This week in TV Guide: April 10, 1965

Even the word sounds quaint, old fashioned. Smut. Sounds like something your grandmother might have warned you about, and if she'd been around in 1965, reading TV Guide, she might have felt justified after reading Leslie Raddatz's article—first in a three-part series—on "Smut in the Living Room."

It's one of the first articles we've seen that indicates a shift, perhaps ever so slight, toward sex replacing violence as the number one concern of television viewers. Raddatz suggests that this may be due to television's ever-increasing use of movies to fill in scheduling gaps. With those older movies that have been staples of broadcasting since the start comes the newer fare from Hollywood, which New York Times critic Bosley Crowther describes as containing "an unmistakable surge of sensuality and just plain smut." Two of the leading offenders of the moment are Kiss Me, Stupid, which Playboy (of all sources) described as "amateur night at a third-rate burlesque house" and The Carpetbaggers, described by Life as "An untalented leering paean to sex." Since this is a three-part article, we're not going to see a comprehensive analysis of the situation right away; indeed, in part one, Raddatz focuses his attention on two men in particular: Billy Wilder, the man who brought us Kiss Me, Stupid; and Joseph E. Levine, the producer of The Carpetbaggers.

Wilder won't discuss Kiss Me, Stupid, but Raddatz has plenty to say about Wilder, whose career and his work "have often verged on an, at best, unconventional and sometimes seamy borderline." Critics have addressed "the inner nihilism, the impatience and contempt for the audience" in many of his movies, and a former associate calls him "the only guy I know who could sneer 'Merry Christmas.' " Despite this, or perhaps because of it, he's one of Hollywood's most honored directors, with the Oscars to prove it. 

   Is this as hot as it gets while fully clothed?

Wilder came from humble origins—when he moved from Berlin to the United States, he initially lived in an unused ladies' lavatory of a hotel—and Raddatz wonders, in the psychoanalytical style of the times, if his desire to bend the boundaries of acceptability somehow constitute "a defense of his base beginnings." His movies tend to deal with "distasteful or single-entendre themes," such as adultery in Double Indemnity and The Apartment, alcoholism in The Lost Weekend, drag in Some Like it Hot, prostitution in Irma la Douce, and—raising the states—double adultery in Kiss Me, Stupid, which Life, in its put-down of the movie, said included "situations and a dialog that would generate blushes in a smoker car." Wilder, an opponent of censorship by "ladies' clubs in Nebraska," professes delight with television, since it gives those in movies "something to look down on."

Levine, whose movies, like Wilder's, have won honors, has several already running on television: "Two Women, which involves the rape of a woman and her teen-age daughter, Room at the Top, which concerns adultery; A Taste of Honey, which deals with illegitimacy and homosexuality; and The Mark, which is about a suspected child molester." The movies run later in the evening, at 10:00 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and carry with them a respectability that seems often to be absent from Wilder's films. 

They also tend to spark less outrage than those of Wilder's, and Raddatz wonders if this might be the answer to a problem faced by television programmers. "The great thing," according to one Hollywood journalist, "is that television has taken over the place of program pictures and B pictures, so that good adult movies can be made. If these adult films can’t be shown on television, does it mean that all motion pictures are to be made at the level of the TV viewer?" In other words, the critics can focus their barbs on Kiss Me, Stupid and the like, allowing "worthwhile adult films in dignified fashion" such as Room at the Top and Two Women to be viewed as acceptable alternatives. 

Or, he wonders at the conclusion of part one, when these new displays of smut turn up on television, will we see things come to a point? Will we see more self-regulation, or is the government, "—either through Congressional committees or the Federal Communications Commission—preparing to move into this sensitive area?"

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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era. 

The question before us is this: is For the People really for the viewers? Cleveland Amory is inclined to think so, although he concedes it may not be for all the people. But as a logical successor to The Defenders, he thinks this legal drama will do just fine. Like its predecessor, the show is long on realism, and desiring of topicality—even though its grittiness may, at times, come close to discouraging us. But, he says, if you stick with it, you won't be sorry.

For the People, as the title might suggest, takes the opposite tack from The Defenders (given that it's produced by the same people, comparisons are unavoidable), with William Shatner as assistant D.A. David Koster, an earnest, bulldog prosecutor, aided by his boss (Howard Da Silva), a friendly detective (Lonny Chapman), and his loyal wife (Jessica Walter), who sometimes wishes he could just let go of the job for awhile. It boasts an equally fine lineup of guest stars, all of whom turn in particularly fine performances. It is, Cleve says, as "equally exciting" as The Defenders, but "even more penetrating and engrossing." 

As someone who, for the most part, appreciated The Defenders and, in fact, has seen a couple of episodes of For the People, I can sympathize, even agree, with much of what Amory says. Where we part company, though, is in the matter of the show's star. Amory sees Shatner as "right up there in the big leagues with David Janssen, Robert Lansing, Vic Morrow and Richard Crenna," to which I can only scoff. This is not to be unduly harsh on the Shat, but I've always felt that he was almost always the weak link in every production he's appeared in. In For the People, as in most of his roles, he comes across either as overly intense, or so over the top that you'd think he was working behind a deli counter, he's hurling so much ham around. I know a lot of you might not agree with me on this, but to suggest that he's in the same league as those other actors is probably the funniest thing I'll read in this issue; he might conceivably be close to Morrow (although I can't envision Shatner in Combat!), but as for the other three, it strikes me as, frankly, preposterous. Apparently the viewers felt at least somewhat the same: For the People lasts but 13 weeks before shuffling off this mortal coil.

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This week may seem to you a lot like last week, which wouldn't be surprising, given that Easter doesn't have a fixed date each year. (If you're interested in just how the date for Easter is determined, you can read about it here.) One of those duplicates from last week is the Masters, golf's first major of the season, which concludes this weekend with CBS's coverage of the third and fourth rounds (Saturday, 2:00 p.m. PT, Sunday, 1:00 p.m.) What promises to be a thrilling showdown between golf's big three of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player—tied for the lead after 36 holes—fails to materialize as Nicklaus puts the pedal to the metal over the weekend, shooting 64-69 to finish with a then-record score of -17, winning by nine shots (another record at the time) over Palmer and Player, who finish tied for second.

One of the commentators on CBS's coverage is Dr. Cary Middlecoff, who won the Masters himself in 1955; this week, he sits down with Melvin Durslag to discuss what he sees as a threat to golf's success on television: overexposure. There's no question that televised golf is thriving at the moment, helping lift prize money to a then-unheard-of $3.5 million over 43 PGA tournaments. (By comparision, last year's Masters—a single tournament—offered $20 million in prize money, including $3.6 million for the winner.) Much of the popularity for the sport, Middlecoff believes, is due to former President Eisenhower, the world's most famous golfer. "While he was in office, he played golf, he watched golf and he talked golf. He made people conscious of the sport." And Arnold Palmer, the most charismatic golfer around, has certainly made the sport attractive. But Middlecoff sees a dark side to all this. "The money is rolling in now," he concedes, "but we could be heading toward overexposure. I wonder what's going to happen if people start watching tournaments, say, 30 times a year on TV." He thinks 15 televised tournaments a year would be about right; "Otherwise, the public will lose interest."

This might sound ridiculous at first glance. Is there any such thing as overexposure for a sport on television? For a long while—during the Tiger Woods boom—people couldn't seem to get enough of it on TV. The result is that today, every tournament is televised, either on networks or cable. And not just the final holes of the final two rounds, either; by shuttling between stations, one can see every shot, not only of those weekend rounds, but the first two rounds as well. And when you combine that saturation coverage with prize money that encourages the top professionals to play only a handful of tournaments each year, plus a general lack of charismatic stars—well, is it any wonder why ratings for golf have fallen dramatically over the past few seasons? Having most of the world's best players competing in rival golf leagues doesn't help, either. Clearly, there are probably two dozen tournaments that could be dropped from the TV schedule without anyone noticing. Which would leave us with somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 tournaments that become important viewing. Just what the doctor ordered, it would seem. (Or dentist, in Cary Middlecoff's case.)

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As with last week, this Sunday is Palm Sunday, which leads into some interesting seasonal programming, chief among them being the one-act Passover opera "The Final Ingredient," commissioned by and airing on ABC's Directions '65 (Sunday, 1:00 p.m.). The music is by David Amram, with a libretto by Arnold Weinstein, based on a television play by Reginald Rose. Amram, who most recently composed the movie score for The Manchurian Candidate), also conducts the orchestra in this story of inmates in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, preparing to celebrate the Seder for Passover. Willialm Covington, Joseph Sopher, and Malcolm Smith are among the stars in this production, which ABC likely hoped would become an annual event, a la "Amahl and the Night Visitors." Not for the first time, I'm amazed at how little information there is out there on a program that was considered important at the time, was composed by a prominent composer, and was released on record. More info than we see on some lost programs, but still, it goes to show how lost the television historian would be without TV Guide.

Among other Passover programs, there's also "From Exodus to Selma; Marching for Freedom" (Sunday, 10:30 a.m, KRON in San Francisco), in which Bay Area rabbis who participated in the Selma civil rights march discuss "the Jewish concept of freedom found in the Passover as translated into present-day civil rights action." It's a prime example of the social justice bug, one of the plagues of the 1960s, working even then to infect religion, turning it away from the spiritual and toward earthly things.

Continuing, NBC presents a Palm Sunday Mass from St. Peter in Chains Cathedral in Cincinnati (8:00 a.m.). Later Sunday, it's That I May See (11:15 p.m., KSBW in Salinas), with Ruth Hussey and Raymond Burr in a story of Bartimeus, the blind beggar healed by Christ. Tuesday's Bell Telephone Hour (10:00 p.m., NBC) offers an hour of music saluting both the sacred and romantic aspects of spring, hosted by Olivia de Havilland, and featuring Metropolitan Opera star Richard Tucker, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Dorothy Collins, Ron Husmann, Anita Gillette, and dancers Edward Villella and Patricia McBride. On Thursday, the First Baptist Church choir and orchestra of San Jose presents a half-hour of Easter music (7:30 p.m., KNTV in San Jose). Finally, a pair of seasonal movies commemorate Good Friday; at 9:00 p.m. it's The King of Kings (KVIE in Sacramento), Cecil B. DeMille's original silent spectacular from 1926, starring H.B. Warner; then, at 10:00 p.m., Paul Newman stars in 1955's The Silver Chalice (KXTV in Sacramento). Newman, by the way, was a better actor than William Shatner.

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Thursday night's Kraft Suspense Theatre (10:00 p.m., NBC) airs "Rapture at 240" (video here), the pilot for the upcoming fall series Run for Your Life, starring Ben Gazzara as a man faced with an unspecified terminal illness*, leaving him a couple of years to squeeze in a lifetime of living. The fact that Run for Your Life ran for three seasons always seems to have tainted the series a bit, and some have thought that this was a reason ratings for the series dipped that third season, leading to the show's cancellation. I don't know about that; after all, M*A*S*H, Hogan's Heroes, and Combat! all had longer durations than the wars in which they took place; as someone once pointed out, TV time runs differently from normal time. (There's a website out there that actually posited an unofficial timeline showing how the episodes could have taken place in the given time.) My suspicion is that it might have had more to do with the main character, Paul Bryan, not always being all that likeable, but then I could be reading my own thoughts about Ben Gazzara into that. I think Gazzara might have preferred that the series lean a little more into the existentialism inherent in its concept, which I would agree with. One thing I think we can agree on is that Ben Gazzara was a superior dramatic actor to, say, William Shatner. 

*Some sites have posited that the disease from which Paul Bryan was suffering was chronic myelocytic leukemia, which is plausible as diseases go. It is true, however, that it was never given a name in the series, and if it were, it would be in this pilot, where we see Bryan's doctor giving him the death sentence.

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Among the rest of the week's highlights, we have more sports: Saturday, it's bowling's preeminent event, the $100,000 Firestone Tournament of Champions in Akron (3:30 p.m., ABC; video here). Billy Hardwick defeats Dick Weber in the final, taking home a prize of $25,000—more, I'll have you know, than Jack Nicklaus got for winning the Masters. Yes, bowling was a big sport back then. In prime time, KRCR in Redding carries David L. Wolper's documentary The General (6:30 p.m.), a profile of General Douglas MacArthur on the first anniversary of his death. Later, The Hollywood Palace is preempted for the special "Mission to Malaya," a profile of Peace Corps volunteers and the hardships they deal with in Malaya. (9:30 p.m., ABC)

On Sunday, the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers clash in the fifth game of their Eastern Division final (2:00 p.m., ABC), with the Celtics taking a 114-108 victory and a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series. The Celtics eventually win in seven, on their way to a five-game victory over the Los Angeles Lakers and their seventh consecutive NBA championship. And now that I think about it, it's probably a good thing Palace was preempted this week, because I don't think it would have had a chance against Ed Sullivan's lineup, which includes Maurice Chevalier, Cab Calloway, the San Francisco Ballet, singer Felicia Sanders, Soupy Sales, Gerry and the Pacemakers, juggler Rudy Schweitzer, comedian Loundon Lee, light heavyweight champion Jose Torres, and Stiller and Meara.

Saturday was the first anniversary of Douglas MacArthur's death; Monday is the 20th anniversary of the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Charles Kuralt hosts a one-hour special, "FDR Remembered" (10:00 p.m., CBS), looking at the personal side of the late president. Included among the interviews is one with Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. at the family home in Hyde Park, New York. 

Monday was baseball's Opening Day, and in honor of the season, the Channel 7 all-night triple feature begins with It Happened in Flatbush (Tuesday, 1:00 a.m.), with Lloyd Nolan as a former big-leaguer hired as manager of a team on its last legs. Carole Landis co-stars. Wednesday, Robert Cromie's guest on Book Beat is Ladislas Farago, discussing his book Patton: Ordeal and Triumph, the basis for the 1970 movie biography that won an Oscar for George C. Scott. 

The late Richard Chamberlain is put in charge of the annual nurses and residents' review on Dr. Kildare (Thursday, 8:30 p.m., NBC), giving us a chance to find out that the staff of Blair General Hospital is not only much larger but much more talented that we might have thought, what with Darryl Hickman, Rosemary De Camp, ◀ Dorothy Provine, and Jud Taylor being among the guest stars. 

On Friday, Jack Paar's Good Friday show includes Charlton Heston (a better actor than William Shatner, by the way), who reads a passage from Genesis that inspired Michelangelo's painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; author Morris West (whose previous novels include The Shoes of the Fisherman), discussing the Vietnam situation in conjunction with his new novel, The Ambassador; and Bob Newhart, who has nothing to do with Good Friday, but is always welcome for good humor. (10:00 p.m., NBC)

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We haven't had a fashion spread for a while, so I can't think of a better time for one than now, to wrap up the week. It features Barbara Barrie modeling the year's hottest trend: leather. For motorcycle riding, you know. 

Of course, any fan of The Avengers could talk to you about leather. TV  

This week in TV Guide: April 7, 1956

With tensions between the United States and Canada running high at the moment, it seems appropriate to lead off this week with an article from Gordon Sinclair, the legendary Canadian journalist who in 1973 will become famous south of the border for his editorial on behalf of America at a time when the rest of the world is taking potshots at her. He's writing on the state of Canadian television, which he describes as "green," as it was in America a few years before; "there's no doubt that the future is just as bright" but at this moment, don't expect to see "the same slick technique you get in the States." Indeed, TV in Canada is still a little rough around the edges: "Our scripts are pedestrian, our crews are inexperienced and our directors seem hesitant to direct. Or even to suggest to performers older than themselves how to play a scene better."

Canadians produce 38 hours of network television each week, ranking third behind Hollywood and New York. Canadians have produced stars of American television, including Lorne Greene, Gisele MacKenzie and Barry Morse. (But no William Shatner?) Canadian shows have their share of curvy females, including Joan Fairfax and Shirley Harmer. But American television is still more popular than many home-grown shows; one of those native shows, Cross Canada Hit Parade (similar to Your Hit Parade in the States) is a twice-weekly musical showcase. A guest star ("usually American") is invited to sing a top record; MacKenzie, Canada's "most glittering expert in the field of song," has never appeared on the show. She was offered as much as $2,000 for a one-shot, but "showed no interest." And Fairfax, who was once voted "Miss Canadian Television" (because of her picture tubes?) has a Monday variety hour she co-hosts with Denny Vaughan, but it's beaten in the ratings by Robert Montgomery Presents; "You see, American programs are highly popular north of the border."

One of Canadian television's sitcoms, the French-Canadian Plouffe Family, is unique in that "it must be the only dramatic show on earth bradcast in two languages by the same cast playing the identical parts." A nice trick if you can pull it off. And there's the comic team of Johnny Wayne and Frank SHuster, "who are vulgar or delightful, depending on how you feel about such stuff." (Ed Sullivan was one who obviously expressed the latter; he had the two on his show 58 times.) On the Jackie Rae Show, he says, Canadians occasionally get the unexpected—along with imported guests. There are even what Sinclair describes as "fleeting glimpses of high comedy," which means Canada's Jackie doesn't really measure up to America's Jackie (Gleason, that is). Don't despair, thoughf: Sinclair suggests Canadian television will one day thrive. After all, even the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the government-run entity that "frowns on press agentry and commercial exploitation" hasn't been able to completely subdue the spirit of Canadian TV.

Where, I wonder, is today's Gordon Sinclair? We could certainly use him, on both sides of the border.

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Let's make sure we take care of the cover stories. The cover picture of Garry Moore, host of the quiz show I've Got a Secret, along with the show's two female panelists of the time, Jayne Meadows and Faye Emerson (much better looking than the male panelists, Bill Cullen and Henry Morgan) doesn't really have anything to do with the inside story. That's about the "secret" files of I've Got a Secret, which aren't really that secret. What is a secret, or at least something many of you might not have known, is that IGAS was created by Allan Sherman, the singer-comedian who was Weird Al before Weird Al, best-known for the hit single "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah." This week Sherman talks about some of the up to 4,000 secrets he receives each week—people with 12 toes or 13 fingers or no eyebrows, but also people with relatives who came to America on the Mayflower or shook hands with Abraham Lincoln, a man who went over Niagara Falls in a rubber ball and lived to tell about it, the first man to cash a Social Security check, or the woman who won the first Miss America pageant. By the way, Sherman says, if you have 40 toes he'll take you, but if it's only 12, don't bother.

After that, we go down south to Nashville, and visit the Grand Ole Opry. The Opry is already an American institution, having started in 1925, and what's surprising about its transition to television is not that it's happened, but that it took this long. The 1955-56 fall season brought about the premiere of the Opry on ABC, where once a month it substitutes for Ozark Jubilee, another Country-Western program, and in rural areas (which, remember, make up a much larger part of America in 1956 than they do today), it is absolutely slaughtering the competition, Perry Como and Jackie Gleason.

This week's article takes a kind of quaint approach to the whole thing, pointing out that these Country stars are just as business-savvy as anyone—hardly surprising considering how successful the Grand Ole Opry has been over the years; and when you think of how big Country music has become as a business, I think it shows these "hayseeds" have always been pretty shrewd business people.

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Two new soap operas premiered last week on CBS, and they're unusual in that they run for 30 minutes, rather than the traditional 15-minute format (a carryover from radio; you notice a lot of shows fit into that category). You might have heard of them: As the World Turns and The Edge of Night. Incidentally, The Edge of Night started out as "the daytime version of Perry Mason," with Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner writing it, but the notoriously temperamental Gardner pulls out due to "creative differences,"* and the character of the heroic lawyer is changed from Mason to Mike Karr, played by John Larkin, who played Mason on the radio.

*According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, those differences include Mason having a regular girlfriend, which throws into question that intriguing relationship with his secretary, Della Street. That's something Gardner, who jealously guarded Mason's image, would never agree to.

Speaking of the great lawyer, there's an interesting item in this week's Hollywood Teletype: "If everybody can agree on the contracts, Fred MacMurray will wind up as lawyer Perry Mason in the new CBS hour-long detective series." Discussions had gotten to the point that a Gardner memo states, "Apparently Fred MacMurray is the person who will probably be selected." It's an intriguing thought; like Burr, MacMurray had played many the heavy in movies up to that time (and would continue to do so; check him out in The Apartment), and there are many who think that Burr brought, from those roles as a heavy, an underlying sense of menace that gave his Mason, especially in the early seasons, a real edge of danger. Could MacMurray have done the same? He was certainly talented enough, but when Burr finally had the chance to audition for the role (he'd previously been tried as Hamilton Burger), he is said to have so impressed Gardner that he told Bur, "In twenty minutes, you captured Perry Mason better than I did in twenty years." That, presumably, was the end of that.

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Baseball is back! Well, kind of; it's still Spring Training, but on Saturday the New York Giants take on the Cleveland Indians in a pre-season game live from Dallas, home of this week's TV Guide. (1:25 p.m. CT, CBS). Dizzy Dean and Buddy Blattner call the action. It's not the big sports story of the weekend, though; that would be the final round of the Masters Golf Tournament, live from Augusta, Georgia. (Sunday, 4:00 p.m., CBS) It's the first time for the Masters on television (and the start of the tournament's long association with CBS), and the first major championship for Jack Burke Jr.,  who came from eight shots behind to defeat amateur Ken Venturi by one stroke. It remains the last time no golfer broke par for the tournament. 

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There's some real star power in this week's shows. On Saturday night's Ford Star Jubilee (9:30 p.m., CBS), Orson Welles and Betty Grable make rare television appearances in the comedy "Twentieth Century," written by the famed Broadway duo of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. Welles would come to do a lot of television in the last couple of decades of his life—remember those cheesy appearances on the Dean Martin roasts and the commercials for Paul Masson wine? ("We will sell no wine before its time.")—but in 1956 he was still a star, known for The War of the Worlds and Citizen Kane and The Third Man, and still two years away from his noir classic Touch of Evil. Ah, one has to pay the bills, however, and Welles was always looking for money for his latest projects, many of which sadly never came to fruition. As he once famously said, "I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts."*

*By the way, if you're interested in absorbing article on Welles, check out this New Yorker piece by Alex Ross from ten years ago, celebrating the Welles centennial. It truly seems as if Orson Welles could only have been a character concocted in an Orson Welles movie.

On Sunday afternoon the American composer Norman Dello Joio premieres his opera "The Trial at Rouen" on NBC Opera Theatre (3:00 p.m.). It's Dello Joio's second crack at rendering an operatic version of the story of Joan of Arc. His first, "The Triumph of St. Joan," premiered in 1950, but Dello Joio was never happy with it, and eventually reworked the story (but neither the music nor the libretto) into the 75-minute opera (plus commercials) that you'd be seeing on television. There's yet a third version to come, however, as Dello Joio will add some of the music from the 1950 version to the 1956 version while creating some new scenes and expanding on others, resulting in the 1959 version, also called "The Triumph of St. Joan." Many of the critics of the time will consider it to be the best of the three versions of the story.

That night, G.E. Theater (8:00 p.m., CBS) presents Judy Garland in an informal one-woman show, performing a half-hour of songs she's never before done in public, and backed by pianist Leonard Pennario and choreographer Peter Gennaro (who did Annie, West Side Story and The Unsinkable Molly Brown, among other Broadway hits). It's introduced by host Ronald Reagan.

If you happen to own the boxed set of Studio One episodes that came out a few years ago, you'll have seen the Rod Serling political drama "The Arena," airing Monday night (9:00 p.m., CBS), with Wendell Corey as an ambitious young senator dealing with the legacy (and feuds) of his father. (If not, you can watch it here.) You might have thought, watching it, that it was substandard Serling, one of the episodes that helped drive him to create The Twilight Zone. The problem, as he writes in his 1957 collection of television plays Patterns: Four Television Plays With The Author’s Personal Commentaries, is not a new one: interference from the network and sponsors. His reaction, however, shows us the direction he is already considering going:

I was not permitted to have my Senators discuss any current or pressing problem. To talk of tariff was to align oneself with the Republicans; to talk of labor was to suggest control by the Democrats. To say a single thing germane to the current political scene was absolutely prohibited. So on television in April 1956, several million viewers got a definitive picture of television’s concept of politics and the way government is run. They were treated to an incredible display on the floor of The United States Senate of groups of Senators shouting, gesticulating and talking in hieroglyphics about make-believe issues, using invented terminology, in a kind of prolonged, unbelievable double-talk… In retrospect, I probably would have had a much more adult play had I made it science fiction, put it in the year 2057, and peopled the Senate with robots. This would probably have been more reasonable and no less dramatically incisive.

I suspect this episode was included in the DVD collection because 1) it was Serling, and 2) it was in fairly good condition. There are likely better episodes that could have been chosen. "The Arena" isn't bad, mind you, but far from peak Serling.

Dinah Shore currently hosts a twice-weekly 15-minute show (Tuesday and Thursday evenings on NBC, filling the remainder of the half hour occupied by John Cameron Swayzee's News Caravan), but she's talking about dumping that in favor of an hour-long Tuesday night show; another idea is to keep the current show, while adding a number of hour-long specials. The latter gets a tryout tonight (7:00 p.m., NBC), with Dinah welcoming Dean Martin and Marge and Gower Champion. As it turns out, nothing could be finah than to catch an hour of Dinah: The Dinah Shore Chevy Show starts up this October, and runs until 1963. (Her 15-minute show, which airs at 6:15 p.m. tonight, is guest-hosted by Gordon MacRae.) And, in the "you might be interested" category, a note on The 64,000 Question (9:00 p.m, CBS) tells us that, "As of the 43rd show, emcee Hal March has given out $544,608 and nine luxury automobiles." 

On Wednesday, M-G-M Parade (7:30 p.m., ABC) presents "The Greatness of Garbo," the conclusion of a two-part tribute to the legendary star. (Presumably, Garbo speaks.) Parade is the subject of Robert Sanders' review this week, which isn't a positive one; last month, Walter Pidgeon had been introduced as the new host, and the format of the show had been altered to present serialized versions of movies along with clips from the M-G-M vault. The problem, Sanders says, is that this doesn't produce any new material for television; the studio execs seem to "presumptously believe that viewers will be eager to watch their old hit movies and promotional plugs for new movies." And when movies are chopped up into two or three parts, "viewers cannot help but lose interest." Anyway, it only has another month to run. One story you'll get to see all at once is "The Funny Heart," tonight's presentation on The U.S. Steel Hour (9:00 p.m., CBS), with Imogene Coca, the female side of the team that made Your Show of Shows such a success, making her dramatic television debut. 

Thursday we see another of those shows that we likely won't see today, The All-American Homemaker of Tomorrow (7:00 p.m., ABC), sponsored by Betty Crocker, with the aforementioned Hal March on hand to crown the winner (or whatever is was they did). The competition, which was comprised of high school students who'd won similar competitions at the local level, began in 1955, and ran through 1977. You might be interested to know that one of the future contestants will be now-Senator Elizabeth Warren, competiting in 1966 as the representative from Northwest Classen High School in Oklahoma City. Meantime, Shower of Stars (7:30 p.m., CBS) presents a review of current musical trends, with Frankie Lane and Joe E. Brown sharing the hosting duties. 

On Friday, John Newland, who we'll come to know better as the host of One Step Beyond, stars in "The Bitter Land" on Schlitz Playhouse of Stars (8:00 p.m., CBS), as a father heading West to revenge the death of his son during a bank robbery. Later, Edward R. Murrow interviews pollster George Gallup on Person to Person (9:30 p.m., CBS), discussing the exotic art of measuring public opinion. It was probably just as accurate then as it is today.

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Finally, there's a small ad on the bottom of Wednesday's listings referring to the social event of the year, perhaps the television event of the year, with the provocative question: "How much will you see?"

That event is the marriage of the Academy Award-winning actress Grace Kelly to Prince Rainier of Monaco, and everybody who's anybody will be heading over there to cover it. At the end of this week's What's My Line?, John Daly mentions that both Dorothy Kilgallen and Arlene Francis will be in Monaco to cover the wedding (Dorothy for the New York Journal American, Arlene for her Home show on NBC), and a worldwide audience estimated at 30 million tunes in for the formal ceremony on April 19.

It's an interesting mix of attendees; with Rainier as a head of state, a vast assemblage of diplomats and other heads of state are present, while Grace's status as Hollywood royalty attracts such luminaries as Cary Grant (who costarred with her in the Monaco-based To Catch a Thief), David Niven, Gloria Swanson, Ava Gardner and Aristotle Onassis, and her iconic wedding dress is designed by MGM's Helen Rose.* In essence, this is Charles and Di before Charles and Di.

*According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, this dress was the inspiration for that worn by Kate Middleton for her wedding to Prince William.

There are actually two marriage ceremonies; the first, a civil ceremony required by law, was held on April 18, while the Catholic Nuptial Mass, the televised event, was held the following day at St. Nicholas Cathedral. I'm not sure of the answer to TV Guide's question of how much viewers will see, but here's a brief look at what all the shouting was about. TV  

This week in TV Guide: March 7, 1959

Walter Brennan—veteran of nearly 40 years in the movies, three-time Oscar winner, and currently the star of ABC's The Real McCoys—has some interesting thoughts on television: "It's like ice cream. Awfully good stuff but you've got to be careful not to 'eat' too much of it."

In truth, he wonders why anyone would willingly choose to do a television series, given the workload. "We have to cover 14 script pages a day and do 39 shows a year. I wake up in the middle of the night wondering why a man in his right mind does it. Why, I see more of the people I work with in The Real McCoys than I do my own wife."

On the other hand, he also understands that television is the future, and that anyone who wants to continue working is going to have to gravitate towards it. "TV is the thing that is modern, and you've got to go along with it. They sorta talked me into this series against my better judgment. Now that I'm in—well, I think we've got a good show. Anyway, people seem to like it. And I like the people on the show. And I'm rather taken with [his character] Grampa McCoy."

I suppose it's likely more people saw Walter Brennan during the six seasons (plus endless reruns, not to mention DVD and streaming) of The Real McCoys than all of his movies put together. It's true that his three Best Supporting Actor Oscars came from a different time in the movies, when the role of the supporting actor was well and exclusively defined. (One wouldn't see Meryl Streep, for example, slumming in a Supporting Actress role.) And television has been very good to Brennan, giving him an income that, with his careful management, has allowed him to become a wealthy man. With that kind of security comes the freedom to be outspoken, and Brennan has some definite thoughts on TV. He's fond of it and watches it "a good deal" until something on it starts to annoy him. He's a big fan of his own show (never misses it), and prefers programs like Gunsmoke, Lawrence Welk, George Burns and Red Skelton to the "prestige" dramas such as Playhouse 90.

On the other hand. . . "I don't watch to criticize, but of course you can't help it. I even criticize myself. I don't like all this violence on TV these days. I don't like depressing things. I have an instinct to watch the other guy. . . If a guy thinks at all, he knows he's fortunate to have had a little recognition. He'd be silly to think it was all him." He recalls a conversation he had with a successful film director, to whom he said, "'God has been very kind to you.' He said, 'What do you mean! I did it all myself.' I said—well, you can't print what I said."

Brennan and Dezi Arnez once figured that The Real McCoys would be good for about five seasons before hitting the wall, and that's just fine with him.  "To be in this business longer than that a man really has to have a hole in his head."  It's not his last go-round in the weekly series department, though, with upcoming stops such as the underrated The Guns of Will Sonnett (a curious late-60s Western that debuted long after the golden age of Westerns had ended) and To Rome With Love.  For anyone familiar with Brennan's Western persona, a must-see is his lampooning of that character in the wonderful James Garner comedy Support Your Local Sheriff!

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Here's a headline you don't see often: "How Television Encourages Children to Read." This is so contrary to the conventional thinking, both then and now, that it deserves a closer look.

The idea is that television shows send children running to the library to learn more about what they've seen, whether it be stars like Wyatt Earp, Robin Hood and Davy Crockett, or books on "how to make a monster."

The bulk of the article details the ways in which libraries are learning how to use the new medium to their own advantage. In Philadelphia, for instance, librarians publicize upcoming shows such as Peter Pan or Sleeping Beauty and suggest to kids that they'll want to read the book before they see the program. In Los Angeles, where their evidence suggests "television programs stimulate children to read more widely," Davy Crockett is such a big hit that one patron contributed enough funds for the library to purchase 50 copies of Crockett biographies. Denver reports that Shirley Temple's Storybook has sparked new interest in fairy tales, and in New York, Golden Press is working on book adaptations of popular TV shows such as Maverick and Leave It to Beaver. The head children's librarian in San Francisco goes so far as to say that TV stimulates children to find out more factual information about the characters in their favorite shows.

All is not completely rosy, however; in Chicago, one librarian says she could not convince a child that Cinderella was written by Charles Perrault—the child was sure it was Rogers and Hammerstein.* Children do tend to be confused when shows are widely different than the books on which they're based (but then, aren't we all?), and kids from "poorer" reading groups often want simplified versions of the stories they see, rather than the real thing.

*Kids nowadays wouldn't have the faintest idea who Rodgers and Hammerstein were.

  
The consensus, though, seems to be that television should no longer be seen as the enemy, but as something that can be "a useful instrument in a child's education."

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Television's favorite opera composer is back with a new production this week. It's Maria Golovin, the newest from Gian Carlo Menotti; commissioned by Peter Herman Adler, head of NBC Opera Theatre, it makes its television debut Sunday afternoon (4:00 p.m. CT) with a two-hour color broadcast. Maria Golovin is heavy stuff, telling the story of the romance between a blind, former POW and a married woman living in a European country a few years after a recent war.

Menotti was once famous enough that he appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and he won two Pulitzer Prizes in the '50s for his operas. By 1959, however, Menotti's star has begun to fade. Golovin receives only fair reviews, and his subsequent operas, such as the made-for-TV Labyrinth and The Last Savage, are poorly received. Today, he's a much-underrated composer; although his most famous composition, Amahl and the Night Visitors, continues to delight audiences young and old, most of his operas have fallen into disuse, which is a pity. Occasionally one comes across a revival of his Pulitzer-winning operas, The Consul (a brutal take on a totalitarian government) and The Saint of Bleecker Street, and Menotti deserves to one day be back in the opera house on a regular basis. I fear, however, that it will happen about the time opera makes a comeback on network television.

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I'll note once again why something like NBC Opera Theatre can be seen on a Sunday afternoon—it's because sports on television is in 1959 nowhere near as prevalent as it is today. Saturday is the busier of the two days of the weekend. CBS has the NHL game of the week between the New York Rangers and Chicago Black Hawks at 1:30 p.m. while there are a pair of college basketball games on at 2:00 p.m. Cincinnati vs. Bradley on NBC, Missouri vs. Kansas State on ABC. A couple of made-for-TV bowling programs round out the day's sporting activity—and that's it. Sunday is even leaner, with the NBA game of the week between the St. Louis Hawks and Minneapolis Lakers (1:30 p.m., NBC) being the only major event, unless you want to include another bowling show, and a roller derby match between the San Francisco Bombers and the New York Chiefs (3:30 p.m., KWTX).

So what exactly did all-weekend sports replace on TV? Well, there are a lot of movies, Westerns, and Western movies that run on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. There are syndicated programs such as Mr. District Attorney on WFAA and Abbot and Costello on KFJZ. There are local and national variety shows, cartoons, and Sunday afternoon religious, news and public affairs programs. There's G-E College Bowl (this week: Notre Dame vs. Georgetown). There is, in fact, a great deal of diversity in the programming. Compared to the infomercials that too often dominate non-network hours today, I think that's not such a bad lineup.

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Speaking of variety shows, we know that the golden age of variety has long since disappeared from television, but it's useful to see just how many shows there were in 1959. In fact, as we run through the week, we find at least one on each night, many with the sponsor's name as part of the title.

Saturday night has always been a good night for variety, and there's plenty of it this week. At 6:30 p.m., The Dick Clark Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show (try saying that five times fast) features Jaye P. Morgan (pre-Gong Show), Paul Anka and Dale Hawkins, and Fabian and the Coasters (on ABC, natch). That's followed at 7:00 by Red Foley's Country show Jubilee U.S.A., with Tex Ritter and the Schmitz Sisters (also on ABC); opposite that, Perry Como's colorcast on NBC has Ronnie Burns, Eve Arden (Our Miss Brooks) and Max Gallop. Lawrence Welk is on at 8:00 with what was known formally back then as the Dodge Dancing Party.

Sunday is Ed Sullivan's night, of course, and this week Ed's guests include Jane Russell and her younger brother Kevin, Shelly Winters, Fred MacMurray, Jan Murray, Joe Howard, David Seville and the Chipmunks, and Shecky Greene. (7:00 p.m., CBS) Before that, though, NBC has a program called Music Shop (last show of the series), hosted by Buddy Bregman and starring the great Billy Eckstine and Dodie Stevens. Steve Allen follows Music Shop (although next week Steve movies from 7:00 to 6:30, to get a half-hour jump on Ed). For this week, Steve's guests are Zsa Zsa Gabor, Vic Damone, Jane Harvey, Johnny Carson (!) and Earl "Father" Hines. NBC's variety show block concludes at 8:00 p.m. with The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, with Tony Randall, Ella Fitzgerald and Betty Grable.

Monday has what I'd consider an unusual variety show: a special presentation of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, with ringmaster Ernie Kovacs (6:30 p.m., ABC). I don't know if it lives up to its billing as The Greatest Show on Earth, but with a host like Kovacs it has to be fun. Then there's the Arthur Murray Dance Party (9;00 p.m., NBC), with Kathryn Murray interviewing Cornelia Otis Skinner, Rita Gam, Denise Darcel, Mitchell Parrish, Enzo Stuarti and Judy Lynn. Opposite that is The Patti Page Oldsmobile Show (9:00 p.m., ABC); Patti's guests are Duke Ellington and the Dukes of Dixieland. Edge to Patti there.

On Tuesday, George Gobel and Eddie Fisher (aka Mr. Elizabeth Taylor) alternate in the 7:00 p.m. slot on NBC; this week, it's George's turn, and his guests this week are opera singer Patrice Munsel, Johnny Cash and Paul Lynde. Lucille Ball appears on Arthur Godfrey's show (8:00 p.m., CBS), followed by Red Skelton, with Cesar Romero and Terry Moore (8:30 p.m., CBS), and Garry Moore returns from vacation to welcome Ed Wynn, Jane Powell, the Mills Brothers and Sue Carson (9:00 p.m., again on CBS).

Lawrence Welk is back on Wednesday with Lawrence Welk's Top Talent (7:30 p.m., ABC), while NBC counters with Milton Berle on the Kraft Music Hall, with guest Martha Raye. Thursday night sees The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom with Maureen O'Hara (8:00 p.m., ABC), while on The Ford Show (the car, not the entertainer), Tennessee Ernie Ford (the entertainer, not the car) welcomes special guest Liberace. There's no regular show scheduled for Friday, but Bob Hope's back with another of his specials (7:00 p.m., NBC), featuring Julie London, Guy Mitchell, Chuck Conners, Fess Parker and Gail Davis. It's sponsored by Chrysler, of course.

If that isn't enough, there are also Monday through Friday daytime variety shows: Arthur Godfrey's back every morning at 9:30 on CBS, The Peter Lind Hayes Show features on ABC at 11:30 a.m.,  Jimmy Dean has a show on CBS at 1:00 p.m,, as does Liberace on ABC, Art Linkletter's House Party follows Jimmy at 1:30 p.m. (CBS), Bert Parks hosts County Fair at 3:30 p.m. on NBC, and we can't forget Dick Clark and American Bandstand at 4:00 p.m. on ABC. And then, lest we forget, there's Jack Paar's late night Tonight show. If you include those, you come up with, I think 57, plus two specials for the week.* Granted, there were only four stations in most markets back then, but there really is something for everyone, don't you think?

*This statistic brought to you by Heinz. 

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Finally, there's the show I would have wanted to see that week: Sunday's G.E. Theater (8:00 p.m., CBS) presents "The Incredible Jewel Robbery," a comedy without dialog starring Harpo and Chico Marx as two criminals plotting a jewelry-store robbery. With Groucho hosting You Bet Your Life on Thursdays, that means the three biggest Marx brothers are all on television this week. (There's also, according to TV Guide, an unbilled cameo from a mustachioed gentleman who, contractually, must remain anonymous.) And if that isn't "the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," try this: you can watch the episode on YouTube.

I've said it before, but for all the trouble it causes, technology can be a wonderful thing. TV  

This week in TV Guide: February 11, 1967

On Sunday February 12 (11:30 a.m. CT), NBC's Meet the Press presents a special one-hour edition with William Manchester, author of the controversial book The Death of a President, the authorized account of the assassination and funeral of John F. Kennedy. Manchester is to be quizzed by Alistair Cooke, whom we'll get to know better as host of Masterpiece Theatre but at this point is the American correspondent for The Guardian; Chuck Roberts, White House correspondent for Newsweek, who was in Dallas and flew back on Air Force One with President Johnson; Robert MacNeil of NBC, the network's man in Dallas who covered the assassination; and Meet the Press producer Lawrence Spivak. Edwin Newman is the moderator.

To understand why Manchester's book is so controversial, one has to step back in time to shortly after the funeral. The Kennedy family realized that books about the assassination would come out; they worried about how both the event itself and the family would be depicted. In an effort to control the story, they had commissioned Manchester, who had earlier written a flattering article about JFK, to write the book, and have exclusive access to family, friends, and political allies of the late president.

Once the manuscript had been produced, however, the family began to have second thoughts. There were concerns that Manchester had revealed too many personal glimpses into the family's life, that Manchester's prose was "overwrought," and that his unfavorable portrayal of Lyndon Johnson could prove troubling to Robert F. Kennedy's political ambitions. Jacqueline Kennedy had spoken frankly and personally with Manchester, but now feared the thought of those revelations in print.* Bobby Kennedy, who was fanatically loyal to Jackie, got into the middle of the dispute. An agreement for a four-part serialization in Look magazine was, RFK charged, a breach of the agreement that "the final text" was not to be published until approved by the two Kennedys. Manchester countered that Bobby had been in agreement that the book should be published as soon as it was finished, to avoid playing a part in the 1968 elections and also to counter the Warren Report critics, and that in fact Look was Kennedy's preferred magazine of choice. Lawyers were called, negotiations were conducted, Manchester himself almost suffered a nervous breakdown over the interference by the Kennedys and their Boston cronies. When Jackie went to court, Manchester went to Meet the Press to tell his side of the story.

*Mrs. Kennedy later admitted that she never actually thought the public would read the book, but that it “would be bound in black and put away on dark library shelves.

In the end, things were settled. As the family saw their popularity take a dive in the polls (people suspected the worst about their efforts to control the story, and that doesn't even take into account the conspiracy buffs already in full swing), Bobby decided he'd had enough; a drop in the polls is never welcome news for a politician. As Spivak says on Meet the Press, everyone involved "has been hurt or somehow damaged—you, Mrs. Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, President Johnson and the book itself." The two parties settled out of court, with Manchester removing 1,600 words from the Look serialization and seven pages from the book—"less than one percent," according to Manchester. Look hits the newsstands at the end of January and immediately sells out; the book, published in April, becomes an instant bestseller. But, as Alistair Cooke would later note, "the dispute is already more famous than the book."

I've not been able to find any video of the program, but if you're interested, you can read the transcript of the sometimes-contentious interview here. And you don't even have to send ten cents to Merkle Press to do it.

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During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premiere variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup.

Palace: Host Sammy Davis Jr. welcomes Mickey Rooney, Liberace, singer Kaye Stevens, comic Lee Tully, the acrobatic Mascots, and Mr. and Mrs. Bob Top, English high-pole roller skaters.

Sullivan: Scheduled guests: comic-actor Jack Gilford, who appears in a sketch with comedienne Nancy Walker; comics Joey Adams, Joan Rivers and Richard Pryor; singers Sally Ann Howes, Jerry Vale and Lola Falana; the rock 'n' rolling Young Rascals; dancer Peter Gennaro; and teh roller-skating team of Ravic and Babs.

Short and sweet. Sammy Davis Jr. If there hadn't been anyone else on the show, Palace still would have won. As it is, include Mickey Rooney and Liberace, and you've got it made. Palace dances to this week's title.

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Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever we get the chance, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era. 

"Well, you can look if you want to," Cleveland Amory begins in his review of CBS's new sitcom Mr. Terrific, "but do me a favor, will you? Don't expect, along the [air] waves, any raves. For the fact is, Mr. Terrific, like its Siamese twin, Captain Nice, is not only not terrific, it's pretty terrible."

Mr. Terrific, for those of you unfamiliar with the title, is a superhero spoof starring Stephen Strimpell as Stanley Beamish, a mild-mannered gas station attendant who, with the help of a special pill, gains superhuman strength and the ability to fly, which he uses to help fight crime. The problem, according to Amory, is that despite his new superpowers, "he still remains basically the same stumblebum he always was." And since the pill apparently only works on him, the government has to make do with its imperfect hero. There wouldn't be much of a show otherwise, would there?

Speaking of strength, the show is not without its own, chief among them the "peerless performance" of John McGiver as the head of the government agency for which Stanley moonlights as Mr. Terrific; I'd expect no less from a pro like McGiver; there is, as Amory says, only one of him. But—and here we'll let Cleve's comments on the second episode serve for the entire series, "the individual shortcomings of the script, the acting and the directing were matched only by the innate tastelessness of the whole idea." In fact, the whole thing can be summed up by an acknowledgement from Harley, another government agent. "Stanley is accident prone. Even when he does something right, it's an accident." Concludes Amory, "The same might be said, at almost any moment, of this show."

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I don't think we've ever had the chance to look at dueling ice shows, have we?

First up, on Monday, is your 1967 Ice Capades (7:00 p.m., NBC), hosted by Jimmy Durante and featuring Jimmy Dean and the Supremes. The Ice Capades first appeared on NBC in 1965, and their annual show ran through 1970, with various hosts such as Arthur Godfrey, Lorne Greene and Florence Henderson. (These ice shows are something of a regular occurrence on NBC; later in the year, Ed Ames hosts a similar presentation of the Ice Follies.)

Not to be outdone, Milton Berle hosts Holiday on Ice (one of the Ice Follies' bitter competitors) Thursday night (9:00 p.m., ABC). Perhaps a little more glamour here; whereas Capades show was taped in Rochester, New York, Holiday on Ice comes to you from Paris. Berle ought to be a good MC for this; it's much like his hosting jobs on his other variety shows, and there are probably plenty of pretty girls in skimpy outfits for him to leer at.

Interestingly enough, the Ice Capades went out of business in the mid-90s, while in 1979 the Ice Follies merged with Holiday on Ice. There's no limit to themed ice shows out there even today, though.

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And now a brief pause for some culture, and I'm not talking about what you'd find in a petri dish, either.

On Monday, Gilligan's Island and the aforementioned Mr. Terrific are preempted for a musical rendition of Pinocchio by New York's Prince Street Players (6:30 p.m., CBS). This is just one of a number of productions of classic family stories that Prince Street Players did for CBS between 1965 and 1970, including Jack and the Beanstalk, The Emperor's New Clothes, and Aladdin. Fortunately, several of them exist on YouTube—including Pinocchio!

Wednesday, KTCA, the public broadcasting station, has An Age of Kings (7:00 p.m.), a continuing series of the Bard's historical plays. You'll see this pop up throughout the '60s, especially the early part of the decade—it was made by the BBC in 1960. Later the same evening, WTCN has The Wars of the Roses (8:30 p.m.), another BBC production of Shakespeare's first series of historical plays, made in 1965. I find it interesting that this was being shown on commercial, rather than public, television; possibly it was some kind of syndicated package similar to when Edward the King was broadcast in America in the mid-70s. 

Friday night, NET Opera Theatre (7:00 p.m., WDSE) presents Jack Beeson's opera Lizzie Borden, based on the ax murderess of the same name. The production is from the acclaimed world premiere staged by the New York City Opera in 1965, adapted for the television stage. The music is modern and at times atonal, and Beeson has taken liberties with the story for dramatic effect, but it makes for compelling viewing both as an opera and a television production. The broadcast is a prime example of the advantage to staging an opera in a television studio (as opposed to simply bringing in cameras to cover a live performance, as is done with the Metropolitan Opera's HD broadcasts), giving viewers camera angles and views that would be impossible to replicate in a live theater broadcast. Following the opera, there's a half-hour profile of composer Beeson, looking at his work methods and motivations.

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Some other selections from the week:

The Golden Globes are broadcast Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. on NBC, hosted by Andy Williams. You remember the Golden Globes, don't you? I know they've only been off television for one year, but memories are short, nowadays. Anyway, I wrote a while back about the Golden Globes and their colorful history; for a few years the awards were actually presented on Andy's variety show, but this year they get their own place in the sun. It's a short spotlight, though; the show still runs for only an hour, but that's plenty of time to give out a handful of awards, most of them to the movie A Man for All Seasons. You'll recall that this would have been during the period of time when winners were actually tipped off in advance that they were bringing home the award; it was often the only way to get them to attend the show. Today, the problems faced by the Hollywood Foreign Press Assocation, presenter of the Globes, are not so much because of being colorful, but colorless, shall we say.

One of the great Star Trek episodes of all time airs on Thursday (7:30 p.m., NBC)—"Space Seed." It introduces us to a ruthless dictator played by Ricardo Montalban, and without it we'd never have gotten this immortal scene.


OK, maybe it didn't last that long. . .

The cover story this week, by Leslie Raddatz, is on Steven Hill, the original head of the Mission: Impossible team. After decades of reruns with Peter Graves as Jim Phelps*, it can be a little surprising to remember that for the first season of Mission: Impossible, it was Hill's Dan Briggs who listened to the recordings at the beginning of each show and pulled the same pictures out of the dossier each time.

*Who is not a traitor to his country, no matter what Brian DePalma thinks.

Hill is very good in the role, with just the right amount of menace to suggest that, if things were to get tough, Dan Briggs could get even tougher. It doesn't work out, though, and the reasons are clear in the article. Hill is an observant Orthodox Jew who leaves the set on Fridays in order to get home before sundown, and does not work on Jewish holy days, and while his beliefs are respected, there's no doubt that it puts a crimp in shooting a complicated television series. Many times Briggs' visible role is limited to the beginning and end of the story, and there's at least one episode in which he isn't seen at all. His level of involvement in each week's mission is seldom as large as it becomes for Jim Phelps in future seasons. So it's one year and out for Steven Hill, but don't worry too much—Law & Order will be by in a couple of decades, and he'll get ten seasons out of that.

Our starlet of the week is "comely" Pat Moore, who is moving from a $60 per hour model to a bit player in television (a semi-regular on Hullabaloo and Perry Como, but with no speaking lines) and commercials (where, as is usual in commercials, her voice is dubbed). For her, the big time is simple: being able to talk.

In the TV Teletype, we're told that Batman producer Howie Horwitz is "looking for a Batgirl to 'fight evil' next fall. Batman won't know her real life identity and vice versa." Thanks to retrovision, we do know the identity of Batgirl, though—the lissome Yvonne Craig, who packs quite a kick.

And speaking of Batman. . .

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Dwight Whitney spends some quality time with Adam West, learning about what it's like being the star of the hottest television show around. His portrait of West paints a restless man who has already been married and divorced twice, an ambitious man who gave up a successful radio show in Honolulu (and his second wife) when Hollywood called, an actor who wants to be thought of in the same company with Marcello Mastroianni. Batman, Adam West says, "will make it possible for me to do what I want to do the way I want to do it." And that is? "Like be a big fat star."

Lest this sound too serious though, there's a wonderful bit at the beginning of the article that is pure West, speaking in that stiff, breathless staccato full of odd pauses, as campy and self-deprecating as we've come to see him in the years since Batman. The scene: West's dressing room trailer as he prepares for the day's shooting.

"It's hero time," says Adam West lightly, tugging the top of the tights up over the flat of his stomach and starting on the skintight tunic. "In a moment I will step from this humble dwelling and, to the plaudits of the crowd, plummet from a platform fully three and a half feet high."

The chant "We want Batman!" rises in shrill crescendo. "Ah, the adulation!" he continues, undulating like a Girl Scout in a tight girdle. "Oh, I love it, basking in the sincere warm smiles of the little children. What! You say Chief O'Hara isn't working today? Oh, I miss the Chief. The family's disintegrating—Robin off to college, Aunt Harriet drafted and being shipped to Vietnam. Oh, the heartbreak of it all. Here, give me that!"

His dresser hands him the tiny gray skullcap worn beneath the Batman helmet. West places it with exaggerated care. "I wonder if I should go out and bless the crowd? No, perhaps not." He jams the fiberglass-and-nylon helmet down over his ears. "Marvelous bit of haberdashery," he mumbles. "It's hot. The sound bounces. Can't hear. My nose pinches and gives me a cleft palate. Can't see. And I owe it all to that peerless Prince of Trivia, our producer Bill—'Bull'—Dozier, who refuses to supply me with a seeing-eye dog. Now off to give another Academy Award-winning performance."

[...]

"Sign my autograph, Batman, please!"

"Later, kids," says the Caped Crusader coolly. "Got to rescue Alfred from the clutches of that infernal scoundrel, The Archer."

"Aw, Batman, you couldn't hurt a flea!" says one.

"Yeah," replies Adam West amiably. "Disillusioning, isn't it?"

And that, my friends, makes this whole blog worth it. TV