Let's begin our look, as we often do, with bare-bones e-zine, where Jack's Hitchcock Project continues the look at the works of Halsted Welles. This time it's the seventh season episode "The Silk Petticoat," starring a couple of personal favorites, the always-satisfying Michael Rennie and the lovely Antoinette Bower.
At Comfort TV, David's odyssey through the 1970s continues; this week, he's up to Tuesday night in 1972. Some iconic shows from that year: Maude, Hawaii Five-O, Adam-12, Banacek, Marcus Welby, M.D. and Search, among others.And then there was Temperatures Rising, . .
The Broadcast Archives gives us a look at one of public broadcasting's early breakout stars, the ragtime pianist Max Morath, who made 26 half-hour programs for NET between 1959 and 1961. You can read more about him, and follow links to some of his videos, here.
John keeps on returning to American television at Cult TV Blog, and this week his focus is on the Get Smart episode "Rub-a-Dub-Dub. . . Three Spies in a Sub." Actually, as he mentions, the focus isn't on this episode, but that doesn't stop it from being entertaining—and, as usual, John makes some very salient points along the way.
Something that I don't dwell on, but that bothers me greatly, is the rise of AI. I don't dwell on it because it's a threat to so many things, including truth, that it becomes depressing. But as a writer, I resent the idea that artists can be replaced, or augmented, by it. JB has thoughts on this and more at The Hits Just Keep On Comin'.
If you're in the mood for a little old-time radio, how about The Green Hornet? As Martin Grams tells us, Radio Spirits has just released a batch of them, many not heard in decades. Best of all, Martin has written the liner notes for many of these sets! You can read more about it here.
Route 66 was never the same once George Maharis left. Don't get me wrong; I think Glenn Corbett was fine, and I even came to prefer him to Marty Milner. But the original dynamic between Maharis and Milner was what made the show work, and at A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence takes the opportunity of Maharis's death last week to look back on his long and successful career.
Burke's Law has become one of my favorite shows (although I seldom think of it when I'm counting off my favorites), and one of the most enjoyable parts of the show was the show's weekly list of cameo appearances by big-name guest stars. Those Were the Days provids a handy—and very impressive—list of those guest stars. What other show can compare to this?
Roger and Mike, the guys at The View from the Junkyard, do write about things other than The Avengers, but when their reviews are that enjoyable, why should we look any further? This week, the pair take a look at the fourth season episode "Too Many Christmas Trees," and—well, let's just say it's not your typical Christmas story. TV
Last week we dabbled in food, sharing a TV Guide recipe for minestrone. This week we go even farther, as Richard Gehman tells us how "You too can be a chef" by watching The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. You see, Carson makes a perfect companion for the hungry view (and Gehman finds himself, for some unknown reason, starved every time he watches Carson). Forthwith, Gehman's complete late-night supper, made during a recent episode of Tonight.
Start with the small potatoes, which can be prepared for boiling during Carson's commercial for a new spot remover. You can do the whole thing from your easy chair while Don Rickles comes on and insults everyone in sight. While Rickles continues, it's time for you to separate slices of chipped beef, which you've brought to your easy chair along with the spuds. As Ed McMahon shills for Alpo, take the separated beef to the kitchen, toss the potatoes in a pot for boiling, and while you're there put an eighth of a pound of butter in a frypan which has been preheated to 300°. Turn up the TV while Sergio Franchi is singing, so you can hear him while toasting two slices of bread and opening a can of peas. With the next commercial, you can drain the potatoes and toast a couple more slices of bread. The next guest, possibly George Jessel, allows you to chop a fresh green or red pepper.
When the show pauses for a station break, that's your chance to add two tablespoonfuls of sifted flour to the sizzling butter, stir with a whisk, and add a half teaspoonful of salt, a couple of pinches of dried parsley, a very small dash of oregano and some pepper, preferably fresh-ground. You can add a half-cup of water while the next singer (probably named Connie) warbles away. Add the chipped beef to the mixture when shills for a sewer-cleaning device, along with a half-cup of milk, stirring until the mixture bubbles, at which time you include the drained peas.
This whole thing should take you to within about ten minutes of the end of Carson's show. During the next-to-last commercial, add a tablespoonful of capped black pitted olives, and as Carson interviews his final guest (Mary Martin, Mary McCarthy, Mary Healy, or maybe Mary Queen of Scots), you can serve your creamed chipped beef, either on the toast or the potatoes you've put on the side. Turn off the set. Eat heartily.
I don't know. I don't think I can eat that heavy a meal right before bedtime.
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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..
Sullivan: Tentatively scheduled guests: singers Tom Jones, Vikki Carr and Jimmi Hendrix; comedians Wayne and Shuster, and Scoey Mitchell; the Chung Trio, instrumentalists; and Valente and Valente, balancing act.
Palace: Host Mike Douglas presents Polly Bergen, Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66, Donovan, comics Hendra and Ullett, juggler Rudy Schweitzer and the Solokhins, balancing acrobats from the Moscow State Circus.
Once again, KMSP, the Twin Cities ABC affiliate, has seen fit to tamper with the schedule of Hollywood Palace. The station had a frequent habit of pre-empting the network's prime-time fare for local programming (and the accompanying ad revenue)—in this case sixing ABC's Saturday night shows (after Lawrence Welk, of course) in favor of a movie (Back Street, with Susan Hayward)*, and airing Palace on Sunday afternoon (opposite NFL football).
*Full disclosure: looking at the picture of Susan Hayward in the movie ad, I think I would have preferred Back Street to the Palace myself.
Be that as it may, I love these examples of the variety show adapting to contemporary culture. Vikki Carr is a traditional songstress, Tom Jones epitomizes the power of sexual dynamism, and Hendrix—well, he's out there in an area code of his own, isn't he? Case closed—the verdict goes to Sullivan.
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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 series of the era.
Every one in a while television tries something a little different. Not often, but occasionally. What's not different, though, is the result, which usually takes about thirteen weeks to play out, thirteen being an unlucky number, but the traditional number of episodes a series would run before getting cancelled. The history of television is littered with such noble failures (Cop Rock, anyone?) and this week Cleveland Amory takes a look at one of them: ABC's That's Life, a comedy-variety series with a regular cast and continuing story. It is, Amory says, more like "a long musical comedy—with each act lasting an hour and each intermission a week." That's Life stars Robert Morse (Tony winner for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying) and E.J. Peaker as a young couple headed for marriage; Morse, Amory admits, "is not our favorite actor. But he is, bar none, our favorite re-actor—in fact, he is perhaps the best in the business." Peaker took a while to grow on Cleve, but by the fourth ekpisode "we were ready, if not for marriage, at least to go steady."
One of the highlights of each week's episode is the guest star, and Amory points out that the show is often written to take advantage of that guest, rather than the regulars. And with a cast of guests including George Burns, Jackie Vernon, and Tim Conway, the show succeeds more often than not. A particular highlight is the show in which Kay Medford and Shelly Berman appear as Peaker's mother and father, an episode that also features Robert Goulet and Alan King. "This was," Amory writes, "by all odds the best single episode of any series we have seen so far." That's Life could actually be considered a success as far as these "different" series go, running for 32 episodes. Cleve's much more bullish on the show, though: "When That's Life is good, it's very, very good—good enough to pay money for on Broadway. And even when it's bad, it's never, never horrid."
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On the cover this week is Barbara Feldon in marryin' garb, and inside is a layout of Feldon in the year's smartest outfits. The hook is the upcoming wedding of her Get Smart character, Agent 99, to Don Adams' Maxwell Smart, but it's clear that there's more to Feldon than meets the eye—or the secret agent, as it were.
SOURCE: HADLEY TV GUIDE COLLECTION
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Last week we also took a look at the story of PBL, the experimental new Sunday night program launched by NET. (I don't have anything to check on in this week's edition; KTCA, the Twin Cities' educational channel, is dark this Sunday.) This week we read of the network's plans to add a half-hour prime-time news program. James White, head of NET, hopes to have the newscast on by the fall of 1969. I don't know that it ever happens; if it did, I've not seen any evidence that it was shown in Minneapolis. It may well have been broadcast in one of the network's larger markets, such as New York, Washington D.C. or San Francisco. But a newscast delayed is not a newscast denied; following their coverage of the Watergate hearings, Robert McNeil and Jim Lehrer begin The McNeil/LehrerReport, which quickly goes nationally and continues today as PBS NewsHour. White had said that he would seek "top-ranked commentators"—there's no arguing that's what they got.
And in one more follow-up from that piece, the Hawaiian Open golf tournament is back, and this time the broadcast really takes advantage of the time difference—Saturday coverage starts at 7:30 p.m. CT on Channel 11, with the final round airing Sunday at 7:00 p.m.
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The week's football is kind of a meh, but Stanley Frank provides a fascinating look behind-the-scenes at what happens in the television control booth. The focus is on CBS' coverage of the season opener between the New York Giants and Pittsburgh Steelers, where announcers Frank Gifford and Jack Whitaker go through the preparation for the week's game with the production team, producer Bill Creasy and director Chris Erskine. Gifford runs through each team's tendencies, gives insight on key players, and advises the team on what to look for. (Bobby Walden, the Pittsburgh punter, has "been known to pass from kick formation.")
Covering football has changed dramatically over the years. There are five color cameras assigned to the game: three near the 50-yard line, one on the sidelines, one behind an end zone. (By contrast, the average game today uses at least twice as many, and NBC has 40 for its Sunday night broadcasts.) CBS gets off to a rough start; despite Gifford's warning that Steelers running back Dick Houk had the capability of throwing on the option play, the cameras miss his 62-yard pass on the game's first play. Later in the first half Erskine cuts to the field-level camera as Giants quarterback Fran Tarkenton unleashes an 84-yard pass to Homer Jones; the ground shot "projects the speed and power of the players but loses a panoramic view of the field," blowing the live shot. An instant replay showing the completed pass doesn't make up for Erskine's frustration at missing the original play.
The game continues through to a 34-20 victory by the Giants, a dull affair that, as Frank notes, proves the truism that "false excitement cannot be pumped into an event." Despite the early glitches, the broadcast goes well, and Gifford's tip about a fake punt means the cameras are in perfect position when Walden does in fact opt for the pass in the fourth quarter (which was dropped). It's particularly interesting to note how commercials were treated back in the day: under the current agreement, CBS can ask the officials for a commercial time-out "if there has been no natural break in the action during the first seven minutes of a quarter." The referee misses the network's initial fourth quarter signal, and Creasy nixes a commercial during a first-down measurement. ("We can't interrupt a drive.") The network is eventually bailed out by Giants kicker Pete Gogolak, who obligingly kicks two field goals to provide natural breaks for the spots.
Televising a game is tough work for everyone; as Creasy says after the game's end, "I feel as though my eyes are falling out of my head, and they pop out a little farther every week."
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Us classic television fans remember Robert Young as the wise Jim Anderson on Father Knows Best, or the kindly family doctor Marcus Welby, M.D., but Young was a fine actor who wasn't above showing an edge in his work. We're reminded of that in Friday's episode of Name of the Game (7:30 p.m., NBC), as Young plays Herman Allison, "an ultraright fanatic who's building a private army" to guard against the growing race problem. Gene Barry, one of the three stars of Name of the Game, enters the scene while investigating the death of an investigative reporter, and runs into a cast of characters that includes an influence-peddling former senator, a washed-up actress, a restaurateur, and another murder.
It's just another indication of the sign of the times, as we can see in a Letter to the Editor from Doris Mathews of Checotah, Oklahoma. Miss Mathews writes in praise of a recent special called Soul, which could have been any one of a number of specials but was probably a public broadcasting series of the same name. In the letter, she says "The Negro 'Soul' special was fabulous. More shows like this should be aired so that the whites can see all the talent among the Negro people." Wince-inducing to modern ears perhaps, but this is a time not far removed from the infamous interracial kiss on Star Trek, which caused NBC so much trouble in the South.
Thomas J. O'Neal of New Orleans has a hilarious take on Howard Cosell, who's not quite the household name he'll become in two years thanks to Monday Night Football, but has become plenty familiar thanks to ABC's coverage of boxing—especially Muhammad Ali. In response to an October 19 article entitled "I'm Irreplaceable" (I'm assuming Humble Howard is speaking of himself here), O'Neal writes "In musing over the word 'saturnine,' which Howard Cosell believes everyone 'ought to learn,' it occurred to me that this Argus-eyed, stentorian Palladium of narcissism should pause on his commercial odyssey, pick up his aegis, take his Antaean virtues and his cornucopia of money—and paddle down the Stygian Way to Hades. [That's "go to hell," for the rest of us.] Cosell, you are a myth!" Couldn't have said that better myself.
I'll defer to the following as the Letter of the Week, though, as it checks a number of boxes that I've written about in the past months. Karen Fiedler, of Columbus, Ohio, has CBS' new Western series Lancer in mind in her letter. "Lancer is based on the fact that Murdoch Lancer [Andrew Duggan] was shot so badly he had to send for his boys, Scott [Wayne Maunder] and Johnny [James Stacy]. Scott gets shot int he first episode, Johnny gets shot in the second, and Scott gets shot again in the third by a family trying to avenge Johnny's killing of one of their brood. Johnny is forced to shoot one of them because they shot Scott. Luckily everyone recovers quickly except the bad guys. It is certainly a joy to view the new lack of violence." Got all that straight?
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Back in the day—“the day” in this case being before DVDs, before VHS, before even TCM—there were only two ways to catch classic movies. One was to see them in a revival or art house theater, the other came courtesy of The Late Late Show on local TV.
One of those little-known movies was a British film called The Mark, a bleak story of a man trying to rebuild his life after being released from prison for child molestation. It starred Stuart Whitman, an B-actor better known for television, who somehow wound up snagging a Best Actor nomination for for it. He didn't win—Maximilian Schell did, for Judgment at Nuremberg*), but The Mark was an obscure movie that was well worth watching.
*Fun fact: Maximilian Schell’s sister, Maria, was Whitman’s co-star in The Mark.
Stuart Whitman’s on the cover of TV Guide this week for what is probably his best-known role: Marshal Jim Crown in Cimarron Strip, CBS’ 90-minute answer to the mega-Westerns Wagon Train and The Virginian. Actually, Cimarron Strip bears more resemblance to another CBS oater, Gunsmoke;no surprise, since the series is helmed by that show’s former executive producer, Philip Leacock. Whitman hopes Cimarron Strip will be the start of a new stage in his career, which to date has consisted mostly of roles that had originally been intended for others: Darby’s Rangers (Charlton Heston), The Story of Ruth (Stephen Boyd), The Sound and the Fury (Robert Wagner), An American Dream (David Janssen). Even The Mark was inherited from Richard Burton, and despite the nomination, Whitman concedes, “I wasn’t sure I was in the right profession.” He feels that this role “is definitely going to hit me with an image. It’s the image that makes the star. I’m on the brink of the stardom that I’ve always sought and wanted. I wasn’t ready for it before.”
Whitman’s confidence in Cimarron Strip is misplaced—the show, perennially over-budget, will only run for one season—but his career will continue, never as the star he’d hoped to be, with a few more movie roles and plenty of guest appearances in series, not to mention a turn as Superman’s Earthly father in The Adventures of Superboy.
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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..
Sullivan: Tony Bennett; jazz clarinetist Woody Herman and his Swinging Herd; singer Shirley Bassey; comedians Marty Allen and Steve Rossi, Rodney Dangerfield and Totie Fields; accordionist Dick Contino; and the Jovers, comedy-acrobatic team.
Palace: Host Sid Caesar, with Marlo “That Girl” Thomas; singers Sergio Franchi and Fran Jeffries; and the pop-rocking Checkmates.
ABC, in its infinite wisdom, has moved Palace to Tuesdays to make room for Dale Robertson’s Western The Iron Horse. (That move doesn’t last long.) The show has a mensch with Caesar, a miss with Marlo, and “meh” with the rest. By contrast, Sullivan packs more star power, and in a rarity for these old TV Guides, several of them are still going strong, including Bennett and Bassey*. I never cared much for Allen and Rossi, but they were big stuff in 1968, and Dangerfield was getting plenty of respect as well. And Woody Herman? Well, he and his Swinging Herd could swing indeed; he was the halftime entertainment at Super Bowl VII. I assume there was no wardrobe malfunction involved. The verdict: Sullivan takes the prize.
*Not sure who Shirley Bassey is? Listen to the theme from Goldfinger.
Here's Woody Herman and his Swinging Herd from 1967—could well be from this very show.
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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 series of the era. The Second Hundred Years, says Cleveland Amory, is a very cool idea for a television show. Cool, as in cold, as in a glacier that traps our hero, Luke Carpenter, for 67 years in what we would call a state of suspended animation. When Luke, portrayed by Monte Markham, is thawed out, his infant son is now old enough to be played by Arthur O'Connell, and his son, Ken, is now 33, which just happens to be the same age as Luke was when—well, you know. And just so we've got that all straight, Ken is also played by Monte Markham, and, naturally, looks exactly like his grandson. With me so far?
This is, obviously, what one might call a "gimmick" series, and it's no surprise, considering the executive producer is Harry Ackerman, responsible for The Flying Nun, another "gimmick." Speaking of gimmicks, The Second Hundred Years has two: the obvious one, the efforts of a hundred-year-old man, who is really just 33, having to adjust to the "modern" age; and second, that of a grandfather and grandson who happen to be the same age, and the confusion that entails. The problem, according to Amory, is that this is really one gimmick too many. It's fine when the show concentrates on "Luke's old-fashioned rugged individualism vis-Ã -vis today's welfare (or farewell) state," but when the series tries to ride the mistaken identity trope, which is, frankly, a mistake.
That's not to say there aren't good moments in this series, because there are. Markham is very good in the dual roles, making each one believable; he's especially funny in a scene where Luke turns on the television and sees a cowboy pulling a gun and saying, "Reach for the sky!" whereupon Luke shoots the tube out. "By golly," he says, "there's a midget in that box." The moments are too few, and the far-betweens too many; and when you only last 26 episodes, you need a little more than that.
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This week’s cover promises something different, and that something is PBL.
The Public Broadcast Laboratory, premiering Sunday, November 5, is a first for the nation's fledgling public television system: the first time a show will be broadcast nationwide on the same day at the same time. It's intent, according to Richard K. Doan, is to "try just about everything its producers can think of that will demonstrate what Public Television ought to be."
The major domo of PBL is Fred Friendly, former head of CBS News, now the TV consultant to the Ford Foundation, which will be underwriting the venture. Bossing the project for him is Av Westin, formerly executive producer of CBS' election coverage. The host is Edward P. Morgan, ABC news anchorman, who is taking a two-year sabbatical from the network to helm the program.
Note the lit candle used as the "I" in the word "Television" - possibly alluding to the flame in the NET logo shown here.
The challenge to PBL is the challenge that PBS has faced ever since, in microcosm: "They do not want to appear to strive for broad mass appeal, a la commercial TV, and must perforce adopt the stance that since they are not interested in ratings they can afford, if they so choose, sometimes to devote their attention to a subject palpably interesting to 50,000 people" rather than the audience of millions that tune into commercial broadcasts. At the same time, "it would be helpful to the cause of Public Television if they could create excitement at the very outset." Failing that, the program "could be quickly dismissed as a dud." It's this lack of identity, not to mention mission, that's plagued the network ever since.
Fish or fowl? Experimental programs or Britcoms? Classical opera or seniors-tour pop stars? PBS has never really made up its mind, with the result that increasingly the network doesn't seem capable of doing anything exactly right. It's hard enough when you try to be all things to all people, but as Doan points out, PBL has to "come on like Gangbusters and seem nonchalant about it."
Nowhere is this more evident than in the very structure of a typical PBL episode, which could include news, drama, satire, music, and discussion - all within one two-hour slot. Originally, according to Ford Foundation president McGeorge Bundy, the show's objective was to "pull together the intellectual and cultural resources of this country to speak directly, once a week, to the great issues of the day in every field of action." Westin, referring to the popular magazines of the day, vowed to present "everything from Harper's to Playboy—without the latter's centerfold." Ah, well. At the same time, Westin talked of live drama with a regular repertory company, commentary ranging from political pundit Walter Lippmann to Groucho Marx, an "in depth" examination of vital issues such as Vietnam and race relations, and even "consumer reports done with the slickness of TV commercials." The show might even go on the road from time to time, broadcasting from locations other than its New York studio.
PBL will run for two years, eventually giving way on Sunday nights to the British drama The Forsythe Saga, forerunner to Masterpiece Theatre. The show receives many critical plaudits and more than a few brickbats. It retrospect, it seems impossible that any program could hope to capture the ambitious variety of PBL, and in truth the network probably would have been better served to figure out what PBL could do best and stick to it. As it is, PBL remains at the same time both a tantalizing hint as to what Public Broadcasting could have been, and a reminder of how in so many ways it has failed totally.
Television Obscurities has a very good overview of PBLhere.
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Anything interesting on the tube this week? Let's take a look.
Chet Huntley and David Brinkley make a rare joint prime-time appearance on Friday night (9:00 p.m. CT) with a first look at the upcoming Presidential race. The issues, it appears, have already been brought to a head: Vietnam and the inner cities. (Of course, 1968 has even more horrors in store.) What's particularly interesting is the cast of candidates whose strengths and weaknesses are surveyed: President Johnson, at this point the presumptive Democratic nominee, is the lone Democrat profiled; on the Republican side are the four men who do, in fact, dominate much of the pre-election speculation: George Romney, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Nelson Rockefeller.* And then there's the wildcard—Alabama Governor George Wallace, who will run on a third-party ticket in an effort to throw the electoral vote into the House of Representatives.
*Between the two parties, a veritable Murderer's Row of heavy-hitting politicians. Perhaps it's just me, but the larger-than-life persona of national figures seems to have shrunk dramatically over the decades.
While LBJ might seem the sure thing for the Democrats, I find it interesting that his first major rival, Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy, is a guest on the Mike Douglas show on Channel 4 Thursday afternoon (4:00 p.m.). McCarthy has been hinting for some time that he might challenge the President, and he's less than a month from making the formal announcement of his candidacy. Clean Gene's fellow guests include Anne Baxter and Booker T. and the MGs. Must have been an interesting show.
Bob Hope appears in an NBC special Wednesday night at 8:00 p.m., a kind of meta-concept show that nicely summarizes the state of television in the late 1960s. The variety show concept as presented by Hope is itself kind of hoary, increasingly out of touch with contemporary culture, and the premise of this one—a star-studded battle between Westerns and sitcoms* for control of NBC's schedule—illustrates the changing tides. "Cowboys have taken over TV, leaving the comedians up in arms and out of work. Hope's mission is to don a disguise, sneak into the Westerners' secret meeting—and arrange a shootin' showdown between the cowpunchers and the punch liners." As TV Guide points out, the irony is that all season long the sitcoms have dominated the Westerns in the ratings race (ask Stuart Whitman how well that worked out), meaning the show's premise, like the variety show itself, is already approaching obsolescence. Within a few years, Westerns will have virtually disappeared from the screen, and variety isn't far behind.
*Virtually all of the stars on both "sides" are featured in various NBC properties. Imagine that.
How about some prime-time golf? It's possible when your tournament is being played in Oahu. Syndicated coverage of the Hawaiian Open, which nowadays is called the Sony Open and is played in January, airs at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, 5:00 p.m. on Sunday. Actually, given the time difference, it could have been televised a lot later in the evening than that; tournaments from California had occasionally veered into prime time in the past, and more recently NBC's U.S. Open coverage from San Francisco ran until 10:00 p.m.
More conventional Sunday sports: football! With the Minnesota Vikings playing at home, and thus blacked out in the Twin Cities, local viewers instead get to see the Green Bay Packers take on the Colts in Baltimore (1:00 p.m., CBS), a far better game if you ask me. The Vikings take on the New York Giants in the second game of the doubleheader, but since we're not allowed to watch that, we're stuck with Gadabout Gaddis and Almanac Newsreel instead. Over on NBC, it's the Jets vs. the Chiefs from Kansas City (1:00 p.m.), and given that NBC's top crew of Curt Gowdy and Paul Christman are on the scene, I'm guessing this is probably the feature game of the day.
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Finally, November is soup season, and what TV Guide would be complete without a recipe for something you can enjoy while seated in front of the tube. So let's close with this recipe for minestrone—serves 10-12, and goes great with a crusty piece of Italian bread!
Care for some charasmatic newsmen? Gerald M. Goldhaber's article on the most popular TV newsmen confirms what we've always been told: Walter Cronkite has the most charisma.
Goldhaber is Chairman of the Communication Department at The State University of New York at Buffalo. He's also president of the New York research firm McLuhan, Goldhaber, Williams, Inc., which was founded by Marshall McLuhan. All this means that Goldhaber likely knows what he's talking about. The study suggests three distinct kinds of charismatic personalities: the "hero," an idealized person who is what we wish we were; the "antihero," seen as "the common man," someone that we're comfortable with; and the "mystic," someone who's unusual, different, strange or unpredictable. Other qualities taken into consideration include appearance, sexuality, message similarity, actions, and imagery.
As I mentioned, Cronkite comes out on top, even though he's no longer anchoring the CBS Evening News: his 43 antihero charisma rating far outdistances NBC's Roger Mudd at 31, and John Chancellor at 29. Dan Rather, who's inherited Cronkite's spot behind the anchor desk, scores 41, but none comes from the antihero category; Rather scores 34 under hero, and 7 under mystic. A telling anecdote comes from Art Buchwald, who mentions that, "I remember once, when the astronauts were in trouble and I was worried, my wife said, 'Don't worry: Walter will solve the problem.' Twenty minutes later, Walter came back on the air. . . and fixed it. Dan Rather will never be able to do anything like that." That's it in a nutshell.
My preferred anchor, Frank Reynolds of ABC, ranks third with a total score of 33 (13 hero, 20 antihero); his co-anchors Max Robinson (12/19=31) and Peter Jennings (17/5/5=27) rank fifth and seventh overall. I'd argue that in another twenty or so years, Jennings would rank at the top of the list, don't you think? Using the same criteria, Good Morning America's David Hartman is the ideal morning show host, with an antihero rating of 33.
According to Goldhaber, the study suggests that NBC should put Mudd behind the anchor desk when Chancellor retires and use Tom Brokaw in the field; that Reynolds should be less aggressive and that Robinson and Jennings would make better reporters; and that CBS may just want to reconsider Dan Rather as an anchor unless he can rid himself of the hero mold (he never does)—otherwise the network might be better off moving Charles Kuralt from mornings to evenings. Wouldn't all that have been interesting?
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On the cover this week are the hosts of one of television's more surprising hits of recent years: Cathy Lee Crosby, the one-time professional tennis player, failed Wonder Woman and B-movie actress, perennial game-show celebrity and B-grade singer John Davidson, and hall-of-fame quarterback and B-grade TV personality Fran Tarkenton. What's really incredible about their show, That's Incredible!, is that in its first season (of four), the show finished #3 in the Nielsens.
That's Incredible! isn't exactly a reality show, not in the way we think of them today, anyway. It's closer to shows like Ripley's Believe it or Not! or, back in the old days, You Asked For It. I suppose you could also compare it to something like America's Funniest Home Videos, in that the hosts really don't do a whole lot more than introduce videos. Time called it "the most sadistic show on television," and for every segment that focused on something that was a real accomplishment, a medical or technological advancement, there was a clip of a man catching a bullet in his teeth.
So why was it popular? It's only a theory, mind you, but the show's first and most successful season was 1979-80. The country was in a malaise, the economy was a mess, and we were apparently too inept to free the hostages in Iran. There was, for those of us alive at the time, a feeling of great impotency, as if the United States couldn't do anything right anymore. Under those circumstances, it's perhaps understandable that people wanted to watch a show that didn't require much from them, that consisted of people actually accomplishing things, even if it was just catching a bullet in your teeth. A feature on cryogenic corneal reshaping through lathe keratomileusis might have been enough to remind people that we could get something right at least once in a while. As I say, it's just a theory.
Either that, or it was Cathy Lee Crosby.
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On Saturday at 4:00 p.m. CT, ABC brings us the 107th running of the Kentucky Derby, live from Churchill Downs. The broadcast's only an hour long, compared to the virtually all-day coverage that NBC foists on us nowadays*, but that's plenty of time to cover the excitement as Pleasant Colony holds off Woodchopper to win by less than a length. Colony will go on to win the Preakness two weeks later and then, with Triple Crown excitement building, finishes third in the Belmont. As I recall, there wasn't as much excitement about a possible Triple Crown winner back in 1981. After all, following the great Secretariat's victory in 1973, Seattle Slew had taken the Crown in 1977, and Affirmed the very next year. In fact, Spectacular Bid had fallen just short in 1979, so at this point the question wasn't whether not the Triple Crown would be won, but whether or not this year's Derby winner would fail to win it. Who could possibly have known that Affirmed's 1978 triumph would be the last time for almost 40 years?
*Which is still double the 30 minutes that CBS often offered when it carried the Triple Crown races.
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By 1981, the TV Teletype—which once graced both the beginning and end of the shiny section—has been reduced to one single page, encompassing news from both New York and Hollywood. There's not much here that's newsworthy, but I do see a note that in June, "NBC will telecast five pilot episodes of "Wedding Day," a daytime series in which real couples get married, for better or for worse, on TV." Sounds like something you'd see on E! or Bravo nowadays, no? Also in the Teletype is a story about Carol Burnett, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence and Ken Berry getting together for "Eunice," a spinoff of the bit from Burnett's variety show. That, of course, becomes Mama's Family.
Long Live Betamax!
In the "TV Q&A" feature, a questioner asks why TV sound can't be broadcast in stereo. The answer—it can! It's already being done in Japan, and should be making its way here within the next few years. Wonder what they'd think of surround sound? There's also a question from someone who'd recorded a number of tapes on Betamax and wondered if it would be compatible with VHS, and another from someone concerned that their new cable box meant they couldn't use the remote control from their television. A lot of this is probably gibberish to younger readers, but for people of my age these were real problems—and it makes me feel old. Again.
A rising star of the '80s is future Oscar nominee Mare Winningham, who appears this week in the TV-movie Freedom, in which she plays a rebellious 15-year-old runaway. This comes on the heels of her performance as a runaway teen-age hooker in Off the Minnesota Strip in 1980, and Operation Runaway, in which she played, well, a runaway. Typecasting, anyone? Unlike many profiles from TV Guide, Winningham actually does fulfill her potential, with a long and successful career in both TV and movies.
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So what's on tap for viewing this week? Well, on Saturday night at 7:00 p.m., ABC has a special two-hour Love Boat, featuring "top fashion designers": Geoffrey Beene! Halston! Bob Mackie! Gloria Vanderbilt! Compared to the guest cast that week (including Morgan Brittany, Jayne Kennedy, McLean Stevenson and Robert Vaughn), it might have been the first time the designers were bigger stars than the celebrities. Oh well, I'm sure a fun time was had by all.
If you wanted to catch all of Love Boat, you would have been forced to pass up NBC's Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters, which also starts at 7:00. I'm not a country music fan, so I really have no idea how well-known Barbara Mandrell is today, but back in the early '80s she was a big name. Blonde, cute, with a good-enough voice, and two equally cute sisters; not a bad combination for a show that ran for a couple of years. You also would have missed Channel 9's airing of the syndicated Hee Haw, not to mention the show that followed it at 8:00 p.m., Dolly.* You would have been good to see Lawrence Welk at 6:00 p.m,, though, so there is that. And then don't forget ABC's Fantasy Island at 9:00 p.m., with an all-star cast—Cleavon Little, Joe Namath, Christopher Connelly, Trish Stewart. I mean, they're stars. Right?
*One guess as to who that would have been. Or perhaps two, if you get my drift.
A quick look at the rest of the week's "highlights":
Sunday: CBS has a pretty strong lineup, which kicks off with 60 Minutes, followed by Archie Bunker's Place, One Day at a Time, Alice, The Jeffersons and Trapper John, M.D. All of those shows made a nice little profit for CBS. But my choice would have been PBS' Meeting of Minds, the marvelous Steve Allen program in which historic figures from the past (played by actors) "sit down" to discuss the issues of the day. This week's discussion looks promising: economist Adam Smith (Sandy Kenyon), birth-control (and eugenics) advocate Margaret Sanger (Jayne Meadows, Allen's wife), and Gandhi (Al Mancini). Again, back to a time when good conversation was actually considered entertainment. Monday: Take your pick; it's the aforementioned That's Incredible! on ABC, or Little House on the Prairie on NBC. If you like your drama straight up, there's M*A*S*H (still) and Lou Grant on CBS.
Tuesday: It's ABC's version of CBS' famed Saturday-night Murderers' Row of the 1970s, with Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Three's Company, Too Close for Comfort and Hart to Hart. I'd imagine a lot of networks would love to have that lineup as well.* But for other choices, there's always Hill Street Blues on NBC, or the made-for-TV flick Broken Promise on CBS.
*Topic for another day: could we postulate that this is ABC's signature lineup of all time, to compete with that CBS Saturday night schedule (All in the Family, M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett) and NBC's Must-See Thursday of the 90s (anchored by Friends, Frazier and ER, along with, variously, Will and Grace, Suddenly Susan and others)? Might make for an interesting discussion.
Wednesday: A fleeting reminder of the glory that once was Hallmark Hall of Fame, as PBS' single season of the long-running series presents Charles Durning in the one-man play "Casey Stengel." I don't think Durning looked anything like Stengel, but he was brilliant in the role. That year was a very good one for Hall of Fame; in addition to "Stengel," there was another one-man performance, with Roy Dotrice as "Mr. Lincoln," and Jane Alexander and Edward Hermann teaming up for "Dear Liar." If you're not a fan, you're probably watching Real People, Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts of Life on NBC.
Thursday: Heavy hitters, indeed: The Waltons and Magnum, P.I. on CBS, Mork & Mindy, Barney Miller and Taxi on ABC, and part one of the murder-of-the-week telemovie The People vs. Jean Harris on NBC. Jean Harris, you may recall, was accused and convicted of the murder of her lover Dr. Herman Tarnower, author of the famed "Scarsdale Diet." Think Atkins, but with violence.
Friday: I'd think the night would have been dominated by CBS' twin-bill of Dukes of Hazzard and Dallas.Tonight's Dallas episode is a repeat of the season premier, which opened with J.R.'s crumpled body being discovered. That's right, it's the "Who Shot J.R.?" season! What's particularly interesting about this is that Friday, nowadays considered something of a TV graveyard, was anything but back in 1981. ABC sought to siphon off some of that Dallas audience with a brand new Battle of the Network Stars, and NBC gave us the shocking verdict in the conclusion of The People vs. Jean Harris.
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Also on Friday night is a program I have fond memories of. Actually, "program" might be a misnomer, but I'm not sure what you'd call it. Not a series, nor a miniseries, because it's not scripted drama. I suppose you might think of it as reality programming, but it doesn't exploit anyone. No, I guess there's really no way to describe the spectacle that was "Action Auction."
The Auction was the principal fundraiser for KTCA, Minneapolis' public broadcasting station. It was a delightfully scatterbrained week or so of broadcasting that preempted Channel 2's prime time schedule and, on the last night of the auction, would stretch into the the early hours of the next morning. I first became acquainted with it in 1971 or '72, when the broadcast came live from the Garden Court of Southdale Center. The Garden Court was the center atrium of the three-story mall, and people were able to stand at the railings and watch the show while the mall was open.
You might think that this would be pretty dry programming, but you'd be wrong. For one thing, celebrities from all the other Twin Cities stations would appear to do some time as a guest auctioneer (KTCA wasn't seen as competition at the time, and appearing on it was more like a civic duty). There were also some fantastic items being auctioned off—from a popcorn wagon that became a staple during summers on the Nicollet Mall, to lunch with movie star Cary Grant.* And it wasn't just a spectator sport, of course; anyone could call up and bid on an item, and anyone who's attended a benefit featuring a silent auction knows that some of those items are pretty good.
*Grant, a member of the board of Faberge, was in St. Paul often for board meetings, and was apparently a big supporter of public broadcasting.
The best part of the auction was the final Saturday, which would start at 4:00 p.m. and would end—well, whenever the last item had been sold. In the year I'm thinking of, the year of the Southdale broadcast, that hour came at 6:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, and there was a wonderful shot on TV of the sun rising through the clear windows that lined the Garden Court. Watching the auction was a lot like watching a telethon, and as midnight came and went, as 2:00 a.m. came and went, the on-air personalities would get loopier and loopier. (The closest I've seen to it was the 1987 Islanders-Capitals four-overtime playoff game, which ended around 1:00 a.m. CT and at one point featured announcers Mike Emrick and Bill Clement on camera with their neckties tied around their foreheads like headbands while Clement did impressions of John Wayne.)
There was something delightfully amateurish about Action Auction, and as KTCA became more professional and more polished, the auction started to lose its appeal. Eventually it became a dry affair, more reminiscent of a pledge break than live anarchy; I don't remember when KTCA finally discontinued it, but it would be great if they brought it back one more time—in its goofiest version, of course. TV
This is one of those issues that I find interesting on a number of levels, particularly since one of the main items this week is not only a reflection of the past, but a foretaste of the future.
It's the Vienna Summit between President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and television coverage reflects the importance of the summit, with all three networks covering the President's arrival in Vienna on Saturday and continuing (through specials and regular news programs) with Sunday's final communique, and a wrap up of the weekend's events on Monday.
It's not the first presidential trip covered by the networks - there was extensive coverage of President Eisenhower's goodwill world tour in 1959, for example, as well as the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway that same year, and Vice President Nixon's "Kitchen Debate" with Khrushchev in Moscow - so what makes this one different besides being Kennedy's first European trip as President*? Well, it takes place in the shadow of the Bay of Pigs fiasco just six weeks earlier, and Kennedy's performance in the meeting with Khrushchev led not only to the Berlin Wall, but the Cuban Missile Crisis. Khrushchev sized up the young American President as a lightweight - JFK called it "the worst thing in my life," and told New York Times correspondent James Reston that Khrushchev “thought that anyone who was so young and inexperienced as to get into that mess could be taken. And anyone who got into it and didn’t see it through had no guts. So he just beat the hell out of me…I’ve got a real problem.”
*The trip started in Paris where Kennedy met with French President Charles de Gaulle, and concluded with a post-Vienna visit to England, and meetings with the Queen and British PM Harold Macmillan.
The emboldened Khrushchev did indeed try to "take" Kennedy, first with the August construction of the Berlin Wall, which the Russian Premier (correctly) calculated the United States would not oppose militarily, and then by moving missiles into Cuba in 1962. It's true that the Soviet action in Cuba was done surreptitiously (it's hard to build a wall without anyone noticing), but Khrushchev likely counted on Kennedy backing down again once the location of the missiles became known. This was precisely what Kennedy had feared in the wake of Vienna: "that Khrushchev, assuming that he was weak and indecisive, might engage in the sort of 'miscalculation' that could lead to the threat of nuclear war." It didn't, but as it unfolded, nobody knew that for sure. In the end, popular history holds that the result was a diplomatic triumph for Kennedy, although a minority opinion suggests that Khrushchev pulled a fast one by getting the U.S. to not only withdraw missiles in Turkey and Italy, but also promise not to invade Cuba in the future.* Ultimately, historians can hash this out.
*The U.S. didn't promise not to try and assassinate Castro, however, which means we might be able to add JFK's assassination to the fallout from Vienna as well.
All of this was in the future as viewers watched television coverage of the summit in June 1961, and as the networks poured forth their analysis, I wonder what their consensus was. Did they sense the danger Kennedy felt in the wake of his abysmal performance, or did they maintain positive coverage of the new president? It would be interesting to know, but that's for another issue.
Here's a recording of the first White House meeting regarding the Missile Crisis:
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Martin Scott has an interesting piece on Raymond Burr's threat to leave Perry Mason after four seasons. The article admits to friction between Burr and the show's producer, Gail Patrick Jackson, and while it doesn't cite any specific area in which the two have crossed swords, Scott does provide this quote from Burr, which tells us more about what he doesn't want than what he does: "I've informed them that I will not do the show next season. I don't want more money. I don't want part ownership. I don't want to produce or direct. All I want is what I've been asking for since the first six months of the show. Mrs. Jackson knows that. CBS has been trying to see Mrs. Jackson and has not been able to."
As to what it is exactly that Burr does want, "He wants some of the enormous burden of carrying the show all but singlehandedly taken off his broad shoulders. He wants better-written and more intelligent scripts. He wants some control over stories in which he must appear." Burr would seem to be negotiating from a position of strength, as Scott points out: he's won "innumerable" awards, including two Emmys and last year's TV Guide Award, and "has become perhaps the most popular actor in any dramatic series on television." Nobody really seems to think the impasse can continue; Scott concedes that the issue may be settled "by the time this magazine is in its readers' hands." But one thing seems certain: although replacing the lead actor is not unknown on television, "It is hard to think of another actor filling his shoes as Perry Mason." If you don't believe him, just ask Monte Markham.
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There's talk of a fourth television network, and while this was fairly common (until Fox came along), the end result of this discussion is a network that's not a network.
It's National Educational Television, and with 51 such stations throughout the United States in cities such as Boston, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Chicago, Denver, and Pittsburgh (but not New York City), there would seem to be good reason to expect success. We're talking about a potential audience of 26 million people here. The typical educational channel carries local classroom programming throughout the school day, followed by NET children's programs, shows of local interest, and then NET network programming, of which NET currently provides ten hours a week. According to John White, NET's president, NET shows are intended "to provide for the special interests of the public in the arts, sciences, humanities and public affairs" but not to compete with the big three networks. All of the programs are, of course, aired without commercial interruption.
As an example, the article cites the schedule of Boston's famed WGBH. "Wednesday night viewers this season could have watched a concert-lecture by Pablo Casals or a two-hour classical drama produced in England and televised without interruptions for commercials. The next Wednesday it might have been a ballet program featuring outstanding dancers and comments by distinguished critics."
Now, let's fast-forward to today, and see how that mission statement of White is going. I'd say you could sum it up in one word: poorly. There are no regularly scheduled programs on dance or classical music, and classical drama has for the most part been replaced by British soap operas. Pledge-week broadcasts, made up in great part by concerts from aging pop and folk singers*, show that the network is indeed in competition with commercial - and cable - broadcasters. Perhaps we should have known when the word "educational" was removed from the network's name, as NET morphed into PBS.
*And shown over and over and over - and over - again.
You could make the argument that the lack of government funding has forced PBS into this position of competition; when you depend on contributions by Viewers Like You, the first thing you need are Viewers. On the other hand, others might respond, if the network had remained true to its mission in the first place instead of veering into programming that advocated liberal political viewpoints and avant-garde "art," taxpayers might have been more willing to cough up their dollars via the government. Whatever the answer, it's brutal to look at what NET (and the first few years of PBS) aspired to, and compare it to what it has become.
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I've written several times about my enjoyment of the series Naked City, so naturally I'm going to touch on Richard Gehman's discussion of the series. You may recall a few weeks ago I mentioned a review of the series that was critical of the show's emphasis on New York City as the main character, but as Gehman points out, this is the very point - "A great metropolis, despite its seamy face, emerges as the star of an exciting TV series." For if you take the real New York out of Naked City, you're left with - well, I'm not quite sure what you're left with. A studio-bound series, for certain. Perhaps even a good series. But not Naked City.
SOURCE: HADLEY TV GUIDE COLLECTION
Lileks calls shows like this "inadvertent documentaries" - in other words, those who watch these period pieces today are treated to a story within a story, that of the city or country in which the action takes place. You get to see it unadorned, without the retrospective consideration that mars shows such as Mad Men. As even the greatest documentarians have discovered, you can never completely replicate the past; no matter how hard you try, you're never able to divorce yourself from what you already know. Route 66 is a prime example of this on a large scale, as though the course of four seasons we're treated to an intimate look at an American that no longer exists. That's not a political statement, just a fact; nearly 60 years on, great swaths of this country are virtually unrecognizable compared to what they are now. And if Route 66 provided a macro look at America, Naked City did the same on a micro scale, looking at one city among hundreds of thousands.* That it was the nation's biggest city didn't hurt, for as the closing narration reminds us each week, there are eight million stories in the Naked City.
Gehman details the various ways that producers and directors make their way around the city, and the different faces that it's captured, and that's very interesting, if not almost poetic. What I find most interesting in Gehman's article, though, is his stunning description of New York: "It sits dying of urban cancer, wracked by the violence that festers and explodes inside it. In the eyes of some there are elements of interest, even of beauty, in extreme ugliness." What this means for Naked City is simple: "if [New York] fails as a city, it succeeds spectacularly as a television personality."
If you're of a certain age, you can remember when New York nearly went bankrupt, when garbage piled up on street corners for what seemed like weeks at a time, when Times Square was one of the most depraved areas that anyone could find in the entire country. This condition reached its peak (or valley) during the hapless administration of John Lindsay, mayor and wannabe-president. But Lindsay didn't become mayor until 1966, nearly five years after this article was written. What we're seeing and reading, therefore, is a contemporaneous view of the city in the midst of a nervous breakdown, no longer great but not nearly as bad as it will become. Granted, we're looking backward at this, with that hindsight of which I wrote earlier, and so we're no more immune to contextual distortion than those who attempt to recreate the past with the knowledge of the present.
In a way, though, it is the knowledge of what is to come that makes the images of New York as seen in Naked City that much more powerful; we look for the buildings that fell victim to Robert Moses and his wrecking ball, we search for what we think of as a simpler time, even though the people of that time might look at us today and scoff.
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As we move into the summer months, it always becomes a little harder to go through the programming section and find anything new and different; the reruns are already upon us. But let's see what's on anyway.
Once again, the sports story of the week is horse racing, this time Saturday's running of the third and final jewel of the Triple Crown, the Belmont Stakes. (3:30 p.m. CT, CBS) Carry Back,winner of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, is a "strong favorite" to become the first Triple Crown winner since Citation in 1948, and a huge crowd (including former President Eisenhower) turns out to see history made. However, following the Preakness there were reports that Carry Back had suffered an injury; although these reports were denied by the New York Racing Association, it turns out that the horse is in fact dealing with a left front ankle injury, and he is never a factor in the Belmont, which is won by long shot Sherluck.
Interesting episode of Camera Three on Sunday morning (10:30 a.m., CBS) - Patricia Neway stars in the one-act, one-woman opera "The Accused," about the Salem witch trials. I'd never heard of this opera*, but its composer, John Strauss, did go on to some degree of success - he wrote the music for the movie Amadeus. Meanwhile, Channel 4's matinee movie is The Lady-Killers, the delightful Alec Guinness comedy; the Tom Hanks remake just reminds one of how good the original is.
*When I Googled the opera, I discovered that most websites mistakenly claimed it was broadcast on NBC Opera Theatre. Other than getting the network and the title of the program wrong, that pretty much covers it. It goes to show that this TV expert business isn't as easy as it looks. Don't try it at home.
Monday, between updates on President Kennedy's trip, KDAL runs an episode of The Twilight Zone (10:15 p.m.) that I've always liked - "The Obsolete Man," starring Burgess Meredith as a librarian in a world in which books have been banned, who goes on trial before chancellor Fritz Weaver. Some might see it as a bit heavy-handed, but Meredith makes it work (as always), and the message remains a powerful one.* I like to think of this as the flip-side of Meredith's most famous TZ episode, that of the bookworm in "Time Enough At Last" who survives a nuclear blast and can now read all the books he wants, only to have his glasses break. Seems that books and Burgess don't mix very well, do they?
*Sounds like today's college campuses, doesn't it?
An episode of Amos 'n' Andy caught my eye on Tuesday afternoon (3:30 p.m., WTCN), just because of the description: "The Kingfish tries to raise money by palming off a pair of cheap rabbits as rare chinchillas." Now, I know how controversial this series is, and while I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole (no pun intended) right now, I'll just say that this could have been an episode of any old-time radio show or TV sitcom. I can see Phil Harris and Remley doing this, or Duffy of Duffy's Tavern, or even Bob and Bing if they were desperate enough for money. What's funny is funny, no matter who does it. Wednesday evening continues the trend of looking at local shows - in this case it's the 7:00 p.m. movie on WTCN, one of the greatest film noirs of all time: Out of the Past, starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas. It hadn't even been out for 15 years when it airs tonight; I wonder if it was as heralded then as it is today? Otherwise, check out Naked City at 9:00 p.m. on ABC, as the detectives investigate the theft of industrial diamonds from a factory not long after a man vows revenge against the company for firing him.
Looking at Thursday's listings, it's fun to see shows that we get all excited about today because they've come out on DVD - and yet they were just syndicated reruns back then, filling up space. There's State Trooper on WEAU at 9:00 p.m. and Coronado 9 on KDAL at 10:15 p.m., both of which star Rod Cameron. There's Manhunt, starring Victor Jory, on WKBT at 9:00 p.m. and KSTP at 9:30 p.m. ("17 Rare Episodes!" on DVD, says one website, none of which are "The Gopher," which KSTP airs. And then there's The Third Man on KGLO at 11:00 p.m. - that stars Michael Rennie in the Orson Welles role of Harry Lime, only this time Lime's gone legit. Have I written about this before? If not, remind me to do that sometime.
And finally, here's a story I don't even want to think about: On Way Out (Friday, 8:30 p.m., CBS), Charlotte "The Facts of Life" Rae stars in "Death Wish." "Hazel Atterbury lives and breathes TV. She watches and talks about it all the time. When she asks her husband George what his favorite show was, he tells her it's the one on which the man murdered his wife because she talked too much."
At least he didn't say she talked too much about TV. TV
