Withers

Pop, Rock and Folk Female Vocalist
Joan Baez
Cher
Janis Joplin
Carole King (W)
Carly Simon

Pop, Rock and Folk Male Vocalist
Perry Como
Neil Diamond
Gordon Lightfoot
James Taylor (W)
Bill Withers

Pop, Rock and Folk Vocal Group
Bee Gees
Carpenters (W)
"Jesus Christ, Superstar" original cast
Sonny and Cher
Three Dog Night

Don't you just love how the Academy groups these acts together?

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Headlines:

Running on empty? The networks haven't announced fall schedules yet, but speculation runs rampant, as always, on which of the incumbent favorites will fail to return next season. Among the well-known shows facing the possibility of the ax: The Persuaders, Bewitched and The Courtship of Eddie's Father on ABC, My Three Sons and Don Rickles on CBS, and Jimmy Stewart, Emergency! and Nichols on NBC.

Show I'd like to have seen: Kurt Vonnegut's Between Time and Timbuktu, a bizarre futuristic story featuring Bob & Ray. Well, here it is:


How about a touch of class? Masterpiece Theater, also on Sunday on PBS, presents part one of yet another acclaimed BBC miniseries, "Elizabeth R," starring Oscar winner Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth I.

The week's most provocative program: ABC's Saturday Movie of the Week, a made-for-TV drama entitled "The Last Child." Set in 1994, it depicts a United States with population control laws that limit families to one child (China, anyone?) and forbid medical care to those over 65, and stars the late Van Heflin in his final performance, that of a retired U.S. senator helping a young couple (Michael Cole, Janet Margolin) escape to Canada before government authorities can capture them and murder their unborn child. It's badly midguided in many ways - the whole concept of overpopulation, particularly in the United States, has always been overblown - but in other ways the idea of an increasingly totalitarian American government is one that chills the bones, perhaps now more than ever. Here's a clip from the film.


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Finally, we'd be remiss if we didn't talk a look at the most famous figure from this week's edition. He's arguably the most successful salesman on TV, and his commercials have become among the most famous on the tube. Because of his success, directors are willing to put up with his difficulty and temper tantrums, not to mention being ready to use "a lot of patience - and a lot of film." His adoptive name is Lucky, but you know him better as Morris the Cat.

Lucky is indeed Lucky; the orange cat was less than a half-hour from being put away when his handler, who was looking for a cat to use in a commercial, found him at an animal shelter. "He was walking around as if he owned the place," Bob Martwick says. He wound up being taken to a 9-Lives audition, and the producer said "We knew instantly he was the one the minute he walked in. He was the Clark Gable of cats."

Today he's at work doing his 14th commercial for 9-Lives, in which he's to type a testimonial letter extolling the virtues of the cat food, whose box he appears on. First the camera (running continuously) captures a few seconds of Morris sniffing at and appearing to read the box. In order to simulate the typing, food is placed between the keys of the typewriter, and the camera runs again until the cat paws at the keys. At last, after a few hours and 4,000 feet of film, the 30 seconds necessary for the commercial are captured, and Morris is loaded back into his travel cage, to make the 20-mile journey from downtown Chicago to the 4-by-3 foot cement kennel where he lives. It's a reminder that for the thousands of fan letters he receives, for all the articles written about him (like this one) and pictures taken (like the one at the left), a cat is still just a cat - even if he's top cat in the advertising business. TV  

When the story is not yours, but belongs to the guest star

GENA ROWLANDS AND EDUARD FRANZ IN ABC'S BREAKING POINT

The pivotal moment comes almost halfway through "Heart of Marble, Body of Stone," a 1963 episode of the ABC psychiatric series Breaking Point. Dr. Edward Raymer (Eduard Franz) is treating Shelly Peters (Gena Rowlands), a woman who attempted suicide while drunk. They are discussing why she and her husband were not able to conceive, and why she wanted children in the first place. At one point Peters asks Dr. Raymer "Are you married?" to which he replies, "Does it matter?"

With that, we see one of the major differences between television of the '50s and '60s and the television of today, within the context of an episode that tells us much about the different between culture then and now, and how people see themselves.

I've discussed Breaking Point in the past; it was a spin-off from ABC's successful doctor drama Ben Casey, following the protocol for medical dramas of the day: a young doctor dedicated to change (Paul Richards) with an older doctor who serves as a partner/mentor (Franz). It didn't achieve the success of its parent series, running for only 30 episodes in the 1963-64 season. It's never received an official DVD release, although episodes can be found on the grey market and, as was the case here, on YouTube.

My impression of it, having watched a few episodes, is that it's a very good show. Franz is an actor of great dignity and gravitas, and Richards, whose face will be familiar to classic television aficionados, shows a depth and subtlety that we haven't often seen in other settings. It's different from many other medical dramas in that it deals with illnesses of the mind, rather than those of the body, and while many doctors touch on that element, it's usually with a guest star portraying the psychiatric aspect of medicine.* Watching it, I've wondered why there seem to be no shows with psychiatrists or psychologists as leading characters, much as there are no shows with classic private detectives anymore.

*A notable exception, of course, being NBC's The Eleventh Hour, itself a spin-off from Ben Casey's great rival Dr. Kildare, which ran during the same period of time as Breaking Point.

And then there was Rowlands' question and Franz's answer, and it started to come clear to me. Unlike today's serialized programs, Breaking Point was not about its lead actors, but about the guest stars and their stories. Today, were the star of a drama, medical show or police procedural to be asked if they were married, we'd almost certainly be treated to a pained look of remembrance, a flashback, an invitation to the tortured backstory which so many of today's leading characters seem to have. In other words, the story is about them, not about the guest star. If you've read this blog for any length of time you already know that this is one of my real grievances with modern television*, this tendency toward turning all drama into soap opera.

*The feeling is a little too strong to simply be called a peeve.

But that's not what Breaking Point is, because that's not what psychiatry is. The only thing important to the therapist is the life of his or her patient, and it is their story which drives the narrative; hence the response by Dr. Raymer. If it had been material to his patient's well-being, one thinks, he might have given her - and us - the answer, but as it is, she never finds out, and neither do we. It simply isn't germane to the story.

Most of us realize how vulnerable we would make ourselves by putting ourselves in the hands of someone who is essentially a stranger, paid to listen to us unburden ourselves of the most intimate, the most personal details of our lives. It is a leap of faith in more ways than one, and it must include absolute trust in the doctor. As viewers, we also look to our protagonists to display that confidence and competence in order to assure us that the story will end well, and in the case of a series in which the doctors deal with these very delicate issues, I think it would be a logical extension of this theory to suggest that we'd be uncomfortable watching a psychiatrist treat someone whose welfare we're being asked to invest in, if said psychiatrist was struggling with problems of his or her own - substance abuse, infidelity, a financial crisis, or whatnot. Yes, it's true that it might create a compelling character, this doctor who can heal others but not himself - but then the series becomes all about the doctor rather than the patient.

That's not what '60s shows of this kind were about, and for that reason I think that's why it would be very difficult to have a successful series of this type today. When we demand serialization, when we want our dramas to be all about seething passions, we cannot afford for our protagonists to cede the focus of the story to a guest star, to act as a vehicle for the story and then recede into the background. It just isn't done that way. One could argue that the last successful series to portray a mental therapist as lead character was The Bob Newhart Show, but there again the show wasn't about the patients - it was about Bob. And anyway, we all know that Suzanne Pleshette was really the sane one. . .

It's a theory anyway. It may or may not be right, but for what it's worth, it's mine. Perhaps you have some thoughts on it?

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I mentioned that this whole discussion played itself out in a larger context, and I want to come back to that briefly in conclusion. One of the central points in the episode was the relationship between Shelly Peters and her father, and between her and her husband. She wanted to have children, or at least she says so, but why? It's the matter that Dr. Raymer is probing when the question about being married came up.

She finally confesses to the doctor that she wanted children in order to feel like a "real wife," a complete woman, one who sits on a park bench with a stroller in front of her, discussing things like child care with other mothers. It may sound terribly sexist to modern ears, but that's the reason I bring it up. In 1964 the idea of the "Career Woman" had not completely overrun the culture, and it wasn't always because women were being oppressed, locked into stereotypical roles, kept prisoners in their own homes. It was because they saw a sense of fulfillment, of completion, in being a mother. There was something natural about it, and I think this is what you hear in many of the complaints today from women who find it so hard to have it all, to combine a career with motherhood, who wish the economy would allow them to concentrate on nurturing their family.

I touched on this a couple of years ago in a piece I wrote about the '50s medical drama Medic. I won't rehash it here now; I'd much rather you go back and read the original article, which I think is still quite good. The point, though, is that it is another episode in which a woman demonstrates her understanding as to the importance of child-bearing in a marriage. In this case, she carries the gene that causes hemophilia. The only sure way to prevent it from being passed on is to not have children, and her fear is that not being able to have children will make her less desirable as a wife.

Again, it's a thought that sounds very foreign to us today, but it was something very real back then, because of the societal understanding about the definition and purpose of marriage (which, of course, drives some of our most bitter political conflicts today). And it's another example of how television, the window to the world, gives us such a good portrait of our time. It doesn't need to preach, to make a point of it, to send a message: it simply gives us a story borne of the era, and allows us today to look back on it, and learn.