What has TV done to men? Naturally, I'm eager to find the answer to this question; it's likely to be far less expensive than going through analysis. However, while this one-page article is written tongue-in-cheek, I believe it makes some serious points about modern society and the impact perception has on reality.
"Whatever happened to men?" our unidentified author asks. "You know, those strong, dominant, intelligent creatures who built empires, struggled for democracy, and delved into nature's secrets. Where did they go? What cataclysm left us with the stupid, bumbling nincompoops who pass as males today?" The answer, of course, is television.
Yes, thanks to our favorite medium, and heroes such as Robert Beanblossom (Bob Cummings on My Hero), Ozzie Nelson (Ozzie and Harriet), and Chester A. Riley (William Bendix on The Life of Riley), the American woman "thinks of her man, and any other man, as a Prime Idiot. She also sees how easily Lucy outsmarts Ricky, how capably Sapphire beats up the Kingfish [Amos 'n' Andy], and how smoothly Margie manages her father [My Little Margie]." As a result, we get the general idea that men are a bunch of losers, worthy of little more than scorn and ridicule.
There are reasons for this, not all of which are necessarily whimsical: programs are written chiefly for a female audience, and most of the sponsors' products are geared toward women: soap, appliances, food, etc. Therefore, styling men in this fashion "pleases the female, causing her to dash to the nearest store to buy whatever the sponsor advertises." Men have little say in the matter, given that of the top 25 shows in the ratings, men comprise the majority of viewership for only two: the Wednesday and Friday night fights. "So with women comprising the bulk of the audience, and women liking shows that portray stupid men, it looks as if men—who are brilliant, kind and charming*—will continue to be maligned on television." Ergo, any change is unlikely, given that "our children are watching too, and by the time they grow up it will be a generally accepted fact that women are the dominant sex. That means today's little girls are tomorrow's Amazons. Today's little boys are tomorrow's mice."
*I would amend that to read, "can be brilliant, kind and charming," but the point stands.
This is, I think, a future that has largely come to pass. Just look at modern society, and how much of it has been feminized and emotionalized: politics, religion, education, literature and the arts, the corporate world; why should television be any different? The best example of this is probably the kind of programming one sees on outlets such as the Hallmark Channel. Whereas Hallmark used to present classic stories of strong-willed, heroic men, today we're confronted by sensitive, stubble-faced blokes with muscles enough to crush steel, but so gentle they wouldn't disturb the petals of a flower. Is that really the kind of masculinity we need in this day and age?
One hears a great deal today about "toxic masculinity," the concept of which I firmly reject as being a thing. Still, to the extent that it exists at all, it's hard to deny that its roots lie in a rejection of the male castration that has taken place in popular culture. This is not an argument for enforcing outdated concepts of men and women; this week's article certainly carries a tone of lighthearted chauvinism. But history and experience have taught us that truth is often buried within the folds of humor, and this is no exception. This is the world we live in today, and any attempt to overcompensate for this is bound to wind up in disaster. Until we find a happy medium—a natural medium, I would say—we're bound to reap the harvest we have sown.
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Well, that was a bit intense for openers, wasn't it? Let's try something a little less stressful—like mysteries.
Chicago Daily News columnist Jack Mabley, who performs the honors as TV critic for this Chicagoland edition of TV Guide, has seen three TV mystery shows over the past six months. The first was the long-running series
Danger, and this episode (which we know aired on April 28, thanks to the always-reliable Wikipedia) featured singer Johnny Desmond making his TV acting debut. The story and the acting were both a bit over the top, Mabley thought, "but maybe that's the way they want it in New York to impress us yokels."
The second show, which is unnamed, "concerned a pretty young lady who opened the front door to find a stranger who said he was her
husband. She insisted he wasn't her husband, and he insisted he was. He even produced some old family friends who said he was. She put in a nervous half hour, because she had paid to have her husband murdered. She didn't admit it until just before the final commercial. The pretender, of course, was a policeman."
The third show was an episode of The Web from a couple of weeks ago. It "concerned a pretty young lady who opened the front door to find a stranger who said he was her brother. She insisted he wasn't her brother, and he insisted he was. He even produced some old family friends who said he was. She put in a nervous half hour, because she had paid to have her brother murdered. She didn't admit it until just before the final commercial. The pretender, of course, was a policeman."
Now, if you think the last two stories were just a bit, perhaps, derivative, you couldn't be more wrong. After all, one of them features a wife wanting to murder her husband, and takes place in London. In the second, it's a sister wanting to murder her brother, and takes place in San Francisco. Not only that, but the wife is a brunette, while the sister is a blonde. See the difference? I thought you would.
On a more serious note, Mabley suggests that, over a period of perhaps six months, one might see 60 mysteries on television, with perhaps seven or eight different storylines, and that sounds about right to me. "Maybe I'm spoiled by Mickey Spillane," Mabley concludes, but of the hundreds of mysteries he's watched, "I haven't wholly enjoyed one since seeing 'Lucky Night' put on by Bill Eddy's WBKB crew early in 1948." Notwithstanding the local angle, that's a pretty sad return on one's investment of time. It probably isn't much different from any other television genre, unfortunately.
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Speaking of which, what exactly is on TV this week? Is it all mysteries and male-bashing, or can we look forward to something completely different?
Back in 1953, the start of the TV Guide week was Friday, and the home of the Chicago Cubs was WGN. (Ah, for the days of the Superstation. Why couldn't I have been retired back then?) Today, the Cubbies take on the New York Giants; coverage begins at 12:45 p.m. CT, with Baseball with the Girls, followed by the pre-game at 1:00, and the game at 1:30. That night, on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (7:00 p.m., ABC), we get right to the heart of the matter, with one of Ozzie's neighbors telling him that "women prefer unpredictable men." I suppose that might be true, but you can see what kind of hilarity will result from this, can't you?
On
Saturday, it's one of those lovely mysteries, albeit one that originally premiered in the theaters:
The Chinese Cat (Noon, WGN), starring Sidney Toler as the great Charlie Chan, who has four hours to solve a case that's stumped the police for six months. Think he can do it? Considering Toler still has nine more movies in the series, my money's on the Chan man. In primetime, it's Bob Cummings as the aforementioned Bob Beanblossom, who "tries to serve eviction papers but turns kitten when he has orders to be "The Tiger" on
My Hero (7:00 p.m., NBC).
Little-known fact: before
Hallmark Hall of Fame turned into a series of acclaimed specials, it was a weekly series that aired on
Sunday afternoons, and had as its host and occasional star the noted actress (and daughter of Winston), Sarah Churchill. This week, she stars in "My Own True Darlin'" (4:00 p.m., NBC), an original musical comedy for television, based on the real-life story of the "
Mercer Girls," women who moved from the East to Seattle to become wives. Yes, it's the basis for the series
Here Come the Brides. Later, on Ed Sullivan's
Toast of the Town (7:00 p.m., CBS), guest host Tony Martin welcomes opera star Roberta Peters, the comedy Wiere Brothers, the dance team of Elsa and Waldo, harmonica player Richard Hayman, and comedian Joey Foreman. Had there been a
Palace, I think it would have stood a good chance this week.
On Monday, Voice of Firestone (7:30 p.m., NBC) tunes up for the 4th of July next week with a salute to Independence Day, starring Metropolitan Opera tenor Eugene Conley, singing a medley of patriotic songs. On Summer Theater (9:00 p.m., CBS), tonight's drama is "Greed," with Hurd Hatfield as a young man whose desire for his grandfather's fortune leads to a murder attempt with either riches or suicide in the offing. There's no word as to whether or not he's confronted by a man at the door insisting he's his grandfather, and is even able to produce some old family friends who say he is. The midnight movie on WBKB, Beyond Tomorrow (1940), is now considered a seasonal movie, if not quite a Christmas tradition; it's the story of three old men who invite a young couple to their mansion for Christmas dinner. Watching it in June is kind of like popping It's a Wonderful Life in the DVD to celebrate Labor Day.
Tuesday's episode of This Is Your Life (8:30 p.m., NBC) is, presumably, a rerun since the honoree is Roy Rogers, and Ralph Edwards famously kept those identities a secret in the days of live television. Meanwhile, on Danger (9:00 p.m., CBS), we run into a familiar theme: in "Surface Tension," "an oil prospector begins to imagine that his best friend and his wife are falling in love, so he plots to murder the friend." See, there is some variety in these shows—unless, that is, a man shows up at his front door who says he's his best friend, and. . . oh, never mind.
Here's something I've not encountered before: on Wednesday afternoon, WGN's 4:00 p.m. movie (title yet to be determined) is a "full length feature cut down to accommodate the ending time of the ball game.") That would be the Chicago White Sox game against the St. Louis Browns (soon to be the Baltimore Orioles), which begins at 1:30 p.m. The movie is scheduled to run until 4:45 p.m., which means it could be cut to, say, even 30 minutes. Can you imagine tuning in to Ben Hur and finding out you're getting the Reader's Digest Condensed version instead? In fact, the game, won by the Sox 13-4, runs 2:38; assuming it started at 1:35 (the National Anthem, etc.), it would have ended at 4:13 p.m., and if you figure, oh, five minutes to sign off, that means we get 27 minutes for the movie. Otherwise we run into Beany and Cecil, which probably had higher ratings.
Dinah Shore signs off for the season at 6:30 p.m. on
Friday (NBC), and when she and the cast come to the studio, "they find it empty, and so take on the duties of the stage hands and erect the scenery themselves." (Probably violating some kind of union regulation, but whatever.) In this week's cover story, writer, producer, and director Alan Handley says Dinah is one of the best stars to work with in the business. "When you tell a star that on the next show she is to slide down a fireman's pole and her reply is, 'Can I wear slacks or do I have to do it in a dress?' then you know you're working with a real star." She has, Handley says, a "rare combination of talent, beauty, brains and sheer graciousness." No matter what the task, there are never any complaints, never a sign of ego. I'll admit that while I haven't read much in-depth about Dinah Shore, this seems to jibe with what I do know; I've never heard anyone speak ill of her. Says Handley, "Her warmth and sincerity don't go on and off with the stage make-up."
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Rumor abound that color television might be available to the public by Christmas of this year. Could it be? The RCAS all-electronic compatible system, one of three competitors competing for approval from the FCC (the other two being CBS's mechanical disc system and the Lawrence tube, developed by Drs. Ernest Lawrence and Luis Alvarez.) In the case of the RCA system, "all-electronic" means that the transmission is handled by image orthicon tubes, as is the case with black-and-white transmission, while "compatible" refers to the ability of the color image to be received by standard sets in black-and-white. That said, what you can see here is an actual picture taken "directly from the face of a television set tube during a demonstration of the RCA system," next to the same exact picture in black-and-white. (The model is the charming Marie McNamara.)
As you can see, the quality of the color picture is excellent, repeated tests have been successful, equipment is in experimental use, and some sets have already been manufactured. So what's holding things up? In a word, politics.
So far, the FCC has approved only the CBS system, which is not compatible; in other words, "you could receive these color telecasts in black-and-white only if you purchased adapters and converters." Several Congressional leaders, backed by the mighty influence of the RCA corporation, are pressing for FCC approval of the RCA system, but were that to happen, you'd require two sets, one in each format, to receive all the color programs available, since the systems are not compatible with each other. The new sets are likely to be quite expensive, at least until the tubes can be mass-produced. And Dr. Allen DuMont believes that a three-dimensional system should take precedence over color.
Before we can look forward to color broadcasts in our homes, at least three things have to happen. First, the FCC has to make a final decision on which system is to be used. (spoiler alert: RCA wins.) Second, the equipment for transmitting color telecasts has to be standardized. And third, color sets will need to be put on a mass-production basis to lower costs.
In other words, there ain't gonna be a color TV under the tree this Christmas.
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A quick take on some coming attractions: Oscar-winner Broderick Crawford is talking about a turn on TV, in a series called Manhunt. I wonder if that doesn't wind up being Highway Patrol, which premieres in 1956 and has a successful four-season run in syndication.
NBC is looking at big changes in its daytime lineup; Dave Garroway's Today show, currently seen only in the East and Midwest, will be available in California this fall. The show will be kinescoped from the live feed, and then replayed at 7:00 a.m. Pacific time. Also, the network plans a mid-morning hour-long show called Home, hosted by Arlene Francis, which will feature "drama, music, how-to segments and news, all geared to the housewife audience." It's all part of Pat Weaver's plan for the complete broadcast day; the third member of the triumvirate, Tonight, will be along next September.
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Television hasn't quite relegated network radio to the sidelines (although it's doing its best), and we're reminded of that by an ad for WMAQ radio—I like that idea of radio advertising in TV Guide—which mentions that Bob Hope's daily radio program can now be heard a hour earlier, at 9:30 a.m. Monday through Friday. It's a show "designed especially for women" (so it
isn't just television!), with "chatter, guest stars, human interest stories, 'a lady of the week' feature, Jell-O recipes and the inevitable gags and cracks. Remember gals, it's WMAQ for daytime Hope at 9:30 a.m. every weekday." Who says everything is Hopeless?
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