This week in TV Guide: June 13, 1959

Do you remember what you were doing when you were 25? Besides watching TV, that is? I was three years out of college, working a job that didn't provide me with anything more than an income, making plans that never came true for a life that turned out far more gratifying than I could have imagined. I suspect most of you have lived some variation on that theme.

Now imagine you're Pat Boone, and you're 25. You're the host of one of the most successful television programs on ABC. You've sold nearly 21 million records, and you have long-term contracts for both TV and movies. You wrote a book, Twixt Twelve and Twenty, which has had a run of 350,000 copies. You own a company that not only handles your music business, it also has a branch that deals in merchandising your brand. You work 10 hours a day, five or six days a week, but by all accounts you love what you do. And on Sundays you teach Sunday School  Your income in 1958 was nearly $1,000,000. Did I mention that you're only 25? This is where the rest of us deal with our inferiority complexes.

I've always admired the poise with which Pat Boone has handled his career; watching him on that ABC series, when he was the youngest individual ever to host his own variety show, he had every appearance of being an old pro, interacting with established stars not as a starry-eyed youngster, but as an equal. And yet it wasn't always this way, according to Pat himself. He'd dealt with stardom before, singing on the Arthur Godfrey show, but fronting a show of his own was different. "I felt I was responsible for a lot of people - people working for me and people looking at me. That made me nervous. And that made me stiff and awkward." The result was a show that "looked better in rehearsal than it did on the air," and he hated it. "Well, I decided this wouldn't do at all. It wasn't fun any more. I had to stop getting nervous. I'd force myself to spend 10 minutes before every show calming myself down. And gradually it began to work."

It surprises me not at all that Boone could will himself to change this way. "Maybe that's why I don't worry much. I take my work seriously and I work hard at it - but I don't worry about it." I wish I could do that. But while he's not exactly worried about his future, he does know that when he moves West, to Hollywood, that things could go South as well, and the success that now seems preordained could dry up overnight. "I used to think that it would be foolish to plan a long career in show business," he says. "But now I don't know. They say that if you've been successful for four or five years you can look forward to being successful for a good many more."

He does say that there are days that he could imagine a "20- or 30-year career in entertainment," and other times that he can envision himself teaching English in a high school in 25 years. Well, at last count, that career has lasted for 63 years. He's produced hit records, he's made hit movies. He's owned a professional basketball team. His daughter has made hit records. He's been a friend of presidents. He's outlived most of the people who appear in the pages of this TV Guide.

When asked about the future - entertainer or high school teacher - he says "Either way would suit me just fine." One can imagine that his long and successful career has, indeed, suited him just fine.

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In sports, twin events compete for this week's honors. On Saturday at 4:30 p.m. ET, CBS covers the last of the Triple Crown races, the Belmont Stakes, live from New York. Sword Dancer, ridden by the great Willie Shoemaker, but the win is overshadowed by a spectacular accident in the far turn at the head of the stretch involving Eddie Arcaro, another of the sport's greatest jockeys; Arcaro spends the night in the hospital but escapes serious injury, while the horse on which is riding, Black Hills, suffers a fractured shinbone and is destroyed.

The other major event is the U.S. Open golf championship (or as it was frequently known, including in TV Guide, the National Open) from Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, suburban New York City.* According to the tradition of the time, the tournament culminated in "Open Saturday," in which 36 holes were played, 18 in the morning and 18 in the afternoon. However, this year tradition was to be upset; heavy rain in the morning (the same rain that created the sloppy track that claimed Black Hills) forced the final round to Sunday for the first time in the tournament's history. NBC was scheduled to carry the final three holes of the final round on Saturday at 4:30 p.m.; I suspect they were back on Sunday to see Billy Casper defeat Bob Rosburg by a single stroke.

*Big week in the Big Apple, wouldn't you say?

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On Monday, ABC has a special 90 minute tour of Disneyland on its 4th anniversary, hosted by Walt himself with Art Linkletter. Among the attractions of the show are looks at the park's three new attractions: a 14-story-high replica of the Matterhorn, a fleet of eight submarines, each over 50 feet long, and the iconic monorail. Must have been an amazing thing for people to see then, when the future was able to amaze us. This is not from that show (it's in color, for one thing), but it gives you an idea of those new attractions, and what the park was like almost 60 years ago.


Also on Monday, there's this terrific ad for Ed McMahon's half-hour variety/interview show, McMahon & Co. which follows Jack Paar's Tonight on WRCV, the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia. One tends to forget that before Ed became Johnny Carson's sidekick, he was a local TV host in Philadelphia, and in fact he had a pretty high profile himself. This ad celebrates Ed's show expanding to a full 30 minutes, and reminds us that his lovely co-stars, Moona and Yelty, "help Ed make staying up that late worth-while."

SOURCE ALL: HADLEY TV GUIDE COLLECTION

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Maurice Evans is billed in this week's issue as "one of the world's most brilliant stars," and that's not an exaggeration. He's one of television's true pioneers; his six Shakespearean performances on Hallmark Hall of Fame are the first full-length productions of the plays ever seen on American television.*

*He was also a Shakespearean star on Broadway; 

There's more to Evans than Shakespeare, though, as we see this week in his starring turn on The U.S. Steel Hour's "No Leave for the Captain" (10:00 p.m. Wednesday, CBS), in which he plays a perpetually drunk commander of a World War II British mine-disposal unit - a really bad combination, if you ask me. His co-star, playing his son and fellow officer, is Nicolas Coster*, whom I'll always remember from one of my mother's favorite soaps, Another World. (He also did a very funny turn on the late, lamented Police Squad.) Geraldine Brooks also stars in what looks to be a pretty strong story - not of war, but of men in a war.

*Fun fact: Nicolas Coster's first wife was Candace Hilligoss, star of the cult classic Carnival of Souls.

I don't want to leave the impression that Maurice Evans is little more than a highbrow actor, though. He'll go on to appear as Samantha's father in Bewitched, and as Dr. Zaius in the original movie version of Planet of the Apes.

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Dr. Joyce Brothers, who legitimately won $134,000 on The $64,000 Question and The $64,000 Challenge by displaying her knowledge of boxing, is back on television as host of her own daily advice show on New York's WRCA, with prospects that the show might be syndicated nationally next fall. The psychologist receives hundreds of letters each week; here's a representative sampling of what people are concerned about in 1959:

"If a girl has a good figure, should she hide it?"

Says Dr. Brothers: "If a girl has a good figure it's almost impossible to hide it. My advice is this; A girl should wear her clothes just tight enough to show that she is a woman, and just loose enough to show that she is a lady." Pretty good advice, if you ask me.

"My parents carp about the way I'm raising my grandchildren."

"Grandparents are accustomed to exercising their authority over their child (you) through criticism. It gives them a sense of superiority, a chance to blow off steam. But you should use your own judgment in raising your children."

"I suspect the woman next door is after my husband. She wears such scanty costumes."

"What your neighbor wears is her business, not yours. Take a look at yourself and make sure you haven't slipped a little since your marriage. Have you gained weight or become careless in your appearance? Have you stopped trying to be alluring? Don't put on a neighbor the blame that may be yours."

"Does a woman drive a man to drink?"

"A study made some years ago determined that there are definite types of women who are found to be the wives of alcoholics. [Women who choose weak husbands, women who need to be miserable, aggressive women with the need to punish herself.] But don't be a wife who is going to punish herself by making a drinker of her husband. Remember, an ounce of prevention is worth a couple of fifths of cure."


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By the way, if any of you happened to be in Philadelphia on Thursday, June 18, the great Fred Astaire will be at Gimbels to autograph copies of his new autobiography Steps in Time. We have that book - not autographed, alas.

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Finally, this week's starlet is Arlene Howell, Miss U.S.A. 1958, who was "discovered" by Roy Huggins' daughter Kathy, who'd overheard her father complaining about how hard it was to get an actress with a real Southern accent. She'd seen and heard Arlene at the Miss Universe contest (where she was third runner-up), and the rest is history - so let this be a lesson to you that you never know what doors will be opened to you once you've appeared on TV. She guested on Huggins' Maverick, as well as 77 Sunset Strip and Cheyenne, and this fall, at the age of 19, she'll be a regular on ABC's Bourbon Street Beat (Warner Brothers series all).

Bourbon Street Beat ran for only one series, 1959-60, and beyond that Arlene Howell's record goes dry. IMDb gives her last credit as a 1966 appearance on Gomer Pyle, but other than a few guest gigs following the end of her series, nothing. Oh well. The article does mention that she's to be married to building contractor Paul LaCava Jr., so perhaps they lived happily ever after. There is more to life, after all, than television. TV  

This week in TV Guide: March 9, 1957

Two thoughts about Pat Boone: in 1962 he'll star in the remake of State Fair, which wasn't very good to begin with, and pales in comparison to the original, but it does give one a very good panorama of the State Fair of Texas. When we moved here three years ago, I was thrilled to find Fair Park much the same as it was in the movie, with Big Tex there to greet us.

And although I've never been a particular fan of Boone, a few years ago I saw a PBS documentary about his television show, and I was mightily impressed. He was only 23 when The Pat Boone Chevy Show started in 1957 on ABC, not only the youngest person ever to host a network variety show, but undoubtedly younger than most of his guests. He was still a student at Columbia when it started. Yet for all that, the clips from the series show a very mature, poised young man, totally at ease in front of the camera, completely comfortable with his famous guests. As I say, particularly when you compare him to today's celebrities, he cuts a very impressive figure.

It comes as no surprise when you read this week's issue, in which Boone's business savvy is apparent. He's already turned down three series offers, two because they were sponsored by tobacco companies, one because the sponsor was a brewery. Boone, of course, neither smokes or drinks, and he's sensitive to the influence he might have on his young viewers, so it's no surprise that his ABC contract, which will pay him $1 million over five years, gives him approval over sponsors.

He's also sensitive to the debt he owes Arthur Godfrey, on whose show he's been a regular since 1955. So deep is his loyalty to the Old Redhead that he refused guests spots with Steve Allen and Perry Como because the shows would air on networks other than Godfrey's CBS. Even though he wasn't under contract to either Godfrey or CBS, "why should I go on another network and maybe help that show to draw a bigger rating than CBS?" It takes ABC's offer of his own show to pull Boone away from CBS, and though Godfrey publicly praises it, in private he urges Boone to wait, saying he won't be ready for his own show for "another five or six years." With respect, I think Arthur Godfrey was wrong on that one.

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There's a charming profile of the charming French soprano Lily Pons, star of the Metropolitan Opera, and a recent guest on Perry Como's program. "Before a con-zairt, I stay in bed all day. I do not even speak upon the telephone. But for The Perry Como Show I re-harse all week. Eet was a miracle that I am in marvelous voice."

The Met has never really seen a soprano quite like Lily Pons before. The typical sopranos are, in the words of the article, "elephants." Miss Pons, on the other hand, stands 5 feet, ½ inch tall and weighs a mere 109 pounds. " 'I was the first,' she said, indicating a portion of her anatomy sometimes called a midriff, 'to appear from 'ere to 'ere - all nek-keed!" Despite her fame, Lily has no desire to go into television full-time - "Eev I do TV, I can do only TV; no opera, no con-zairt. One cannot do TV and be on hanything else" - but if she did, she envisions a version of Your Hit Parade only with classical music.

It's a pity Lily Pons isn't better remembered today. Even among opera buffs, her fame has faded as the Met has moved away from the repertoire that showed off her high coloratura. But if she had perhaps been born a few years later, when she could have made even more use of television, she might have become as famous as Roberta Peters, the all-time recordholder for appearances with Ed Sullivan. She did the Sullivan show, though, many times, as well as her appearances on The Perry Como Show, Your Show of Shows, The Jimmy Durante Show, Person to Person, What's My Line? and This Is Your Life. There are also the memories of her famed performances at the Met as Lucia in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, and here's a clip of her performing another of her standards, "The Bell Song" from Delibes' Lakme.

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One of the hallmarks of the Golden Age is the drama anthology. They were one of the prestige offerings on early television, attracting many actors and actresses who would go on to great fame in movies and television, names like Charlton Heston, James Dean, Elizabeth Montgomery, Charles Bronson and Lee Remick, and the shows spawned directors from John Frankenheimer and Franklin Schaffner to George Roy Hill and Sidney Lumet.

You'll also notice a lot of big names in the shows, though: those, like Robert Montgomery, who've retreated from the big screen and now work in production or hosting, with only occasional forays into acting; or those whose box office presence has faded over time; or those still at the top of their game who've been lured to television by the promise of an exceptional script or, more often, a nice payday and exposure for their next big-screen presentation.

By 1957, the glory days of the live anthology program are themselves beginning to fade; the advent of video tape and the consequent ability to improve the technical quality of the production has contributed to a shift away from live programming in many cases. There's also a feeling among some sponsors that consistent star appeal - having the same leads in the program every week - are more effective vehicles at attracting viewers - and, therefore, selling the sponsor's product. Nonetheless, as you see below, there are still plenty of them on the air. You'll also notice that in many cases, the sponsor's name is part of the title - either obviously, as in the case of Kraft Television Theatre, or more obliquely (meaning that it's not part of the title shown in TV Guide), as with Westinghouse Studio One. Either way, let's see what was on this week, among shows both prominent and little-known.

Saturday's lineup is dominated by sitcoms and variety shows, so we'll kickoff our look at anthologies on Sunday with CBS' long-running G.E. Theater, featuring one of those big names we talked about, Oscar winner Bette Davis, starring as a jilted novelist plotting revenge on the publisher who rejected her book in "With Malice Toward One." That's followed by the droll Alfred Hitchcock Presents, with Casablanca's Captain Louis Renault, Claude Rains, in "The Cream of the Jest."* Finally, The Loretta Young Show (NBC) has Vivica Lindfors (whom we'll see again later in the week) and Herbert Marshall, but not Loretta herself, in "Louise," the story of a woman trying to outrun her memories of World War II. There's also ABC's Omnibus, which isn't strictly speaking a drama anthology but occasionally dips into the genre, as it does tonight with "The Trial of Captain Kidd," starring Victor Jory.

*Fun fact: The Nazi target in Casablanca, freedom fighter Victor Laszlo (the one who escapes with Ingrid Bergman) is played by Paul Henreid, who directed many episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents - not, alas, this one.

Monday night features two of those prestige dramas - Robert Montgomery Presents, on NBC, has "Last Train to Kildevil," a domestic drama starring Martha Scott and David White, while CBS' legendary Studio One  offers the Abby Mann*-written drama "A Child Is Waiting," starring Mary Fickett and Pat Hingle. And I don't know - should we count NBC's Voice of Firestone, which is, after all, a musical anthology? It started on radio in 1928 and survived on television until 1963. I say we count it - tenor Brian Sullivan is tonight's guest.

*Fun fact: Abby Mann won an Oscar for the screenplay to Judgment at Nuremberg, and was the creator of the cop drama Kojak.

A trio of programs finish off Tuesday night, starting with NBC's The Jane Wyman Show. The Oscar winner and former wife of G.E. Theater host Ronald Reagan stars in as well as hosts "The Pendulum," which also features Bat Masterson star Gene Barry. That's followed by The Kaiser Aluminum Hour, which ran for only one season despite attracting stars such as Paul Newman, Ralph Bellamy and Kim Hunter. Tonight, Richard Kiley, June Lockhart and Larry Gates are in "The Story of a Crime." Finally, there's ABC's Du Pont Theatre, which began on radio in 1935 as "Cavalcade of America." Tonight's story is "One Day at a Time," the story of the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, with James Daly as Bill W.

SOURCE ALL: HADLEY TV GUIDE COLLECTION

The U.S. Steel Hour, which alternates Wednesday nights on CBS with Armstrong Circle Theatre, has an unusual presentation: a dramatic fantasy with musical narration. It's "The Bottle Imp," based on the story by Robert Louis Stevenson, with Farley Granger, Geoffrey Holder and Susan Oliver. Meanwhile, NBC has the venerable (11 seasons) Kraft Television Theatre, one of the first and oldest anthologies*, has the seafaring mystery "Collision!" with Peter Falk as part of the cast. ABC adds the eight-season program Ford Television Theater, which this week stars Linda Darnell in "Fate Travels East."

*Perhaps its most famous presentation was Rod Serling's "Patterns," which catapulted Serling to fame.

Thursday's Lux Video Theatre (NBC) goes one step further, presenting a full-blown operetta by the king of operettas, Victor Herbert. The star is singer and regular host Gordon MacRae, husband of Sheila, father of Meredith. It's good, but the prestige show on Thursdays is CBS' long-running Playhouse 90, although tonight's episode, a dramatization of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Last Tycoon," is not one of those that's most fondly remembered by classic TV fans. It stars a woefully miscast Jack Palance as Fitzgerald's protagonist Monroe Stahr, and features turns from Keenan Wynn, Peter Lorre, Viveca Lindfors and Lee Remick.

On Friday Schlitz Playhouse (CBS), another of the half-hour dramas of the genre, gives us Oscar-winner Ray Milland directing and starring in "The Girl in the Grass." It's preceded on CBS by Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater, with another Oscar winner, Dean Jagger, starring along with John Derek* in the revenge tale "There Were Four."

*Fun Fact: John Derek is, at the time, married to future Bond girl Ursula Andress. He'll go on to marry Bo Derek and Linda Evans, though not at the same time.

And that's not even all of them. There are other series, such as West Point, The Joseph Cotten Show, Navy Log and Studio 57 (sponsored by Heinz, of course), and shows that function as virtual anthologies because of their concentration on the characters played by guest stars - Gunsmoke, for example, especially in its later years. Not all of them were hits, nor were the prestige shows always good. They were, however, an essential part of early television. Contemporary shows such as True Detective put a spin on the old formula by using an entire season, rather than one episode, to tell the story, then changing the cast entirely for the next season. It would, though, be nice if the public were attracted to prestige dramas once again.

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We've seen these before, but it's worth a reminder how much something like the telephone has changed. We think it's remarkable enough that we can carry them around in our pockets (or even on our wrists), how we can access the internet on them, take pictures with them, use them as a calculator, even pay our bills if we have the right app. But in 1957, something we take for granted - something as simple as a long distance call - was complicated. It was expensive, and therefore not only saved for special occasions, but one also had to give a great deal of thought to when the call was placed. As this ad points out, if you can wait until after 6:00pm or make the call on Sunday, you're going to save. A call from Fort Worth to New Orleans costs only 95 cents for the first three minutes, and each additional minute is only 25 cents. What a deal! Today, we don't even give it another thought - not only do most cell plans have free long distance, depending on our data plan we can just Face Time someone, and not only talk to them, but see them at the same time. Not unlike Dick Tracy's two-way wrist radio, eh?

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Finally, we haven't done any recipe sharing lately, but for those occasions when you've invited friends over to watch the latest spectacular on that new-fangled technology*, these "calorie-counted desserts top off an evening of television." You could also be like the family in the new header, sampling mom's new recipes after having dined off of the TV trays set up in the living room.

*It's helpful to recall that in January of 1958, 13% of American households still lacked even one television.  In June of 1955, less than two years before this issue of TV Guide was published, that figure was 33%.

Let's take a look at the two pictured at right: the first being strawberries glacé in caramel rings, weighing in (sic) at approximately 400 calories per serving.

Our next recipe is for tiger parfait, approximately 275 calories per serving.

My suggestion: try this out tonight by inviting some friends over to watch a movie from your DVD collection. Serve these to them for dessert, and let us know how things turn out! TV